Today I want to talk about sisterhood.
The layer that makes everything else work. The key to feeling supported and held despite all of life’s ups and downs.
But, I know what some of you are thinking: Really? Women are such a huge pain in my ass. They are back-stabbing, back-biting, untrustworthy, and selfish. There is no way on this earthly earth that a woman would give ME support! She would probably just step all over me as she crawls her way to the top, and I’d have the battle scars to prove it.
And yes, it is true that women have been given a really, really bad rap inside this patriarchal world culture.
I don’t think any of us get through our childhood or adulthood without being mean-girled. Or mean-girling others.
Perhaps the worst consequence of the patriarchal belief system is that we end up unable to connect with other women in a deep trusting way, much less through joy, radiance, and pleasure.
If we want kinship with other women, we’ve been taught to reach for it through mutual victimization.
We’re conditioned to connect around our current woes. Bad news is our entry point. We have absolutely no shame about leading with the negative. But to start with the spectacular news of our lives? We cringe.
This kind of cultural agreement binds us to negativity, instead of our potential. It keeps us small, and cut-off, and less than we are capable of being and becoming.
So what does sisterhood mean exactly?
It means a world loaded with women who can be counted on to laugh their panties off with one another. Who cry with wild abandon in each other’s arms. Who share their outrageous dreams. Who insist on each other’s beauty, passion, and full-throttle joy.
Sisterhood is the safe space where you get to connect with your truth, and have it celebrated.
It allows your authentic self to shine through. Not the image of you that you think everyone wants to see. Not the you that placates, the you that cooperates, the you that compromises. The real you.
Here are three easy ways to up your game around sisterhood:
- Reverse the negativity habit. Find a group of women that are open to and interested in bragging. You can test this out, one woman at a time, simply by suggesting to your friend that you each brag about something good that is happening in your lives. You can use my book as a guide. And don’t worry if you can only find one woman to brag with. It’s a start! Make a commitment to brag every single week. If you really want to hit the gas pedal on this, decide to brag together, every day. And be sure to upride each other’s brags. That means to praise each other for how wonderful each other’s brags are.
- Create space for your unfiltered truth. Every single one of us has both intensely good and intensely bad experiences, and everything in between. Because we are accustomed to leading with the negative, we don’t realize that the act of complaining ad nauseam actually amplifies the negativity and stress in our lives. Yet, we all need a safe space to dump our garbage, our frustration, our monkey-mind stirrings, our not-so-wonderful judgments. If we don’t get it out, we stuff it in. Spring Cleaning is a communication exercise I teach in my book, that allows us to hold space for a friend to release the negative feelings they might have, without having to talk about it, solve it, or step inside their storyline.
- Schedule Sisterhood. Most of us simply do not live in a world where community and sisterhood are embedded in our everyday lives. Like anything important to us, we’ve got to get our priorities in our calendars, or they simply won’t happen. If you are just getting started in creating your posse of girlfriends, don’t be afraid to be the fire-starter and the cheerleader. Women are just beginning to learn each other’s value, and we each need someone to open a door to sisterhood for us. The fact that you are reading this email right now means you are the leader. Tag, lady, you are it. I cannot wait to see what you can create!
There is so much joy in these inspiring stories and I want to celebrate them with you!
With so much love and pleasure,
Regena is a feminist icon, a teacher, a speaker, a mother, a best-selling author, and creatrix and CEO of The School of Womanly Arts.