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The one who always showed up, stayed late, and smiled through it all. I knew how to read the room and become what others needed me to be.
I didn’ t know I was playing a role until it no longer fit.
Midlife, with its epic decade of change that rivals any high school drama— menopause, empty nesting, career shifts, spiritual and creative awakenings— cracked my good girl mask wide open. I found myself asking, with tears in my eyes and paint on my hands, Who am I if I’ m not trying to please everyone?
THE GOOD GIRL ARCHETYPE
The Good Girl is more than a behavior pattern. She’ s an archetype— a deeply embedded cultural story about what it means to be acceptable, lovable, and safe as a woman. She is obedient, accommodating, self-sacrificing. She avoids conflict. She over-gives. She says yes when her body screams no. Her identity is often built entirely around who she is to others: mother, wife, teacher, helper.
But the trouble with being the good girl is that it costs you you.
By the time I reached my fifties, I felt like a chameleon. I could blend in anywhere, but nowhere felt like home. I was tired of being what everyone expected and hungry to know who I really was. The invisibility I felt wasn’ t about being overlooked by others— it was about losing sight of myself.
I found myself wandering the aisles of the Santa Barbara Farmer’ s Market crying for no clear reason I could fathom or snapping at my husband and kids when they would ask“ What’ s for dinner?”
I hear this same story of the tension between awakening, grief and rage from women in the Sisterhood of Wisdom and Wonder, a creative space I hold for women in their 50s and beyond. Many of us are waking up to the truth that the Good Girl cannot carry us through the second half of life. She got us here, yes. But she cannot take us where we long to go.
WISDOM & SELF-GROWTH
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