The Link Between Autoimmunity and the “Good Girls”: Rising from Being a Girlhood Caretaker with Sara Hirsh Bordo (Episode #114)

Dr. Lynn Hellerstein of Vision Beyond Sight speaks with Sara Hirsh Bordo, award-winning filmmaker and author, to talk about how her autoimmune diagnoses are seemingly linked to her personal traumas and upbringing as a girlhood caretaker. Being a “good girl” all her life prevented Sara from putting herself first and seeking help at the detriment of her health, and she only recognized this at age 42 through an emotional autopsy in a life-changing trip. Her bigger discovery later on is finding out that she is far from alone. Her eye-opening survey (that is free to download!) explores the intersection of empowerment (or lack thereof) and autoimmunity in American women.

Discover how suppressed energies lead to epigenetic stress, and how empowerment is the missing modality of health. As mentioned in the Law of Samsara, Sara invites you to undergo a rebirth and rise up from being the eternal girlhood caregiver. Rebuild your values as a woman by learning to say no and listening to your body. You don’t need to get sick as permission to prioritize yourself, and being a “good girl” does not necessarily make you a “true girl.”

🔊 Click here and tune in to the show now to explore:

• Becoming the “good girl” or “big girl” as the eldest in the family
• Caretaking as almost an addiction
• Being aware of having the caretaking belief system
• The Law of Samsara
• Sara’s traumas and autoimmune diagnoses
• Suppressed/stuck energies and epigenetic stress
• Empowerment as the missing modality in health
• Creating new rules for the game that our body gets to play
• Rebuilding values for women
• Sacred rage
• Sara’s study on exploring the intersection of empowerment and autoimmunity in American women
• How to support women healing from girlhood caretaker mindset
• Learning to say no and listening to your body
• You don’t need to get sick as permission to put yourself first
• Check out Womenrising.com and download Sara’s research for free on Autoimmunesurvey.com

Growing up the oldest daughter of a big Texan and Lebanese family, I was raised in the traditional manner—to be the ultimate Good Girl. But by age 42, having been diagnosed with melanoma, multiple breast and ovarian tumors, shingles, active Epstein-Barr, and Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease, my “goodness” may have been the very thing that was slowly killing me.

For the past fifteen years, as a female empowerment director and mentor, I have created stages and screens for millions of women and girls worldwide. Films that have premiered and won SXSW and played in 35 countries, directed the largest gathering of women in Texas history with the 2017 Women’s March, directed the United State of Women Summit with Michelle Obama, and consulted as a female empowerment strategist for movies like Wonder Woman.

But five years ago, life presented me with professional, personal, and health crises that pulled back the curtain of my own life. Any empowerment I thought I had achieved may have been an illusion all along.

So during Covid I began to do almost a version of documentary research on my life- to connect the dots of my own empowerment and the timing those choices had on my health. Three years later, I commissioned the first quantitative survey at the intersection of female empowerment and health and now have a worldwide deal with HarperOne/Harper Collins for a book I begin writing next week. What I have learned the loudest and have proven it in the research is that girls who conditionally caretake and self-sacrifice their own needs as women, are growing up to become women unwell and unable to receive the care they need. What I hope to share, based on my own healing all of the original diagnoses, is that the permission to put yourself first has the power to keep you well.

Connect with Sara Hirsh Bordo and Women Rising:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram

“The very first thing I realized that I have always done because of my upbringing and family, I think I was so comfortable compromising over and over again that I don’t know if I had ever really been a true girl. I think I had just been a good one. And when I started with that, I began to unravel – the self-prioritization, the compromise, the neglect, abandonment and betrayal – how all of these behaviors had a very interesting mirror to how the immune system behaved.” – Sara Hirsh Bordo