Rich women sisterhood – are women really capable of being friends and supporting each other?
I came across the website richwomensisterhood.com this morning. I like the concept, and I like the idea of a place where women can interact with enlightening women, feel a sense of sisterhood and become empowered through their connections, but I have to admit that my experiences with women throughout my life have not been good.
I have five sisters, a mother, several aunts, and two grandmothers. There is no shortage of women in my family and yet there isn’t a single woman in my life I can call when I need someone to talk to. I had a therapist but that’s quite different paying someone to listen to you. In my lifetime I’ve only had a few female friends and the friendships have never lasted. Maybe the problem has to do with me not being a likable person, but you see, that’s entirely the problem.
For all my life I have had extremely low self esteem. I have been shy and insecure and because I haven’t always been outgoing or always had interesting things to say people have treated me with disregard. I’ve never liked being overlooked, but that has been my experience in life. I have always been overlooked unless I’ve done something to get attention. Needless to say everything I’ve ever done to get attention has been self-destructive and people never get that you were just trying to get attention. They look at the self destruction action you took and condemn you for it and judge your entire worth by it. And when you already feel worthless as it is, having everybody around you telling you that you’re worthless or treating you like you’re worthless will obviously only make a bad situation worse.
Through all my life women have only been a source of misery for me. My mother, sisters, grandmother, aunts have always been ready to condemn me and to make me feel even smaller than I already felt. The women I know all seem to think they are better than me. They look down on me. They talk about me, criticizing every decision I have ever made with my life. They think I’m crazy because I isolate myself. I isolate myself because I learned not to trust anyone. I learned that these women in my life are not my friends. When I’ve broken down and reached out to any of them they have turned around and discussed whatever I’ve shared with anyone who would listen. They’ve all judged me. They’ve all betrayed my trust.
The idea of “sisterhood” is lovely, but it’s hard to believe that strangers will care when your own mother doesn’t, and your own sisters don’t. The richwomensisterhood.com idea sounds like a great idea, and I hope women find it useful, but I personally believe that it’s rare to find a woman who is genuinely interested in helping other women transform their lives. There would usually have to be something in it for the woman, and that kills the idea of sisterhood for me. Then again, the site is probably not targetting women who are so lost that the only way to save them will be to institutionalize and medicate them. I’m starting to think I’m that far gone myself…
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