The Good Girl

I’ve been blaming it on the hormones.

For a couple of years now I’ve experienced a variety of strange behaviors that make me feel out of step with the world. I’ll find myself in a completely ordinary situation that I’ve been in thousands of times and my response to it seems bizarre and unreasonable. For instance, I will be calmly sitting in a work meeting, and a colleague will say the same dumb thing that they’ve said for the past five years, and a blaze of anger will rush through me. I physically have to stop myself from smacking them on the head and beating some sense into them. Or I’ll be rereading a favorite novel, like The Age of Innocence, and instead of swooning over the star-crossed lover dynamic, I am completely disgusted with the damage Newland Archer wreaks in the lives of the women who love him. “Why do either of these women want this weak-ass man?” I ask myself. “How in the hell did I ever think this was romantic?” And heaven help you if you’re a white guy in souped-up a truck that cuts me off on the freeway. I will risk any number of traffic violations and the wholeness of my limbs to chase you down and flip you off.

I told myself it was all part of the adjustment to middle age. My reasoning was thus: There is no empirical evidence that I’m turning into the Incredible Hulk. My body is changing, and my hormones are fluctuating every day. I can’t expect to have the same reactions to negative stimuli that I did when I was 25. I’m sure that eating a balanced diet and taking high-grade supplements will calm down any temporary impulse control issues and I’ll return to my normal, reasonable self.

If only it were that simple. Yes, there are natural things that happen at this stage of life that influence our understanding of the world, and it never pays to underestimate the power of hormones. But I’ve realized that biology isn’t really the root of my behavior. The resentment that I’m experiencing has to do with a heighted reaction to injustice—specifically my growing issues with patriarchy and how that is showing up in my life.

I came to this insight by reading one of my favorite authors Sue Monk Kidd and her book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. I’ve read and loved Sue’s fictional bestsellers like The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings but hadn’t really delved into her nonfiction work. At first, I wasn’t sure I was going to like Dissident Daughter as the beginning of the book revolves around Sue wrestling with her place within the Christian religious tradition—a question that has never kept me up at night.

I quickly realized, though, that while this memoir is about exploring spiritual modalities and ways of worshipping outside of the duality “God/Supplicant,” it is also about releasing adherence to the inherited roles established by the patriarchy. I have tended to think of the patriarchy as something large and abstract—like “the government.” It affects me, sure, but not really on a personal level. Wrong! According to Monk Kidd, patriarchy wields more internal power than we might want to believe. She writes,

“I had truly thought of myself as an independent woman. Certainly I was not outwardly submissive. I had my career, my own life, ideas, and plans. I behaved in seemingly independent ways, but inside I was still caught in daughterhood. I was deferring to the father at the center. I operated out of a lot of assumptions and ideas, but I had no idea the extent to which my ideas were really the internalized notions of a culture that put men at the center.”

The word in this quote that really arrested me was “daughterhood.” This isn’t a concept that I’ve thought a lot about as an adult. Yes, I’m the firstborn daughter in my family, and some days I’m more successful in this role than others. But I haven’t considered my father as the “patriarch” since I left home at the age of 17. So why did this bring up a trigger response?

Monk Kidd explains that “daughterhood” is more than just a singular parent/child relationship. She writes: “For me the ‘man’ was sometimes my husband, at other times my father, male colleagues, clergy, or God. But at its most basic, the ‘man’ was symbolic of male authority itself, the cultural father or the collective rule of man in general.” Now this I understand. Ever since I was kicked out of Riverside Christian Preschool for asking the priest too many questions, I’ve been wary of authority figures trying to tell me what to do. But my current reality is that I’m a grown-ass feminist with a middle-class bank account and a sharp tongue. It’s not like masses of people are ordering me around every day. So, what’s the problem?

Thinking back on my recent irritations, I was shocked to discover that much of my resentment was the result of a tendency to over-support everyone at the expense of myself. In the book, Monk Kidd writes: “Women have been encouraged to embrace the all-nurturing (many-breasted) role of womanhood as the jewel in the female crown…The Many-Breasted Mother ends up caring for an array of children, including projects, needs, groups, and persons, that may not even belong at her breast.” Uh-oh, I do this! I’m the team player, the loyal friend, the dedicated mother, the person you can count on, the generous hostess who forgets to eat. For as long as I can remember this has been part of my identity. I have been so busy supporting and nurturing everyone around me that I have forgotten to look after myself. And apparently that’s making me mad.

Lately, the universe has been doling out some tough lessons on what happens when I assume the role of the Many-Breasted Mother. Instances at work where my skills and generosity have been taken for granted and not sufficiently valued. Friction in my family when I’ve allowed other people’s issues and insecurities to sideline events or overtake conversations. Friendships that have caused physical pain and suffering because I’ve spent years giving and not getting anything back.

I have realized that the cost of not assuming primacy in my own life is getting higher as I get older. As a system patriarchy devalues women, and I need to look at the ways I’ve internalized that devaluation. I’ve allowed too much anger and bitterness into my heart, and it’s time to do something about it.

One of the gifts of middle age is that we start to cherish time in a different way. There is a quickening sense that each piece of our life which is not serving us needs to be cut away. Sometimes this purging is drastic and necessitates the dying of the person you used to be so that someone new can be born. Monk Kidd describes it like this:

“If I had to reduce the meaning of initiation to just two words, they would be death and rebirth…The old forms, which grew small and confining as we woke, now crumble and give way as something new and large and mysterious rises up inside us. Attachment to the patriarchal world, which we’ve struggled to unname and unhinge, begins to dissolve and die away, and we are immersed in the feelings that go along with dying.”

For me, the identity that needs to die is the Many-Breasted Mother or caretaker-at-all-costs. This doesn’t mean that I won’t support the people that I love because doing so still gives me joy. But I also need to acknowledge that setting boundaries for my health is the priority. No one is going to appreciate me if I don’t do it for myself. Also I need to acknowledge that if swooping in to solve problems for people who can do it for themselves is giving me fits of rage, that is energy that can be used elsewhere for a better outcome. Monk Kidd sees this shift of focus as having the ability to engender a more equitable society:

“What rage wants and needs is to move outward toward positive social purpose, to become a creative force of energy that changes the conditions that created it. It needs to become out-rage. Outrage is love’s wild and unacknowledged sister. She is the one who recognizes feminine injury, stands on the roof, and announces it if she has to, then jumps into the fray to change it. She is the one grappling with her life, reconfiguring it, struggling to find liberating ways of relating.”  

There comes a moment in every life when those who seek to become whole must disown the patriarchal identity of the “good girl.” I think each of us will have our own definition of what this looks like, but, for me, it is about examining my participation in systems of obedience and oppression.

As I get older, I want—more than anything else—the freedom to decide the parameters of my own life. The way to do that is to become clear on what I want that life to be—what it feels, tastes, smells, and looks like. Being a woman that loves, values, and respects herself is important to me, so I must give that goal the time and energy it deserves. That might mean that some of the people and situations who have enjoyed my selfless attention in the past will have to fend for themselves. And that’s okay. I don’t need to save them. I’m ready to let them stand on their own so that I can move forward with all my power intact. Time is precious, and I still have a lot to do.

Main image is Édouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron by John Singer Sargent, 1881.