Stage 6   GROWING THROUGH LISTENING  

Affirmation:  I will listen patiently to other women and learn from their wisdom about a better way to live my life.

Because we are women, we have not been listened to and this neglect has hurt us.  Not being listened to is hard on our hearts because we hide our need for understanding.  It is hard on our identity because it drives a wedge between our true Self and our false self.  Our unsatisfied yearning to be heard causes us to feel isolated and our isolation only increases our yearning to be heard.  Over time, we learn not to take ourselves seriously and tend to question the value and credibility of our opinions, insights, and experiences.  In this stage, you learn to appreciate the value of listening and being listened to.  You learn to shatter the isolation that silence creates.  Listening can only happen if you respect the speaker and want to learn from them or learn about them.  You become witness-student-seeker-partner in communication when you listen.  You can learn from other women the creative ways that they have maintained their dignity while struggling with cultural oppression.  You will learn from their courage, their determination and their healthy resistance to becoming lost.  As you listen, you teach yourself the value of a woman's authority.

In this chapter, you'll find out whether you give yourself the space and the quiet time to just listen to other women.  Or do you internalize their stories and try to"fix" the problem, instead of just witnessing their pain?  It can be difficult to just sit and listen without asking questions, without interrupting.  When you listen, you are challenging yourself to be quiet so that you can join in the life of another without taking responsibility for her.  Patience is "knowing" that healing will evolve without forcing it to happen.  Whomever you listen to will find their own insights that will make their own recovery possible.  In this stage, you'll discover that listening is believing that wisdom can and does exist outside you-and that it feels good to be listened to, without the intrusive, albeit well-meaning, advice of another.
  

Presentation based on Codependency and the Socialization of Women, by Ann Mody Lewis, Ph.D., Copyright 1996