Take a moment to get comfortable.
Ensure that you won't be bothered during this meditation.
Meditation is most effective when there are no disturbances or distractions.
Slowly close your eyes and take a few calming and centering breaths.
Inhale deep into your belly and your lungs and exhale all the air from your lungs.
Inhaling deep down into your being,
Exhaling all.
Inhaling deep down into your heart center and exhaling out.
The sister wound is something that most women don't talk about.
It 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.
We then continue to pass on the sister wound down from one generation to the next.
Patriarchs were aware and afraid of a female's power to command peace and harmony among all living beings which didn't really suit their agenda of owning and controlling their reality.
In order to gain control,
A carefully crafted cocktail of patriarchal religions,
Brute force and fear mongering was used to split apart these peaceful societies and divide women from each other.
In order to survive,
Women had to either submit or go underground.
As knights conquered new lands for kings,
Priestesses and men who associated with the old religions of harmony slipped quietly into the woods to await a time when they would be accepted and revered once again.
For the rest of us,
Life became a game of survival and unfortunately the game was set up so that women could not trust one another.
For years,
Women have been taught to not trust each other.
Learning to survive in a patriarchal world,
We learned to turn against each other,
Compete with each other and step on each other to get to the top because there were few spots for us up there in a male dominated world.
The patriarchal structures of our society taught us to turn against each other,
Betray each other and obsess about things like our appearance,
Our weight or whether we are being liked.
These were excellent ways to decrease the incredible primal power that exists in our bodies,
Our pleasure and how it births life,
Metaphorically and physically,
And an even better way to stop women with the power of pleasure and life in their bodies to come together as one force.
As a result,
Most of us grow up with loneliness in our hearts.
We long for deep,
Connected and nourishing friendships but we push them away because of our past experiences with women.
Can you imagine what the world would look like if we stopped suspecting each other and started working together?
Before patriarchy and the rise of the media,
Women depended on other women.
There was a time long ago when we lived a community focused life and helped each other raise the children instead of judging our neighbour for her child rearing decisions.
There was a time we worked together to feed villagers and keep our families safe from harm.
There was a time we communicated for the sake of collaboration and growth and not for division and toxic gossip.
There was a time we weren't afraid of each other's powers because we knew that each and every one of us are powerful in our own right.
There was a time where women were leaders and we understood that it truly takes a village.
In order to change this dynamic,
We need to look within.
We need to see where the sister wound shows up in our own lives.
So I want you to contemplate the following questions.
Do you put other women down in the workplace?
Do you shame them for the way they dress,
Speak,
Think or conduct themselves?
Do you gossip and talk about other women to mutual friends or acquaintances?
Do you deliberately exclude and remove a woman from feeling welcome?
Do you not invite certain women to group events or do you ghost them?
Do you find yourself talking over others or speaking too loudly?
Do you have a fear of rejection or exclusion?
Are you constantly criticizing yourself for the way you look,
Behave or what you have achieved?
Do you have difficulty trusting other women,
Especially those you're not familiar with?
Do you struggle to hold conversations and speak up?
Do you feel an inability to be assertive or stand up for yourself?
Do you believe other women are better or more than you?
Do you ever experience jealousy or envy towards other women?
Do you have a loud inner critic?
Do you find yourself in circles of negative self-talk?
Do you lack self-love?
Do you place small in fear of upsetting others or standing out?
Do you have trouble being vulnerable and expressing yourself in a unique way?
These are all symptoms of the sister wound.
Doing all this damage starts with the one person we can highly influence,
Ourselves.
In order to do this,
We need to shine a light on this pattern with compassion and curiosity,
Recognizing that a lot of this stems from intergenerational trauma and conditioning.
We need to be open to doing inner work,
Whether that be therapy or coaching.
Shadow work can be a particular healing modality for sister wounds.
We need to reconnect to our feminine energy or femininity.
You have to love yourself and your femininity to love other women.
We need to make it a habit of celebrating other women that inspire you.
It takes only a few moments to comment on another woman's Facebook or Instagram post,
To share it,
Or even attend an event that a fellow sister is hosting.
If you are a leader of women,
Then I invite you to create safe spaces where women can express themselves with respect.
Set the tone by setting healthy boundaries in any groups that you may run,
Creating a loving and supportive place for women to express themselves.
My hope is that we continue to shine a light on this pattern and work towards breaking it so that we can heal and stop the spread to future generations.
I invite you to give a compliment or support to a woman that you admire in your life today.
Because when women support women,
Magical things start to happen.
When you are ready,
Slowly start to bring your awareness back into this present moment.
And to reconnect to your breath and your physical body,
You can make some slight movements to ground yourself back into this moment.
And slowly blink open your eyes.
