The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd Page A

how important it was to me that he be aware of my accomplishments. The need surfaced from a deep place in my feminine wound.
    I’d grown up the firstborn in a field of bright, athletic brothers, unconsciously trying to convince everyone that being a girl was every bit as worthy. Certainly no one ever said to me that girlhood was less valuable. I simply picked it up by virtue of being female on the planet. And I set out to prove it wrong. I tried through a blaze of achievement: A’s on the report card, school honors, swimming trophies, cheerleading trophies, church awards. I did it through compliance. I did it by being everything I imagined a good girl should be.
    It had been a core pattern of my life, this attempt to be a Favored Daughter.
    Favored Daughters are women who, carrying the wound of feminine inferiority, try to make up for it by seeking the blessing of the cultural father. Through accomplishments and perfectionism we hope to atone for the “original sin” of being born female. We are hoping that Father God will finally see our worth.
    Even as an adult woman, I’d set up perfectionist standards, which kept me striving. I pursued a thin body, happy children, an impressive speech, and a perfectly written article with determination to succeed, but also with an internal voice that led me to feelwhatever I did wasn’t quite enough. I worried about not measuring up.
    Herein lies the torment of it: Favored Daughters strive for their worth, piling up external validations, but inside they are most often plagued by self-doubt, wondering if their work or their efforts are good enough.
    I met a Favored Daughter at a conference in Atlanta. A successful businesswoman, she told me her story one afternoon over coffee. “All my life I’ve been internally driven to succeed at things,” she said, “even things that don’t matter all that much. I had to be a star at everything. When I finally asked myself why, what came to me was the time my father took me to a Braves baseball game.
    â€œI got the chance only because my brother was sick that day. I was a daydreamy girl who didn’t care much for baseball, but I tried to like it to make my father happy. He loved the game almost irrationally. And he loved my brother the same way, I think, because he was a boy. My father loved me, too, but he didn’t value me the way he did my brother. I always had the feeling that if I’d been a boy, he would have loved me in that same irrational way.”
    Suddenly her eyes grew teary. She said, “That day at the ballpark I was looking up at the sky counting the clouds, which was this thing I did. And here comes a foul ball flying into the stands, landing right at my feet.
    â€œI was so lost in the clouds I didn’t hear my father shouting at me to pick up the ball. By the time I realized what was happening, someone else had grabbed it. What I remember most is my father’s reaction. He said, ‘Geez, you girls. You think your brother would have lost the ball like that?’
    â€œI’ve spent my whole life since trying hard not to drop the ball, trying to make it up to my father for being nothing but a girl, hoping I could finally get him to prize me like he did my brother. The crazy thing is, I have this nineteen-page résumé, but still there’s a voice inside telling me I’m going to mess up.”
    I didn’t know what to say to her except that I understood, that undoubtedly we were looking for validation in the wrong place.That we needed to quit trying and go recover the primacy of our feminine souls. Then maybe our sense of worth and confidence as women in the world would flow to us fully and naturally.
    I’ve met so many of these women, heard so many stories like this. They are all different, and yet they are all the same. In every one the woman is sitting in the bleacher (or the pew, the school desk, wherever) just being her girl-self when the