Reading Good Bad Girl: Reflections on Mothers, Daughters, and the Spaces Between

I picked up Good Bad Girl expecting a page-turner. I got that — but I also got something else.

The novel weaves together women at different stages of life, their stories colliding in ways that made me pause, not just as a reader but as a daughter myself — and now as a mother. 👩‍👧

Mother-daughter relationships are never simple. They are marked by longing, by unspoken words, by protection that sometimes feels like control, by love that isn’t always tender. Reading Feeney’s story made me reflect on the ways I still carry my own daughterhood inside me, even as I parent my children.

Today, on my own mother’s birthday, this reflection feels especially tender. We don’t speak often. She is alive, yet sometimes the space between us feels like a different kind of loss. That absence shapes me, too — and it reminds me to choose, with intention, how I show up for my kids.

It reminded me that we don’t ever stop being someone’s child, even if circumstances, distance, or silence make that role complicated. And how that shapes the kind of mother I want to be. 🌱

Reading fiction often does this for me — pulls something real and raw into the light. And I’m grateful for the reminder that stories can unlock truths we might not face directly.

✨ Coaching connection: Sometimes, like in fiction, the stories we tell about our families are layered. In coaching, part of the work is gently noticing which parts of those stories still guide us — and which ones we’re ready to rewrite.