Holding hands, originally uploaded by Valerie Everett.

My last post for Roots of She, on “hidden aggression” between women that largely result from not being taught how to handle conflict (as women, it’s not “ladylike” to be upset) and from the very real fear (shared between all of humanity, I think) of being vulnerable within our relationships. At the end of that post, I wrote:

I’m curious to know: What, in your mind, will shift the dynamic of hidden female aggression? What do we need in order to truly connect with one another, come from a place of connection when we voice our frustrations or conflicts, and stop buying into the false power of what I’ll call “cliquing-up”?

There were some really amazing, powerful, well-thought out comments left by readers, and my plan this month had been to follow up with ideas for how we can bridge that gap between the fear that causes disconnection, and risking being vulnerable/handling conflict.

Then I realized that if we’re talking about vulnerability, far better to practice it rather than talk around it, dissect it, analyze it. I’m a Life Coach, after all–by definition, my profession is more interested in working with what-is than symptoms of pathology.

So I’m asking you this, now:

• What is it that you most desire in your connections with other women?

• If you knew it were possible to create the kinds of relationships between and among women that you really want to see in the world, what qualities would those relationships have?
• What’s the most tender, vulnerable thing you could ask for?

I’ll start:

What is that you most desire in your connections with other women?
Feeling fully seen. I am uncomfortable when I realize that I am being viewed through the lens of others’ projections, rather than the lens of who I am. Sometimes the lens is one of “God, you’re such a fucking idiot,” and other times the lens is one of “You’ve got it all figured out; now teach me.” Neither pole is a healthy place to live, because both are lies. I am, just like you and all of my sisters out there, a mixed up bag of power and failings, wisdom and stupid moves, joy and core wounds. I’d like to be honored for all that I am, and to practice honoring all that others are (because I project, too).

If you knew it were possible to create the kinds of relationships between and among women that you really want to see in the world, what qualities would those relationships have?
Compassion. Joy. Deep respect for one another–we are women, and I’m constantly wrapping my mind around this…we give life! We give the earth life! That’s so magnificent, if you really sink into it! So how is it possible that we go around gossiping and calling one another stupid bitches?

I want us to see relationships as processes for growth, rather than temporary contracts in which each person gets what they can until someone decides it’s too much trouble. I also want all of the “mothering” of the world to be respected–the mothering of the women who bear children AND the mothering of the women who birth and mother their children named Social Action and Change, or A Beautiful Career, or Living Life By My Own (Child-Free) Values, or Nourishing And Loving My Friends Who Have Kids.

And gosh–all of that sounds so serious!–so I would also love to make plenty of space for laughter, and not taking ourselves so seriously.

What’s the most tender, vulnerable thing you could ask for?
Acceptance. The most devastating thing about my friendships that haven’t flourished is the little narrative my brain follows, which goes something like this: “Everyone says to ‘just be yourself’ when making friends. However, sometimes when I’ve ‘just been myself’ (which inevitably includes being flawed), people have just up and left, telling me that I’m bad or wrong and that’s why they left. This makes me afraid to ‘just be myself,’ because I now equate that with people leaving.”

Acceptance is powerful not just because it necessarily invokes compassion, but also because it brings with it an amazing parallel: Acceptance runs a track right alongside developing that capacity within ourselves to be grounded in who we are. I’m only able to accept others to the degree that I’ve developed my own sense of self-worth, so that You Being You doesn’t threaten my sense of Me Being Me.

Acceptance, in my mind, is tender and vulnerable to ask for–it’s a direct statement that things aren’t going to be perfect, right from the get-go. It’s also the win-win, the Hero (or Shero!) that we’ve all been waiting for. Imagine this beautiful symbiosis: I develop me so that I can feel good about me, and in that process, I help to support and nurture you in being wherever you’re at in your process.

I’d like to ask readers to consider blogging about these three questions, with a linkback to this Roots of She post, and then coming back here to post the link to your blog using this Mr. Linky widget, so that we can see what it is that the women of this world are all asking for, from one another.

Consider this exercise to be like one of those little notes you’re going to send up to the Universe, some kind of energetic alchemy that transmutes a seemingly stuck issue into your own personal gold.

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Rough Patches, originally uploaded by Lissy Elle.

“Girls don’t have to bully, at least as far as we have understood the word, to injure and alienate their peers. In fact, the word bullying couldn’t be more wrong in describing what some girls do to hurt on another. The day-to-day aggression that persists among girls, a dark underside of their social universe, remains to be charted and explored. We have no real language for it.” –Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

I have tried several times now to finish Simmons’ book. I haven’t yet done it, mostly because every time I do, I feel triggered like crazy.

The darkest year of my k-12 education was my junior year, when I temporarily left the public school I’d been attending after it lost a lot of funding, to attend a small, private, Catholic all-girls school. Before I was officially admitted, I’d had these fantasies in my mind of becoming part of a small clique of friends, studying together, hanging out on weekends, making the kinds of friends that you make for the rest of your life.

Instead, I spent the year…alone. Most of the girls had known one another since pre-school. I was an outsider. The social aggression was total: rumors were spread, people snickered at things I said in class just to be mean, and–just when I’d reached some semblance of acceptance of the fact that I was so alone, someone would invite me to a party…only to completely ignore me both at the party or come Monday morning. I stuck through my junior year and returned my senior year, hoping that with time I would be treated as one of the gang. But one month into my senior year, nothing had changed. I left the school and finished my senior year at the public school I’d originally attended.

Simmons spent years researching adolescent female aggression, which typically shows up as relational aggression (using relationships to bully, i.e., turning friends against people, giving someone the silent treatment, or threatening to end a relationship unless someone agrees to a request) and indirect aggression (trying to hurt someone indirectly such as spreading a rumor). She interviewed hundreds of girls and their stories are so familiar.

What keeps nagging at me is, simply, this: this kind of “hidden aggression” doesn’t end when we get out of adolescence. As an adult, I’ve encountered it at jobs, in social settings, and on the web.

Even more painful? Recognizing the places where I have played a part in maintaining that kind of aggression. While I feel some relief in being able to offer that as an adult, I’ve never threatened to stop speaking to a friend if they didn’t comply with my requests or engaged in backstabbing of the sort that I ever saw on an episode of Desperate Housewives, it is a vulnerable truth to admit that in my adult life, I have not always practiced my life vision. I have stopped speaking to someone when I was upset with them, or hoped in a back-of-my-mind kind of way that other people would stop speaking to someone I didn’t like and felt a kind of cold, deviant…glee when I saw that they were being excluded or left out.

Blecch.

So what’s going on? If I know how painful this hidden aggression is, why have I sometimes played a part in it? Here’s what I think it all boils down to:

“Socialized away from aggression, expected to be nice girls who have ‘perfect relationships,’ many girls are unprepared to negotiate conflict. As a result, a minor disagreement can call an entire relationship into question. What do I mean by this? In a normal conflict, two people use language, voice, or fists to settle their dispute. The relationship between them is secondary to the issue being worked out. But when anger cannot be voiced, and when the skills to handle a conflict are absent, the specific matter cannot be addressed.”

What was behind those times when I gave someone the silent treatment because I was upset? I’m hurting, and I don’t know how to fix it, and I’m scared to be wrong. I don’t want to admit that I don’t know how to fix it or that I’m wrong, and I don’t want to try to fix it and botch the job. I’m afraid. What was behind those times when I was relieved to realize that someone I didn’t like was also not liked by others? I’m hurting. We don’t connect with one another, or I’m triggered when I’m around you in a way that I don’t know how to deal with. It’s easier for me if others decide to exclude you.

It’s my guess that these sorts of statements are also behind the girls and women who have treated me in ways that felt anything but kind.

There’s so much more to say about this “hidden aggression” than can possibly be covered in one blog post. Nonetheless, the kernel that I keep trying to take away–now that I’m older, wiser, more equipped to navigate relationships–is remembering the courage of being vulnerable.

It is courageous to be vulnerable. It is courageous to step into a place where we are willing to admit, “I’m hurting, and I don’t know how to fix it, yet what I really wish for is connection.” It’s courageous to lean into that edge of fear and recognize that that person who triggers us like crazy is our teacher, someone who is just like us deep inside, wanting connection. It is courageous to lean into vulnerability because it’s scary as hell.

It’s scary, and yet it’s necessary–because when we don’t risk vulnerability, we risk continuing the cycle, simply out of fear.

I want more for you, and for your relationships, and for the daughter I’ll have one day, than snarky Twitter attacks or backhanded blog posts; more than wondering whether someone was really busy or if they haven’t been available because they’re pissed. I want more for all of us as women than the divisiveness of hiding out and this false shell of power.

I believe that we can do it, and I believe that it starts with dropping the gossip, the judgements, the silent treatment, the underhandedness, and getting more honest (read: courageous) than we thought we were capable of. When we can come from a place of love rather than a place of fear, everything shifts.

I’d like to write more on this topic, and I’m curious to know: What, in your mind, will shift the dynamic of hidden female aggression? What do we need in order to truly connect with one another, come from a place of connection when we voice our frustrations or conflicts, and stop buying into the false power of what I’ll call “cliquing-up”?

I am so honored to be part of this community—because if you really knew me, you’d know that lately, alllll of my stuff about women and womanhood is coming up.

I’ve been asking myself when I’ll be done fully processing the pain of lost friendships, especially those that ended with passive-aggressive silence and a lot of unanswered questions (oh, the ache!). I’ve been asking myself what it means to be connected to sisterhood and a tribe. I’ve been longing to be a mother and trying to determine how anyone ever knows when it’s the “right” time to embark on that kind of journey. I’ve been contemplating my inner goddess, my sexuality, and the shaky line where being sensual can feel scary—vulnerable.

But I am Kate Courageous, which means that I also practice courage: feeling the fear (because no one gets out of that part), diving in anyway (because what else would I do—stay stuck?), and transforming (because that’s what always happens when we meet our edges and work with our fear). When I was leading The Courageous Year, my online e-course that was eventually turned into the Courageous Living Guides—I learned that it’s not “having all of the answers” that makes a person courageous. Working with our questions is the very act that defines us as courageous—that we get in there, we examine, we open, we question, we stay curious, we stay present, we work with what’s there. In essence, we are willing to BE our journey.

I’m looking forward to being in this space for the next few months, getting tender with what is there and having a community space in which to explore these questions.

Photo: In Her Image

Honoring Women

I started college in the late 90′s, right in time for the third wave of the feminist movement and its intersection with the creation of intentional online communities. Before the more “corporate-esque” entities of the Oxygen network or Salon, there were grassroots website collaborations that exploded into a hub of forums and linked blogs faster than the owners could keep up with them–She-Net and Chick Click being the most notable of those two.

I began reading–online, whatever books I could get my hands on. I wanted to be immersed further into this world of women who were just as upset as I was that men leered at me, that women were objectified, that sexual violence is an issue that men treat as a “women’s issue.” These women were seemingly rejecting the uber-intellectual feminism of their predecessors that would have made wearing lipstick akin to bowing down to the patriarchy–fashion could be fun, an outward expression. There was no need for dogma or an ideology to subscribe to.

–Until there was. Increasingly, I both felt and saw an anger that I didn’t know how to cope with. To be more conscious of the oppression of women is to feel the pain, like a raw wound. The more I thought about it, the more it infuriated me that men made jokes at my expense or touched me inappropriately (and, of course, told me that I was “overreacting” if I got upset). I was angered that my friends had started calling one another “bitch” as a term of endearment. I was traumatized by movies that sexualized rape, making it seem erotic. I was frustrated that so many women said, “It’s not like I’m a feminist or anything,” as if a term associated with equal rights and sexual rights and access to education was so awful.

I didn’t know what to do with my anger. To express it in my peer group of 18-year-old college freshman only invited alienation, or the question: “So, if you’re a feminist, are you a lesbian?” missing the point entirely. Worse, it didn’t seem that anyone else in these online communities knew what to do with their anger, either–sometimes being amidst these discussions of how bad things were only left me with the feeling that I was, and always would be, a victim.

So, I turned my back on my sisters. I stopped reading feminist websites, calling myself a feminist, or posting on forums. I declined further invitations to write for web zines (a “blog” in today’s parlance).

My online sisters had, in many respects, turned their backs on me–the more the numbers swelled in the forums, the more distinct groups emerged: feminists who made it their job to criticize everyone else’s feminism; hipster cliques who let everyone know that they were long on distressed t-shirts but short on activism.

Worse, the owners of these sites sold out and we, the users, became a demographic. Once the web ads began, there was a downward spiral.

I’d been drawn to feminism because I wanted to discover who I was as a woman, and because feminism was supposed to have a place for everyone, but there was not a place for me–the woman of contradictions who wanted to see real political change; to believe in “fluffy” ideas like possibility; to be a loving invitation to include men in that process; to have fun with fashion; to be accepted if I did choose motherhood over career; to be engaged in the political world and vote according to my personal values rather than the ideologies of a movement; to be supportive of lesbians without being treated as a traitor for loving men.

In leaving, I became disengaged with that process of discovering who I was as a woman. Now I look back and see how narrowly I have sometimes lived, not wanting to seem “too much” of this or “too little” of that as I’ve defined my womanhood.

But this, too, is one of the lessons learned as we get older–when ideologies miss the mark, you improvise.

So I’ve begun making it up as I go along–an often challenging process of back and forth and testing the waters only to backtrack. It has been a process of voicing my politics and then learning the line between assertiveness and self-righteousness; buying clothing only to realize that I was pandering to some ideal of womanhood that had been sold to me in a magazine; rejecting men’s perspectives as rooted in patriarchy and then opening my heart enough to see the scars of male oppression; buying in to someone else’s interpretation that I spoke up “too aggressively,” before realizing that that trigger was all her own; opening myself past the fear that if I become a mother I will lose myself entirely in dishes and diapers.

The biggest lesson learned? That beneath the anger and pain of female oppression, which is real and does need to be acknowledged, there is this place that I can connect with, a harmony that is deeper than ideology. I now proudly call myself a feminist, and what that means to me is a hodgepodge mixture of many different ‘feminisms.’

At the heart of it is my desire to connect with my inner woman, and to honor all women, and to be a stand for one’s right to choose in every domain of one’s life, and to be accepted in those choices. Connection is at the heart of all of it–the kind of connection that creates the strength needed for real change to happen. It would be my hope that you, too, would join me in calling yourself a feminist–there is a place for everyone, here.