EPISODE 297: Why Female Friendships Matter: Navigating Shame, Vulnerability, and Growth

Lisa Carpenter [00:00:02]:
Well, hey, hey. Welcome to another episode of the Full Frontal Living podcast. And I'm talking on a topic today that I have never actually dove into. And I think it because I just not really saw it as being super relevant in my lives or in the lives of my clients. However, as you know, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know, 2023, 2024 big years for me, we can go back even a couple years prior to that. So I've had a lot of new insights and ways to reflect on my own life, things that have happened to me in my life lessons that have come to the surface because that's what happens when life lifes us. We have an opportunity to look at what are my lessons here. And it made me realize that this is a topic that I really want to dive into.

Lisa Carpenter [00:00:53]:
It may it's made such a massive difference in my life and and I want to share that with you today. So we're going to be talking about female friendships, specifically female friendships as we get older. The benefits of having deeply connected female friendships, what it's brought into my life, but also all the obstacles that I've had to overcome in order to welcome friends into my life. And not even realizing at a conscious level for a long time that I was blocking that those connections with strong female friends. And by strong female friends, I mean deeply connected relationships. And in fact some of the most profound relationships that I have in my life with other women, I would say have come in in the past decade. So since I've started to dive so much deeper into self development, work with my own coaches and therapists and such, what I've noticed is as my relationship with myself has changed, of course my relationships with the people in my life have changed. The type of women in my life has dramatically changed.

Lisa Carpenter [00:02:01]:
But I want to talk about how in 2023 that really gave me the opportunity to open myself up to my close female friends. So when everything let me back up first, I'm going to give you a little bit more context behind this. So well, over a decade ago was when my my partner first went into rehab. I've talked about this openly on the podcast many times before and I remember at the time because this isn't really a story about him or rehab or addiction or anything like that. But I do remember at the time I told nobody. So I was running my own successful personal training studio. I had a full roster of personal training CL clients, nutrition clients that I was working with. And all of a sudden my life had fallen Apart and he was off to rehab.

Lisa Carpenter [00:02:56]:
And I was just standing there in shock and awe of what had happened, feeling like a fool, knowing nothing about addiction, feeling incredibly alone and isolated. You know, as somebody who had always prided myself on kind of having my together and being self reliant and self made and, you know, tell me I can't do something and I'll show you I can do it. It really was, you know, it brought me to my knees moment. So, you know, God bless my partner. He's just such a catalyst for so much growth for me. I truly believe that relationships are the most powerful catalysts for growth. And so at that time I felt very alone and very, very isolated. And I had one client who, her husband had actually gone into rehab as well, probably, I'm going to say two or three months before he'd been in rehab, came home, and then ended up back in rehab.

Lisa Carpenter [00:03:54]:
So I reached out to her with a lot of questions about a lot of things and she, you know, gave it to me straight. But she was the only friend at the time who knew what was going on in my life, who I felt safe enough with to share. And even then I didn't really want to share with her because I didn't want my partner to be like her husband. And in my mind they were so different and they are different, but that was the part of me that was just, you know, so deeply in denial of what was happening in my life. And she was the one who actually led me to the therapy group that I started with. And, you know, so the journey began for me. So in 2023, which, you know, in part, what happened was my, my partner relapsed. And I won't get into all of the details of what specifically that looked like.

Lisa Carpenter [00:04:47]:
It was so hard. It was so hard what was happening for me. I felt so much shame. I had such strong boundaries around, you know, how I was going to handle things if there was a relapse. And I followed through on those boundaries that, you know, that was set in stone. So when everything happened, it was just like I didn't have to question myself. I didn't have to make decisions. The decision had already been made, so I was able to follow through on that.

Lisa Carpenter [00:05:14]:
But what this was about was me asking myself how and are you willing, Lisa, to allow yourself to be vulnerable and share openly with your close friends what is going on? Because over the years I had learned that shutting myself down, not speaking, closing myself off, isolating, actually just kept me in a deep place of shame and I have done so much work around my own vulnerability. It's a lot of the work that I do with my clients is walking them into feeling safe with their own vulnerability, opening themselves up to themselves and to other people. So I reached out with my friends two very specifically, and then it ended up being a couple more after that. I still kept the circle very, very tight because it was so raw. It was so hard for me to talk about. I couldn't even get the words out. There were. There were many months where I.

Lisa Carpenter [00:06:07]:
I couldn't even. I couldn't even share. And I also let my clients know what was going on in a. In a specific circle of clients that I. That I host because I needed them to understand where I was working from and what was going on in my life, if anything had to change. And to be honest, the way I lead my clients, the way I support my clients, is I let them into my world because I believe in the power of storytelling. I believe in allowing other people to see us in our weakest times, because when I'm human, it gives my clients permission to also be human. We don't always have to look like we have it together, and we can still, like, do our lives and have hard things happening and allow ourselves to be supported.

Lisa Carpenter [00:06:51]:
So I would have been completely out of integrity if I hid that all this stuff was going on while leading my clients to be open and vulnerable. So that just doesn't serve well with me. And this is why I'm not a therapist, because therapists work under different guidelines in terms of how they give service to their clients, clients. So that was a choice on my part to share. And even then, I didn't get into all the details because it wasn't necessary to share all the details with everybody. But I did not want to go back to a place where I wasn't being honest about what was going on in my life. So this is where we tie into the power of female friendships and healing those old female wounds. When I go back in my life as a young woman growing up, through my teenage years, through my young adolescence, early in my 20s, when I was married, I can look back and see so many wounds that were inflicted at the hands of other women.

Lisa Carpenter [00:07:56]:
And I even remember saying when I was younger, you know, like boys, they just beat each other up, and then they shake hands and move on with it. Whereas girls have this really unbelievable way of being cruel when we are young. And I'm hoping, if you're listening, that, you know, I'm not the only one with These wounds kind of from my past around other women. And we really do each other dirty ladies. Because it does not need to be that way. And in doing this self development work, as we grow and change and transform, we can let go of some of these beliefs that we hold around other women. What we've been taught through media influence, whether it's the media teaching us that women are catty and competitive, whether it's, you know, that women devalue other women, right? Tearing each other down instead of building each other up, this is something that is perpetuated in movies and tv. And it's just kind of an internalized thing that that's how we work, right? Like there's an actual saying in Australia, like, what is it? The, the don't be the tall poppy with the.

Lisa Carpenter [00:09:09]:
The notion is like, if you stand out too much, somebody's going to cut you down. And I think pretty much all women have been told, like, don't be too pretty, don't be too loud, don't be too quiet, don't be too talky, don't stand out too much, don't be too much of this. Because we don't want to make her feel bad. Like, we're taught these things, so. And then so many women are carrying around shame because they've been hurt by other female friends or they've been judged by somebody. So, so many women, and a lot of the women that I work with, they're actually deep feelers who are disconnected from their emotions because at some point in their lives they didn't want to be the emotional one or the feeling one or be too needy or too sensitive. So these are ways that women work against each other women because women will say to other women, oh, you're being too needy. But listen, ladies, we can have needs without being needy.

Lisa Carpenter [00:10:10]:
Let that land. We can have needs without being needy. We can be emotional beings without being like out of control emotional beings. Like, we're all hardwired to feel, but we've been told that there's no value in that. And if you do feel things, it's often women that have come at you, at least in my life, with remarks. So when I go back into my high school days and it's not to poo poo on anybody that I went to school with or relationships that I had, but there are so many times in my life where I needed my friends to be there for me and they didn't have the emotional capacity at the time to be there for me because we haven't done this work. So, for instance, I typically would find any broken man, and that would be the person that I would gravitate towards because my wounds were always looking for a match in somebody else's wounds. So the part of me that never felt like I was good enough was always looking for the broken guy, the hurt guy, because if I could just love him enough, then he would love himself, not even recognizing back then that it was me who needed my love from me.

Lisa Carpenter [00:11:17]:
Like, I needed to love myself and feel good enough. So what would happen is, obviously these relationships would not go well at all. And my girlfriends, instead of being there and supporting me, they would to a certain extent. But then it would kind of roll into the I told you so, I told you so. It was never, you know, we trust you to make the right decision for you, Lisa, or we're here for you. Regardless. It was kind of that sense of, if I didn't break up with him, if I didn't leave the relationship, that they were going to abandon me. Now, that is 100% I take ownership.

Lisa Carpenter [00:11:52]:
That. That was my interpretation. It doesn't necessarily mean that that's the way they wanted me to interpret it, but that is how I interpreted it. And so it made me. Anytime something was going on in my relationship, I wouldn't talk about it. I wouldn't tell my friends. So when this happened in my relationship in 2023, that first instinct was, don't tell anybody. They're going to judge you.

Lisa Carpenter [00:12:15]:
They're going to, you know, because, you know, I had said this, this, and this, and they're going to judge you on being in this relationship, or they're going to tell you what to do. Because that was the other thing. Girls, when we're young, we typically tell each other what to do. We don't just listen to understand and ask better questions. We tell each other what we should do. And I didn't want to be told what to do in this case. I knew that I needed to listen to my own guidance and my own intu, even though I was terrified of it. But I also knew that I needed to be surrounded by love and support.

Lisa Carpenter [00:12:50]:
And it was so beautiful to be met by my closest friends with the. We don't know what your path is, and we are here to support you on wherever that path takes you. We trust you, Lisa, to make decisions. Let us know how we can support you. We love you regardless of what you choose to do. There is no right or wrong here. There was no judgment at all. And what I realized in that moment as I was talking to these friends is how much shame I was already in, thinking that they were going to abandon me, that they were going to let me down, that I was going to be made to feel like shit.

Lisa Carpenter [00:13:29]:
All of this old stuff from, like, when I was in my teens and twenties. So it offered me such a powerful opportunity to go, wow, like, I can completely heal my old girlfriend wounds. Some call them like, sisterhood wounds. I don't particularly love that phrasing, so I just call it old female friend wounds. It was just such a beautiful opportunity for me to realize, Lisa, that's not who you are anymore. That's not who you've surrounded yourself with. And we're playing a whole different game here. We are on Jumanji Level 4.

Lisa Carpenter [00:14:06]:
This is absolutely different than before. It was so powerful for me to see how the women in my life showed up for me with no, like I said, no judgment of me, but also no judgment of my partner. And when things happen, especially in our intimate relationships, we often can go into shame because we love this person even if they've done something shitty, and we don't want other people to think badly about them, even if they've done something shitty. And that was part of. Because I didn't know how things were going to play out. I didn't want the whole. I. I just didn't want the judgment from my friends.

Lisa Carpenter [00:14:43]:
And I had to realize that they were going to judge me regardless. And maybe they did, and I didn't know. Maybe my clients did and I didn't know. But regardless, everybody really showed up for me in a way that made me feel supported, in a way that made me know that whatever decision I made was going to be the right decision for me and that nobody was going to leave me or abandoned me. Which sounds so crazy to say, but a big part of what I worked through in 2023 and 2024 were these kind of deep wounds of abandonment. And I recognize a lot of them were also anchored into friendships as well. So let's talk about this for a little bit around female friendships and how they impact us when we're young. So I did a little bit of research on some of the data around this, because I know it's a real thing, but I wasn't sure how specifically to talk about it.

Lisa Carpenter [00:15:39]:
And so often things impact us when we are young. We just kind of bury it in our subconscious and we go on with our lives, and we don't recognize that these are one of the stories, one of the many stories that we're dragging around with us that are shaping our identity today, that are shaping the choices that we're making that are blocking us from connecting with other people. And I wanted to go a little bit deeper into it. So I pulled up some research and it says that so many women have been impacted by peer bullying. So it's called relational aggression. And it's a form of social manipulation, like exclusion, spreading rumors, ostracizing, and is most commonly seen in girls, more commonly seen in girls than boys, during childhood and adolescence. And these type of aggressions can leave long term scars on a woman's ability to trust and connect with other women. Holy, like jaw drop moment when I read this, because when I was in my early 20s, I already did I have my son then.

Lisa Carpenter [00:16:50]:
I don't think I had my son yet, but I was relatively newly married. And I don't remember all the details of it, but I remember my best friend completely turned her back on me. Completely turned. She was no longer talking to me. There was no conversation to be had. I had no idea why she didn't want to spend time with me, why she didn't like me anymore. But I remember going to the baseball field and none of the other wives would even sit with me. I was completely ostracized.

Lisa Carpenter [00:17:21]:
And I remember being at such a hard and traumatic time in my life and I didn't have the emotional tools to deal with it. So what do we do? We shut down. We. We lock everything down. We like man up, we armor up. We try and be all tough like it's not a big deal. But as somebody who deeply feels things, I was very, very, very hurt. And still to this day, I don't really know what happened.

Lisa Carpenter [00:17:45]:
It was at a time in my life, you know what, I did have my boys then because I had decided to start compet. It was also at a time where I decided to have my implants put in. I was making big changes. And I've always been a leader to a certain extent, meaning that I will go first. That's all it meant at the time. Because when looking back, I don't. I didn't see myself as a leader at that time, but I was starting my own business. I was making changes in my life that was doing things that other people weren't doing or weren't considering doing that may have contributed to it.

Lisa Carpenter [00:18:18]:
I don't know. I'll never know. And to be honest, I don't care. My life has moved on. But I remember it being. Feeling like this is the most cruel thing that could ever happen to me. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of being in a room with people and feeling like you don't exist and you don't matter. It is incredibly, incredibly cruel.

Lisa Carpenter [00:18:41]:
And I don't think I'm the only person that has had that happen. And in fact the data supports it. It says that studies that up to 50% of middle and high school girls experience relational aggression at some point. And I think we see this even more and more now with social media. I mean I didn't grow up, we didn't have phones back then. So I was the generation, I was probably the last generation that didn't have phones. But I can only imagine what it's like for girls now and the wounds that are being inflicted. But we're going to talk about as adults now how we can change this.

Lisa Carpenter [00:19:13]:
So it says long term impact girls who experience relational bullying offer report higher rates of anxiety, depression and difficulties forming trusting relationships as adults. This is so powerful because the things that happen to us when we're young literally will block us from creating powerful relationships with women as we get older because we go into it automatically with our guard up and not trusting because we believe somebody's going to hurt us or they're going to gossip about us or they're not going to be able to hold space for what it is we need need. So a lot of my clients are very, very self reliant and that self reliance is a protective coping strategy that they use so they don't have to get close to anybody. Right. If I can rely on myself for everything, I don't need anybody. But we do need, we do need connection, we do need other women in our lives. And then the other thing is, which applied to me as well and possibly to you is a 2020 study published in Developmental Psych today found that 77% of female adolescents report a significant friendship loss by the age of 17. The pain of those breakups can sometimes mirror the intensity of romantic breakups, leaving lasting emotional wounds.

Lisa Carpenter [00:20:35]:
Now after the pain that I experienced in 2023, when I think back on the things that have happened with female friends when I was younger, I'm like, holy crap, it was the same. But I did not have the tools, the maturity, the wisdom. I did not have the capacity for to hold that level of pain. So we internalize it all. But that's what happens to us. That's why we protect ourselves. Because even now, as I continue to heal and keep my heart open, I have to be prepared Like I have to be okay with the uncertainty of potentially getting hurt again. Like life is going to life.

Lisa Carpenter [00:21:16]:
There is no certainty with anything. And if you want to love, you have to be prepared to hurt because love comes with hurt. Whether it's somebody breaks your heart, whether you break somebody's heart, they could leave the planet. There's all sorts of things that happen that mean we get hurt in relationships, but that doesn't mean to not be in a relationship or to not open your heart. So we also. Excuse me, let me just take a sip of my water here. We also. The other thing that happens with women is we get into this energy of being competitive.

Lisa Carpenter [00:21:58]:
And According to a 2022 U government poll, 59% of women admitted that they felt pressured to compete with other women when they were younger. And that perpetuates mistrust in relationships. Like we're taught this, we feel this. So going into adult relationships, it sucks if you feel like you're competing with another woman. And I really have adopted over the years, like we, when we one rise, we all rise together. I give standing ovations to my clients. I teach them to celebrate each other. I teach them to celebrate themselves.

Lisa Carpenter [00:22:36]:
I celebrate my friends and colleagues. If they're succeeding, I'm succeeding. We're all mirroring back and forth each other's success. But that took practice to lean into that because you have to heal those old wounds. You have to develop that trust again. And it's not about trusting other people. It's not about trusting other women. It's about trusting yourself to read the energy of other women and surround yourself with.

Lisa Carpenter [00:23:01]:
With the right type of women. So over the past two years, and especially with my best friend, I've thought a lot about this because you know, our primary. Let's say if you're in a heterosexual relationship, statistically speaking, you will, as a female, outlive your male counterpart. That's just, that's just data. Which means we are going to be left with our female friendships. And those female friendships became so important to me over the past year. I recognize them and hold them in with the same level of irreverence as I do to my primary relationship, because they are that important. The deep, soulful conversations that I have been able to have with my female friends now where we can talk about anything, we can keep it real and listen.

Lisa Carpenter [00:23:57]:
Sometimes I'm in my girlfriend's voxer and I say that she does not want to hear. And there has been many times, especially over the past couple years, where she has said Stuff to me that I have just like, if I could have spit venom, I would have. And I take it and I feel it. And I know she's willing to say it because she knows that I can handle it. She knows it's coming from a place of love. She knows I'm not going to retaliate because I love her. She knows I'm going to hear it and process it and unpack it with her. There have been so many moments over the past year where we've had to have really tough conversations.

Lisa Carpenter [00:24:37]:
If you go back and listen to my episode around the last time I walked the Camino, I shared an incident that happened there. And the whole time I was like praying that my best friend was going to save me from having to be the last person to stand up and talk. And she didn't know because we didn't debrief what was going to happen ahead of time. We had no way of knowing. But man, the hurt feelings afterwards that I had to be with and then to share honestly with her the next day, like, listen, this is what I experienced. I know this was not your fault in any way, shape or form, but the, you know, eight year old girl in me was sure pissed off at you yesterday because you should have known, even though I know there's no way you could have known. So we had this adult conversation about it. It was super healing and just really made me see what is possible for us as women when we really can create those deep, soulful connections, healed connections with other women who've done their work.

Lisa Carpenter [00:25:34]:
Because listen, just like in any relationship, you will get triggered even by your closest friends, especially by your closest friends if they are doing their job in the relationship. Just like you're going to get triggered by your primary partner. Both of you have to have the emotional availability to hold the discomfort of being triggered of what's come up for you and the willingness to go into repairing whatever conflict is there and having the conversation. And this is why this work is so imperative. Because it's not just about you and you, it's about you and how you relate to other people around you. Not just your primary partnership. But if you want deep connected relationships with other women friends that can stand the test of time, this is the work. This is the work is to heal these wounds.

Lisa Carpenter [00:26:22]:
So other common experiences of hurt in female friendships, exclusion and cliques. I think we've all seen this where we've been left out of groups or activities or picked last, which completely fuels these internal beliefs that we are inadequate, unlovable being rejected. So many of us have this fear of being rejected. I think many of us have probably been privy to gossip and betrayal. So, you know, every now and then I'm here for a spicy conversation. But generally speaking, I am not interested in gossiping or hearing about who's on the what or the what. Right. Like sometimes the curious part of me wants to know and I just have to remind myself, like, it's actually not healthy for me to engage in that type of activity.

Lisa Carpenter [00:27:08]:
And I cannot be around women who are engaging in gossiping and betrayal because guaranteed, like how you do one thing is how you do all things. So if you are gossiping about so and so, chances are you're probably gossiping about me. If you're betraying so and so's trust, chances are you're going to betray my trust. So I need to be in rooms with women who have done their work, who know the importance of loyalty and are not interested in getting into low vibrational. To put it, that's. I don't know how else to put it. Low energy, low vibrational activities like gossiping. Because those things from the past have impacted me deeply.

Lisa Carpenter [00:27:51]:
Deeply. And as somebody who, you know, I really pride myself on my reputation. There was a quote that I read years ago that said, live and act in a way that is some. If somebody said something negative about you, nobody would believe them. Now I am far from perfect, but I do my best to lead from integrity, honesty, you know, commitment. And that's like, that matters to me. So if I'm out gossiping, I'm out of integrity with some of my highest values and how I want to show up in the world. So we also, as women have often get into social comparison.

Lisa Carpenter [00:28:32]:
So whether we're comparing grades, oh, I got an A. You only got a C. I was always the C girl in school. I was never, I was never bragging about my grades. But let me tell you, I did feel inadequate against around some of my other friends who were getting better grades and they did brag on it and listen. Now as a, as a mature adult, I want people to brag about their accomplishments so we can learn as we get older to interpret information differently. You saying you had an A doesn't mean I have to go into my inadequacy wounds. You getting an A actually has nothing to do with me.

Lisa Carpenter [00:29:10]:
So. But when we were young, that social comparison is a huge thing. And I can only imagine what this is like right now with social media and filters and all these things for these young girls. They're going to have to do a lot of work as they get older to unpick themselves from feeling inadequate, feeling judged, feeling not good enough. But the truth is, even without social media, back in the day, women, ladies, we all found a way to do this to other women. I bet you can look back on a time where you remember making someone else feel inadequate. Excuse me, again, now I look at it as we cannot make someone feel inadequate without their permission. I can see that.

Lisa Carpenter [00:29:56]:
Excuse me. Hopefully my editor can take that out. I can see now, looking back on it, that I was always working from a place of such low self worth that the universe was constantly giving me evidence that that was true. And part of my work has been to unravel all of that. So it doesn't matter what somebody says to me. I know what feels true for me. But these are part like we're looking backwards at what, what caused some of these wounds, what caused us to now, as adults, not want to talk, not want to connect with other women in a deeper way. That's why I wanted to talk about this.

Lisa Carpenter [00:30:34]:
So we're going to look at it through a different persp based on who you are today, having done this work, versus who you were when you were a young girl, when you were inflict, these wounds were being inflicted, so to speak. We can't change your perspective back then. So we have to look at what wound was caused and how do we shift that now moving forward into the future. Romantic rivalries. I mean, I think I only gotten one fist fight in my life, ladies. It was not pretty. I got my butt kicked. I am a lover, not a fighter.

Lisa Carpenter [00:31:05]:
And, but, but I'm sure most of you can remember being in romantic rivalries with other women and they can get mean and catty and say things and it's just awful over, over a guy. Over a guy. So again, these are some of the lasting things that cause these like, you know, paper cut moments and, you know, death from a million paper cuts is what women are so good at. Friendship breakups. And again, that losing, losing that really important female friendship in your life for whatever reason is like losing a romantic partner you've been with for years and having to be with the pain of that without having the tools to deal with it, without having the language to speak about it. You know, for me, back in the day, we didn't really have therapists or counselors and if we did, our parents never really sent us to them. We just had to kind of get over it and get on and in fact, I Never talked to my parents about much stuff because I didn't feel comfortable or safe going to them with my deepest inner thoughts. That was my relationship with my parents growing up.

Lisa Carpenter [00:32:15]:
So you know, we were kind of left to our own devices around these things. So all of these, all of these things from have an impact on your self esteem. So with healthy female friendships as you move into your older years, if you're willing to repair the hurts in you so that you can have powerful relationships with other women, so you can seek out other women who are going to be like minded, this can actually boost your confidence and lead you to a place of feeling really, really empowered in your life. It can lower your stress levels. Having really great female friends, it can create better emotional regulation because now you've got somebody who you trust that you can co regulate your nervous system with, that you can have conversations with. So not somebody who's going to spin out on your drama train with you and then go off and gossip about your drama train. There is no drama train like the, the women that I'm surrounded with. We don't believe in drama.

Lisa Carpenter [00:33:15]:
Things happen and we know how to hold space and have conversations for those things. It also increases your longevity if you have solid female friendships. And my guess is of course because it's, you know, your nervous system is more regulated because you have people to talk to who to be there for you. So be so. Female friends can become your greatest ally, your greatest source of strength. And I can tell you from traveling the world and connecting with women, not all of them are like my best friend. I've got my best friend and then I've got all these amazing women in my life that I'm able to connect with. Nothing healed me more.

Lisa Carpenter [00:33:55]:
So I talked about it in a few episodes ago that you know, I loved all the places I went but it was the people that I connected with it, the women that I had conversations with that healed my soul. So you know a woman who has done her work that you can feel safe with, that you can cultivate a deep relationship with, she's going to listen to understand, she is not going to look to save you from yourself, but she's going to be there to support you. How can I help you? What do you need from me? Not, not, you know, let me fix everything in your life that's not, we know that's not our role as female friends. It's just to be there for the person. They don't judge, they trust you and the decisions you're going to make. And I that was so healing for me to hear my friends say, you've got this and whatever you decide, we will stand with you. That, for me, that was the most healing thing that could have happened to me in 2023 and 2024 was knowing that that whether I continued to stay in my relationship or whether I separated from my relationship or whether I was in and out and in and out a million times didn't matter. They were not going to leave my side.

Lisa Carpenter [00:35:09]:
They were there to support me. They were anchored in compassion and not pity. And they know how to be with their own emotions, so they have the capacity to hold space for their own triggers and they don't project their own limitations on to somebody else. They understand the bias that they come to. I mean, there's been many conversations I've had with my best friend where I've had to preface it with, I'm going to say this thing. But I also want to acknowledge my bias in having this conversation. So this is why I've come to this place of recognizing that female friendships, I have not put enough into them. I've really put in everything into my primary relationship.

Lisa Carpenter [00:35:54]:
And now I understand why that was because that felt safer than cultivating close female friends. And now I want both. I want a really solid, connected primary relationship. But I also see my closest friends as my secondary and equally, if not more important relationship in my life. They get as much of my time and my attention as my primary relationship. And this means you don't have 50 friends, right? I don't have 50 million friends. But those close friends, they deserve my time and my energy and my effort. Because when, when the hits the fan, those are the people that are your ride or die.

Lisa Carpenter [00:36:37]:
So those are the people that will bury the body with you. And it is so possible to have deeply connected, nurturing, healing relationships with women. In fact, that's what we're here to do. And society, somewhere along the line, we went so wrong. We got so disconnected from our female power. We got so afraid of how powerful we are as women that we started fighting against each other. And I swear to God, this is why all the old white dudes are still in power. Because women can't get their shit together and recognize we're not in competition here.

Lisa Carpenter [00:37:07]:
When we come together and support each other, man, we can do unbelievably amazing things. So on that note, I'm going to be teaching a master class coming up in February on how to heal your female friendships. How to heal not even your female friendships, but how to heal Your female wounds, we'll call it your friendship wounds, your connection wounds from the early days so that you can have connected deep, soulful relationships with females moving forward. So sorry guys, this masterclass is for the lady and I'm sure men have had some of this experience as well. But I'm going to be talking specifically to women. So that's going to be in February. I'll have my team link the sign up in the show notes. I think it's LisaCarpenter CA forward slash live.

Lisa Carpenter [00:37:54]:
And it'll take you to a, an opt in page where you can drop your name and email and get signed up for the class. So we're going to teach that live. I've got a little workbook that I'm putting together for we're not going to be able to get through everything but I want to get give you a foundation of where you can start so you can have these type of relationships in your life. And then the second thing I want to tell you about, and this is, you know, over I don't know how many years now behind the scenes I have been bringing my one to one clients together to meet in community. And I did it following an intuitive hit years and years ago. And I don't know if this is, I don't know if this is going to work. And what I found is, and I knew it to be true, otherwise I wouldn't have done it is when I bring women together in community to have these deeper conversations, whether it's about control, pleasing, martyring ourselves, overdoing, overworking, not being able to set boundaries, conversations around our money, conversations around parenting. All the conversations that high achieving, self sufficient, ambitious, driven women do not want to have because they do not like being vulnerable.

Lisa Carpenter [00:38:59]:
When I put them in a room together to have these conversations, we start to realize that we are more similar than we are different. And you know, some of the women that came to my retreat in Whistler, they have gotten to be such great friends over the years where they're traveling around now to see each other and they're staying connected, which I love. And you know, when I first went to therapy, when partner went into rehab, I learned about family of recovery versus family of origin. Your family of origin. The people that have known you forever, they've got, you know, a bias for you to be a certain way versus the family of recovery which are people that have come into your lives that have no stake in whether or not you stay with the husband or leave the husband or whether or not you take the job or leave the job. They are just there to be supportive, to be in your corner, to be those ride or dies for you. And this is what I continue and will continue to cultivate in my communities, is bringing women just like you, listening into connection and community. And that's why we've opened the doors for Reclamation.

Lisa Carpenter [00:40:06]:
This is a program I've been working on now for years. There's different tier levels, whether you want some one to one support with coaching, whether you not you just want to show up on the calls, whether or not you want support and accountability. We've got a private podcast that goes with that program as well. You can submit your questions every week, share your wins and your feedback and I can give you, I record the responses to that in the private reclamation podcast. And we're doing a monthly call with very relevant different topics. Obviously at the beginning of 2025 we were talking about kind of setting our intentions, what we would feel proud of when we got to the end of the year and inside Reclamation, if you choose to be inside that community. All the master classes I'm throwing throughout the year are no charge, so you just get them automatically. So if you want to check that out, you can go to lisacarpenter, CA forward slash, Reclamation, the show.

Lisa Carpenter [00:40:59]:
It will in the show notes for the link. So if I've screwed up the link, just go to the show notes because my team comes in behind me and cleans up all my mistakes and you'll be able to find it. But my hope for you and what I truly want for all the women listening is that regardless of whether you're in my community or not, that you, that you have the courage to explore how your relationships with women in years past have truly impacted how you show up, up and relate to women today. Because I can tell you from my honest perspective, some of the deepest, closest friendships have come into my life from my mid-50s and beyond. So it started with me, right? I do believe that if you want to have deeper connected relationships with anybody else, it starts first with the relationship you're having with yourself. It starts first with looking at your own stories and beliefs, beliefs, what you're carrying around with you. Because if you've got all these things and, and, and hurts and wounds from women that were inflicted, you know, years, decades ago, it will prevent you from having what you want. So you can say you want close female friendships till you're blue in the face.

Lisa Carpenter [00:42:13]:
It's like saying you want a great love in your life. But if you haven't done the work around what's causing to keep that at arm's length from you. Right. Why does it always seem like it's out of reach? It will never come into your world. So your job is to clear the energy so that you can welcome that type of relationship into your life and you can also be that person. You can be that woman to some other woman. And that, for me is so powerful, is all the things that I felt like I didn't have in those early years with my friends. And it's not that they were all horrible.

Lisa Carpenter [00:42:45]:
I still have friends that I keep in touch with. And our. Our relationships have definitely grown and evolved as they've grown and evolved. I think think aging as women is a beautiful thing. We step into more wisdom and we let go of the youthful cattiness. But I can tell you that the most powerful and impactful relationships have come later on in. In my life, in rooms that I did not expect to meet people in. In fact, my best friend I met in my coaches mastermind group that I didn't even want to be a part of.

Lisa Carpenter [00:43:13]:
And now we've, you know, we've traveled the world. We'll be running a retreat together. And I just. I couldn't imagine her not being in my life. So this is possible for you as well. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I know I was kind of talking fast and I was throwing a lot of stuff at you, but I really would love for you to consider how, like, where are your female friendships today? Are they where you want them to be? When was the last time you even asked yourself, what do I want from female friendship? Do you have somebody in your corner or do you pour all your time and energy into your primary partner? Mostly men. I think most of the women listen to me are primarily with men.

Lisa Carpenter [00:43:58]:
Is everything going into that relationship? How much is going into the relationship with yourself? How much is going into relationships with other female friends that can support and nurture you through good times and not so good times? Do you want that in your world? I think these are important questions to ask. So on that note, I will leave everything in the show notes. I've given you so much to consider. I think. I think this is a really, really fascinating topic as I unpack it more. And again, you know, this is where I can look back on what happened in 2023 with so much gratitude because these lessons and my. The opportunity to see the deep female friendships I had cultivated and just how important they were to me, to reflect on that and to really lean into that even more has been such a tremendous gift and so healing. And that is opening the door for more phenomenal women to come into my world.

Lisa Carpenter [00:44:58]:
Not as my best friend necessarily, but the ability to welcome more women into my world without being afraid. Because it's not really about them, it's about me, my energy. And I'm only going to attract what's a vibrational match. So I'm sure there'll be more lessons to come, but I will leave you with that. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, please do so. If you found value in this episode, I would love for you to share it. Sharing is caring and it helps helps new listeners find my work.

Lisa Carpenter [00:45:30]:
And if you want to check out anything that we are offering coming up in February January 2025, make sure you check out the links in the show notes, get yourself registered or book a call to chat. I've got openings for OneToOne coaching in February 2025 as well so sending you so much love and connection and I will catch you on the next episode.