Have you ever had your heart broken by other women? When I was in 5th grade, my group of friends dumped me. I showed up at school one day and they just didn't talk to me. They didn't want me to sit with them at lunch and they left me out of our weekend plans. I wondered what I did wrong and why they hated me. It stung so badly that I can still feel it.
Maybe you can relate?
Unfortunately, we're still dealing with mean girls as adults.One of my dear friends felt ostracized by the “football moms” who all got together after games and never invited her. One of my clients just graduated from college and was so excited to connect with the other women at work, but before she knew it, she found out that they were all talking about her behind her back.
At a women's conference recently, the presenter asked how many of us had been betrayed by another woman and every single woman raised her hand.
Every. Single. One.
Unfortunately, most of us have not only been victim to Mean Girls, but we've been the Mean Girl too. If I'm being honest, I've been so jealous of other women before that I judged them. At times, I've seen other women as competition. In college, I was so rude about my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend that I borderline harassed her one night.
Why? I'd love to claim insanity, but I just desperately wanted him to love me most.
Sadly, we've been (inaccurately) told that we have to compete with other women to get ahead. We've heard that there's only “one seat at the boardroom table.” That there's “a glass ceiling that only one woman will break.” That only one of us can date the Football Captain. And then we feel hurt forever around other women. It may be helping the economy with makeup and magazine sales, but it's not helping our self-worth or our purpose.
Our core human need is to be loved. We want to be accepted. We want to belong. We just haven't known how to create love for ourselves and other women without competing, comparison and judgment. Even when I speak at corporations like Progressive Insurance and BMW, inevitably, someone always asks how women can support each other instead of hold one another down.
The answer is Sisterhood. For thousands of years, women connected to support one another. Marriage was for economical reasons, so women leaned on each other for emotional support. Women fed each other's children and listened to each other's dreams.
Connection and collaboration is still in our DNA and when we don't have it, we crave it. I sometimes think that we crave women's love even more than a man's love because when women love us, we feel like we belong.
This is why I build the Sisterhoods I do. This coming weekend is my annual Goddess Girls Retreat where 29 women will gather to support, uplift, cheerlead and love one another. Every woman will share her pain, clarify her truth, and state her desires. And then all of her Sisters will cheer her on with wild, glorious, joyful abandon!
Women who join my PurposeGirl Retreats and Sisterhoods are constantly amazed by the depth of love, authenticity and support that they receive from the other women. Women say they've never experienced anything like it and these new Sisters become their best friends for life.Sure, women get jealous, but in Sisterhood, we flip envy into inspiration and ask how we can help.
Do you have Sisterhood like this? You need one. I need one. Heck, I have 5 of these Sisterhoods in addition to the ones I build because I need it so badly.
EVERY woman is our Sister. The only way that women are going to succeed is if we begin supporting each other. Competing with and judging each other only holds us back professionally, socially, and even financially. We'd make so much more on the dollar if we lifted one another up! I'm not always perfect at this, and every day, I try. I know you do too.
You're a PurposeGirl. A woman who believes that every woman is beautiful, every woman is brilliant, and every woman is meant to shine brightly! Can you imagine if every woman alive made every other woman feel loved?Feel accepted? Feel like she belongs? Can you imagine the monumental shifts this world would make?
Recently, on the PurposeGirl Podcast, I interviewed my friend, colleague, and mentor, Caroline Adams Miller, MAPP and best-selling author of Creating Your Best Life and Getting Grit about why women tear each other down and how we can use the science of positive psychology to lift one another up. (You can listen here.) Caroline is launching a new effort to empower women to empower women. Called #Share222, Caroline teaches us on the podcast episode how to spread women's success and help us all rise to greater success TOGETHER. If you haven't yet listened to it, check it out here.
And once you listen, or if you have experienced this pain between women or want to see women lift each other up, leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Do you see women supporting women in the office and the PTA? What issues have you seen? What solutions can you share? Let's help each other rise up and change this world forever!
Women supporting each other will change this world!
With so much love,
Carin
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