The Good-Girl Costume
The good-girl costume was never yours. It was put on you — by a family that rewarded compliance, by a school that trained obedience, by a profession that promoted your invisibility.
You excel. You deliver. You never disappoint. And somehow you're still invisible in the rooms that matter. You keep yourself small in your speech, your emails, your meetings — and you know you're doing it.
The advice says lean in, play big, find your confidence. But confidence was never the problem. You learned early that your visibility is dangerous to the people you love, and you built a career on being excellent and invisible at the same time. It worked — until leadership demanded the one thing the costume forbids: being seen.
The good-girl costume was never yours. It was put on you — by a family that rewarded compliance, by a school that trained obedience, by a profession that promoted your invisibility. You don't need more confidence. You need to see the costume for what it is: survival clothing from a world that no longer exists. Once you see it, you can choose whether to keep wearing it.