The guilt eldest daughters feel after setting a boundary is often a sign of growth, not wrongdoing. It means we’re stepping outside the role(s) we were assigned, but never wanted or agreed to. These feelings of guilt are a sign we’re moving towards self-honoring choices. Our nervous systems just need a little time to catch up.

Eldest Daughters have been expected to do, give, and be more than any one human can physically, mentally, and emotionally do, give, or be. We’re not failing. We’ve been given an insurmountable task with a set of standards no human can meet. We’ve been asked to do the impossible. Recognizing this truth is the first step to releasing the patterns, behaviors, and feelings that have kept us bound for so long.

When you were expected to be the strong one, the reliable one, to make yourself small, to silence your own voice, and to push down your emotions, that was too much for someone to ask of you. You were never meant to be the parent. It is possible to step out of this role and reclaim your life.

Many eldest daughters feel weighed down, exhausted, and emotionally burned out. Why is this our “normal”? We’ve been lugging around a bunch of emotional baggage that isn’t, and never was, our responsibility to carry. If you think you’re carrying emotional baggage that was never yours, here are 9 signs you are.

The Eldest Daughter Wound is the heavy emotional and mental load that result from the forced parentification of the eldest female child in a family system. We can all, every single one of us, unlearn the false narratives we’ve come to believe about ourselves and start healing our Eldest Daughter Wound.

This space is for the eldest daughters who are healing, questioning, creating, reimagining, and softening. Who are ready to lay their burdens down. Who are done being everyone else’s everything and are choosing, finally, to be something for themselves.