Why is sacred sisterhood different to friendship?

Our female friendships are everything.

Filled with tears and laughter, never-ending phone calls, the excitement of milestones and the sharing of loss, there is no taking away from the importance of our female friends. They buoy us, lift us up and support us through everyday life. For most of us, our female friendships fill our lives with meaning and also keep us grounded. So when I thought about why sacred sisterhood is different from friendship, I’m not saying they are better, just different.

Sacred sisterhood is like a calling.

A sacred blueprint or matrix of how to be authentic, unveiled and shamelessly real. It has nothing to do with the person we are offering it to and everything to do with the depth of who and how we know ourselves. Sacred sisterhood is a way of being and the easiest place to learn how to access this inner template is in a sacred women’s circle.

Sacred circle work involves being vulnerable, opening up to women who you don’t know.

Unlike female friendships, sacred sisterhood it isn’t about comfort and familiarity, it’s about hearing another woman tell her truth – in the moment, without attachment to story and with the privilege of witnessing her soul. While a female friendship is rooted in the familiar comfort of knowing each other’s stories, being part of a women’s circle creates a deep bond between women, essentially from the radical honesty of being storyless. In circle and sacred sisterhood, we liberate each other by being raw, open and very real.

So what does being part of a sacred sisterhood actually mean? Why not just be happy with your gloriously safe and comfortable friendships? Why put yourself in a place of the unknown?

Because being part of a sacred sisterhood is a fast track to spiritual growth.

In circle, when faced with the risk of sharing your radical honest and shamelessly transparent self, it is possible to drop internal and external identities. Anger, pain, joy, understanding can arise simply by being allowed to unconditionally share uninterrupted emotion. Love and nurturing are given in circle, caretaking, there-there-ing are not. Freed to be able to find your own truth without being fixed or advised brings freedom and the opportunity for self-mastery.

In sacred sisterhood, we also explore parameters of integrity and learn to see with the vision of the Divine.

In circles we learn impeccable boundaries, clear edges where we stop projecting and reacting to our own dramas. We also learn to trust our own wisdom and then fiercely reclaim and protect everyone’s innocence. We also learn to see with eyes of Loving Compassion, or the Divine known by many names ~ because we go beyond empathy, to see our soul in every woman.

In sacred sisterhood, we return to sacredness. Sacredness is the elevation of the ordinary to a realm of spiritual reverence.

This means our wounds are not made real, our focus stays on strengths and we are always encouraged to own capacities for self-actualisation. No fixing, no advising, instead of respect, love, and reverence for our imperfect perfections. What also sets these relationships apart is that a reverent beholding if Spirituality is always present in our relationships. Yahweh, Shekinah, Allah, Mariam, our Ancestors, Great Spirit, Source, Mystery, God or the Mother Divine in all her many names and the possibilities this connection brings, never leaves the centre of our conversations.

Most of all the difference between these two wonderful, but different relationships is YOU.

Being part of the sacred sisterhood is about arriving, being your most authentic self, moment by moment.

It’s also about learning to love unconditionally without attachment, with impeccable edges and dignified boundaries. Contained in your capacity to own your sovereignty, present to owning your authentic and feminine power sacred sister enables you to be a better friend to everyone.

In sacred sisterhood, you can truly open to receive and be the sacred expression of all that female friendships can be.