Where do We Go From Here?
Remember, it starts with you. . .you create the world you want to see and the ripples just flow from there. So, how do we survive in a world that does not support sisterhood and life keeps putting this wound back in our face, especially while we are working on these wounds? Micro shifts lead to Macro shifts! Here are some ways that you can bring awareness to how you are perpetuating or feeding more to the sisterhood wound and how to see yourself out of it to keep on your healing journey.
Gossip
When gossiping starts or someone starts to speak bad of another person, especially among women:
Politely excuse yourself from the conversation
Physically leave the conversation
Change the subject
Bring more vulnerability, depth and connection by just being honest with how this is making you feel and what you are trying to do (not gossip)
We can say “I don’t feel comfortable” or “I don’t want to talk about another person”, or “This is not what you want to talk about”. Instead, we can say “Let’s talk about what is going on with you in your life.”
Sometimes we are not comfortable yet and if we can just start with not participating, that is the start we need! We all have our different comfort levels and because this has been so “normalized” and we may feel uncomfortable and fearful to speak up. That is ok. Keep practicing!
If we find ourselves in the midst of gossiping, ask“Why am I gossiping about this person?”, “Do I feel that this person is a threat to me or someone I love?” “Am I feeling insecure about something?”
Commiserating
Commiserating is like the saying “misery loves company”. For instance, a girlfriend comes up to you and says how she hates a certain woman. A lot of the time, as women, we think we are helping when we respond with “oh yeah, she is awful, I don’t know how you handle this. She is such a &%%%#$.“ This is us trying to connect through shared misery and instead of helping, it leads to pity, more misery and exacerbates our problems. When we focus on everything that is wrong, we create a world dominated by those ideas. . . You see, we are always trying to connect, we have just been taught the wrong way on how to do this. This is a very unconscious thing that we do, but we can catch ourselves and flip it around. How can we hold space for vulnerability vs commiserating?
Being accountable and empowering others to shift. Not allowing each other to stay stuck in our looping or negative “stories”.
Show up with Empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. So you are feeling WITH someone. Not sympathy, where we feel sorry for someone.
Here is a great video where Brene Brown explains Empathy vs. Sympathy. A must watch!
Don’t silver line it. Just be in it with the other person, LISTEN to LISTEN or UNDERSTAND, not to RESPOND
Acknowledge their pain, sadness, hurt but don’t wallow in it with them or try to make it better.
If we catch ourselves in a commiserating moment, just let it play out, but then, follow it up with some positive or neutral aspect about our life so that we don’t end with commiseration. We can also ask if our friend want’s help trying to solve an issue or feeling or just wants us to listen.
Contraction
This is another biggie here! Dimming our light so that others do not feel bad about themselves. This one is a biggie for me. I do this, a lot, we have all been here. Minimizing our efforts like it is no big deal when we have better or done better than another woman. We may have been told or taught that we were too much or had more beauty, brains, athletic, etc and made others feel uncomfortable or bad around us and so we dimmed our light. We feel guilty about our successes or try to fit in, so we play it off like no big deal or it was luck.
Sister, let me tell you. We are here to change this paradigm and it starts with you! To remember our sisters, to remember our truth, to remember our light, to remember that we are all one, to remember that we are all in this together. To remember what we see in another sister is what we see in ourselves, so SHINE!!!!
Do not downplay our success or good fortune. Do not let another woman downplay this either in herself!
Encourage & Empower other women on their successes and wins. Let them know you see their light!
Celebrate the women in your life! The big and the little. Let them know you appreciate and celebrate their light.
As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
-Marianne Williamson
As we finish up the last of the 5 series on the Sisterhood wound, I encourage you to go back as many times as you need to, reflect, especially when you get triggered. I hope this helps you to at least be aware and recognize that we all have this wound and that this information, healing and tips give you a starting point in healing so that we can all start the healing. You truly do make a difference and what you do makes a ripple in the collective. So, we need to show the world what we want, and it starts with you and your dream of the collective. I want to leave you with this sweet Sister. You are seen, You are heard, You are Loved!
Enter. . . Forgiveness
Ho’oponopono - The power of forgiveness
Do not think that you are alone here. The reason I am sharing this knowledge and healing is because I too had a huge sisterhood wound, and others are being revealed to me as I do these exercises and practices with you. We are all in this together. Your healing is my healing and my healing is yours, sister!
Ok, que the Eagles song “Forgiveness”, lol “Please Forgive Me” Bryan Adams. These songs won’t stop playing in my head as I write this! LOL!
Have your paper handy for this next part of healing the sisterhood wound. Last week, there was a reflection exercise based on the universal law of mirroring. Were there shadows that you became aware of that you were finally able to see? Were there things you loved or desired in other women that you also see in yourself? If not, no worries, it’s there, we still have more layers of healing to uncover.
Week 2 Practice: Ho’oponopono Prayer
This is an ancient healing practice of forgiveness that comes from Hawaii. It is pronounced (HO-oh-Po-no-Po-no) and translates into “make things right.” It is a powerful practice that helps you cleanse and let go of negative feelings like guilt, shame, ill will, grudges, etc. and brings you peace of mind. It allows us to find our true identity. This practice can be done to forgive yourself and to forgive others, which is ultimately the same. The key here is that in Ho’oponopono, there is no outside us. Everything happens within us, within our minds. Whatever you see, hear , experience, it all occurs in your mind. We control how we react to it and how we react as a consequence to it. It is your responsibility to cleanse and clear it and change it. A note on forgiveness . . .Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting or excusing the act, and it doesn't mean making up with the person and becoming friends. It allows you to acknowledge the wrong doing and release them so that you are free of it’s negative implications on your health and mental well being. It is a process and it is a practice, and it is for YOU, not them. This is why this Ho’oponopono practice is perfect because it is so simple and you don’t need validation from anyone else but yourself.
All it is are 4 simple phrases:
I’m Sorry
Please Forgive Me
Thank You
I Love You
Let’s break these down, shall we? This will really help you to understand why it is so powerful!
I’m Sorry - The first step is about taking ownership and acceptance for what is in your reality. This removes the tendency to defend, deflect or blame things on others. You are accepting that you contributed to whatever it is that is affecting your conscience. It doesn't matter who is involved or who started it. Sometimes all that needs to be forgiven is ourselves.
Please Forgive Me - Next, it is time to release the burden by asking God, Universe, Source, who ever, whatever you want to ask to forgive you for the wrong you apologized for in Step 1.
Thank You - The third step is about expressing gratitude after knowing your apology has been accepted and you are saying “thank you” for the healing happening.
I Love You - The final phrase is about expressing love. Love is the most powerful energy there is. It brings people together, releases toxic emotions and restores hope. Say “I love you” to yourself, God, the Universe, your circumstances and experiences.
For this week’s practice, take the paper about the triggers you have for another woman. Imagine the woman standing in front of you and practice the Ho’oponopono prayer to make peace with yourself and with the person and to practice self love. When you are done, burn or shred the paper and give thanks for this healing. Repeat the Ho’oponopono prayer daily and as often as needed. This is very powerful!
Here are some options for you to do this practice:
Use the Ho’oponopono Meditation on YouTube by Rosalie Yoga and Ho’oponopono chant by Meditation Haven with Sonia
Use the Ho’oponopono chant, mantra or song listed on my Spotify playlist
You can repeat these phrases on your own as a chant or mantra, sing it, etc.
You can write down the phrases until you feel a shift
Here are some easy ways to incorporate Ho’oponopono into your day. You can say them aloud or in your head, but regardless of how you do it, the power is in the feeling.
When you are feeling negative thoughts towards yourself or others
Use it while meditating
Use it when you are feeling tension
Before you go to bed at night
When you are feeling the sisterhood wound
You can play the chant in the background while you are doing something (helps to program it into the subconscious)
Play this Ho’oponopono night meditation while you sleep (another good way to program it into your subconscious).
After I use this prayer, I feel such a deep nourishment, freedom and love within me. It feels as if shackles have been taken off. My prayer is that you will feel the same! I love each and everyone of you, my sisters. The time has come to heal the sisterhood wound and it begins here! Stay tuned, next week, I will be brining you a beautiful healing transmission to delve deeper into your healing of the sisterhood wound.
Mommy Dearest
Now to the origin of the Sisterhood Wound . . .
The primary and most foundational relationship we have with a woman is with our own mothers. This relationship sets the stage and is pivotal in how we see ourselves, our truth and how we feel about women. Enter, the mother wound. . . it is not just around the difficulties and challenges between mothers and daughters, but it is also the trauma carried down by the mother, along with any dysfunctional coping mechanisms that have been used to process the pain, and inherited by her children. If the wound is not healed, negative perceptions and beliefs, choices and parenting styles can be passed down through the matrilineal line, causing new pain with each generation.
Here are some of the ways the mother wound can show up in your relationships with other women:
Fear of another woman’s success/competitiveness
Feeling you must remain small to be accepted
Not feeling good enough/Insecurity
Fearing failure or disapproval
Weak boundaries
Unsure of sense of self/people pleasing
Not being able to be vulnerable/Go it alone
Being overly critical of others
Lack of independence
Now, this is not to shame or blame or play victim to our mothers. We all have different relationships with our mothers, whether it be good or bad and all of our mother’s did the best that they could with what they knew and with their own wounding. This is about accepting our own responsibility by creating new relationships with ourselves so that it no longer has control over our life.
So, how do we go about healing this mother wound? Get curious about your conditioning from your family and from society as well as how your needs were not met by your own mother. As I type this out, that last part makes me cringe. . . why? because to me, it does feel like I am blaming my mom. As a mom myself, I know that I do my best and that I would go to the ends of the Earth for them and I know my mom would have for me as well, even though I may not have felt that way a lot of the time. See. . . my wounding just spilled all over the place here, lol . . . It is interesting to see how so much of this is unconsciously done. Now, we are bringing light and consciousness to these areas so that we can stop the intergenerational wounding of women! If you are reading this, you are who your ancestors have been waiting for! This is your sign!
Mommy Dearest
Week 3 Exercise: Tracking the Wound
I am going to ask you to just read these questions, ponder on them and keep them in the back of your head for the next couple of days and when you have had a moment of “A-HA”, write down your answers to these questions. This is not a sit down and devote 20 minutes type of practice. This goes deep, so you need time, you need to be in it, to witness it within yourself for it to become crystal clear.
What are the cultural norms that may have kept your mother in her own wounding?
Do you see these in yourself?
What are the cultural norms that you see yourself in?
What did you need from your mother that you did not receive?
What were your coping mechanisms around not receiving these things?
How has it affected your life or your relationship with other women as a child and now as an adult?
How has your relationship with your mother influenced your relationship with women?
Healing & Resources
Once you have spent some time recognizing and bringing awareness to these woundings, you can then start the process of healing and creating a new relationship with yourself, not from the wounded child, but from an empowered woman perspective. We cannot live our adult lives trapped in the woundings of our 5, 6, 7, 8 year old selves and we want to be the ones to stop it from passing down to other generations. This involves addressing the places within you that are hurt or stuck and giving yourself the compassion, understanding and unconditional love that you wished you had at the time. A lot of this is inner child work and there are many ways you can do this, through writing a letter either to yourself as a child or to your mother (you don’t have to give it to her), guided meditations (YouTube, Insight Timer), therapy, affirmations, or booking a 1:1 energy healing session with me. I will also have a healing practice for you next week that is soooo powerful for this! It is interesting to note here too that in all my research and in my findings that one of the core parts of healing the mother wound is also reconnecting with your sisters and sisterhood, with other women and with the feminine. I feel such a connection and healing when I am with a group of women and I am in the process of creating my own sister circle to help us create a new paradigm of how women who come together to grow, be vulnerable, trust and heal. But, in the meantime, here are a coulple great ones that I would recommend:
Look on Meetups or on Facebook to see if there are any Sister or Women’s Circles too.
Remember to meet yourself and your mother with empathy and set clear and healthy boundaries while you are doing this work! You got this, Sister!
If this is something you feel you want to dive more into, I suggest doing more research and really getting to the meat of it all. What I have provided really skims the surface. Here are some books and resource website to get you started.
Discovering the Inner Mother by Bethany Webster
It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynn
Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel
The Mother Wound Project website
Inner Child Work - Loner Wolf website: She has some great freebies for connecting with your inner child
The mother wound, like the sister wound is a collective injury and it starts with YOU working through it, the good, the bad, the ugly. You have got to show up for yourself, you have got to show up for your Mother, you have got to show up for your daughter, your niece, your aunt, your grandmother, your friend, all the women! On the other side of pain is freedom. Next week, we will dive into a beautiful, simple yet powerful practice that will step you through your healing into a space of love and compassion and purpose.
“My mother would take the Band-Aid off, clean the wound, and say “Things that are covered don’t heal well.” Mother was right. Things that are covered do not heal well.” - T.D. Jakes
The Mean girl Syndrome?
There are a few major ways in which the sisterhood wound shows up, and most of it can be summed up with the phrase “mean girl.” Whether you have been a “mean girl”, been on the receiving end of a “mean girl” or been both; it affects all of us. It can start out harmlessly enough, a little healthy competition in school, within the family, society norms; it is all being rationalized and normalized so much so that it is now a way of life. As I stated in my previous post. It has almost become a rite of passage for girls to go through this “mean girl” phase. Which brings me to the energetics of it all. During the time frame that girls are considered to be "mean girls” is typically around preteen to teenage years. This is when their Sacral chakra is developing, which is all about relationships and learning and feeling their emotions. So, a lot of heavy emotions, and understanding their differences in the opposite sex, what is attractive to them and what is not, forming relationships both romantic and platonic. There is a lot to unpack in there. Then, comes the teenage years, where their Solar Plexus chakra is developing. This governs their sense of self and understanding who they are. Those parents of teenagers, know what I am talking about. LOL. This is why we get a little more rebellious, push or pull back, want to fit in, want to be treated as an individual from the family, but as a whole with their peer group. This is where the social anxiety and fitting in comes into play, and how the sisterhood wound really starts to manifest and take shape.
Here are the ways in which this “mean girl” expresses itself within us:
Rejection: Not belonging, feeling alone, shunned. “You can’t sit with us” , “You are not invited”
Betrayal: Gossiping, cattiness, lying, distrust “I thought she was my friend”, “I trusted you”
Inauthenticity: Backstabbing, two faced, pretentious “She is so fake”
Comparison: Judging, jealousy, inadequacy or superior “Look at her clothes”, “She is not pretty”
Competition: Scarcity, lack, I need to prove . . . , not enoughness “Look at her, why can’t I be like that?”, “I’m better than she is”, “I’m prettier than her.”
OK, so, if all that did not stir up some stuff in you. . . because it did with me!
Now, close your eyes, place your hands on your thighs and inhale through your nose and then fully exhale through your mouth. Do this 3 more times. Now, I want you to do a self assessment here with this information to find your top two ways in which the sister wound triggers you the most.
Read through each bullet; listen and feel into your body when you read each bullet. Rate yourself on a scale from 1(doesn’t affect me at all) to 10 (triggers the hell outta me). You will know because you may have a quickening in your heartbeat and other physical sensations, maybe memories, pictures feelings pop up, uncomfortableness and different emotions stirring.
Now that you know how you are triggered most by this wounding. I want you to go back to the list you wrote out from Series 1 of the Sisterhood wound and see how these triggers relate to what you wrote down. You should come up with some great revelations here. Now, I know that this can be uncomfortable bringing up things that don’t make us feel good, but this is how we heal, Sister, and this is how we move through and heal others! Now burn, shred, do what you need to do get rid of that paper say “Thank you for the awareness”
Now, listen to this short and powerful healing meditation that is infused with the frequency of love and compassion to help you integrate all the revelations you have discovered that lead you to a deeper healing and connection.
Mean Girl Mediation - Healing the Sacral and Solar Plexus
The reason I am bringing awareness to this major wound of the feminine is that the more awareness we have, the more we can start to heal this within ourselves, our family and soon treating other women with respect, empowering them, rooting for each other, feeling secure and confident around each other will be the new social norm! Instead of the “mean girl” rite of passage it will be “together we rise”.
Stay tuned for next week as we tackle, the Mother . . .
What is the Sisterhood Wound?
The Sisterhood wound. . . do you have it? How to work with it to bring awareness and healing
Welcome to the 1st of a 5 part series on Healing the Sisterhood Wound!
The sister wound has been coined perfectly by Sabrina Lynn of Rewilding as “The sisterhood wound is the manifestation of women living in a patriarchal society who have had to use unhealthy coping mechanisms to survive and have not processed that grief and pain and then continue to pass on the sisterhood wound to the next generation.”
So, obviously, this is not just about having a sister and hating her, it is about the collective of women, our sisters hating on each other. And, honestly, I don’t like to use the word “hate” because the energy behind it is so strong, so menacing, so piercing. Energetically, I see it like a dagger piercing the person you are sending hate too. So, how did all of this start with women hating on other women? 3500 years ago, men and women lived in harmony and women supported and looked after one another and their children. After the rise of the patriarchy and the use of religion and agriculture to tip the balance of power, things became more hierarchical and women were competing against each other to be lead wife.
Since then, women have been conditioned to fear another woman with power and fight each other for survival. It is almost like a known rite of passage for girls to go through the “mean girl” phase in middle and high school with other girls. The cattiness and stepping on, the judgement and ridicule we put on each other. Competing, comparing bodies, looks, how others talk and dress. This wound has taught us to seperate ourselves from other women. That we need to operate alone, that other women cannot be trusted and that other women will shame and judge you. Our culture we live in today reinforces this. . . look at the shows we watch, women competing for other men, jobs, roles, bashing on each other, etc. I can think of a few of these shows I am guilty of watching and participating in the judgement of these women.
How do you feel about your sisters right now? Jealousy? Resentful? Competitive? Jugemental? Does her success trigger you or make you feel like a failure? Do you struggle to trust or go deeply into feminine relationships and let them in?
Heathers Anyone? Sisterhood wound is strong in this movie!
I was guilty of all of these and there are wounds that I am still working on now, which I will tell you about in the next part of this series. The thing is, we all have had these feelings and biases, some more than others. They were handed down to us from our family, our ancestors, our society and conditioning. However, with that, we also inherited some pretty BAD ASS traits from our ancestors of being magnetic, utilizing free will, having a natural tendency to help and nurture, transform and change.
Before we get into this week’s first exercise, let me just tell you about why you want to heal the sisterhood wound. Healing this wound, not only heals you, but it heals it in your ancestors and in your children and in your children’s children. Healing is the gift that keeps on giving! How wonderful is that?! Another great thing is that when you begin healing these wounds, you will notice that your relationships get better, you feel a better and deeper connection not only with women, but with everyone. You will feel better able to let your guard down and trust. It will also help you have greater awareness and more unconditional love. Did you know that when we as women have positive interactions with our friends, oxytocin is released, which is our bonding hormone/love hormone and is associated with trust and relationship building? What a great reason to gather with your best girlfriends!
Our first exercise in working with our sisterhood wounds is a form of reflective healing, based off of the universal law of mirroring.
The law of mirroring suggests that we aren’t only attracting certain circumstances into our lives, we are actually getting glimpses of who we are through how we perceive others. In other words, if we are viewing someone in a negative light, it simply means that there is some element of ourselves with which we are viewing in a negative light. That the origin of our negative feelings towards another person is really within us, not the other person. They are just a mirror of what we do not wish to see within ourselves. Now, if that ain’t a mike drop. Wow! Now, this law also applies to all the great and wonderful traits we like to talk about and take ownership of. So, everything you admire in another person is a reflection of what we carry in ourselves as well. Think about all the people you admire or notice about other people that make you think, “Wow” or “I wish I had that quality!” Chica, if you see it, you have that aspect within you! You would not be able to label or understand it if you did not possess it!
The whole premise behind this law of mirroring is if we never become aware that we are harboring and sustaining a certain vibration/emotion/feeling, we can’t embrace it or shift it to alter the experience that we want to have. It puts you back in the driver’s seat of your life.
Iyanla Vanzant says: “What we love in other people is what we love in ourselves. What we hate in other people is what we cannot see in ourselves.”
Exercise, week 1: Mirror Mirror on the Wall
Find one woman that irks or triggers you.
Write down all the qualities or ways that irk or trigger you, etc. For example: “she is not trustworthy, only cares about herself and is a show off.”
Now reflect these same quality traits you stated with questions to yourself and write them down. Take your time with this step here and just let it flow, journal, and keep digging until you have your “aha” moment of where you need to shift.
Similarities: Where do I meet the untrustworthy trait in me, the woman who only cares about herself in me, the show off in me or something similar?
Desires: Where is this showing up in traits that you need or want? Such as, where are you not speaking up about your wants and needs (only cares about herself) or where are you needing to be more celebratory of the things in your life or feel that you don’t have anything to celebrate in life? (show off)
Now, take either the same woman or a different woman and flip it. What is it about this person that you admire? What are the qualities or traits they have that you love or feel lit up by or desire? Make that list!
OK, save this list because we are going to do something about in in the next blog post! Take this next week to really dig into these questions and sit with them.
All the things you love about a woman, are the same qualities you possess in yourself