The Turkey Sandwich Experience

                   

I have a daughter who is beautiful, kind, sweet, athletic, empathetic and loving. She is all of these things and she is also a “good girl”. She has not yet found her empowered voice that enables her not to be out spoken and loud but to simply just be heard in her authentic voice.

I have no doubt that she will find it soon. We raised her with the best of intentions.  Please and thank you, golden rule, fed, clothed, bathed, dentist, doctor, love and warmth. We did not warn her about what Rachel Simmons writes about in her book entitled, The Curse of the Good Girl,  ‘Our culture is teaching girls to embrace a version of selfhood that sharply curtails their power and potential. In particular, the pressure to be “GOOD”-unerringly nice, polite, modest and selfless-diminishes girl’s authenticity and personal authority.’

My daughter and I were in the grocery store the other night and she wanted to get a sandwich from the deli counter for dinner. I said that was fine, I would shop around and meet her somewhere in the store. I caught up with her a few aisles later, head down, feet dragging. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Nothing”, she mumbled back. “Did you get your sandwich?” “Yeah. It’s not what I asked for but its fine. I’ll just eat it”. “No way!” I said. “Come on, let’s get what you wanted”. Cue the panic stricken look on her face like I am about to start singing Karaoke in the middle of her high school cafeteria. “MOM! No, its fine. I’ll just eat this one”. I gently took her by the arm and led her back to the deli counter and I said to the man behind the counter, “Excuse me, but there was a mistake with this sandwich and I was wondering if you could make another one?” The deli guy said, “Sure no problem”. And made her a new sandwich. She smiled, relieved that I didn’t cause a scene and said “Thanks mom!” Happy with the one she really wanted but was to ‘nice’ to tell the man he had made a mistake.

The point is by example we need to teach our daughters that even if Mom is embarrassing you it is an empowering lesson that when she grows up she wont be afraid to speak from her authentic voice and get what she wants in this world.  A study was done asking a group of mothers what they wanted to teach their children about life; there answers were what you would expect. How to love and be loved, to have peace in their hearts, to raise a happy family and find happiness in whatever they do for a career. But when they were asked to describe the perfect mother they said things like, always have a clean and decorated house, dinner on the table, wash always done. Nothing that would convey to their children what they wanted to teach them about most in life.

Let’s all make a pact that if you come to my house and there is a pile of laundry on my dining room table instead of a hot meal you wont judge me to harshly and I promise to do the same for you. Let’s support our fellow mother’s! We have a hard enough job with out the pressure of being the perfect GOOD GIRL as well.

So go ahead and be embarrassing, your daughter will thank you someday!!