Eldest Daughter Anger: Why Am I This Mad?

I always joke that I was raised to be a palatable woman. Behind every joke there is a level of truth. Growing up it was encouraged to not show any emotion outwardly that wasn’t pleasant, this was especially true for girls + women. Nobody ever wanted to be labeled as “difficult” or the “angry” black woman so growing up I didn’t really recall seeing women who were displeased. What I know now that I didn’t know then is, I did see it, I just didn’t know it.

Looking back I now know that anger doesn’t always announce itself. It shows up disguised as exhaustion. As “I don’t even know why I’m crying right now.” It showed up as the woman sitting across from me who has given her whole life to everybody who needed her, finally getting quiet enough to feel what she’s owed + realizing nobody’s coming to give it to her. That’s a bigass pill to swallow.

Eldest daughter or parentified baby, same job

Truth Moment? Almost every woman I sit with in this season is either the eldest daughter or the parentified baby of the family. Different birth order, the exact same job. Raised to hold things. To notice what everybody else needed before they said anything. Raised to be there. Raised to be the one who didn’t need anything back, because needing things was for other people. The internet calls it eldest daughter syndrome. I call it a job that nobody asked if you wanted.

And then life shifts the way it has the tendency to do. She hits a transition, or three. Divorce, empty nest, a diagnosis, career change, a burnout so deep she can’t name it, + for the first time in her whole life she needs somebody to show up for her the same way she has shown up for everybody else. This is the moment she finds out. The people she gave everything to aren’t there. Not because they’re bad people, not most of the time anyways. It’s because they were never taught to give back or it could be cause she never let them see that she needed help, or maybe because giving was the role that was created + she never knew she could ask for more.

That on top of exhaustion, underneath tears she can’t explain, there is anger. Real anger. The kind that shocks the woman feeling it more than it shocks me.

She’ll say something like ” I don’t even know why I’m this mad” or “this isn’t even that big of a deal, why am I so upset.” Oooo chile. It IS that big of a deal. You’ve been paying a debt for thirty, forty years + you just now noticed nobody’s paying you back. Not in real ways. Not how you would. Like I said, that’s a bigass pill to swallow.

The anger is the data

Here’s what I tell each woman coming to this same realization. That anger is data. Information. It’s the part of you that kept score even when you told yourself you weren’t keeping score, finally presenting the invoice. It’s your body reacting to a deficit within that relationship. You don’t have to apologize for it + you don’t have to perform being okay while you’re moving through it.

What happens next is the work

What you do have to do is decide what happens next. Because anger will tell you the truth, BUT it won’t build you a new life. That’s the work. Learning to ask for what you need out loud instead of waiting to be noticed. Understanding that receiving isn’t owed to you because you gave, it’s something you have to actually let happen, + sometimes teach the people around you how to do. Learning that the people who can’t meet you there aren’t always the enemy, they might just be as unpracticed at this as you were before your body forced the lesson on you.

There is always the option to do nothing. To swallow down the feelings + continue on. What I will tell you is this. This is how you breed disease within the body. Autoimmune disorders, heart disease, the body turning on itself after years of holding everything in. You can always push the feelings down, but they will find a way to present themselves at some point or another.

I’m not writing this because I have some ten step plan to fix it in an afternoon. This is coming out in this very moment because this is the theme that is coming up right now in a lot of circles that I am in. I’m writing this because I want the woman reading this to know she’s not broken, she’s not ungrateful, she’s not too much + she is most certainly not asking for too much.

If you happen to be in the season of reconcile where you are looking back, please know that you gave. You showed up. You did your part. Now it’s somebody else’s turn.

XOXO

Denawa Deniece

P.S. If you’re in this season + want somebody to sit with you in it, grab 20 minutes with me.