The “good girl”. Quiet. Agreeable. Polite. Kind. Careful not to offend.
But what looked like goodness was really obedience — carefully taught, and deeply internalized.
No one said it outright, but I learned early that approval came at a cost: my voice, my boundaries, my authenticity. I wasn’t raised to ask questions. I was raised to obey.
This is the part we rarely name — the way girlhood is shaped not just by love, but by conditioning and control. To please. To accommodate. To disappear, politely though.
Let’s peel that back.
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Quiet Girls Get Approval
Obedience wasn’t a choice — it was a language.
You learn it through tone, through looks, through the subtle shift in a parent’s voice when you speak too boldly. You learn it in school, where girls are praised for sitting still, being helpful. You learn it from the world, which tells you in a thousand ways that being “good” means being agreeable, soft, and submissive.
It starts small.
Don’t talk back. Don’t interrupt. Don’t show off.
Smile. Be helpful. Be nice. Close your legs.
The message is clear: Compliance is character. Obedience is identity.
I wasn’t just told how to act — I was taught how to make other people comfortable, even at my own expense. To be “good” meant to be emotionally fluent in other people’s needs at the expense of my own.
Goodness Meant Self-Erasure.
The “good girl” isn’t born — she’s built.
Through rewards. Through watching what happens when other girls break the rules — the ones who are too loud, too opinionated, too much. They’re called “difficult,” “bossy,” “unladylike.” So you learn to soften. Shrink. Smile through the discomfort.
You stop expressing anger. You downplay ambition. You apologize — even when you haven’t done anything wrong.
And slowly, the mask becomes your face.
What no one tells you is that being “good” often means becoming a stranger to yourself. You learn to suppress the parts that make others uncomfortable. You tuck away your opinions, your instincts, your intuition.
Not because you don’t have them — but because obedience trained you not to trust them.
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The Emotional Debt of Being Good
There is a cost to this kind of training.
It doesn’t show up all at once. It shows up in the anxiety before sending a boundary-setting text. In the guilt that creeps in when you finally say “no.” In the exhaustion of trying to manage everyone’s perception of you.
It shows up in relationships where your needs always come last.
In the way you second-guess yourself, even when your gut is screaming.
This is the emotional debt of obedience:
• You forget how to advocate for yourself.
• You mistake people-pleasing for kindness.
• You equate discomfort with danger.
• You apologize for taking up space.
And worst of all — you start to believe that silence is safer than truth.
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Disobedience as a Path to Wholeness
At some point, the script stops working.
Maybe it’s burnout. Maybe it’s a breakdown. Maybe it’s a moment of clarity that hits you mid-conversation, and you realize:
I’m tired of performing someone else’s version of me.
That’s when you begin to unlearn.
You start by saying no — even when your voice shakes.
You stop over-explaining.
You let people be uncomfortable when you tell the truth.
You choose rest instead of proving.
You speak — even when it’s messy, even when it’s loud. For my perfectionist girlies, even when you are wrong or make mistakes.
This isn’t rebellion for the sake of it. It’s remembering who you were before you were trained to obey.
And it’s hard. Because you were never taught how to trust yourself. You were taught how to behave.
But here’s the truth:
You don’t owe anyone the performance of goodness.
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A Final Word
If this resonates with you — if your chest feels tight or your eyes sting a little — that’s not shame. That’s recognition.
You weren’t weak for following the rules. You were surviving.
But now? You get to choose something different.
Write a letter to the girl you used to be — the one who thought being good would keep her safe. Tell her what you know now. Tell her she was always enough, even when she wasn’t obedient.
And then, start writing a new story. One where you don’t have to disappear to be worthy. One where your voice, your truth, your boundaries — are not just allowed, but essential.
Because being whole will always matter more than being good.
With heart,
Silondile🌷
