A woman can have a dozen acquaintances, a work chat, a friend from school and a complete sense that her life with other women is in order. And not one conversation after which anything got lighter. Between women there often stands a distrust they never name out loud and do not even notice.
Distrust hidden from yourself
Sometimes we do not even know ourselves that we carry a deep distrust of other women. And it is something we hide from ourselves.
It hides conveniently. We arrange a comfortable life in which we have a few friends we feel safe with. Or, for example, we spend more time with men. Or on the contrary, we are around women, but it is all very surface contact.
The sign of that surface is always the same: the talk is about events and about people, about who said what and who did what. Nobody goes inside.
The scale women measure each other on
The second layer of this distrust works like this: we are constantly comparing ourselves with others. I am above them, I am below them.
That scale runs in the background from the first second of meeting. A woman walks into a room and, before she has thought anything, has already placed herself in relation to everyone present. Above on looks, below on work, above on children, below on the man.
While that scale is running, trust is impossible by design. It is hard to open up to someone you are assessing at that moment, and harder still to open up to someone who is assessing you.
What happens when the scale switches off
In shared practice this competition simply melts and dissolves, and then something else begins.
We look at another woman and we see her beauty, often far more of it than she sees in herself. We see her strengths, we see what is particular about her, we see how we are growing together.
And right behind that comes the thing all of it is for: compassion and support in your own heart. They come from a simple understanding that comparison had been blocking: she is the same as I am. She is trying to grow just as I am.
The conversations that change first
The healing of this wound shows up in the way women begin to talk to each other. That is the most important part, fundamentally important.
Our deep conversations become honest. We are women, we cannot live on those surface conversations. He said, she said. No, for us a deep sharing and a real conversation is like nectar.
Into such a conversation comes everything that usually stays unsaid: past men, the loss of love, what we live through with our children, a mother's fears. And something happens that nothing else can replace: a woman hears for the first time that she is not alone in it.
Many have never in their lives shared anything like this with other women, because all their contact was always on the surface. And when the chance appears, it turns out that it makes no difference which culture you live in now, it lands the same way in everyone.
Why a circle works differently than a conversation between two
The healing of this wound happens in a group, and there is a reason for that.
In a conversation between two there is always a setup: one tells, the other listens and involuntarily assesses. In a circle where everyone shares in turn there is nothing left to assess with, because in a few minutes each of them will be in the speaker's place.
That is exactly where the competition melts. Women stop being mirrors for each other to measure themselves in and become parts of one source.
And a feeling of safety appears that is new for many: it turns out you can say out loud what you have never said to anyone, and nothing terrible happens.
The connection that is missing
Through this sharing we begin at the same time to support each other and to be fed by the wisdom of other women through their stories, restoring that primordial connection every one of us needs so much here on this planet. It is a feeling of connection, it is a teaching of belonging.
There is fairly simple arithmetic in it. The experience of one woman is one life. The experience of a circle of women speaking honestly is dozens of lived lives, and each of them becomes available to the rest.
Distrust between women looks like a personal trait and like bad luck with company, and in fact it is a shared wound that heals only in the opposite direction: through an honest conversation with another woman. One such conversation is usually enough for the scale of comparison to start switching itself off.
And if you want to feel that support and stop going through your own things alone, take Peruquois's course Meditation for Women, Level I, you will find it on the website under Courses.
Peruquois
A top World Music performer in Australia, musician, composer, author and facilitator of self-development trainings for women.
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