Wake up and Thrive

092: Four Powerful Tools to Cultivate Deep Sisterhood.

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I am bringing back a very popular episode from exactly one year ago. I have had so many conversations with women about their own hurt and pain in female friendships. The sense of betrayal, judgement, and abandonment can be felt on a visceral level. Do you ever find yourself reflecting on your friendships as an adult and wondering why it's so hard to find that perfect click? Today I share my own personal stories about the highs and lows of relationships within my community, shedding light on the often unspoken hurdle: society's lack of emphasis on teaching us how to cultivate lasting bonds. We'll peel back the layers of what it means to maintain authenticity and the steps to take for establishing more meaningful, life-giving connections. Through my experiences, I'll show you how to define what you truly need from others and why embodying the qualities of clear communication and safety is pivotal in finding the support we crave across all relationships — be it with friends, family, or colleagues.

Building on the theme of connection, I'll reveal how embracing vulnerability and feedback has reshaped the way I interact with loved ones, especially when it comes to distinguishing between constructive criticism and projected insecurities. You'll hear a heartwarming tale involving my son, emphasizing how trust and validation are the bedrock of any healthy relationship. Consider this your invitation to join me on a journey of intentional relationship-building — where honesty reigns supreme, boundaries are respected, and every interaction is a step towards nurturing an environment rich with openness and support. Let's unlock the door to more enriching and supportive relationships together.

And if you are craving real, vulnerable, and deep sisterhood then come check out my newest community, Fully Alive. Inside this new and growing community, you will find expert teaching, coaching, and community all in one place! We are not meant to do life alone. Come join us. Our kickoff call is this Thursday, May 9th at noon EST. And you can join today for less than $7/day. Click here to learn more. 

Let's Connect.

If you want to inquire about coaching and receiving support in helping you create stronger connections to yourself, your purpose, and those in your life email me your story here....bridget@findherwildcoaching.com

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Speaker 1:

Hi, my name is Bridget and welcome to my podcast, wake Up and Thrive. I wear a lot of hats, but the ones I'm most proud of are being a sober mom to my four kids, a wife to my best friend, a forever student of life, a registered nurse and a certified life coach. You can usually find me planning and enjoying quality moments with those I love or coaching women on how to do the same. All of our lives are made up of tiny moments, both beautiful and messy. I know we all want more feel-good moments, but I believe it's the ones that challenge us that become the catalyst for our growth. That's what we do in this space. We explore everyday moments that we deem hard and, instead of allowing them to keep us stuck, we lean into their lessons and let them wake us up. So if you're ready and willing, I'd love to invite you to come along. All you need is an open mind. It's time. It's time to wake up and thrive ride. Happy Monday, everyone. Hope everyone is having a good start to their week and that you had a nice, relaxing weekend.

Speaker 1:

I am coming in here because the episode that I released last week on friendships, where I vulnerably shared my own story and struggle with it and it still somewhat feels a little fresh for me, although I feel mostly on the other side of it. It's still very much a part of my everyday life because I live in the same neighborhood with those same women and it's something I have to continually practice. I have to continually practice coming back to the truth of who I am, not the truth of who they say I am and coming back to the truth of who I am, not the truth of who they say I am and coming back to love, coming back to this place of I don't want to be angry at them, I don't want to be resentful of them, I don't want to be triggered all the time. Right, so I was. So I don't want to say excited, because that means a lot of you guys struggle with the same thing, but this was a very popular episode and I had a lot of people reach out and comment and say me too. So if you are listening or you haven't listened to it yet and you do listen and you resonate, I want you to know you are not dramatic. If you struggle in friendships, you are not too much or not enough or something is not wrong with you. You are a human being that just grew up in a society where you weren't taught how to relate, how to create the relationships and connections that we are innately designed to have. So, again, I really hope that last episode touched you and helps you kind of take some of those steps to creating life-giving and intimate relationships, whether that's friendship or partnership and marriage. It really applies across the board. So this is not necessarily a part two, but it kind of is.

Speaker 1:

I want to piggyback off of what I talked about last week and then I want to take it a step further to really ask the question of what now right? So if I'm doing all this internal work, I'm really starting to allow certain relationships to complete and fall without making it mean anything about myself. I'm really leaning into my own experience. So if that's grief, anger, resentment, sadness and honoring that right, I'm getting really crystal clear on what I want and need in relationships in order to feel safe, safe. Safe is the number one thing that we want to feel in any relationship, so that safety piece has to be there. You have to be able to, first of all, be able to clearly communicate what it is that you want and need, but also be able to honor if they can't meet that, and decide if this is a non-negotiable or something that you want and need, but also be able to honor if they can't meet that and decide if this is a non-negotiable or something that you can maybe get met elsewhere, right? So in today's episode I want to talk about one of the best things you can do to create the relationships you want. And again, this is not just in friendships. This might be in a marriage or the dating scene or at work. The best thing that you can do to have the relationship you want is to be the person you want them to be for you.

Speaker 1:

So in this episode today I'm going to give you guys a few examples from my own journey with friendships. So after I did everything I talked about in the first session to really heal that sisterhood wound, then I actually had to fill up that space right. I released a lot of yucky baggage that I was bringing into those friendships, which is why I was attracting friendships that were not for me, that were not life-giving, that did not fill me up um, because I was attracting it from my wounds. And so once I cleared all that up, I had all this space right, and so I needed to fill that back up with the relationships I did want, and so this episode is how do I do that? Where's the blueprint or the manual or the rule book for how you create friendships, how you create intimate relationships? And again, I'm going to talk from the vantage point of friends, but this relates so heavily to my marriage as well. This also relates like at work, or with your in-laws or with your family of origin. This is relevant across the board.

Speaker 1:

Okay, but my examples in this episode are going to be geared towards friendships. So why do I say be the person you want them to be? Because, energetically speaking, what is going on in the outside world, what we, the world or reality we are living and experiencing, is a direct mirror and reflection on the internal experience inside of each one of us, our own internal judgment, stories, beliefs, emotions, triggers, insecurities, all of it. So as we clean that up, we will naturally become a match for what we really want, right? So in my case, when it came to friendships, some key things that were really, really important to me, and they were actually one of the reasons I was attracted to one of the women in my neighborhood. The first thing was I really wanted people to initiate invites for me.

Speaker 1:

I've talked about this before on my episode on shame, that a lot of times when I felt left out or sad or not enough, I would sort of withdraw because as a kid that's what I did a lot and it would unintentionally trigger for my parents to come up and get me and find out what was wrong. And so subconsciously I was sort of getting this love and attention as I withdrew and they sort of came to me. So as an adult I noticed that that's really important to me in relationships, it's important to me in my marriage, it's important to me in friendships. It's really important for me to have friends that do initiate the invite. It makes me feel seen, it makes me feel wanted and chosen and yeah, I mean, if that could be a six love language like that's one for me, invite me. So that was really important and, like I said, one of the women did that a lot when she moved into the neighborhood. It was like holy crap, my social life went from like a two to like a 12. And it was amazing.

Speaker 1:

What I realize now was that it was one-sided on her part, I mean one-sided on my part, she was initiating invites, but I wasn't doing the same to her, I was just being the receiver of the invites, and that makes for a really crappy friend, right. And so one of the things once I really recognized that those friendships were not for me, they didn't serve me. That one in particular was very much centered around drinking. So when I got sober I chose sobriety over that friendship and my responsibility. My mistake was not communicating that clearly, so she took a lot of offense to it, which I totally understood. But now I wasn't getting the invite, so that part of that friendship that I really enjoyed went away. And so, going forward, I had to step out of my comfort zone and really extend the invite. I had to be the person I wanted her to be for me. So I started extending invites, you know, within with with those women at first, but but also just outside of those women.

Speaker 1:

In my Elementum coaching program we had to do a master project and it was really cool. I started with like a goal line for my business and really kept coming up against the sisterhood wound and was like I need to move this to a soul line. That's what they call it, a soul goal, and I really focused on creating a women's night at my house, inviting, initiating night at my house, inviting, initiating, starting some sort of regular women's night. And you guys, oh my gosh, I realized why I'm not the initiator, because it brought all of my stuff to the surface. I extended the invite and I just noticed my ego go. Oh my God, is anyone going to respond? Oh my God, are they going to all like each other? And even while people were there, like my nervous system was just on edge. So you know, I still need to activate that muscle of being the initiator and the host.

Speaker 1:

But more than anything, I had to recognize that what I really admired in that one neighbor of mine was something that what I wouldn't even say jealous, but I sort of was, I was a little envious that she was always organizing things. She always she had girls night at her house, she constantly had people over. The more I leaned into this work, I really recognized that that judgment, that envy that I felt towards her ability to organize, host, invite, was really just because there was a part of me that wanted to be activated, that really wanted to come online and be that and do that. And so I attempted to do that in my program. It was a little awkward at first but we made it through a few nights. And now the friends that I have today I am very intentional in making sure that's a two-way street and making sure that I'm inviting just as much as I'm accepting the invite right. And that actually brings me to my second way that I started really showing up as the friend I wanted them to be.

Speaker 1:

So one thing that has always been important, it's something I've learned from my mom just show up, just show up. Like you don't necessarily need to show up with food or gifts or money, but simply being present and being there like your time is, is oftentimes the best gift you can give somebody. Truly just show up, just show up times, the best gift you can give somebody. Truly just show up, just show up. And I know for me, with the women, um, that I keep referencing, but the women that I keep referencing, I really didn't show up for them and vice versa. We, we were convenient friends, we were neighbors, um, there was something called front porch sitting where we would, where they would often sit, and it became a big vent session. So it really it just never like. I never felt lit up about it and it also never felt like we were showing up for each other. It just sort of felt like a convenient get together because you walk out on your porch and everyone's there, and so that aspect was really missing for me in the friendships.

Speaker 1:

Occasionally some of them would really show up for some big events, but I'm talking about like the everyday, every, every day, just showing up right Like, um, you know, this past weekend, when I had my girls weekend, these women one of the women flew in from out of state to show up, to be there, to physically be present, and it just speaks volumes about feeling important to them, feeling chosen, feeling accepted. So that was something and that's still a muscle I have to activate. I have to strengthen that muscle of showing up for people if I expect and desire them to show up for me. Okay, so those are two things that I really learned in these friendships extending the invite, actually accepting the invite, and showing up when I'm invited. I referenced this in the last podcast, but there was multiple times where I didn't get invited and I had to look and take a lot of responsibility for that. I, in my body language, in the amount of times I said no, like I was really communicating that I didn't want to show up, right? So be the person you want them to be for you. And then I was sitting in my house crying that no one was showing up for me. So, yes, use what you desire as a blueprint for who you get to be.

Speaker 1:

A final piece for me, that was really, really important, and I just wasn't aware of it at the time of those particular friendships. I wanted to be able to share my truth, so part of that was my responsibility being able to actually discover and communicate my truth in a way that was not blaming or attacking or criticizing them, but it was simply vulnerably showing what was coming up for me and being able to have the language to bring that to them in a neutral way. And that is something I teach inside of my group program, fully Alive. It is this communication and different way of relating to the world around you in a way that will be received. But that was super, super important for me and at the time and at the time I was not a very safe place for them to do the same, which is why I attracted women into my life that couldn't handle my truth, because, a I couldn't handle my truth I didn't know my truth but B I couldn't handle theirs. So I got super offended if they pointed out that I, you know. And again, they didn't have the language either. So when I was sort of in a shame spiral and I was withdrawing, they called me dramatic and manipulative. Right, and that's, that's not good language. You're going to automatically get someone to shut down.

Speaker 1:

But I do remember specifically uh, one of them came over to talk face to face, which I really, looking back, really appreciated, but in the moment I couldn't. I couldn't hear it. I could not hear it. Part of it was the way it was delivered and part of it was just, I wasn't a safe place. I hadn't done enough work to be able to receive their feedback and decide what I felt was true and also discern which was coming from their own insecurities. Right, and be able to just witness them. That's what this is all about Like. Can I just witness them without making it all about myself? And the truth was no, I couldn't, I was not. I can now. The friends I have now can bring anything and everything to me. Maybe it's about me, maybe it's about them, maybe it's about someone else, but a lot of times what I think creates the connection we're after, we have to be able to be a safe place for someone to come and say, hey, when you said and did this like this is what I made it mean. This is what happened inside of my body. These are the stories that came up. Can we talk about this?

Speaker 1:

I have to be willing to sit with that, talking to my seven-year-old about this, because I was giving him very firm feedback in the way that I witnessed him handle a friendship and how I just thought it was being. It was not very kind, and I gave him the feedback and he listened. And then, as soon as I stopped talking, I said is there anything you need to say? And he just started crying, he started bawling and he said I just feel really sad when you tell me all of that, I'm doing something wrong. And so we had a really good conversation about buddy. I am somebody in your life that loves you. I am always on your side and if I am giving you feedback, it's because I want you to have everything you want. I know that you want to play with your buddies. I know that you want to not be fighting with them and sometimes we do things and we don't really know that we're doing them. So we need the people in our life that we trust to be able to give us that clear mirroring, to be able to give us that feedback that really helps us kind of realign with who we are Right.

Speaker 1:

And again, until I was ready to do that, I was never going to be a match or attract women that could do that as well. So what I was getting from those women was, if I would come to, even when I did find and learn the language, and I would bring my heart to them, I would say you know, this is like so incredibly painful to watch everybody go up to the neighborhood pool, have my kids come in and ask why they're not invited me, be sitting here by myself and not invited by someone who says they're friends with me, right, like it was. Just it was a lot, a lot of stuff for me. I didn't know how to handle it. So I wanted to be able to bring that to the one that I was quote unquote friends with, and when I did, she made it all about her. She made it seem like I was being dramatic about her. She made it seem like I was being dramatic, again, manipulative, making her be.

Speaker 1:

I think her words were I shouldn't have to be responsible for your friendships. And I was like whoa, whoa, I'm just sharing. This is hard and this is sad. So when your emotions trump my emotions, that's not a safe relationship. There has to be room for both. Right, I have to be able to explain and share my truth without it spilling over into a conversation about why my truth doesn't matter. Does that make sense? So I'm sort of going all over the place and maybe sharing a little too many details.

Speaker 1:

Lord knows that these women listen to the podcast, but the truth is I would say all this to them today if I could speak to them that there was so much about the way that we talk to each other and this goes for both of us Like I am just as guilty as they are where neither of us were really hearing and seeing what the other person was saying. We weren't hearing their needs. We weren't hearing their needs, we weren't hearing their heart. We were taking it offensively and we were both of us were going on the defense and attack and it just, it just was was a recipe for not a good relationship and that's what we both experienced.

Speaker 1:

So, moving forward, things that I'm really intentional with in my field, in my friendships, are extending the invite, being the inviter, being the initiator, accepting the invite, actually saying yes and showing up while honoring my boundaries, and then being that safe place for other people to share their truth, because in doing so I will attract other women into my life that can hear my truth, and I can't tell you how safe it feels now to have friends where I can say I have a really good friend in the neighborhood now, where I say to her sometimes like I haven't heard you, I haven't heard from you in so long. We're still friends, right, and she doesn't take offense to it, she's not like you're so dramatic, she's like, of course we're still friends. I'm just busy and she knows that. Like in a friendship, something I really need is sometimes reassurance. Like I try my best to do my work, but sometimes I need a little reassurance. She's a safe place for me to go get that and that's beautiful. That's what creates a life-giving relationship. So, yeah, so I'm going to. I'm going to stop on that point and I really just want to encourage everybody to take time If you are trying to call in a friendship, a female friendship.

Speaker 1:

If you're trying to call in the right boss, maybe you've had just really crappy bosses everywhere you go. If you're trying to call in your partner, if you're trying to strengthen your marriage, if you want a good relationship with your in-law, take some time to really journal what it is that you actually want from them. What do you want? Do you want presence? Do you want safety? Do you want them to communicate kindly? Do you want presence? Do you want safety? Do you want them to communicate kindly? Do you want them to be empathetic? Do you want them to be trustworthy? What is it that you want?

Speaker 1:

Get really crystal clear on that and then, from there, look at that list and ask yourself am I a match for all of this? In other words, do I show up this way in my relationships? Because, you guys, it's a clear blueprint on how to have the relationships that your heart desires, based on what it is that you need. You get to go first. You get to show up in the way that you want them to show up, and the beautiful thing is, it's just amazing, you guys. I'm watching it in my life. You will be amazed at who comes through, who shows up. It might be the same people that are currently in your life, but they might start showing up a lot differently because they're taking your lead, they're following your model, or it might be a brand new person. It might be you really getting.

Speaker 1:

If you do this exercise, you might get really crystal clear on. The people in your life right now are actually not a match for what you need in the season, and that's okay, that's beautiful, but you get to really work on letting them go so that you can make space for the ones that you really want. So I'm going to end there. I hope that that served you and felt supportive. Definitely feel free to message me if you're getting stuck on a specific relationship. I would love to help guide you through this journaling process.

Speaker 1:

I also want to personally extend the invite. This is the last invite for my group program for Fully Alive for May 2023. We start this Thursday. This is our kickoff opening call. We are going to dive right into some really cool somatic practices and just learning how to really get out of those stories and out of those heads, because the more that you connect to your body, you guys which is where your intuition lies, you will find the clarity that you actually are looking for in relationships. So if this episode, if you ended on I don't really know what it is that I want then Fully Alive might be the perfect program for you, because I'm gonna help you discover that and bring that forward in your relationships so that you can call forward the exact match for you, the perfect match for you.

Speaker 1:

So love to personally invite you. The next two women that sign up are also getting a bonus one-on-one call with me, along with my signature Overwhelm course. In that Overwhelm course, you're getting additional somatic practices that are gonna help you go from overwhelmed, frantic, crazy chaos to calm in less than 30 seconds. So click the link below register for the group today. We start on Thursday. It's not too late. If you want to get on a phone call with, if you want to hop on a phone call, just message me privately. You can find me on Instagram or go to my email. I would love. It would be such an honor to support you. So I hope you guys have a great rest of your week and I will see you guys next Monday.