Good Girls Don't

"You can be universally liked or you can be authentic. You can't be both."

I read that recently and it stuck with me.

For years I thought that striving for was the first one was the right thing to do. That's what most people pleasers fool themselves into believing. And part of me went along with it, mostly because I was raised to. But there was always another part of me, a quieter part, that was in constant rebellion. Because it felt off.

Good Girls Don't...

My parents divorced when I was ten. My father left. And without anyone asking, without anyone even acknowledging it was happening, I stepped into a role, that wasn't supposed to be mine. I ran the household. I took care of my younger brother. I took care of my mother, who was mentally ill, in ways that no child should ever have to.

I did that until I left for college. Except for my grandfather, not one other person in my family stepped in. Not one. But I did it, quietly, because that's what good little girls do. They hold things together. They don't cause waves. They don't put themselves first.

They make themselves small so everyone else can feel comfortable.

The Phone Call That Changed Everything

In 2000, in my early thirties, I made the decision to move across the country to California. I was ready. I was finally choosing myself, maybe for the first time in my adult life.

Then my uncle called.

He told me I should not be moving. He told me it was my role, as the eldest and as a daughter, to stay. To live with my mother. To take care of her.

I remember the rage that I felt. Not because his call surprised me, but because of how familiar the demand was. The expectation that I would keep shrinking. That I would keep giving. That my needs, my life, my dreams were secondary to maintaining everyone else's comfort.

Where had he been all those years? Where had any of them been?

I moved to California.

It was the first time in my life I made a choice that would cost me approval, and I made it anyway. It was not graceful. It was not without guilt. But it was mine.

How being on the Spiritual Path Helped Me

I'm not going to tell you that one decision healed everything. It didn't. The belief that my worth depended on being liked, being needed, being good enough for everyone else was woven into me at a very deep level. You do not undo that in a single act of courage.

What has done that work, slowly and steadily, is my spiritual path.

Not in a mystical, removed-from-real-life way. In a very practical one. My spiritual path has taught me to see the thought that is running underneath the behavior. The thought that says: if I disappoint them, I am not safe. If I am too much, they will leave. If I stop holding everything together, everything will fall apart.

It has shown me where I shrunk and made myself small to survive. And it has helped me, over time, expand again.

It has also brought forgiveness. Not the kind where you pretend something was fine when it wasn't. The real kind. Where you see the people who hurt you clearly, you stop repeating the past painful stories, and you find a way to let go of the attachment to the old wounds and the weight of what you've been carrying.

Universal likeability is a fairy tale. It belongs in the same category as happily ever after, which does not mean love is not real or that joy is not real. It means the version we were sold was never the whole story.

What I Know Now

In over 40 years of doing this work, sitting with thousands of people who are stuck, foggy, burned out, I can tell you that the version of themselves they are most afraid to show is almost always the truest one.

The one that has opinions. The one that is tired. The one that knows something has to change but is terrified of what people will say.

Authenticity is not a personality trait. It is a practice. It is what happens when you choose yourself, even when it is inconvenient, even when someone is going to be unhappy about it, even when the old voice in your head says: good girls don't.

They do, though. The good ones always do.

They choose authenticity.

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