Why women’s groups fall apart

Tarot cards byTarot of Mystical Moments, 3 of cups & 4 of cups, womens group, alienation and mother wound.

The experience of belonging in a women's group is incredible and terrifying.  
 
Incredible because such groups can be the metaphoric temples of emotional connection, shared wisdom, celebration, caring and support.  
 
Terrifying because, unfortunately, they last a little bit before venom enters the chat and that initial liberating sense of understanding and belonging, against all patriarchal stereotypes, becomes such a stereotype itself.  
 
In the end, we either suppress our real needs and opinions to continue belonging to the already contaminated by dysfunctionality group, or we end up alone and stranded, either by own choice to leave or by the groups decision to protect their existence. Is it just women though? No, but women tend to form such deeply emotional bonding groups more often, where men bond mostly through activities.  
 

But the issue here, like Jung said, is that if the shadow is not brought to light to be resolved and acknowledged it becomes fate. Most of the times, the groups tend to cut off the "dangerous" parts for their currently known core existence, in an act to survive. This is why the fate is "death" , either of the group itself or of its reality-how many groups do you know that you feel in your gut how much they function under fight-flight-freeze response, without even knowing it?!  

Marion Woodman explained why the dynamic falls apart: The Negative or Evil Mother Archetype within can be very prominous, forbidding us to move further from where our own mother has been and if we do so, it fills us with guilt, shame and fear. Fear of getting "killed", as the ultimate expression of the Negative mother is the Death Mother. We can't move further into our own expression without the fear of getting into danger, or exiled if we access our true expression.  
 
There is also the factor that we enter every social situation, like a group, with our own shadows and unworked ego states. This makes us prone to projecting such aspects to the group participants. Basically when we don't accept or like parts of ourselves, we end up recreating them or projecting them to others.  
 
Entering a group and especially a group that has suffered so much from patriarchy, needs a lot of awareness and letting go of our own Ego. And it takes so much work, a lifetime of work indeed, to transform the paternal archetypes into something new and more aligned to our lives and needs.  
 
One piece of advice for every one of us: think of the last time you really disliked or hated someone in such a bonding group. Also think of one person that you were intimidated by, or you felt uncomfortable around-come on, honestly.  
 
And ask yourself:  
 
️-Which aspect inside me that person brings out?  
 
️-Does that person remind me of something/someone in my life?  
 
️-When did I experience or feel something like that in my past? What if I go even deeper in my early past?  
 
️-What parts of my behavior and inner feeling am I repeating and why?  
 
️-Why I can't let go of this part of me? 

P.S. I know I am not mentioning an amount of other factors contributing to success or failure of a group, e.g family bonds, cultural, political & socio-economic factors, etc, but family systems and parental support is always and undoubtfully one of the major contributors to our development. 

Danai Siamou-Kaarakainen