In middle school, there was a group of girls I called the “Clique” – they always seemed to be laughing, in the “know”, and had the best clothes (Champion sweatshirts and Keds sneakers – this was the 80s).
The girls in the Clique generally gave off the feeling that not only were they cooler than everyone else, but that their circle was utterly impenetrable:
No outsiders allowed. And all outsiders were definitely not good or cool enough.
This affected me deeply. I didn’t actually know if I liked the girls in the Clique (because I didn’t really know them), but I still really, really wanted to be part of it.
I longed to belong, to be seen, liked, and appreciated by girls who were seemingly “better” than me. And not being part of the group felt like a judgment on my “enough-ness”.
As I got older, I tended to run with the out-of-the-box people – people who were slightly weird just like I was! And I slowly evolved to not so much need to belong to the “popular” group.
But there always lingered an itsy bitsy need to be seen and loved by those women in exclusive groups, by those that, in my mind at least, ran in super-tight circles…and were somehow cooler, happier, more successful.
The “cliques” for me were always women.
This was about Sisterhood, and feeling excluded from special Sisterhood in one way or another.
I’m sharing all of this because I know I’m not alone in it. It’s sometimes called the Sister Wound – the worrying about being in groups of women and not belonging….or being judged by them…or not being liked….or sometimes the Sister wound can show up as feeling jealous of other women or worry that others are jealous of you.
It’s all related to our need as humans to belong to the tribe…but I also believe the Sister Wound is so pervasive because of how women have been pitted against each other for millennia, how (patriarchal) culture has ensured that it will prevail because it knows what can happen when women really come together fully.
The Sister Wound runs deep:
Even for someone like me who has done so much work on it over the years – I am confident in myself, I generally feel good enough and in my power, I know I am loved and appreciated by many women in my life…and yet it still creeps in for me every now and again.
Even recently, I went to a lecture and stepped into a room of women who knew each other well. I definitely heard some inner rumblings of Will they like me?
I’m sharing all of this not only to normalize so you know you’re not alone if it comes up for you, but also because if you’re leading workshops, retreats, groups, or circles of women, it’s so important to be aware of this.
It’s very likely the Sister Wound might get activated for women who are inside of your groups.
And when you facilitate a group, you want for your participants to feel welcomed, accepted, and like they belong. And that can’t come only from you, the facilitator. You need to be able to create a sisterhood and with it, a space where the sister wound is at least somewhat deactivated.
If not, your group won’t have as much vulnerability, deep sharing. Openness and trust as you would like.
There are specific skills to learn in order to create a group container where the community is strong and sisterhood is at its best…but along with that, the reason why Sisterhood and Community are so hard for some facilitators to create is because of their own Sister Wounds.
Energy follows energy, so if you haven’t worked through some of your own stuff around being in groups of women, it ‘s going to be challenging for you to create a loving, accepting atmosphere inside of your own group.
As always, all of your client and group work starts with how you are showing up. If you want to start to go deeper with this, take a deeper look at your own sister wounds:
What are your own Sister Wounds? Write them down. Even if you think you don’t have any, my guess is that you do. (Again, because of culture).
Do you have trouble with belonging? With closeness? Jealousy? Are scared of losing yourself in a group? Is there a part of you that thinks it’s weak to be vulnerable and receive support from a group? Do you have preconceived notions about how women become caddy when they get together, or too clique-y, etc?
Use this awareness as the seed to transform your own inner dynamics around sisterhood…and this will help you bring a much more empowering energy around community, sisterhood, and belonging to the groups you lead.
