The Eldest Daughter: Where the Cycles Come From {Part 2 of 8 Series: Eldest Daughter Turned Cycle Breaker} | Episode 28

"I was not planned. I was the reason my parents got married. I raised my younger sister. I was my mother's confidant and my family's emotional anchor."

In this episode, I'm going into the origin story. Because before we can talk about breaking cycles, we have to talk about where they came from. Who handed them to us. And how young we were when we picked them up without anyone asking us to.

I'm talking about the eldest daughter. Not the Taylor Swift song. (Though, she nailed it!) The actual lived experience of being the one who sees the gap and fills it, who carries the chaos so nobody else has to, who builds her whole identity around being the strong one — and then forgets it was ever a role at all.

I talk about:

• Growing up as the unplanned child who became her family's emotional anchor
• Raising my younger sister, being my mother's confidant, and filling the gap nobody else would
• How hyper-independence, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and anxiety all trace back to the same root
• The resentment I carried in my nervous system for 33 years — and the guilt I felt for even calling it that
• Why I was sprinting my whole life instead of running the marathon
• What changes when you finally have a word for what you've been carrying
• The difference between the role you took on and the assignment you were always meant for

The hardest truth I had to face:

I built my whole identity around a role nobody assigned me. I carried it so long I forgot it was a choice.

This episode is for the eldest daughters, the family therapists, the chaos coordinators, the ones who never knew how to say no. The ones who loved so hard it cost them everything — and felt guilty for noticing.

You're not broken. You're not too sensitive. You're not dramatic.

You're just finally ready to put down what was never yours to carry.

And that? That's where the real work begins.

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Transcript

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I was not planned. And I was the reason my parents got married. I raised my younger sister. I was my mother's confidant and my family's emotional anchor. And for a very long time, I was a sheep instead of a wolf before I was old enough to understand what any of that meant. I was the eldest daughter. And if any of that felt true to your soul, then this episode is for you. Welcome to Wealth and Mothers, the show where we rewrite the rules of success for women who are building businesses, creating wealth, and raising families all at the same time. I'm Ashley Krabb, and this is not a show about balance, productivity, or doing more. This is a space for mothers who know they're caring more than anyone acknowledges, and who are ready to turn that into power, into leadership and wealth. Here we talk about what it actually looks like to build a business inside the reality of motherhood. The invisible labor, the identity shifts, the ambition and the pressure. The truth that none of it disqualifies you from wealth. It qualifies you for it. Because mothers don't need to shrink to succeed. They need to be seen. Let's get into today's episode. Holy shit. Um, before we start, I'm going to admit that I have not been a Swifty at all, ever. And I might have just listened to Eldest Daughter for the first time in my life. And wow, I get it. I get the obsession. I get the obsession. So if you were here last week, we started to go deep. We started to go deeper into my story, into my narrative, into our collective legacy as mothers, as women in wealth. We talked about awareness versus action and about being stuck in this cage where you can see all of the opportunity outside of it, but you stay in it anyways, or at least I stayed in it, anyways. And I'm done staying in it. And today I want to go into the next chapter, one chapter deeper. Because before I can talk about shifting narratives, about changing culture, about breaking cycles, we have to talk about where the cycles came from, where my cycles came from. I want to talk about the role that I was handed, that so many of us were handed, apparently because Taylor Swift read everybody's diary. But I know that I was handed it. And everyone's talking about the eldest daughter, but like, let's talk about the eldest daughter. So, like, Taylor Swift did not come up with this concept. But when I started thinking about myself and my story and where I've been and where I am now and where I'm headed and everything that I've been through, and I started looking into this concept of eldest daughter, eldest daughter syndrome, whatever. Um, we know it's non-diagnosis, um, it's not in the DSM, but when I started looking into it, and when I listened to the song, I was like, oh my gosh. I mean, goosebumps, chills, tears. I felt like for the first time, and you know how much I love boxes and labels, but for the first time, I was like, holy crap! That describes me perfectly. How, how did I never know this before? The social and the emotional traits and like the development of the firstborn daughter, this excessive caretaking role that I took on, this parental responsibility that I lived with at such a young age, parentification, overachieving, my anxiety and my risk-taking, perfectionism and people pleasing, like this hyper need to be so independent and also crave help and nurturing and for someone to hold me. And like being the family therapist, never being able to say no to anything. All of these things sound like sound familiar. Have you been there? Have you done that? Um, on some level, because like me too, me too. And so, because we know that honesty is really the only way I know how to do this, um something I came to connect with recently during a meditation was the fact that I, from a very young age, was told that I was not planned. I mean, like, what the fuck? From a very young age, I was told that like I was never in the stars. I was, I wasn't planned. I was the reason my parents got married. And if it wasn't for me, like they probably wouldn't, they wouldn't have stuck together. And just just like let that sink in. Um, because wow, like, wow, no wonder I have limiting beliefs of not being enough or worthy and just wanting people to lock me and stick around, right? Makes sense now. But I wouldn't have come to that realization, I don't think, without this meditation. That's for another point in time. But my parents split up when I was in the fifth grade. Um, my mom struggled with alcoholism. My dad didn't really do at that time as a young kid, like what I felt was anything. Um, and our lives were were total fucking chaos. I mean, there were very few sporting events. I remember my mom not being drunk yet. I remember growing up thinking that like drinking and driving absolutely blitzed was an okay thing to do. I saw my mom get arrested and had to stand at the front door questioning the state trooper if he was allowed to enter our home. Um, the list goes on, right? And so from a very young age, I stepped in and raised my younger sister. And like no one, no one ever said, Hey, Ashley, can you do this, right? No one ever stopped it. No one ever stepped up for me. No one ever said, you don't have to do this. But I did it because that's what the eldest daughters do. We see the gap and we fill it. We see the need and we need it. We see the chaos all around us that we don't know how to handle. And we become the coordinator and we learn how to live in that chaos, how to be comfortable in that chaos, how to carry that chaos with it. Like it is the comforting holding space that we have been craving from our parents this whole freaking time. I mean, raising my younger sister, being the confidant for my mom, being the person who always was there for her, who picked up the pieces, who had an explanation, who tried to fix, right? I was the one who tried to hold it all together so it wouldn't fall apart. So nobody else had to worry about holding it. And it's not like my dad totally abandoned us. That's that's like a hard thing, I think, to visualize. Um, is he was there for so much of it because this started when I was in third grade. My parents didn't split up until I was in fifth grade. And even then, he only moved a mile down the road. He was always there. But it never changed anything. It it never felt like his presence was making an impact or an influence on the madness that was going around. And this is me, this is me as a kid, right? Like I don't know the interwebs of a marriage like I do now. Um, but that's how it felt. Like it felt like even dad wasn't willing to be our savior, right? And my grandparents were very present in our lives. They helped raise us. We we do have an extended family. But we also have an extended family who carries the same trauma, right? And what's funny is my mom, ha ha ha, what's funny is my mom was the only girl among four boys. My sister and I are the only girls among an all-boy family, right? And I was the firstborn daughter. My mom was the firstborn daughter. It all trucks. But it also meant that caretaking, nurturing, emotional labor, it was mine by default. No one assigned it to me. I just picked it up and I carried it. And I carried it and I carried it and I carried it for years. For years and years and years, 33 years of my life. I carried it. And I mean, here's what it did to me. It made me, it made me a freaking people pleaser. It made me someone who thought just because she can do it meant she had to, meant she because she could, she would. You know, I I had an extremely, extremely hard time saying no. I I stuck to peer pressure a lot of my life, like glue. But I also never knew where to fit in. So it wasn't actually peer pressure, I think. It was actually just this constant pinball machine game of me trying to figure out if I fit in with the Christian kids or the bad kids or the cool kids or the nerds. Like I never knew where this black sheep fit in because I didn't know I was really a wolf. But I was saying yes to everything, everyone, always being that girl, you know? And when I look back on it, I mean, my anxiety, my ADHD, my extreme need for control all stems from that. It all stems from no one was there for me to trust to catch the ball if it falls. I couldn't depend on anybody for help. And if I did ask for help, I didn't get it. Or I didn't get enough of it, or it wasn't what we really needed. And so that control, that control, living in that state of anxiety and controlling it, it felt like safety. And every time I felt like control was slipping away from me, I made it a point to prove that I was that much more worthy, that I was that much more enough. Because if everything was perfect, if I was perfect, if I could be perceived and project perfectionism, maybe nothing would fall apart. Maybe finally I would be seen and held and heard the way that I was craving. But I wasn't. This magnetic, feral as fuck, amazing, rooted, audacious, awesome ass Ashley wasn't seen just as how she was, as me, just by being me. And so I amplified it. I amplified it and it made me reckless. Freaking reckless from the time I was 12 years old to the time I was about twenty six, twenty seven, reckless, not feral, reckless. That peer pressure, the underage drinking, sneaking out, partying in the woods, getting underages, drugs, like no respect of self and my body as a young woman in this world. Decisions I made, decision after decision, that were not good for me. I don't see the good in these hard decisions. I'm having a hard time seeing the and in them. But these decisions I made from a place of carrying everything I had been carrying for so long. Everything I had been carrying since I was in the freaking womb, since God said, This is your plan, Ashley. I know you can do it. Might take a long time, but we'll get you there. But like I didn't even know at that point in time what I wanted for myself. I couldn't, I couldn't receive that type of message at that time. And all of that, like all of that made me embody a state of hyperindependence. So freaking independent that I wanted help, but I couldn't, I couldn't receive it. I I wasn't capable of holding it. I was very much embodying my masculine energy and not leaning into my femininity, not leaning into receiving, just doing, doing, doing, holding, carrying, handling everything alone. Because every time I reached out, no one was there to take my hand. And it filled me. It filled me with resentment. Resentment that I have only recently started chiseling away at. Do you know what it's like? Holding resentment in your nervous system, in your body and your soul for 33 years. I mean, that is what I had, that feeling, that understanding, that realization of what I was carrying and all of these messages and signs saying forgive, forgive, forgive. I had to sit with that the longest. I had to sit with that acknowledgement, awareness for a long time before I knew what to do with it because it was so heavy and it felt so unfair. And it felt like, why, God, why? It felt like something that was punishment. It felt like, why did I have to grow up so fast? Why didn't I just get to be a kid? All of that, all of that negative, hateful, detrimental energy was resentment. And under like buried, buried, buried, buried, like a foundation buried so deep, we actually want the ground to erode so we can fill the cracks with new cement. But like underneath all of that is extreme guilt and shame for me. For every eldest daughter, maybe because eldest daughters feel guilty for that resentment. Because because we love these people, because they need us, because it felt like love to be needed that way. And so we are so resentful to ourselves. And it goes, it goes in a cycle, like a fat freaking hamster on a broken hamster wheel. And that cycle is exhausting. And it followed me. No, it didn't follow me. I rode that freaking hamster wheel into the sun, and I allowed it to infiltrate my friendships, my relationships, my marriage, my motherhood, my business. That burnout, the difficulty in making and saying in relationships, the struggle to ask for help, the struggle to receive it, even when it's offered, all of it, all of it. The eldest daughter came with me everywhere I went. I embodied the eldest daughter to a T. But here's the thing: when we start working through all of the things and we decide to say them out loud, and we start to give ourselves the space to receive, to channel the information that we are being given, when you finally just have a word for it, have a word and a label and a box to put it in to really pack and send away. When you can look at your whole life existence and say, oh wow. Oh wow, that's I'm getting goosebumps again. Like I'm getting goosebumps again. That's that's what that was. That's what I did, that's what I've been doing and carrying and couldn't stop. That's why it felt like love, even when it cost me everything. That that that realization, that reflection changes everything. And what I'm learning and what I'm coming to accept and and still push through and move through is I have been sprinting my whole life, my whole life up until this point, I have been sprinting because the marathon is so fucking painful. I mean, never gotten shin splint sprinting. I've always gotten shin splints taking the longer route. And so when we decide to start making change, when we decide to throw this big fucking stone of bullshit into the ocean to make these ripple effects, it is so hard to sit and understand that it is not something that happens overnight. It's not something that happens with one meditation, one conversation, one article or podcast that you listen to. It it isn't that fast. Naming like naming something out loud is that first, that first act of taking your power back because it takes so long. It took me so long to get all of it out of my head and just just on paper, just on paper. And I thought that was the work. I thought that was enough. And I still felt disconnected, I still felt misaligned, I still felt this embodied energy of the eldest daughter. And it's because it took me that much longer to be willing to truly face it, to write it down, to say it out loud to myself in the mirror, and then to say it out loud to others. 33 years of being the eldest daughter without really knowing what it was, without understanding why I kept shoving more and more weight into my backpack, without understanding why I kept adding stone after stone to the backpack that I was carrying up this freaking mountain. Stones that were never mine to carry. And I didn't even realize I built. My whole identity, this chaos coordinator, the one who handles it all and and and loves it, the strong one, the one who never needs anything, who always has an answer to everything. I built my whole identity around that. But that's not who I was. It's not who I am. It was the role that I assigned to myself. And I had been playing it for so long that I forgot it was a role. And even more, I forgot that I, out of all the choices that I could see in that cage, I decided to pick that role. And so I want to ask you something. When you think about that list, when you think about Taylor Swift's song, right? When you think about this punk attitude, this reckless attitude, this I'm so unbothered, you know, this I'm gonna be harder than you so that you can never hurt me or chisel me down. When you think about the people pleasing, the nervous system dysregulation, the perfectionism and hyperindependence, when you think about the resentment that you are carrying that you don't want to call resentment out loud. We'll get into how people like that word later. And the guilt that you feel when you say that out loud, when you understand that within yourself. Do you feel it? Do you feel something in your chest go, yeah, yeah, that's me. That has always been me. Or if you hear my story, my hot tea that's really just the cold tip of the iceberg that we gotta chisel at. If you hear that or feel that, I want you to know something. You're not broken, nothing's broken. You're not being too sensitive or dramatic or difficult. Because if you're willing to have these hard conversations and say these things out loud, I'm guaranteeing you there are gonna be people who don't like it because saying hard things and having hard conversations is uncomfortable, and you're doing the job that you decided to do, you're reclaiming the role that you were always meant for. Because that old role that you did so well, everyone forgot it was a job. And you get to give yourself a raise, you get to go to that next level, you get to embody and channel your divine purpose. They just thought that was you, because you thought that was you, because you couldn't fully grasp every message that was being sent to you, and that's okay. Because I am the strong one, I am the capable one, I am the one who figures it out. But because I decide to, because I decide the role that I play, I decide the woman that I embody, the legacy that I am creating right now for myself, for my family, and for the future and for everybody else. The first step to breaking the cycle of being the eldest freaking daughter is understanding the difference between the assignment you took on as that young feral freak that you were, and realizing that it's the assignment you were always meant for. You're just now becoming the woman who can hold it all, who can receive it all, who is capable of channeling it into the greatest good, to the highest power of love. That's work. That's the work that mothers are here to do. That is the work. That is what I am on a mission to talk about. And next week I want to go deeper into this chapter of the eldest daughter turned cycle breaker. We're gonna talk about the system that created the world, the narrative that was handed to us and why breaking it is not. I finally realized it's not about burning anything down. It's about building your own path. I hold space for where you are right now, for the weight that you have been carrying, for the name you just gave it, gave what you've been feeling inside of you your whole life for the woman underneath, the role you were always meant for, who has been waiting very patiently, a slow burning ember. I see her, I hold space for her with love, with accountability, with standards, with the knowledge that she is strong and capable and can, and she's freaking magnetic. She is you. She is you, baby. She is you. If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mother who is building something real. This is how we change the conversation by making sure women like us are seen, are heard, and are freaking taped. And if you are ready to step into your next level of visibility, of leadership, and wealth, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. You can also connect with me on Instagram and TikTok where I share daily thoughts and conversations around motherhood, identity, and life. And I will leave you with this you are not behind, you are not too much, and you don't need to choose between your family and your success. You are the woman who gets to have both. I'll see you in the next episode.