I appreciate your stories so much. And I got to really savor reading this one, which is a rare treat. This line got me big in the feels: "Let’s just say that my 20’s, 30’s and first couple years of my 40s were an unconscious reaction to “trying not to become my mom” while also trying to save her." That sums up my last 2 decades too. ❤️
Thanks Lauren! What a treat for me that you got to savor it, I feel so honored. I know how full your plate is right now! It’s nice to know I’m not alone in that! 🫶
Lauren, that sentence captures a double assignment: build a life in opposition to a mother’s pain while remaining responsible for relieving it. Such a role can keep a daughter’s identity tethered to the very history she is trying to outgrow, which helps explain why Jessie’s words reached across two decades of your own life. Thank you for naming the depth of that recognition and for showing Jessie how fully her honesty met you.
I see so many parallels to my own upbringing. 1983, hippie mom, only and eldest daughter disguised as a middle child (between brothers), super strict with me, not with my brothers, caretaker, the one who figured it out, hyper vigilant to all emotions in the room, keep the peace, I can do it myself kid/adult that I am unlearning thanks to perimenopause. And my dad literally still says every time we say bye, “always be a good girl.”
So many similarities! Hyper vigilant to all emotions in the room really resonates, that's exactly what I was, and still am. We get to unlearn so much during perimenopause. It's not always fun (well mostly it's not at all fun) but it can be freeing if we show up for it!
Tara, your father’s recurring “always be a good girl” gives the pattern an almost ceremonial persistence. A sentence repeated at every goodbye can become an identity assignment long after the child has learned to carry the room, keep the peace, and solve what others leave unattended. Your connection to Jessie’s essay also shows how perimenopause can expose the old command beneath adult competence and create room to decide which parts of that inheritance still belong. Thank you for trusting the thread with such a precise piece of your own history and for showing how deeply Jessie’s story reached you.
Yes you’re spot on. I don’t blame him for saying it, it comes from a good place. And I’m not going to expect him to change it or understand. I’ve come to realize my own awareness around these things is the most important part. 💫
Totally, some of these things, like the idea of the “good girl” are so deeply imbedded in our culture that most people don’t even realize the weight of what they’re saying.
Tara, your response introduces a freedom independent of your father’s understanding or willingness to change the phrase. You can honor the care inside his intention while deciding that “good girl” no longer governs how you measure yourself, carry responsibility, or move through a room. Awareness interrupts automatic inheritance and returns choice to you. Thank you for showing how release can hold affection, clarity, and self-trust at the same time.
The worthiness part is probably the hardest one to catch, because doing the work is the one place it never looks like a problem. Reading everything and going deep earns the same thing the good grades did, and nobody is ever going to tell you to ease off.
The good girl was never really about goodness. She was about safety, about being worthy enough to keep, and it takes decades before most of us can see the trade we made. Writing from just outside Chicago, and what struck me most is the softening: the story staying true while the lens changes.
Wow, this resonated with me so deeply. I've been experiencing the very same thing.
For me, perimenopause became the catalyst for looking at everything I'd built my life on. I've been exploring an alcohol-free life, working towards financial independence, writing a novel about desire, marriage, motherhood and finding yourself again, and questioning so many of the stories I once accepted as truth.
It's been messy, confronting, and incredibly freeing all at once.
Thank you for putting words to something I've been feeling too.
Thank you so much for sharing that perimenopause became the catalyst for looking at everything you built your life on too. I thought I was the only one until I joined Substack and found out I’m not alone. It’s so nice to know that this is a very normal experience even though it can feel so hard when it’s happening. Wishing you so much freedom and peace on the path ahead.
I see so much of myself in this - especially the part about your mom. I was the good girl in all ways until probably around 38 and now I’m almost 43 and feel like I’m finally discovering who I really am. I also left my corporate job a few years ago and never looked back. Thanks for sharing!
I love this so much and despite our 9 year friendship...I learned so much about you. I love the reflection that continues to shift as you do. Your writing is beautiful and thoughtful. Definitely in the healing the mother-wound game and FEEL all of this.
Babe! This is so vulnerable and beautiful. I feel so much of what you are saying here. The mom stuff, hits. The moving...it's a lot. The husband that brings it all out to make you face your shit. HITS! I just am loving finding the people on here, that walk similar and yet different paths that we can all connect with.
Amazing how finding medicine journey is such a powerful tool to help in the awakening (same here, also 2025 for me) They have done so much to help in my growth and clearly for you as well. How funny also that you were a Waldorf kid. My son just graduated from A Waldorf school this year and it was an amazing experience. He didn't start until HS, so he didn't get that 1-8th grade family, but they welcomed him like he'd been there forever. Loved it. Absolutely love this journey you are on. Can not wait to follow it with you - Love!
Awe thanks Shelby! It’s so fun to learn about the many similar paths we’ve walked. I’m learning something really amazing in posting so vulnerably about my life, is that people like you step forward and say “me too!” I feel like I’m getting to know others more deeply as they are getting to know me. It’s so beautiful.
I completely agree with you. Even though I’m just beginning with this platform, I’ve received several “me too’s” and It’s why I started it. Just felt the push to do it and it’s so great to have other people feel the same way and relate in more ways that you could have thought. You’re so right with how fun it is to see the similarities with us and other people. Just such a small world in that sense and it’s pretty great! Looking forward to finding our next link!
Hey Jessie, As I sit here in my 300 year-old farmhouse, slowly untangling my own stories through memoir, your reminder that our memories are never the whole picture really resonated with me. Thank you for sharing so openly. Loved it. X
Thanks Claire. I’ve been so consumed in my own memories and stories over the past few years that it was a really nice reminder for me too. Best of luck untangling your own stories. It can be a lot!
Thank you. 'Heartharbour' was my latest attempt at doing exactly that. It's amazing how writing helps us discover what we think, rather than simply recording it. X
“An unconscious reaction to trying not to become my mom while also trying to save her.” That sentence just named the last 26 years of my life more precisely than I have managed to in months of writing about it. The good girl who became responsible before she understood why, who carried her mother’s weight as though it were a natural part of her own, who spent decades in the contradiction of fleeing a pattern she was simultaneously maintaining. I am writing from inside that same unraveling at 46 and I am so glad this piece exists. Thank you for putting it all down.
This especially hits home: "One thing I know now that I didn’t know when I started writing this post is that our stories keep changing. We remember new things and see old things differently."
Many alignments to this one. I'm 12 years ahead of you... was the only until I was 14 (same parents - two generations).. I was the hyper-vigilant first born - trauma wounds and all.. Happily far along on my. healing journey though ;)
Hey Tiffany! Thanks so much for sharing a little bit of your journey. Wow, I bet that was a big change being an only child until you were 14! What was that like for you?
Well, it was when I realized I didn't want kids.. LOL... I ADORE my brothers. I was up close with the responsibility of it all and tapped out. I didn't begin healing from foundational traumas until well after they arrived & when I look back now I see I would have cloned a lot of the unhealed young mama patterns. Grateful I'm healing the lineage as I am now-
Jessie, the photographs do more than recover happier memories; they change the authority of the archive you have been using to understand yourself. The “good girl” begins to appear as an intelligent response to instability, scarcity, shame, and the wish to protect people you loved, even as that response eventually became costly. I appreciate how the essay lets parental love and childhood wounds occupy the same history, allowing compassion to expand the record without erasing what required healing. Thank you for showing how revisiting a life can return complexity to people and experiences pain had rendered one-dimensional.
I appreciate your stories so much. And I got to really savor reading this one, which is a rare treat. This line got me big in the feels: "Let’s just say that my 20’s, 30’s and first couple years of my 40s were an unconscious reaction to “trying not to become my mom” while also trying to save her." That sums up my last 2 decades too. ❤️
Thanks Lauren! What a treat for me that you got to savor it, I feel so honored. I know how full your plate is right now! It’s nice to know I’m not alone in that! 🫶
Lauren, that sentence captures a double assignment: build a life in opposition to a mother’s pain while remaining responsible for relieving it. Such a role can keep a daughter’s identity tethered to the very history she is trying to outgrow, which helps explain why Jessie’s words reached across two decades of your own life. Thank you for naming the depth of that recognition and for showing Jessie how fully her honesty met you.
I see so many parallels to my own upbringing. 1983, hippie mom, only and eldest daughter disguised as a middle child (between brothers), super strict with me, not with my brothers, caretaker, the one who figured it out, hyper vigilant to all emotions in the room, keep the peace, I can do it myself kid/adult that I am unlearning thanks to perimenopause. And my dad literally still says every time we say bye, “always be a good girl.”
So many similarities! Hyper vigilant to all emotions in the room really resonates, that's exactly what I was, and still am. We get to unlearn so much during perimenopause. It's not always fun (well mostly it's not at all fun) but it can be freeing if we show up for it!
Tara, your father’s recurring “always be a good girl” gives the pattern an almost ceremonial persistence. A sentence repeated at every goodbye can become an identity assignment long after the child has learned to carry the room, keep the peace, and solve what others leave unattended. Your connection to Jessie’s essay also shows how perimenopause can expose the old command beneath adult competence and create room to decide which parts of that inheritance still belong. Thank you for trusting the thread with such a precise piece of your own history and for showing how deeply Jessie’s story reached you.
Yes you’re spot on. I don’t blame him for saying it, it comes from a good place. And I’m not going to expect him to change it or understand. I’ve come to realize my own awareness around these things is the most important part. 💫
Totally, some of these things, like the idea of the “good girl” are so deeply imbedded in our culture that most people don’t even realize the weight of what they’re saying.
Tara, your response introduces a freedom independent of your father’s understanding or willingness to change the phrase. You can honor the care inside his intention while deciding that “good girl” no longer governs how you measure yourself, carry responsibility, or move through a room. Awareness interrupts automatic inheritance and returns choice to you. Thank you for showing how release can hold affection, clarity, and self-trust at the same time.
The worthiness part is probably the hardest one to catch, because doing the work is the one place it never looks like a problem. Reading everything and going deep earns the same thing the good grades did, and nobody is ever going to tell you to ease off.
Oooohhhhh this is such a good point! Over performing and over delivering and doing things TOO well is never going to look
like a problem but it sure can came from a place of not enoughness! Thank you!
The good girl was never really about goodness. She was about safety, about being worthy enough to keep, and it takes decades before most of us can see the trade we made. Writing from just outside Chicago, and what struck me most is the softening: the story staying true while the lens changes.
Thanks @Chrisha Mitchell! You’re spot on with the good girl being about safety and worthiness. Thanks for reading!
Wow, this resonated with me so deeply. I've been experiencing the very same thing.
For me, perimenopause became the catalyst for looking at everything I'd built my life on. I've been exploring an alcohol-free life, working towards financial independence, writing a novel about desire, marriage, motherhood and finding yourself again, and questioning so many of the stories I once accepted as truth.
It's been messy, confronting, and incredibly freeing all at once.
Thank you for putting words to something I've been feeling too.
Thank you so much for sharing that perimenopause became the catalyst for looking at everything you built your life on too. I thought I was the only one until I joined Substack and found out I’m not alone. It’s so nice to know that this is a very normal experience even though it can feel so hard when it’s happening. Wishing you so much freedom and peace on the path ahead.
I see so much of myself in this - especially the part about your mom. I was the good girl in all ways until probably around 38 and now I’m almost 43 and feel like I’m finally discovering who I really am. I also left my corporate job a few years ago and never looked back. Thanks for sharing!
Oh my gosh Kristen! We need to get to know each other! So many similarities!
yes - if you read my post from yesterday you can see my story about leaving corporate. lots of similarities!
Ok great, I’ll check it out!
I love this so much and despite our 9 year friendship...I learned so much about you. I love the reflection that continues to shift as you do. Your writing is beautiful and thoughtful. Definitely in the healing the mother-wound game and FEEL all of this.
Love you
Thank you Jen! I’m so grateful for our friendship, thanks for being by my side all these years 🫶
Babe! This is so vulnerable and beautiful. I feel so much of what you are saying here. The mom stuff, hits. The moving...it's a lot. The husband that brings it all out to make you face your shit. HITS! I just am loving finding the people on here, that walk similar and yet different paths that we can all connect with.
Amazing how finding medicine journey is such a powerful tool to help in the awakening (same here, also 2025 for me) They have done so much to help in my growth and clearly for you as well. How funny also that you were a Waldorf kid. My son just graduated from A Waldorf school this year and it was an amazing experience. He didn't start until HS, so he didn't get that 1-8th grade family, but they welcomed him like he'd been there forever. Loved it. Absolutely love this journey you are on. Can not wait to follow it with you - Love!
Awe thanks Shelby! It’s so fun to learn about the many similar paths we’ve walked. I’m learning something really amazing in posting so vulnerably about my life, is that people like you step forward and say “me too!” I feel like I’m getting to know others more deeply as they are getting to know me. It’s so beautiful.
I completely agree with you. Even though I’m just beginning with this platform, I’ve received several “me too’s” and It’s why I started it. Just felt the push to do it and it’s so great to have other people feel the same way and relate in more ways that you could have thought. You’re so right with how fun it is to see the similarities with us and other people. Just such a small world in that sense and it’s pretty great! Looking forward to finding our next link!
Hey Jessie, As I sit here in my 300 year-old farmhouse, slowly untangling my own stories through memoir, your reminder that our memories are never the whole picture really resonated with me. Thank you for sharing so openly. Loved it. X
Thanks Claire. I’ve been so consumed in my own memories and stories over the past few years that it was a really nice reminder for me too. Best of luck untangling your own stories. It can be a lot!
Thank you. 'Heartharbour' was my latest attempt at doing exactly that. It's amazing how writing helps us discover what we think, rather than simply recording it. X
“An unconscious reaction to trying not to become my mom while also trying to save her.” That sentence just named the last 26 years of my life more precisely than I have managed to in months of writing about it. The good girl who became responsible before she understood why, who carried her mother’s weight as though it were a natural part of her own, who spent decades in the contradiction of fleeing a pattern she was simultaneously maintaining. I am writing from inside that same unraveling at 46 and I am so glad this piece exists. Thank you for putting it all down.
DK, The Unraveling 🤍
Hi DK, thanks so much for letting me know you can relate. I’m looking forward to reading some of your writing on this! I feel like you really get it.
You will find a lot of familiar territory over there. Come whenever you are ready. I’ll be honored 🫶🏻
DK 🤍
This especially hits home: "One thing I know now that I didn’t know when I started writing this post is that our stories keep changing. We remember new things and see old things differently."
It’s such a good reminder when we get stuck spinning in our stories. Especially the stories that are making us unhappy to keep rehashing in our heads.
Many alignments to this one. I'm 12 years ahead of you... was the only until I was 14 (same parents - two generations).. I was the hyper-vigilant first born - trauma wounds and all.. Happily far along on my. healing journey though ;)
Hey Tiffany! Thanks so much for sharing a little bit of your journey. Wow, I bet that was a big change being an only child until you were 14! What was that like for you?
Well, it was when I realized I didn't want kids.. LOL... I ADORE my brothers. I was up close with the responsibility of it all and tapped out. I didn't begin healing from foundational traumas until well after they arrived & when I look back now I see I would have cloned a lot of the unhealed young mama patterns. Grateful I'm healing the lineage as I am now-
Ha! That makes sense! Healing the lineage is a lot of work and glad we’re showing up for it!
Thank you for sharing this. Virgo moon/ Gemini Sun / psychology major here! I resonate so much with your story :)
Amazing! What’s your rising? Mine’s Aries ♈️.
Scorpio !
Jessie, the photographs do more than recover happier memories; they change the authority of the archive you have been using to understand yourself. The “good girl” begins to appear as an intelligent response to instability, scarcity, shame, and the wish to protect people you loved, even as that response eventually became costly. I appreciate how the essay lets parental love and childhood wounds occupy the same history, allowing compassion to expand the record without erasing what required healing. Thank you for showing how revisiting a life can return complexity to people and experiences pain had rendered one-dimensional.