Breaking Free From The Good Girl Image: Part One
Hi friend,
As I mentioned a few newsletters ago, I have been deep diving into Martha Beck’s work. It all started with reading The Way Of Integrity. Holy shit, y’all. This book is absolutely blowing my mind. I can not recommend it highly enough.
In the book, she speaks about her journey of choosing to not tell one single lie for a year. She explains how we tell little white lies all day long (and not-so-white lies) like, “I am great!” when your life feels like it's falling apart, or, “I would love to help out” when you have 100 things on your plate and no capacity for anything else. The list goes on and on.
I have been so struck by this. I knew that I have it in me to exaggerate things and that I have told many lies in my past, but I didn't realize that I was still doing it. This practice of not telling one single lie is rocking my world; it's scary–y’all, really scary–to be a radical truth-teller. Many people will not like it! That is a guarantee. The alternative is not standing in my whole truth though, in full integrity, and that is what I am committed to doing.
As a little girl, when I would see 12:34 on the clock or any numbers in a row like 11:11 or 2:22 I would squeeze my eyes shut, tense my body and obsessively say over and over, “Make me be good. Make me love Jesus.” I didn't know exactly who or what I was sending that wish to. Something in me believed that I was bad and I needed something outside of me to make me good. My heart aches for that girl because she very much still lives inside of me.
We come to this planet knowing our worthiness, wholeness, and divinity, but we are quickly shaken out of that reality by family, culture, and church. We are created to belong, so we learn to do anything in our power to do just that. I could go on and on about all the ways we learn to shrink ourselves. We sign a million little silent contracts saying we will do whatever it takes to get love, acceptance and to belong. We will do anything to fit into the cultural norms and not rock the boat.
We end up believing that our worth and our value is in what everyone outside of us thinks. When we get that affirmation and love, it feels like a dopamine hit (though it is very fleeting and insatiable because it can not fulfill us, ever). And when we don't?! We think that we are bad, unworthy, worthless, and something is inherently wrong with us. My wishing and desperately praying, “Make me be good. Make me love Jesus,” is from these core wounds of not knowing I was worthy and good simply because I exist. I was looking to something outside of myself to feel love because I didn't know that I was divinity!
At my home we mocked people like me growing up. I mocked people like me. Anyone that was outside of the box, or woo woo was a “freak” and we laughed at them. We mock what we fear, and we fear people breaking the silent contracts that we all sign to not rock the patriarchal boat that we have squeezed ourselves into.
My first real taste of this was when I was a senior in high school. From K-8th I had gone to a small private Christian school with 23 people in my class that was started during segregation so that white and black kids wouldn't go to school together. When I was in 9th grade, my dad became the superintendent of the public school one town over. I switched schools, and it was my first time going to school with black kids.
At this school, our dances were segregated. They found a loophole to legally get away with this by having white dances off campus at different churches. I didn't even question it. I was the only white girl on the basketball team and these girls became my friends. By 11th grade, I had just as many, if not more, black friends than white friends, and I started going to the black dances at the school. In my senior year, I invited several of my black friends to come to the dance at my church with me. I write more details about it in my book but suffice it to say, it didn't go over well. Grownups that I had known my whole life and gone to church with were furious with me. I was even called names that I refuse to repeat. And do you know what I did? I shut down.
I felt deep shame. I felt like I had done something wrong. I had learned to say yes ma'am and no sir, that grownups always knew best and to never ever rock the boat. I had always been the good girl. Grownups loved me being friends with their kids because I was such a good influence. I didn't drink, smoke, have sex, or do anything the “bad” kids did. But here I was with this anger pointed at me from people in authority.
I shut down. I didn’t ask my black friends how it felt for them to be kicked out of the white dance. I got small; I fit back into line like a good girl because I wanted to fit in, belong, and be loved. I have so much compassion for that girl today. I have apologized to my black friends for not knowing how to advocate for them, for folding back into my small teeny little box where all the good girls and boys lived.
Thankfully my life since then has blown up in more ways than I can count.
The first was with the car accident that set me on a trajectory I couldn't have begun to imagine. I will not be going into all the details here because I have shared it so many times, but it shook up my world when I broke my neck my senior of high school. What's ironic is I was so shut down emotionally before my wreck that after getting out of the hospital–after dying, being on life support, and being completely traumatized–I wore a huge smile on my face. I stuffed down every feeling, completely disassociated, and told everyone I was just fine. And I believed it!
I did the good girl thing of going to college and getting involved in a ministry. I smiled all the way through, not crying once in 4 years. I was so shut down emotionally and no one knew I was struggling or binge eating every day or starving myself. I moved to Nashville to work at 2 different churches, and then I married my first real boyfriend because we felt so guilty about having sex 10 months after we met. (Good girls didn't have premarital sex so we had to make it official.)
Then about a year into my marriage, my world exploded. I started having debilitating pain that we would later find out was caused by a wire from my previous neck fusion that had broken and pierced my brain stem. I hold the honor of being the only human that has ever experienced this (much less lived to tell the tale). What came next were years in bed, on narcotics, numbing away my life, watching tv, completely shutting down emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Completely frozen.
Several mini breakdowns came throughout those 7 years and then the BIG one came when my marriage was falling apart. Moving home to be taken care of by my family was the biggest shame spiral I think I have ever had. I was losing my mind, didn't sleep for weeks on end, and couldn't take care of myself. My good girl image was being shattered and that felt as painful as the physical pain in my body, if not more. I begged God to let me die. My image felt ruined and that felt like a fate worse than death.
My marriage did end, I stopped living in my bed and weaned off all the narcotics, and slowly started putting my life together. My breakdown was almost 10 years ago. It feels like I have lived so many lives in the last 10 years. So many versions of me have felt like they have died, often feeling brutal, but what has come on the other side of these metaphorical deaths is a truer version of me. What has died was never true but rather was the many walls and masks I have worn to feel love and belonging.
In my next newsletter, I am going to share with you more about my more recent years of awakening. How terrified I have been to shed these old beliefs that I am what I do and what others think of me. These beliefs are still very much in me; I just felt my heart race a bit even thinking about it. I have a lot of fear of fully being seen in public. I still really care about what my family thinks about me. I still really care about what you think about me. But my higher, truest self, knows that it’s none of my business what anyone says about me or believes about me and that we are all just projecting our own wounds and belief systems onto each other.
“No one sees the world as it is, we see it as we are.” Anais Nin.
Even though I know this to be true in the core of my being, as a recovering good girl it still scares the shit out of me. Nonetheless, I am committed to speaking my truth, all that I have seen and experienced, even if it completely goes against what society has taught me.
I choose freedom, I choose full expression, I choose wholeness and I want that freedom for everyone.
I know it is our natural state.
I know it’s why so many are suffering, cut off from themselves, their deepest desires, and longings.
In Part Two, I will share more about how I have been dismantling my good girl image. WHAT A JOURNEY Y’ALL!
Thank you for going on it with me sweet reader. I am so honored to have you here. If you have read this far down you, bless you! Ha!
Coming Soon in the Love’s Invitation Community…
» The Invitation of Pain Small Group Sessions
On Thursday, Dr. Hillary McBride and I will be offering a 4-week workshop for The Invitation Of Pain small group, where once a week for 2 hours we take a small group of people through this work. If you or anyone you know is living with chronic pain and feel hopeless and stuck on how to cope, this deep dive is for you. It truly is everything I needed after all of those years of living in my bed and not seeing any way out of the hell I was living in. You can find more information here. We would be so honored to go on this beautiful healing journey with you.
» A Community Dance Night
Each month I will be offering a free live event to all my paying Substack subscribers. This month we had a gorgeous new moon ceremony, and next month I am going to offer a movement as medicine dance night.
Dance is the most beautiful way to get back into our bodies, to commune with stuck emotions, and help move them through us. Animals know how to do this. If a zebra is chased by a lion and is able to get away, do you know what he does as soon as the danger has passed? He shakes all over and then takes a nap!
Most of us were not taught how to do this. We learn to swallow our big feelings and emotions, but as we know, the body keeps the score. We end up depressed and in pain emotionally, physically, and/or spiritually. So come join me for a night of community, connection, and dancing with our feelings.
Look for details and a link to register to come to your inbox soon!
» Next on the podcast…
I am so thrilled to announce that this month we will have one of my dear friends and brother, Carlos Whitaker, on the podcast. If you don't know Carlos yet, get ready to fall in love with this bright shining star of a human. His Instagram is one of my favorite follows when the world feels devastating. He brings hope, light, and love into action. Here is a post I wrote about him last summer that explains more of my love for this beautiful human. Seriously, check him out!
Things I Am Loving…
Belonging, Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-Pa. This is a beautiful book that I keep going back to this past year. I can’t recommend this book enough to you. It rings true in every part of my being, speaking to all the ways we make ourselves small to belong and fit in and how to unlearn those behaviors to truly belong to ourselves. She also speaks a lot about dreamwork which I am so interested in learning more about.
I have been dancing to this song so often and letting my body remember how free she is.
This podcast with Tara Brach. Tara Brach is one of my favorite teachers and this morning I listened to this podcast on embodiment and mindfulness. It is always the perfect reminder for me to come back to this moment, and this moment and this moment.
A Card For For You
I loved this card I pulled this week, I had written one newsletter and then I threw it out and started over because it didn't feel like my truest truth. I know vulnerability is our greatest strength and that is how we will foster our deepest connection with others.
In my next newsletter, I will share more of what breaking out of the “good girl” persona has been like for me and why I feel like it could bring such deep healing for women and the world.
I love you all so much and am so grateful for you.
XX,
Ruthie