In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by Paige Christiansen, Co-Founder and CEO of Self(ish), behavioral strategist, entrepreneur, and Human Design expert, for a conversation about raising daughters beyond the good girl script. So many women are actively unraveling people-pleasing, perfectionism, over-functioning, and the belief that being loved requires being agreeable, helpful, easy, or endlessly accommodating. But when we become mothers, an entirely new question emerges: how do we teach our daughters to be kind, thoughtful, and connected without accidentally teaching them to abandon themselves?
Paige introduces the “villain edit”, the fear women carry of being perceived as selfish, cold, difficult, dramatic, or too much, and explains how that fear begins shaping our identities from an early age. We explore how women become a threat to themselves when they are constantly editing, suppressing, or overcorrecting who they are in order to remain likable. Paige offers a powerful reframe of selfishness as self-possession: centering yourself in your own life, trusting your internal authority, and allowing other people to have their own reactions without making their comfort your responsibility.
Together, we talk about what it means to model self-possession, boundaries, emotional honesty, and personal power for our daughters. Paige shares how she uses Human Design to understand her children as whole individuals rather than extensions of herself, support their unique emotional and energetic needs, and guide them through sibling conflict, communication, decision-making, and self-trust. We also explore how to teach empathy without emotional over-responsibility, why children need space to experience discomfort, and how mothers can stop parenting through the lens of perfection, performance, and fear of being judged.
In this episode, we explore:
- How good girl conditioning begins in childhood and shapes women’s identity, relationships, motherhood, and self-worth
- The difference between raising kind, thoughtful daughters and conditioning girls to people-please, over-function, or self-abandon
- Paige’s concept of the “villain edit” and why women fear being seen as selfish, difficult, cold, dramatic, or too much
- Reclaiming selfishness as self-possession, self-respect, and the ability to center yourself in your own life
- Why mothers must model self-trust, emotional honesty, boundaries, and authentic self-expression for their daughters
- How to raise girls who can ask for what they want, hear no, disappoint others, and remain connected to themselves
- The importance of seeing children as whole individuals rather than extensions or reflections of their parents
- How Human Design can support conscious parenting, self-awareness, decision-making, and understanding a child’s unique needs
- Using Human Design to navigate emotional sensitivity, sibling conflict, communication patterns, and family dynamics
- Teaching children empathy without making them emotionally responsible for everyone around them
- Helping sensitive children understand which emotions belong to them and which emotions they may be absorbing from others
- The ways perfectionism and good mother conditioning can quietly influence parenting choices
- Paige’s vision for Self(ish) Media and the intersection of Human Design, cultural psychology, relationships, self-concept, and modern womanhood
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Join Emily and Kelsey Anderson for VeilFall, an intimate Samhain and Full Hunter’s Moon women’s retreat happening October 23–26, 2026, at Blue Star Retreat Center in Columbia Falls, Montana, near Glacier National Park.
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