The oldest Daughter wound

Being the oldest daughter comes with a weight that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. From a young age, I learned how to take care of everyone else before myself. I stepped into shoes that weren’t mine to fill—becoming a second parent instead of just a sister.

I carried responsibilities that were too heavy for little shoulders. I learned to anticipate needs before they were spoken, to fix problems before they unraveled, to keep the peace when things felt shaky. That’s what parentification is: growing up too fast, because you had to. And while it made me strong, it also took pieces of me I didn’t realize were missing until I was older.

Now, as an adult, I’m trying to unlearn those patterns—especially with my brother. For so long, I wasn’t just his sister. I was caretaker, protector, fixer, the one who made sure he was okay even if it meant I wasn’t. It was survival then, but now I see how it shaped the way I love and the way I lose myself in others.

Unlearning is hard. It means reminding myself that my brother doesn’t need me to be his mom. He needs me to be his sister. He needs laughter, not lectures. He needs someone to share memories with, not someone to shoulder his choices for him. And I need to allow myself the freedom to just be, without guilt that I’m not doing enough.

Some days, I slip back into old habits… trying to solve things that aren’t mine to solve. But I’m learning that love doesn’t always mean fixing. Sometimes it means stepping back. Sometimes it means trusting him to figure it out. Sometimes it means simply being present, not in control.

It’s not easy to rewrite roles that were ingrained in childhood. But I owe it to myself, and I owe it to him. Because he deserves a sister, not another parent. And I deserve to let that little girl inside me finally rest.