We at iCandi have been on the women’s empowerment kick. I decided to do this after observing relationships of women and even more recent personal experiences, I’ve realized that a lot of women don’t want to see each other win. It’s always a competition for something. Instead of working together and uplifting each other, women are stabbing each other in the back, stealing jobs (gigs), boyfriends, gossiping about each other, and throwing each other under the bus. Why?
Why do we feel the need to hurt or watch another woman hurt instead of helping her celebrate a win? Are we that selfish and self-absorbed that we can’t stand to watch another sister be happy? I know some of my readers are not like that, but we all need to really take a closer look in the mirror at some of our behaviors. I have even checked my damn self about this. Let me list a few examples of the way we as women might hate on other women and not even realize it
Relationships: I was having a conversation recently with a friend and was asking her why do a lot of “sisterhoods” fall apart. Her response shocked me, but it made me think. “Women will find a new d&%$ and act brand new.”
Now y’all know I was thinking “Whoa, why that hate? Be happy that your friend has found a man and is happy!” But when she broke her answer, it made a lot of sense.
Let’s say you and your sisterhood circle get together twice a month for “Ladies Night.” If you are ever going through hard times, whether it be physically, emotionally, or financially, who do you call? Your sisterhood circle. The bottom line is, your girlfriends have your back. They have been there. Woke up out of the middle of the night to come let you cry on their shoulders, feed you and your children when you couldn’t afford to, gotten in physical fights for you. They have your front, back and both sides. True “Ride or Dies.”
But you meet a nice young man. Nothing wrong with that right? Your girlfriends should want to see you happy. I agree with that. If they are your true friends, then they should definitely want to see you happy. But let’s say while you are in LaLa Land one of your girls really needs you. One of her children are sick, or maybe she just got fired from her job. She’s really going through it and when she calls you, you send her straight to voicemail. She leaves you a voicemail, but you don’t check it. She texts you to call her asap and you turn your phone off because at that moment you are spending quality time with your boo. At the end of the day, you forget about her call, don’t return it and leave her feeling a certain kind of way.
If this is a rare thing and you up and call her the next day then it’s forgivable, but that’s not the case. This behavior happens every time you get yourself a new man. You completely neglect the people that are always there. If things don’t work out, they are always there to help you pick up the pieces, but when it’s your turn to do that same, you are “too busy”, or you say, “me and bae are going out tonight.” It might sound like your friends are a little jealous but truthfully, they are just tired of a one-sided friendship.
We need to learn how to balance relationships and our friendships. Just like the women with children (single mothers) shouldn’t neglect their children because they have themselves a new boo, you shouldn’t neglect your friends; they might really need you. It wouldn’t hurt to excuse yourself quickly to answer the phone. If it’s not an emergency tell your friend that you will call her back soon. We must realize that the world does not revolve around us and our lives and we need to be there for others as well. What happens after this friend feels neglected and gain a new-found attitude? Then we think, “they are just jealous.”
We distance ourselves from our friends and boom, what happened to that sisterhood? What happens if you need your Ride or Die again? You can’t just pop back up because YOU need her. Where were you when she needed you? Cattiness: Come on ladies! Stop it with all the gossiping. I personally had to realize that although I’m not the gossiping friend, I will listen to some juicy gossip. I never really noticed that I was just at fault until a couple years ago: I had just relocated back to my hometown of Cincinnati, OH from Jacksonville, FL, and was riding around with a friend getting caught up on what’s been going on. This friend (former) was a pretty big gossiper but not about outsiders, but about people close to her. She proceeded to imply that a very close friend of ours was trying to flirt with her husband. This caught me off-guard because that just wasn’t in our friend’s character, and she was going on and on about how shady our friend was. MY friend.
At that moment a light bulb went off. I could continue to gossip about a friend, or I could shut it down; I decided to shut it down. I told her that I would not participate in slandering our good friend’s name. If she really thought this was going on, we could call her right then and there, go over to her house to sit down and talk, or she could tell it to someone else.
Of course, she just changed the subject and didn’t want to deal with it, which made me believe it was all BS anyway. If someone I knew was testing my man, they’d hear from me. But why would someone make up things like that about another woman? A woman who you consider a friend nonetheless? We as women must do better with checking each other.
If you see me doing wrong, pull me in. Get me together. All in the name of sisterhood love. If you see me out here winning, celebrate with me; don’t bash me or hate. Give me a high five. Uplift me! Encourage me! I will do the same. Women are truly amazing people and we can get a lot more done out here together than apart.
Now before I wrap this up let me say this: I am in no way saying that we don’t need men and let’s do this without them, or bash the fellas. Y’all know I love men. So, as we are uplifting each other and getting US together we still need to encourage and uplift our men. Women are amazing multitaskers so this shouldn’t be hard for us.
Until next time candi babies, be blessed and keep it icandilicious
Below are pictures from our very 1st Women's Empowerment Conference
