Rachel Harris's Blog

I want to start with a confession. It’s about what happens when you discover that the thing you’d been calling your personality was actually your survival story — wearing your face.

For most of my adult life, I’d have told you I was a Heart-center. The helper. The one who loves through service, who reads the need before you say it, who is endlessly, always available. And I was those things. I just didn’t realize I’d learned to be them — not because they were the truest me, but because they kept me safe.

When I first took the Enneagram, I came back a Two. Of course I did. I answered every question the way the woman I’d trained to be would answer. It wasn’t until a month later — after a lot of honest, somewhat uncomfortable digging and reflection — that I took it again, slowly this time, pausing at every automatic answer to ask: is this true, or is this automatic? And I came back a Seven. Joy. The gift I’d spent two decades quietly praying away for being “too much.”

Here’s where we’re going:

· Why the thing you keep “working on” might not be a flaw at all — it might be the costume.

· The quiet way the good-girl code turns the fruit of the Spirit into a job description for disappearing.

· Your Sacred Shimmer — the God-given gift each Enneagram style was built to carry (and a free guide to find yours).

There are a lot of ways a woman disappears without ever leaving the room. I named it Good Girl Ghosting™ , because good women don’t set out to vanish; we’re taught it’s kindness, maturity, humility, and faithfulness. So it becomes the sneaky should — shrinking mistaken for kindness, silence confused for maturity, self-abandonment misread as faithfulness — lulling us along on autopilot until we wake up one day, look around, and realize we’re 93.8% unrecognizable in our own life.

Underneath it is a mechanism I call the good-girl code, and the disguise it hands you: the costume. The survival story you learned to wear like a personality.

And here’s what I’ve found, after sitting with over a hundred women: the good Christian woman’s biggest struggle isn’t hiding her darkness. It’s hiding her light. The thing we most often bury isn’t our worst — it’s our best. Our boldness, or our steady calm. Our big laugh, our depth, our holy anger, our wide-open wonder. The gift built into us to shine? That’s the thing we learned to tuck away, dim, and even apologize for.

I call that Shadowlight. And to be clear: the shadow isn’t the bad you. It’s the costume you put on to survive — and it worked. It kept you safe once. It just doesn’t get to drive anymore. The light underneath? That’s your Sacred Shimmer, the God-given gift the costume’s been hiding the whole time.

The fruit of the Spirit’s not a coconut

When a spiritual director first named my gift — joy — it hit me like a ton of bricks, because I’d spent twenty years praying it away. I mean… the fruit of the Spirit’s not a coconut. If you’ve hung around in preschool worship circles for any length of time, you know the song. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control-l-l… it’s right there. Joy. My sacred superpower. And I kept blanking on it.

And you know what’s not on that list? Opinion-less. Emotion-less. Needless. It’s tempting to think they are, because they almost sound holy. But that’s exactly where the code gets sneaky — it takes real, biblical virtues and quietly distorts them:

· Gentleness becomes don’t make anyone uncomfortable.

· Kindness becomes don’t disappoint anyone.

· Faithfulness becomes always say yes.

The fruit is biblical. The distortion isn’t. Swallowing every hard feeling isn’t gentleness — it’s suppression. Saying yes when your whole body is screaming no isn’t kindness — it’s self-abandonment. Making yourself smaller so everyone else stays comfortable isn’t humility — it’s shrinking.

God never asked you to disappear.

The gift was never the problem. The costume was.

Nine Gifts, Nine Facets of God

Here’s my Shadowlight framework.

There are nine Enneagram styles, and each one carries a different gift — some a fruit of the Spirit, some a name or attribute of God — but every single one is a different facet of His character.

No one woman carries them all at full strength, and that was never a flaw. That’s the whole design: the Body of Christ reflecting Him together, each of us shining a different piece.

So here’s yours — one for each style:

Type 8 — God is strong. Your shimmer: protective strength — the courage that makes the vulnerable feel safe.

Type 9 — God is peace. Your shimmer: a steady serenity — the calm everyone else borrows.

Type 1 — God is righteous. Your shimmer: integrity that blooms into grace.

Type 2 — God is love. Your shimmer: a generous love finally big enough to include yourself.

Type 3 — God is hope. Your shimmer: hope made visible — you make possibility real enough that a whole room believes it.

Type 4 — God is creative. Your shimmer: sacred depth — the soul who finds beauty where others look away.

Type 5 — God is wise. Your shimmer: clear-eyed wisdom — the clearest eyes in the room.

Type 6 — God is faithful. Your shimmer: vigilant loyalty — a watchfulness that guards the ones who’d never see it coming.

Type 7 — God is joy (this one’s mine). Your shimmer: childlike wonder — the one who remembers there’s still good.

Every one of those gifts has a costume it’s been hiding under — and a sentence you were never told. I made you a free one-page guide with all nine: your gift, the costume, and that sentence. It’s yours here.

Joy Nugget — We don’t have to shine harder (that’s striving, not shining, and we’ve been striving for years!). We just have to stop hiding.

Take off the costume, Sister, and shine!

If you want the tools to actually lift the costume — not just name it — that’s what waits below, and in the room where we practice it together.

","action":null,"class":null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton">I want to find my shimmer —>

FOR PAID — THE REBEL JOY COLLECTIVE

The Practice and the Prompt

Read more

My daughter had just moved back home. We’d been apart a couple of months — new house, new state, her finishing out a semester back where we used to live — and now she was here, on my couch, asking me about my podcast. Catching up on my whole world. I was soaking her in.

And someone I love — someone who has shown up for me again and again — was sitting just across the room. Right in the middle of me and my girl talking, she leaned in: “Do you mind if I give you a little feedback?”

Here’s where we’re going:

Why “No, thank you” is a complete sentence — and how tacking on a reason quietly hands someone the pen.

The one-question test for “was that a boundary, or was I just being unkind?”

Three Joy Nuggets to make a hard no feel a little bit delicious.

Here’s what the old me would have done. The good-girl, honor-your-elders, Southern-raised me would have chirped “Of course!” — and then spent the next three days chewing on whatever came next.

Because I know my own wiring. If she offered ten kind things and one small critique, my inner storyteller would grab the one and run laps with it. Not because she meant any harm — she didn’t — but because that’s the groove I’ve worn smooth. I’d have handed over my peace to spare her a second of discomfort. That’s ghosting yourself in real time: disappearing from your own conversation, your own body, your own moment, so someone else stays comfortable.

This time, I said two words. “No, thank you.” And I turned back to my daughter. “What were you saying?”

She was surprised. She tried again a minute later — “it’s really not a big deal, just one little thing” — and I said it again, as warm as I could: “No thank you.” Then a third and final time about a minute after that, this time with an additional sentence tacked onto the end: “No thank you. I don’t want any feedback right now, but I appreciate it.”

And that was that. For the record, she handled it beautifully — better than I probably would have.

Here’s what I had to see clearly to do it, though. I wasn’t protecting myself from her. I was protecting my ability to walk back to my work and show up messy and present and unafraid.

I’m learning — from mentors and people out there doing what I do — to create scrappy, to be imperfect, to do it anyway. One well-meaning note, taken in at the wrong moment, and I’d have gone quieter, more careful, more afraid — I would’ve been tempted to ghost myself, right when I’m trying to get braver.

The no wasn’t rudeness. It was respect.

For my work, and for the woman doing it.

And can I be honest about the part underneath the skin? I felt a little buzz in my body, doing something that new. Something that felt like growth and almost naughty at the same time.

The next day I even asked a coach in a cohort I’m in the question I was really fixated on: where’s the line between holding a boundary and just being unkind?

How do I know this was honoring myself and not something uglier?

The answer landed sideways. As long as I was still spinning a whole story about what her feedback would mean, there was a thread of old fear still braided into it. Which was humbling — and also completely fine.

Because here’s the Rebel truth: you don’t just arrive.

The Good Girl Ghosting™ pattern is sneaky. Even when you’re miles down the road, it doesn’t always make you vanish — it just finds a new room to try it in.

Self-abandonment always finds a new host.

So the goal is never some finished, fearless woman who never wobbles. The goal is catching it — and honestly? When I look at how far I’ve come, that buzz of confidence surges back because I caught it at all.

This is a practice, not a performance.

You don’t have to trust yourself all the way to choose yourself once.

You just have to stop pretending you don’t know what you need.

Joy Nugget #1 — That fizzy, half-naughty flutter after a clean no?

That’s not a warning light. That’s your joy waking up and stretching after a long nap. Give her a name and say hi. (Mine answers to Whimsy. Also: Finally)

If “No, thank you” is a sentence you’d like to actually get out of your mouth — that’s exactly what we practice in here. Come sit with us.

I want the words, too

FOR PAID — THE REBEL PRACTICE CIRCLE

The Practice, The Teaching, The Play Prompts, and this week’s Joy Engine

Read more

About a month ago, a group of friends and I were planning a get-together, when the spot we’d been eyeing started to feel a little pricey. You know how a group chat deflates when the exciting plan you’ve been hyping each other up about might not happen — that “well, I guess we’ll try again next month” energy?

Yeah, that.

That’s when someone said: “Man, if only one of us had a pool for a hangout.”

Before the thought even finished landing, I was out my back door, filming my yard: “I don’t have a pool, but I’ve got this wonderfully whimsical splash pad — we can hang here!”

Instant relief.

Everybody lit right back up. We were going to make it happen.

I felt like a hero. I was the yes. And that’s exactly where it started to cost me.

Here’s where we’re going:

• The splash pad brunch that quietly ate my whole Sunday

• The two-part body signal that maps the “no” you buried — relief, then resentment

• Why your honest voice was never rude — it’s load-bearing

“So what should we eat?”

Well, I love hosting, I love being in the heart of a party, and I love me some food — your girl’s from New Orleans. So I said, I’ve got it taken care of: homemade beignets, mimosas, cinnamon rolls, fruit, a little protein. Perfect.

Then: “what time?”

That’s when it got sticky. The brunch was a Sunday, and everyone had a different church service time. Brunch arrival started ping-ponging — 10 am, then noon, then 11 am, then 2 pm. At one point brunch was sounding a lot more like early dinner. And for every single suggestion, my reply stayed the same: “Sure, that works. Y’all can come anytime.”

And for the most part, I meant it.

But over the next week, my own brunch at my own house went from something I was genuinely excited about to something I just wanted over with. Days before it happened, I was already thinking: I can’t wait for Monday.

I’d accommodated every single person except me — and except my own family, who, last I checked, also live in the house.

Nobody trapped me into an all-day event at my own house. I did that, with a smile and one “no worries” at a time.

I kept handing over my day and calling it hospitality.

That’s Good Girl Ghosting™ in its most polite, covered-dish, Sunday-best form.

We’ve been taught that a good woman keeps the peace. She’s easygoing, kind, thoughtful. And somewhere along the way, all of that quietly came to mean: swallow the honest thing, soften it, edit, be accommodating, put yourself last.

So that’s what we do — for years — until one day someone asks what you actually think, and you realize you’re not totally sure anymore.

You’re Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride, not knowing how you like your eggs.

That’s not a character flaw. That’s data. You’ve swallowed the honest thing so many times you lost the thread of it — but your body kept the receipts. Every stinking one.

THE MAP: RELIEF, THEN RESENTMENT

Here’s how you find the honest thing you buried.

You follow the relief, then the resentment.

You say yes, and there’s a flash of relief that the awkwardness is over — you’re the hero. Then an hour later, or a day later…sometimes a few minutes later…the slow burn: the resentment.

That two-part combo is a treasure map. The relief is the old pattern working exactly the way it was trained to work. The resentment is the honest thing knocking to get out.

And there are actually two kinds of relief. The first is the one I felt when everyone lit back up and I was the hero.

It feels amazing — it feels like being seen.

But it’s the people-pleasing sugar high: you disappearing, dressed up as generosity.

You’re being seen for the costume, not for you.

The second relief lives on the far side of the honest thing — and that one hits completely different.

The Holy No creates margin.

And the Spark — your joy, your aliveness, the dreams you keep saying you’ll get to later — the Spark needs the space.

Every yes you didn’t mean is taking up room where your joy could go. Because every no is a yes pointed somewhere else — there’s no such thing as a free-floating no. When I said yes to pushing that brunch into an all-day thing, I was saying no to my family’s Sunday. It might not feel like a choice you’re making, but it’s a choice getting made for you — usually by whoever’s asking the loudest or looks the most disappointed.

YOUR VOICE IS LOAD-BEARING

This isn’t just a feelings thing.

A psychologist named Dana Crowley Jack spent years studying women who chronically silence themselves, and she found that the swallowed voice isn’t only frustrating — it’s linked to depression. Your “nice” that swallows your real answer is never free. Take your voice out from under your life and something real starts to sag.

(And Midlife Sisters, we know the sting of ‘the sag.’)

Here’s the key to actually saying the thing.

A Harvard researcher, Alison Wood Brooks, studies what happens right before something scary — a speech, a hard conversation, a no.

When our heart pounds, most of us try to force ourselves to calm down. Her research found that rarely works (duh); your body’s already revved and you can’t slam those brakes. But do you know what does work? Reappraisal.

You take that same racing heart and rename it — out loud, because saying it out loud matters. Anxiety and excitement are almost identical in the body; the only difference is the story you tell about it.

So when you go to say your Holy No and your whole body lights up, that’s not a warning. That’s aliveness. As the Leading Lady of your life, you get to reclaim the pen and write the true story, saying: “I’m alive, that’s what this feeling is telling me, and I’m about to sound like me.”

On the episode, I tell the story of the very first time my body made the no for me — a full-blown panic attack in a church parking lot at 26, because I could not make myself say the word out loud. I couldn’t admit how much I needed and even wanted to say it. I ignored all my body’s signals until I simply couldn’t anymore.

Hold that memory up next to the splash pad brunch, where this time there was no parking lot and no panic — just a three-day catch and a two-line text: “Come at 11, we’ll call it noon, and my family gets their house back around two.”

The panic attack became a pause.

The disappearing became an internally whispered, finally.

(That whole story’s in the episode — press play.)

If you can feel that slow burn in your own life right now, you’re in the right place. The words for the next “no” land here every week.

Goodbye, Good Girl is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts filled with play, reflection, and strategies to stop disappearing and reclaim JOY, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A BOUNDARY ISN’T THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE

The real fear — the one I lived inside for decades — is that if I say the no, it’ll cost me the relationship. She’ll be hurt. They’ll think I’ve changed, that I’m difficult.

So here are the two things that finally set me free.

First: a boundary isn’t the opposite of love. It’s the shape love takes when it plans to last.

And here’s the part the good-girl code skips right over — the most loving person in history wasn’t infinitely available. Jesus withdrew from crowds who still needed things. He slept through the storm. He asked for space in the garden. Love had a bedtime. So if perfect love, if Jesus, kept boundaries, then your boundary isn’t a character flaw you need to pray away.

The martyr burns out and calls it holiness. The Holy No stays in the room for the long haul — and that, sweet sister, is the more loving option. It’s just not the one we were trained to pick.

Second: when you hold your no, you make room for someone else to stand up. Because I jumped in so fast with “we can do it here,” nobody else in the chat ever got the chance to offer their yes. My quick yes didn’t just cost me — it quietly robbed the room of everyone else’s.

Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is leave one beat of silence and let someone else’s yes rise up to fill it.

JOY NUGGET

Your true voice was never rude. It’s the most freeing sound in the world.

You don’t have to earn your voice back — it’s already yours.

You just get to stop giving it away.

YOUR PINKIE-TOE STEP

No hard conversations required yet.

This week, just catch one relief-then-resentment.

Notice the yes.

Notice the flash of relief.

And when the slow burn shows up a day later, instead of scolding yourself, get curious: what was the honest thing I swallowed there?

You don’t have to say it to a single soul. Just name it to yourself. Noticing is the first act of joyful rebellion.

Playful Prompt

For this letter, I thought I’d include some goodness I’ve created.

Choose Your Adventure, friends, by clicking the link in the title:

Are You A Good Girl Ghost? Quiz - fun, maybe a bit of an ouch, but I leave you with goodness, I promise

My Free Rebel Joy Card Deck - Seven print-and-keep cards with quick and easy play prompts.

And here’s one: Kitchen-Floor Rebellion. Put on the song that was YOURS before you were anyone’s wife or mom. Dance one whole song like the windows are painted shut and the house is empty. Bonus joy if someone walks in and you don’t stop!

Before you go — reply or drop it in the comments: what’s one “sure, that works” you said this week that you didn’t quite mean?

You don’t have to fix it. Just name it. I read every one.

Leave a comment

Welcome to the Rebellion. We’ve saved you a seat.

P.S. Part 1 in this series is finding the honest thing. Part 2 hands you the actual words — the Holy No Script Bank — so the short, kind, guilt-free no comes out of your mouth without the whole paragraph of over-explaining tacked on. Subscribe so it lands in your feed the second it drops.

Subscribe - so Part 2 finds you

You’ve spent years being the one who holds it together. The helper. The good one. The woman who takes the burnt corner of the casserole so nobody else has to.

And somewhere in all that showing-up, you got quiet in your own life.

The Rebel Practice Circle is the room where you practice coming back — where you say the true thing out loud here, where it’s safe and the stakes are zero, before you have to say it out there, where it counts.

If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking:

“Is this really it?”

“I miss being me — and I feel guilty for even saying that.”

“I look at my life and feel about 93.8% unrecognizable.”

— you’re not making it up, and you’re not the only one.

I’ve worked with, listened to, and coached over 100 women — and I was my own first client. Underneath all the different roles and seasons and expectations, we had the same quiet ache: I disappeared from my own life…I ghosted myself…and I don’t know the way back.

I literally wrote the way back out, and this is the room where you find yours.

Join the Circle

You don’t need another course. You need a room.

Most of us aren’t stuck because we’re missing information. We’re stuck because we’re trying to find our way back alone — with a headful of automatic yeses and nobody to practice the no with.

So this isn’t a content library you’ll never open. It’s a practice, and a room full of women doing it with you.

Your membership is what lets this stay a room instead of a funnel.

What you get — three things, one breath

The monthly live room — plus that month’s workbook page. Real teaching, real conversation, real women, not a webinar you watch on mute. You’ll leave with that month’s workbook page in hand — stay the year and you’ll have collected the whole book. Can’t make it live? The replay’s always waiting.

The deeper layer of every essay. Under each week’s free essay: the Practice, the Play Prompt, the Extended Journal, and the monthly Joy Engine — our playful ritual for practicing joy on purpose. It all stays, and it all stacks.

Say It Here First. The members-only Chat, where you rehearse the true sentence — the boundary, the ask, the “actually, no” — and we witness it before you go say it for real. Rehearsed courage is still courage. It might be the smartest kind.

From women already in the room

“I can’t tell you how much lighter — dare I say, happier — I feel.” — Mindy

“She makes me see myself differently, and I can’t thank her enough.” — Jen D.

This is for you if…

You know the exact rooms where you go quiet — and what it’s cost you.

You want the words for the moment, not just the theory.

You’re done disappearing to keep everyone else comfortable.

You want to practice the no somewhere safe before you say it out loud.

You’d rather find your way back in good company than white-knuckle it alone.

Three ways in

$9 / month, or $80 / year — two months on the house.

Reclaim Your JOY - Join the Circle

Founding Rebel — $150 / year. For the woman who’s not just joining, she’s planting a flag. Founding Rebels get everything in the annual Circle, plus a private Rebel Hour with me — a one-on-one, normally $150 on its own, redeemable anytime this year. So yes: the 1:1 is on the house. Same price as a single Rebel Hour, and you get the whole year in the room too.

Become a Founding Rebel

The Circle Promise

You don’t have to reclaim your joy alone. You don’t have to wonder whether what you’re feeling is normal. You don’t have to keep disappearing to keep the peace. You just need a room that gets it — and a seat that’s already yours.

Welcome to the Rebellion. We’ve saved you a seat.

Take Your Seat

Last week, I pulled up a chair at my daughter’s desk, armed with a dozen printouts of notes, a notebook filled with squiggles of handwriting and arrows, and my ever-present Diet Mountain Dew, joining her for a Zoom chat with her Northern Arizona University adviser. A follow-up to one they’d had two weeks prior.

Here’s where we’re going:

• The advising appointment where I almost apologized for being right

• The two wrong courses that had to go before the good one could fit

• Why speaking up was never actually about winning

Course numbers highlighted. Transfer credits cross-checked twice, because I’d spent evenings on the university website like it was a mystery novel and I was determined to know who did it.

Yet I still walked into that meeting with the old flutter — the one that says: don’t be that mom.

Because the adviser is the expert. The adviser has the degree and the software and the paycheck from the university with her name on it. And I’m just the mother in the extra chair with a highlighter and an opinion. The one they rarely want to talk to unless it’s about tuition being paid. (Am I right?)

But here’s the thing. My daughter wanted me there. And we’d already discovered during our note-gathering research that mistakes had been made.

They’d enrolled my daughter in two courses she didn’t need, thanks to her transfer credits, and a third course wasn’t pulling the weight that a different one would carry.

Here’s where the old me would have played it safe. Suggest a change, let the expert tell me I was wrong, then say “oh, okay” in a pleasant voice before writing it all down, walking down the hall, and rage-Googling for a few more hours to prove I was right — but still let it go rather than be difficult.

I didn’t do that.

Instead, I said, kindly but confidently: “I don’t think this course is right — can we check it?”

And when there was a beat of discomfort, I said the other true thing too — the one that made my ears go hot:

“I’m the one paying for this, so I just want to make sure we get it right.”

Friend, I have wanted to say versions of that sentence so many times in my life, but the rare moments I came close, I never did it without apologizing for it afterward.

This time? I didn’t apologize.

Because no apology was needed.

I wasn’t rude. I wasn’t smug. I actually delivered the line with a smile and some humor, because it’s real — and college isn’t cheap. And if the woman was honest, she’d understand that.

And the really cool thing? She totally did.

In fact, she thanked me for coming so prepared and noticing things she hadn’t.

She also caught two details I’d misread, to which I said “oh, good, thank you” — and meant it. That part matters as much as the rest.

Because I stayed okay being imperfect in a room where I’d shown up prepared.

I didn’t need to be right to be allowed to speak. And being wrong, didn’t negate the right that I’d contributed.

Over the half hour, we dropped those two courses that never should have been on there. And then we went looking for what to put in their place.

That’s when it got good.

I came armed with my list of four or five alternatives — classes that either fit my daughter’s degree plan better or that she’d actually enjoy taking, rather than plod her way through.

During the back and forth, we landed on a science class — a real, credited, this-counts science class — about fermentation. Taught by a woman my daughter immediately decided was the coolest person on campus. Who, over the course of the semester, will be teaching my daughter alcoholic fermentation (beer, wine, sake, mead, and cider), along with non-alcoholic (pickles, yogurt, cheese, chocolate, and vanilla). For the rest of her life, my daughter gets to say she legit took a course in college about making beer. How whimsical and unique is that?

My kid — who cooks and tinkers and asks why about everything with a burner on — looked at that screen and her whole face changed.

She…lit…up.

As a mom, that look is what we live for.

As a grown woman, I’m finally learning about the things make ME look like that. Asking myself how I can live from that place. And how I can help other women do the same.

Good Girl Ghosting™ isn’t only the big disappearing.

It’s the smaller one: sitting in a room where you did the homework and deciding it’s more polite to be wrong quietly than to be inconvenient out loud.

It’s letting your own money, your own research, your own knowing sit quiet while you nod.

Most of the women I work with can name the exact rooms where they go quiet — and they know exactly what it cost them. They just never knew what to say or how to choose any different.

The other half of this part of the self-discovery journey is realizing the reason you speak up isn’t to win. It’s so there’s room left for the thing that makes somebody’s face light up. Especially your own.

The two wrong courses had to go before the fermentation class could fit.

That’s always how it works.

The Holy No creates the margin.

The Spark needs the space.

That’s the Alignment Drop — do I respect myself here, or betray myself and call it manners?

If you can name the exact room where you go quiet, you’re already in the right place. The words for the next one land here every week.

Goodbye, Good Girl is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts filled with play, reflection, and strategies to stop disappearing and reclaim JOY, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Your membership is what lets this stay a room instead of a funnel.

JOY NUGGET

You’re allowed to be the most prepared person in the room and say so — out loud, kindly, without apologizing for the sound of your own voice.

Being informed isn’t being difficult. Ask the question. Ask it twice.

THIS WEEK’S JOURNAL PROMPT (free)

Where’s one room where you did the homework and still went quiet?

Write down the sentence you swallowed — word for word. That’s data, not a verdict.

Normally, the rest of the essay lives in the Rebel Practice Circle: the Practice, the Play Prompt, the Extended Journal, and this month’s JOY Engine — plus the monthly live room, the Say It Here First thread, and everything we’ve already practiced together.

July is our Open House, so the door is wide open. Come see the room from the inside before you decide anything.

Welcome to the Rebellion. We’ve saved you a seat.

Subscribe now

For the Circle — the Practice, the Play Prompt, the Extended Journal, and this month’s JOY Engine.

This week’s deeper layer, in three: the pattern dissected · the rebel tool · the prompts.

1 · The pattern, dissected

Look at what actually happened in that chair, in order.

The flutter before the meeting — don’t be that mom — that’s the fear of being judged, of being seen as too much and quietly moved outside the circle.

The hot ears when the money sentence came out — that’s guilt as muscle memory: the old alarm ringing because I broke a rule I never wrote, not because I did anything wrong. The echo, not a verdict. And the rage-Googling the old me would have done in the hallway? That’s the leak — anger pooling into resentment every time we hand the room our knowing and call it politeness.

So run the catch-question: is this true, or is this automatic?

The flutter was automatic. The receipts were true.

You can feel the first and still act on the second — that’s the whole practice.

2 · The rebel tool — your script for the week

Two sentences, tested live in an advising appointment:

• The check: “I don’t think this is right — can we check it?”

• The receipts line: “(This) is why I’m asking — help me understand it.” (my version of, “I’m the one paying for this, so I just want to make sure we get it right.”)

Holding it through the pushback: if the expert bristles, don’t retreat and don’t escalate — stay calm and just ask the question. Your comfort and need to know is as important as anyone else’s. A minute of awkwardness is worth having answers.

And if it turns out you misread a detail, the strongest move in the room is “oh, good — thank you,” and mean it.

You don’t have to be right to be allowed to speak.

Staying at the table after being corrected IS the win.

3 · The prompts

• The sentence I’ve wanted to say for years is ______. The apology I usually staple to it is ______. What happens if the sentence goes out alone this week?

• What are the two “wrong courses” taking up space on my schedule right now — and what might fit if they went? (Remember: The Holy No creates the margin and clears the shelf. The spark needs the space.)

• When was the last time my whole face lit up? Who witnessed it — and do they know?

PINKIE-TOE STEP

This week, in one ordinary room — a doctor’s office, a school meeting, a customer service call, a conversation about money you didn’t start — say one clarifying sentence you’d normally swallow.

Five words is plenty. “Can we double-check that one?” That’s the whole step.

You don’t have to be certain. You just have to stop pretending you don’t know.

PLAY PROMPT

Go find your version of the fermentation class.

Somewhere out there is a thing you’d take or pursue purely because it sounds delightful — a class, a workshop, a library book, a two-hour YouTube rabbit hole on sourdough or celestial navigation or how they make the tiny sets in stop-motion movies.

Look it up. Just look it up. Notice what happens in your chest when you find the one that makes you go oh, THAT. That flicker is data. Write it down.

You don’t have to sign up for anything.

You can — but this isn’t about adding to your plate.

It’s about admitting, to yourself, that something still lights you up. And finding that glittering fingerprint back to your joy.

THE JOY ENGINE — July · Story Shift · Week 4: the Gain Jar

“Reclaim the pen.” This month we’ve been rewriting the story — so this week, drop the proof in the jar: one sentence you said out loud this month that the old story would never have let you say.

Mine’s in this essay. Bring yours to Chat — the smaller and more ordinary, the better.

SAY IT HERE FIRST (in the Chat)

Got a version of the receipts line waiting in your own life — an adviser, a contractor, a doctor, a bill you’ve been overcharged on?

Before it goes live in a real room, post it in the Say It Here First thread. Say it here, where the room is safe and the stakes are zero. We’ll witness it. Then go say it out there — and come back and tell us what happened.

Rehearsed courage is still courage. It might be the smartest kind.

The Circle door is standing wide open all month — the live call, the workbook page, the Joy Engine, the Chat, free to feel from the inside. If this essay named something you already knew, come practice it with us.

Welcome to the Rebellion. We’ve saved you a seat.

Reclaim your JOY,

— Rachel ~ xoxo

P.S. We also officially moved her up this weekend. Boxes and bags and a dresser that weighs more than it has any right to. Sixteen years of homeschooling, a thousand kitchen-table mornings, and now a brand new apartment 2.5 hours away, a fermentation class, and a girl walking into her own life on purpose. I’m so proud I can barely stand it. I may’ve teared up in the car. That counts as joy too.

Before you go — drop it in the comments: what’s the clarifying sentence you’d normally swallow? Six words is plenty. I read every one.

My youngest had just graduated from our homeschool.

My oldest was off doing her thing at community college, getting core credits while figuring out her next steps.

I was spiraling in the most common, silent way possible: What do I do now? Who even am I now?

Here’s where we’re going:

The dream job that came with ten kids, a raised wooden floor, and a train

The People-Pleaser Math — and the math that finally beat it

Why the beliefs you’d defend hardest are the ones you’ve never said out loud

Also, we were staring down college tuition that, one semester in, was raised to cost more than Harvard…AND they didn’t adjust the scholarships to match. Which was just lovely. (I’m looking at you, TCU).

So: a job.

Yes, I’m a NYT & USA Today bestselling author of 11 novels, but the truth people don’t tell you about that fact: impressive looking titles often don’t equal $$.

So, I went looking for what I was qualified for, and I found what looked like a dream — a hybrid school for homeschoolers, half-day program, Montessori-style. I answered the ad for the Children’s house, littles through kindergarten. During the interview, the school’s owner mentioned a brand-new upper-elementary room — third through sixth grade, the oldest kids in her still-growing school — which she believed I could be perfect for based on my experience. I thought so, too.

Enter me accepting the key to my very own one-room schoolhouse that had never been used. I got to make it exactly what I believed a learning room should be: warm, cozy, blankets everywhere. My own tiny kingdom.

Here’s what the brochure version leaves out:

I was alone — in a Montessori-style room (read: no desks) that’s never supposed to have just one adult — with ten kids at a time. Mostly boys, ages nine to eleven. Nearly every one of them having a special need that required individual attention — gifted, ADHD, autistic, or some combination — very familiar country for me, since my own girls are twice-exceptional.

A raised wooden floor, so every step went boom, boom, boom.

And a train that roared past, literally right outside, multiple times a day.

The owner’s vision for this room was Montessori calm. Quiet. Serene, self-directed children padding softly between workstations. Enthusiastic about the materials and approach. Even though many had never been in that environment before.

Yeah…That wasn’t what happened.

So I did the thing sixteen years of homeschooling my own kids and others who learn sideways had taught me: I followed the children instead of the script.

I got a doorbell to wear around my neck with a fun jingle to ring for attention. We did callbacks that they helped choose and sang. We learned math and science concepts in scavenger hunts. We built things with our hands and did projects you could feel.

Boys that age carry energy that has to go somewhere — so I built the learning around the energy, instead of spending the whole day fighting it.

It was not quiet. It was, however, working.

The parents were the first to say it out loud. A few had been skeptical of me at the start — a new teacher to the school, and although a veteran homeschool mom, not a “real” teacher (although I was in classes to be certified) — but at the first parent-teacher conferences six weeks in, they were telling me how much their kids were changing, enjoying learning, and they asking me for advice.

The owner, however, still wanted things her way. Quiet. Calm. Self-directed but only if using the materials in the expected way. Even though when she came in one day to show me how it “should be” done, she struggled, too. Some of the work got done, but not well, not in a way that sparked learning, and not in a way that met the child where they were.

I realized I had a real Good Girl Ghost Dilemma.

Here’s the People-Pleaser Math:

She was my boss + it was her school + she paid me = Obedience and compliance was the obvious, comfortable, GOOD-girl move.

She’d be happy, and I wouldn’t disappoint her.

Here’s the Joyful Rebel & Good Girl Ghost Reset Math:

I was being asked to do things I didn’t believe were good for the kids + weren’t in the best interest of the parents paying tuition + went against my personal belief in creating a love of learning = Alignment and Integrity demanded I choose different.

Everything in my wiring said comply.

I refused.

Real talk? I hate disappointing people — absolutely loathe it — and I felt like either decision required disappointing someone. The owner, or the kids and parents I’d grown to love.

The Real Good Girl Ghost Math?

Second-guessing what I knew was right

+ Outsourcing my own discernment every time I tried it the other way

+ Shrinking my belief

+ Swallowing my voice

+ Over-functioning and spending a lot of my own money attempting to make everyone happy by doing it both ways

= Self-Betrayal

The longer I ignored what I knew to be true, the longer I fought my inner-voice and pretended things could change, the more exhausted, frustrated, and joyless I felt. After another evening spent crying in my car, I finally admitted the only honest move left was to go.

Why am I sharing this? Because this moment, this story, happened BEFORE.

Before I had named the pattern Good Girl Ghosting. Before I created the Rebel Practice. Before I could have told you what any of this was called or why it happened. Everywhere else in my life at that time, I was still very much living the disappearing act of the good girl ghost.

But in that little boom-boom-boom house by the train tracks, I turned out to be the only believer in the room — and I found a belief I had never once said out loud: kids don’t learn by being managed into stillness. They learn with their bodies, their hands, and their joy. They learn through wonder and possibility.

I didn’t know it was a credo. I just knew I couldn’t do it their way.

On the podcast this week I taught the I Believe List — writing your credo forward, in your own words.

But that season taught me the other half: sometimes you don’t write your beliefs. You dig them up.

Your beliefs leave evidence — in the job you walked away from, the no that cost you something, the hill you didn’t plan to stand on but somehow still couldn’t leave.

Looking back, that classroom was one of my tipping points. The place where enough started becoming enough.

And the parents? Years later, several still call. Message. Email. They still ask advice or let me know how their kids are doing.

The proof was never in the quiet. The proof was in the kids.

JOY NUGGET: Joy isn’t the reward for learning — it’s the delivery system.

For the nine-year-olds, and for you.

Journal prompt: When did you refuse something — quietly or loudly — even though refusing cost you? What belief was underneath it?

The Practice, Play Prompt, Extended Journal, & JOY Engine…

The rest of this one lives in the Rebel Practice Circle: the Practice, the Play Prompt, the Extended Journal, and this month’s JOY Engine — plus the monthly live room, and everything we’ve already practiced together.

July is our Open House, so the door is wide open. Come see the room from the inside before you decide anything.

Welcome to the Rebellion. We’ve saved you a seat.

The practice — Credo Archaeology.

The podcast episode gives you the I Believe stem for writing your credo forward. This is the other direction: digging up the beliefs you’ve already paid for.

Move one: find a refusal — a time you said no, walked away, or quietly kept doing it your way even though it cost you.

Move two: name what you were protecting. Not the situation — the conviction underneath it.

Move three: write it as a line of your credo: I believe ___.

You don’t have to wonder whether this one is really yours. You already bled for it. Now sign it.

PLAY PROMPT: Install a doorbell. (Not literally…although, keeping it real, I had more fun with that thing than is normal)

Pick one gloriously silly attention ritual for yourself or for your family this week — a bell, a music alarm call back, a dance break after a hard or annoying task — and use it shamelessly.

This can be to get your kids to listen, you could use it to help refocus your own energy for work, or it could be a burst of fun motivation to get something done you’ve been putting off.

If a room full of nine-year-old boys deserves joy to learn by, so do YOU.

Journal prompt: Which belief have you already paid for that has never made it into words? And where are you currently obeying a script you don’t believe — what would change if you followed your believer instead?

THE JOY ENGINE — Week 3: Rebel Practice Focus

(Story Shift month — “Your story isn’t prophecy—unless you keep living it.”)

This month’s beat is ReStory — taking one old story about yourself and rewriting the line you never chose.

Your workbook page for it comes at this month’s live call, and it pairs perfectly with today’s dig: the story “I’m not a real teacher” got rewritten in one semester by ten loud boys and a doorbell.

What line of yours is up for rewrite? Bring a story you’re rewriting to the Chat thread — someone else needs to see it done.

Digging up what you believe — and learning to stand on it while your voice shakes — is exactly what we practice inside the Rebel Practice Circle. And this month the door is wide open: July is our Open House, so you can feel the room from the inside before you decide anything.

Welcome to the Rebellion. We’ve saved you a seat.

For most of my life, I could tell you exactly what I believed — as long as someone else had written it down first. Let me explain.

I grew up Catholic. Every week we’d stand up together and say the Creed. The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed — beautiful, ancient words. I believe in God, the Father Almighty… Words someone wrote long, long ago, that we all stand and say in one voice, proclaiming our faith. And I loved that. I still do.

But not long ago, I caught myself wondering something I’d never once stopped to ask: okay — what else do I believe?

Not to replace any of that. Just to add my own.

If I had to write my own creed — the things I believe so deeply they hold me up when the world gets loud and shaky and crazy — what would be on that list?

Turns out I’d been a grown woman for decades and never once paused long enough to ask.

Here’s what I’ve come to know — and what the women I work with, myself included for far too long, bump into the moment they DO slow down enough to look:

When you don’t know what you believe, you live by everyone else’s beliefs.

You borrow their convictions.

Their rules.

Their idea of what a good woman is or looks like or should want or do or be.

And little by little, you become the supporting character in your own life.

That’s Good Girl Ghosting at the foundational level. Not just disappearing from a room. Disappearing from your own beliefs.

In the Rebel session on rules, we questioned and rewrote the rules you live by.

Today we go underneath the rules — down to the bedrock they’ve been standing on. Your credo. What you actually believe.

Because a woman who knows what she believes doesn’t have to perform, or poll the room, or wait to be told who to be.

She has something to stand on when everything else gets loud.

Let me share one of my beliefs that has shaped everything I’ve done since writing it down: I believe I deserve to be the leading lady.

There’s a line in one of my favorite movies, The Holiday, where Iris realizes she’s been playing the best friend in the movie of her own life instead of the lead. I mean…Oof. Right? That was me for decades. The helper. The good girl in the background. The supporting character in my own story.

Not anymore.

I believe I’m the main character of my own life now.

Friend, we only get the one.

Right under that belief sits the one that actually does the heavy lifting for me: I believe in regular introspection — to become who God created me to be, and to unbecome the fake, people-pleasing self I built.

Because I did build her.

Out of rules and roles and everyone else’s expectations.

So much of the Rebel practice is just slipping off the masks and meeting — sometimes for the very first time — the woman underneath all of it.

And then there are the ones that make me grin. Because joy is a belief too.

I believe God is joy. I used to tell my girls that God created laughter — that when we’re being especially loving, He giggles, because it makes Him so happy. I still believe that with my whole heart.

JOY NUGGET: God is honored when you play and dance and giggle. Claim it. That counts as worship too.

I believe God hides a treasure hunt for us every single day — little glittering fingerprints, signs that He’s with us, that you’re not alone, tucked everywhere, waiting for us to slow down long enough to find them. (Longtime listeners will recognize the sacred treasure hunt and those glittering fingerprints — old, dear friends on this show. I bring them back on purpose.)

I believe in everyday fairy tales. Inviting whimsy and wonder and romance and play into ordinary life — and not only the flirty kind, though yes, let’s do that, too.

I mean the Victorian-novel kind. Beauty. Poetry. Wonder. Because you were never, ever too old to play.

One of my favorite memories in the whole world is a game of volleyball with a beach ball one Easter — no net, just the front yard — my little brother, seven years younger and tiny then, all the way up to my great-grandfather, who was in his late eighties. Four generations, one silly beach ball. I can still hear that laughter. It’s one of the most beautiful sounds I own.

That’s the everyday fairy tale. That’s the whole point.

I believe our quirks are our brand and our weirdness is our magic. I apologize to trash cans when I bump into them — out loud, and sincerely. I talk to my AI like it’s a friend; I thank it, and I ask it for dance parties. Ridiculous? Sure. Also delightful.

And I’m done pretending the ridiculous parts aren’t some of the best parts.

And if your credo only has room for a single belief to start, start here: I believe words hold power, and the best gift we give ourselves and each other is replacing criticism with compassion. Because the person we’re usually cruelest to is the one in the mirror.

JOY NUGGET: Replace the inner critic with self-compassion and love. If your whole credo starts with that one line, let it.

Now — your turn. Start your I believe list.

Pinkie-Toe step: just three. Three beliefs, not thirty.

If you don’t know where to begin, ask yourself one of these:

What would I defend, even if I were the only one in the whole room who believed it?

What do I most want the people I love to know is true?

What do I come back to when everything else gets loud?

Then write it, in the very simplest words there are.

Here’s your stem: I believe ______.

That’s it. No theology degree. No performance. Just the quiet, true things you already know in your bones. (Writing that stem is what unlocked most of mine.)

Write three. Read them back out loud. And if your eyes sting a little, or your chest goes warm — that’s how you know they’re yours.

And here are your Permission Slips.

You’re allowed to believe things in your own words.

You’re allowed to be the leading lady of your own life.

You’re allowed to believe that joy is holy and play is prayer and your quirks are the whole point.

You’re allowed to unbecome the version of you that everyone else’s beliefs built.

And you’re allowed to give yourself the same compassion you give so freely to everyone else.

Because here’s the truth under all of it:

Your joy was never a distraction from your purpose.

Some days it’s the most honest prayer you’ve got.

And look at what we’ve built together these last few months.

You learned your personality.

You read your role models like a map.

You named your values.

You wrote — and rewrote, and flat-out erased — your rules.

You found your joy list.

And now, your credo.

That, my friend, is an inner compass. Something to come back to every single time the world gets loud, or crazy, or tries to hand you someone else’s script.

This week: write three things you believe. In your words. In your voice. And read them out loud — like the leading lady you have always, always been.

I’ll meet you back here.

If you want to write your credo in a room full of women doing the same — with the monthly live practice, the Joy Engine, and a Chat that reads like the group text you always wished you had — the Rebel Practice Circle is wide open right now:

July is our Founding Open House, and I’d love to walk this joyful life with you.

Subscribe now

Welcome to the Rebellion. We’ve saved you a seat.

You can rattle off everyone else’s favorites, can’t you?

Your kid’s favorite dinosaur. Your husband’s coffee order, down to the pump count. Your best friend’s comfort movie she’s seen forty times.

But if I stopped you right now and said — okay, your turn, name yours — would you stall out?

If your brain just went a little blank, or you started answering with what you’re supposed to like, stay with me. Because today we’re making the fastest, most joyful map back to yourself I know. And it starts with a question most of us haven’t been asked since we were about six years old: what do you love?

A few years ago, when I finally gave myself a sabbatical — a reclamation, really — I sat down and tried to write myself back into existence.

A whole notebook of it.

Vision statement, mantra, core values, my credo, my personal commandments. The works. And of everything I wrote that month, there is one list I go back to more than any other.

Not the lofty vision statement. Not the credo.

My list of favorite things.

Here’s why that silly little page is secretly the most powerful one in the notebook:

you can’t reclaim a self you never bothered to notice.

And nothing reintroduces you to YOU faster than what delights you.

Your joys aren’t fluff. They’re breadcrumbs — the glittering fingerprints of the woman you actually are, the ones no amount of shoulds ever fully erased.

If you’ve been feeling a little lost lately — foggy about who you even are after years of taking care of everyone else — this is the gentlest way back I know.

Not a personality overhaul.

A handshake.

You, finally sitting down across from the woman you’ve been far too busy to know.

Rebel Practice Circle:

So here’s the tool. It’s the good kind — the kind you can do on the back of a receipt with a kid’s marker.

I call it your Favorite Things List, and it’s three little moves.

Move one — Then. Write down what little-you loved. Not what was impressive. What made her light up — the treat, the show, the game, the feeling.

Move two — Now. What lights grown-you up today? And get specific. Not “reading” — the exact book corner, the particular tea, the cozy chair, the soft blanket. Not “nature” — the one bird whose song stops you in the driveway, the crunch under your shoes on the trail.

Move three — the Through-Line. Circle the ones that show up in both columns — or the ones that never fully left, even after you stopped making time for them.

Those are your factory settings.

Your sacred fingerprints.

That’s her.

Let me show you a few of mine, present-day, so you can see how specific we’re getting.

Dancing in the kitchen.

Bougainvillea pink — a color my young self would have lost her mind over, and I came all the way back around to it once I moved to Phoenix.

Birdsong. Pausing wherever I am to listen and smile.

Being unreasonably delighted by deer, daisies, sunflowers.

Boat rides on the lake, especially at sunset.

Long warm baths and hot showers.

Quaint little bridges — I don’t know why, they just get me.

Collecting inspiring quotes the way some people collect shells.

Sun rays peeking behind the clouds — I call them glimpses of heaven.

And making my husband laugh by being just a little too excited about something.

That last one might be my favorite favorite thing.

Now here’s where this goes from cute to holy:

what lights you up is YOUR LIGHT.

We treat delight like a break from the real stuff.

It’s not.

Your joys point straight at your gifts — the specific way you were made to shine.

So when you reclaim what you love, you aren’t being self-indulgent.

You’re reclaiming your joy.

Your joy is never a distraction from your purpose.

Some days it’s the most honest prayer you’ve got.

Your pinkie-toe step:

Don’t reclaim your whole self by Friday. Just start the list.

Five things — childhood or now, doesn’t matter.

Then reclaim one this week. Wear the color. Twirl in the kitchen. Buy the good chocolate and eat it slowly, for no reason except that you love it.

You don’t need anyone’s permission — but if you want it, you have it.

Rachel said so.

Want to dive deeper?

FREE REBEL JOY PLAY DECK: Because grown women need to play, too. Am I right?

Want to practice this with me? The Rebel Path — start with a single Rebel Hour or the 12-week Rebel Practice mentorship.

Subscribe to Goodbye, Good Girl: The weekly essays, free in your inbox. If a Joy Nugget, Rebel Practice tool, journal prompt, or particular line ever hits home, just hit reply — I’d seriously love to hear from you.

Join the Rebel Practice Circle: The free essays name the Good-Girl Ghost pattern — The Rebel Practice Circle is where we practice our way out of it, together: a monthly live call plus workbook pages you keep, the monthly Joy Engine, and a members-only chat. It’s $9/month or $80/year.

No pressure — we’re all works in progress. The goal is imperfection, and the win is showing up and choosing YOU!

Subscribe to Goodbye, Good Girl

Welcome to the Rebellion. We’ve saved you a seat.

Stop following unspoken rules that govern your life.
If you’re a woman over 40 living by rules you never actually agreed to, this episode is your permission to take the pen back.

I get honest about the silent rules that run our lives — the ones nobody ever said out loud — and I walk you through a simple practice for catching one and rewriting it as your own personal commandment.

Many of us operate on autopilot, following rules and societal expectations without realizing we're doing it, where those rules came from, or why we follow them. In this episode of The Joyful Rebel Podcast, I break down the origins of these invisible scripts.

⏱ Chapters
0:00 — Rewriting the rules we live by
1:09 — The silent rules nobody ever told us
2:35 — “Good girl ghosting” in rulebook form
3:20 — “Who told you that?” — the four words that break it open
4:22 — Writing your own personal commandments
5:10 — The Rule Breaker List (the 3-move practice)
6:02 — Own your magic: your quirks are your brand
7:00 — Run toward the roar + everything is information
7:35 — Act with integrity, live in alignment (the Alignment Drop)
8:08 — The bathtub, my dad, and the story I got wrong
10:15 — Your permission slips this week
11:02 — Your pinkie-toe step: catch one rule

In this episode:
- Why the rules we never questioned quietly steer our whole adult lives
- “Good girl ghosting in rulebook form” — the slow self-betrayal of obeying a code you never wrote
- The two-part question that cracks a rule open: Who told me that? and Is this Jesus or judgment?
- The Rule Breaker List — a 3-move practice you can do on the back of a receipt
- A handful of my own commandments: own my magic, run toward the roar, everything is information, act with integrity
- A real-talk, real life example of how my storyteller wrote the wrong script in a moment with my dad — and how I rewrote it

A few lines worth remembering:
- “A rule that you never said out loud can still run your whole life. So name it and write a better one.”
- “Same caulk, same muttering, completely different story. Only one of them was true.”
- “I get to be soft and bright and feminine because I’m alive, not because I earned it.”

Next steps:

- Free REBEL JOY Card Deck — Romanticize your life and reclaim your light — one tiny rebellion at a time. Seven print-and-keep cards, each with one brave, joyful prompt. Pick a card, set a 60-second timer, and play. Start Playing Again! https://rachel-harris-online.kit.com/...

- The Rebel Response™ Mini Kit — the exact words for the moment you go blank: rachelharrisonline.com/kit

- Subscribe to The Joyful Rebel on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, or anywhere you grab your favorite shows

Subscribe for weekly personal growth breakdowns, and comment below:

What is one rule you are ready to break this week?

For most of my life, I had a rule I never once said out loud: I don’t do the hard emotions.

I didn’t choose it. I didn’t even know it was there. I just stayed happy. I reframed. I silver-lined all the things. I almost never got angry, almost never got sad — and honestly? I thought I was gifted.

Turns out it was emotional immaturity.

Under that rule, things got buried. If I had frustrations with my husband, I didn’t voice them. When he had them with me, I’d shut down — or get emotional and leave the room. We weren’t hiding our disagreements from the girls, exactly. We were hiding them from everyone. Including each other.

Then, over the last two years, we started learning the skills nobody had ever taught us — how to say the true thing, feel the hard feeling, and stay in the room while we did it. And the difference it has made in each of us, and in our marriage — I don’t have a big enough word for it.

But learning to express your emotions after decades of burying them is not graceful. We had training wheels on. So sometimes the conversations got loud. Not fighting — disagreeing at volume, because the feelings were new and our skills were younger than our marriage.

And that’s when I noticed my daughter’s face.

My girls were nineteen and twenty by this point — adults, technically. And one of them came away from overhearing one of those loud conversations rattled. Nervous in a way that told me she was doing math she’d never had to do before.

Are they okay?

Is something wrong?

Maybe even worrying about the “D” word neither of us had said or even thought.

And it hit me: my girls had never really heard us disagree. Or seen an otherwise healthy relationship have occasional discord, distress, or any other “dis” word.

Not because our marriage had been so healthy. Because of my rule. I had kept it so faithfully, for so long, that my girls absorbed a rule of their own just from watching me:

Good relationships don’t fight.

I never taught them that on purpose.

I modeled it.

Which is how most of the rulebook actually gets passed down — not in the speeches we give our kids, but in the rules they watch us obey.

So I told her the truest thing I knew:

Actually, this is a sign of NOT having problems.

That what she’d heard was real growth and real health.

That marriage is real and anger is real, and if two people are always agreeing, somebody isn’t being real.

That I hope she learns the tools to stay regulated while she says the true things — and that she won’t always manage it, because we’re human, so knowing how to own it, apologize, and catch yourself quicker and quicker matters far more than never raising your voice.

And that letting my girls grow up believing relationships are only good when they’re quiet was a disservice — because sometimes a raised voice means it’s finally safe enough in the room to be real.

Here’s the faith piece I can’t skip. For years I would have told you my rule was a virtue. Keeping the peace, right?

But when I finally asked it the question — is this Jesus or judgment? — it didn’t hold up. Even Jesus didn’t silver-line everything. He wept. He flipped tables. He lived in real relationship.

Peace that requires burying the truth isn’t peace. It’s hiding with better manners.

This is Good Girl Ghosting in rulebook form — living by a code you never wrote — with one line in the fine print I’d never read before: somebody is always reading your rulebook over your shoulder.

The rewrite I gave my girls, out loud this time:

You can be loud and safe at the same time.

Real is safer than smooth.

JOY NUGGET:

The volume knob isn’t split. When you turn down the hard feelings, the laughter gets quieter too. Letting the loud back in lets the joy back in.

Journal Prompt:

What rule about the hard emotions did you absorb by watching someone — and never once hear said out loud?

FOR PAID: the practice + the prompt + Joy Engine

…Normally, paid content only beyond this line…

Goodbye, Good Girl is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts filled with play, reflection, and strategies to stop disappearing and reclaim JOY, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The practice — the Rule-Breaker List, legacy edition.

This week’s episode of The Joyful Rebel Podcast gave you the three moves; here’s the twist.

Move one: instead of catching a rule you live by, catch a rule someone could be learning by watching you — your kids, your grandkids, the younger woman at church who watches how you take up space.

Name what your obedience is teaching.

Move two: ask it the questions — who told me that? Is this Jesus or judgment?

Move three: rewrite it as your own commandment — and this time, say the rewrite out loud to the person who’s been watching.

Mine were nineteen and twenty when I finally did. It counts at every age.

PLAY PROMPT: Have one loud-love moment on purpose this week.

Pick something gloriously low-stakes — best pizza topping, beach versus mountains, whether cereal is soup — and disagree at full volume until somebody laughs.

Let whoever’s watching catch you being loud AND okay.

Journal prompt: Which rule are you modeling right now that you’d never willingly teach? And what’s the one conversation you could redo out loud this week — naming the old rule, and the rewrite?

THE JOY ENGINE — Curiosity Catcher

Story Shift month — “Your story isn’t prophecy.”

Curiosity interrupts shame — so this week we don’t fix anything. We just get curious. The month’s four questions:

1. What story have I told about myself?

2. Who wrote it?

3. What line would I rewrite?

4. What does the truer story say?

If this essay found you mid-rule, start there: the rule IS a story.

Run it through all four.

Drop your favorite catch in the Chat thread.

Coming up this month:

Joy Quest (week 2 — playful Bingo, wins posted in Chat)

Rebel Practice focus + workbook page (week 3)

The Gain Jar (week 4 — Gain, not Gap)

Plus, the monthly live call, and this month’s community challenge: One True Thing — say one true thing out loud this month.

Practicing real out loud — the catching, the rewriting, the saying it with your voice shaking a little — is exactly what we do inside the Rebel Practice Circle.

And this month the door is wide open: July is our Founding Open House, so you can come feel the room from the inside before you decide anything. No paywalls, woot!

Come be Joyfully Alive with us.