Have you heard about the sister wound? I just recently learnt about it and all I can is wow I think I am starting to learn why I am the way I am.
There are a lot of different readings out there on the subject and a lot of them focus in our power as women and being shut down by our patriarchal society. I don’t particularly want to focus on the why and what has caused these behaviours so much as to what we as women are doing to one another and how even our behaviours as children can affect someone in o adulthood. In brief, the sister wound is how women have been taught to not trust each other and turn against each other while competing and stepping on each other to get to the top. This causes many of us to grow up with a loneliness in our hearts because we sabotage and push away deep nourishing friendships with other women.
This wound is created when we are shut down, judged, mocked and mistreated by other women. It starts when you are a little girl and follows you in to adulthood. Each time you are hurt by another woman you begin self-sabotaging yourself from being able to have a deep relationship with other women where you can be comfortable sharing everything.
We start judging ourselves against other women who we think are better than ourselves. We put them up on a pedestal and become self-conscious and feel inferior next to them. We become fearful that others are constantly judging us, this keeps us from sharing who we are with others and being proud of our differences.
The more times you are hurt by women the more we have an inability to trust other women in fear of being betrayed.
I have never resonated with something so much in my life.
When I was younger I always walked to the beat of my own drum. I was outgoing and confident, I thrived being different and standing out. This part of me was shut down and smothered as I started to experience my sister wound being dug.
I don’t know who else didn’t get the memo but did you know you could have more than one best friend? I didn’t! My sister had a best friend and a big group of other friends so I am not entirely sure where this behaviour was learnt. I think this kept me from building relationships with other girls because I had my BFF and I didn’t want to replace her. As we grew up, our interests blossomed but they weren’t the same always. She started to make other friends and I felt the need to compete for her friendship not realizing she wasn’t replacing me but adding to her circle. I always felt like I was competing for her attention.
In elementary school I had a group of girl friends, I opened up to them about something sensitive looking for some kind of consoling or support (whatever that looks like to a 12 year old girl). Instead of being embraced and lifted up I found out they were passing notes and gossiping about me behind my back.
Soon I wasn’t being invited to the hangouts and when I was invited, I was often the last there because I lived further away. There was one time I remember it clear as day, my mom dropped me off and pulled the whole “I’ll wait till you get in before I leave”, at the time I was embarrassed but when I rang the bell no one answered. I was left standing on the step listening to the other girls laugh at me behind a locked door. I walked back to the card with my head hanging down and cried all the way home.
I was in constant fear of being publicly rejected again. It was at this point I learnt to keep a wall up and only share enough about myself and past that was deemed “acceptable” and not overwhelming for another person in fear or ridicule or scaring them off.
At this time I still loved wearing whatever I liked, the brighter the better. But soon that became a target for jokes. I remember one particularly vibrant outfit that consisted of a pink shirt, hot pink shorts laced with hawaiian flowers, pink runners topped off with pink hair. Could this have let to my notoriously bland wardrobe filled with white shirt after white shirt, 7 grey sweaters that I swear are all different and the only so called colours are navy and olive green?
Next came the era of ICQ... for those of you younger than 31 this is the original what’s App or whatever the current trendy communication app is called. Some how I became the target of one particular girl who didn’t know me only knew of me. Honestly we had never met; I didn’t even know she existed until she started attacking me. She played soccer with a few girls in my class. There was a rumour that the boy she had a crush on apparently had a crush on me instead. This upset her and she took that out on me. She was relentless.
She verbally attacked me.
She made fun of my clothes.
She made up rumours about me.
I didn’t know this girl; I didn’t even know what she looked like. I didn’t like this boy, I didn’t ask for any attention from him. But some how I got singled out. I wanted to hide under a rock, become invisible, and just disappear from the world.
The rumours she spread made it unacceptable for any of the other girls I went to school with to be friends with me. It was at that moment that I became a leper. I went from having 10 girlfriends to zero. No one would talk to me, I wasn’t invited to anything, I was alone. At home there were family issues we were dealing with that only exacerbated my feelings of being alone. My sister was sick and my mom was doing everything she could to get her help. Note: I am not blaming my sister or my mother for anything. I did not want to become an additional burden on anyone, my mom was dealing with enough and I saw her being drained so I kept my problems to myself.
I began questioning everything I did, everything I said, everything I liked in constant fear that I would move even further down the social totem poll or worse draw attention to myself. I developed anxiety and began experiencing panic attacks at school, specifically when there was attention on me. The first time I had a panic attack at school, the rumours started again. Kids were saying I was faking it, and I was just trying to bring attention to myself. From that moment I felt worthless and didn’t want to exist. I started thinking about what the world would be like if I wasn’t there to get in the way..
A girl I had recently met picked up on the signs. She knew what school I went to and told her mom who reached out to my principal to intervene (thank you Morgan. I was mad at you at the time and never spoke to you again, but I do thank you for doing what you did). I wouldn’t say I ever properly dealt with that time of my life or those feelings but I do not nor have I ever felt that way since.
This experience taught me to hide my true feelings. I didn’t want people to know how I really felt or that I had emotions that could be hurt.
A strong brick wall was built that year. Hopefully it would be strong enough to get me through high school.
Throughout high school I developed friendships but I always seemed to “float” between social groups. I never stuck to one group and developed those deep long lasting friendships with girls. I found it easier and safer to be friends with guys. To this day I still don’t have any close friends let alone girl friends from high school. Sure, I talk to people I use to be closer with but the friendship is distant and we don’t keep in touch very much.
As I grew older I was unconfident in myself and who I was and untrusting of other women never feeling up to snuff. I was seen as a jealous bitch that didn’t trust any guy she was dating to be around other women. Funny it takes two to tango, not taking in to consideration I couldn’t trust someone who was suppose to care about me. When I found a boyfriend in bed with the girl I didn’t trust (and we both worked with, it further deepened my fear and mistrust of women. Yet I would bounce back to trust a man quickly but not women.
From job to job I would make friends, but once we no longer worked together the friendship would fall apart. I would never follow up and maintain the relationship. I would think why would they still want to be my friend they have to commitment to me now that we don’t work together. Maybe we were only “friends” because we spent 8 hours a day 5 days a week together. I don’t want to force my friendship on them and be rejected. To this day I have only retained one friendship from a job and I will 100% say that she was the one who pursued the friendship (thank you Andrea) and I love her for it. Now our husbands are friends and our boys are friends. Most of the friends I see and hang out with are the wives of my husband’s friends. They are all wonderful women. We are all so different from one another but still get along, but again I don’t have that deep bond with any of them where I feel I can say or share anything and everything. I am getting better with time, I feel like no one is going to leave so I am slowly opening up but I still rehearse what I am going to say prior to opening up about something personal.
Slowly I have started to peel back the layers. Since the birth of my son I have realized that our experiences bringing life in to this world and our journey through motherhood unite us and deepen our bond with other women. I want to take those feelings in to all parts of my life.
My feelings are valid.
I am smart.
And my thoughts and ideas are worth sharing.
It’s finally time to let go and grow.