Restoring the Sisterhood Relationship!
When women start recognizing how they have been taught to survive on a starvation diet of invisibility and silence, they will no longer need to feel jealous of women who expect to be seen, heard, and respected. Mothers will no longer teach their daughters how to survive on lack of self-nurturing, because they themselves will no longer be trying to survive without meeting their own needs.
Without this depth of understanding about how partirachy has got under our skin, women are in danger of being like crabs in a bucket. As soon as one tries to escape and manages to get to the top of the bucket, the others pull the escapee back down. Fear of not being liked, of being alone, of the consequences of escaping and standing up for your rights and life, are strong motivators that make women pull each other back down to where it is sad but safe and familiar.
Women have long learned how to survive on a little, but what we are not yet good at is recognizing our collective starvation and encouraging each other to claim what we are missing. We are not yet good at acknowledging how awful it feels to be criticized, unsupported, and ignored by other women. It feels like the ultimate betrayal. Women have said that it feels worse than being criticized or rejected by a man because that is what they expect from men. They don't expect it from their sisters. Not being surrounded by or being able to trust the "I'm with you sister" connection with other women hurts us deeply in our relational wiring. Women are wired to want and need connection with other women. We need to be heard and supported by other women, and when we don't have it, or it flickers on and off at will, it harms our development and feels like a crushing loss.
For women to flourish, we need to band together. We need to re-create the sense of female connection we once had during biblical days around the village well and in the Red Tent where women gathered, shared stories, supported each other, and passed on their female wisdom. I am not suggesting that things were great for women then, but I am saying that we have lost that essential sense of community that women had then. They saying "together we stand, divided we fall" is true. Together we are a force to be reckoned with. Divided and alone makes it harder to stand up and say "no". I hear over and over how hungry women are for empowering, supportive, and nurturing female connection and community We need to recognize and unlearn our internalized misogyny[means hatred, dislike, or trust of women] so that we can thrive and save this ailing world.
Without this depth of understanding about how partirachy has got under our skin, women are in danger of being like crabs in a bucket. As soon as one tries to escape and manages to get to the top of the bucket, the others pull the escapee back down. Fear of not being liked, of being alone, of the consequences of escaping and standing up for your rights and life, are strong motivators that make women pull each other back down to where it is sad but safe and familiar.
Women have long learned how to survive on a little, but what we are not yet good at is recognizing our collective starvation and encouraging each other to claim what we are missing. We are not yet good at acknowledging how awful it feels to be criticized, unsupported, and ignored by other women. It feels like the ultimate betrayal. Women have said that it feels worse than being criticized or rejected by a man because that is what they expect from men. They don't expect it from their sisters. Not being surrounded by or being able to trust the "I'm with you sister" connection with other women hurts us deeply in our relational wiring. Women are wired to want and need connection with other women. We need to be heard and supported by other women, and when we don't have it, or it flickers on and off at will, it harms our development and feels like a crushing loss.
For women to flourish, we need to band together. We need to re-create the sense of female connection we once had during biblical days around the village well and in the Red Tent where women gathered, shared stories, supported each other, and passed on their female wisdom. I am not suggesting that things were great for women then, but I am saying that we have lost that essential sense of community that women had then. They saying "together we stand, divided we fall" is true. Together we are a force to be reckoned with. Divided and alone makes it harder to stand up and say "no". I hear over and over how hungry women are for empowering, supportive, and nurturing female connection and community We need to recognize and unlearn our internalized misogyny[means hatred, dislike, or trust of women] so that we can thrive and save this ailing world.
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