For my female friends

Many of us are victims of hurt from other women. Most of the time it comes from a childhood hurt. For me, it was rejection. Cold, unfeeling rejection from two girls that I thought were my best friends. Many years later, I realize it is possible that neither of them meant to hurt me. But their actions left a lasting wound that perhaps only now is healing.

Women are often suspicious of each other. I have found that whenever I talk about my former “issues” with women, it strikes a chord with other women, who tell me that they have given up and just decided to hang out with men.

The root of this is the kind of childhood hurts like I experienced, coupled with the messages society delivers about what makes women valuable. These messages literally pit us one against another in an endless competition to be the most beautiful, the sexiest, the youngest looking, the best dressed, the most well off, and to get the man. Even if he is someone else’s man. Even if he is yours.

So after we experience the sting of childhood rejection, then they pile on with the news that we have to watch out or some nasty but beautiful vixen is going to snatch our husband or boyfriend out from under our nose, especially if we are not thin, smooth-skinned, and large-breasted enough to continuously captivate our mate and any other man in our presence.

This is not a good environment for friend-making. We don’t trust each other. We’re insecure, and we think everyone else is making us look bad. Just drive to work and you’ll receive hundreds of messages designed to make you feel bad about yourself so you will buy something.

I am convinced that because we women are constantly receiving the message “not good enough,” we see other women not as friends, but as dangerous rivals. We put up our defenses, just waiting for the first slight. If someone else is having a bad day and snaps at us or ignores us or says something insensitive, we take it as a personal rejection. Many times we snap back, or take our hurt and go hurt someone else with it.

My prayer today for all my sisters is that we would recognize our need for healing in our relationships with each other, and our need to overcome the deadly message of Madison Avenue. I know you all think I am “smoking something” with my posts on stepping out of the matrix and not following the systems of this world, but let me tell you that you are better off without these things. Living the message of Madison Avenue brings death to the things that are really important - the things that, when we get to the end of our life, we realize are the things that matter.

I got to be 40 and realized I had this hole in my heart that was missing friendships with women. Since I have begun to heal from my past hurts, I have discovered the nourishing quality of relationship with the fairer sex. With my female friends, I can be mothered. I can also mother and mentor. With my girlfriends, I can be a child. I can be myself in a safe environment where I know they love me. I can grow. Oh yes, we step on each others’ toes sometimes and it hurts. But “wounds from a friend can be trusted,” goes the Proverb. When it comes to friendships with women, “Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” In other words, we will get angry with each other, but anger is born of true relationship. When we are envious of others’ status, that destroys relationship. Anger can make our relationships stronger, as long as we work through the anger and keep on trusting each other.

If you are one of those women who just don’t “do women,” I get you. I used to be you and I know that it feels safer to just avoid the issue of female relationships. I also know that there is an ache in your heart to experience the God-given blessing of healthy relationships with women. I am praying for you, my sister, to overcome your woundedness and reach out to that motherly woman who needs a daughter like you. Or to pick up the phone and call that mother who needs a sister, or that young girl who needs a mother. Don’t reach the end of your life and realize that in protecting yourself, you have missed what is really important in this life. In giving of yourself you will receive so much more. It really is worth the risk.

Tags: friendship, women