Be sure to read the message from Ann each month

Codependency and the Socialization of Women by
Ann Mody Lewis, Ph.D.


          The personal implications of socialization come alive when I listen to women tell the story
          of their lives.  In the privacy of my office, I hear stories that all contain common themes.
          I listen to women who have been sexually abused by men they trusted and loved and now
          suffer from a host of psychological disorders, the worst of which is the inability to bond, to
          trust and feel safe in their own skin. I listen to daughters who are angry with their mothers
          for being submissive, critical, dependent, controlling or too forgiving.  I listen to wives who
          can't make a decision to leave a marriage, no matter how bad it gets.  I listen to women
          who raised their children.  I listen to women who only dream of personal freedom, but can't
          imagine a way to achieve it.  And, yes, there are the women who have dedicated their lives
          to their husband and children for years and, when it's time to reap the rewards for their
          sacrifice, a younger woman is chosen to take her place.  Professional women who are
          brilliant and eager to succeed tell their stories of derailment, dismissal, belittling and
          sexual harassment because they are women.  I listen to single mothers who live alone
          with their children, struggling to survive financially and emotionally, because they are
          abandoned by the father of their children and a socio-economic culture that ignores their
          mothering responsibilities.  Women who "struggle to death" with chronic discontent with
          their bodies, starve themselves, purge the food they ingest, and deny themselves any
          compliment that challenges their total conviction that they are not thin enough, beautiful
          enough or worthy to be loved.  I listen to women who are exhausted caring for their parents
          or other older family members while, at the same time, they are caring for their children or
          grandchildren and working a full time job.  Women who are now old tell me of their loneliness
          because their children and society have forgotten them.  The stories are endless and they
          touch every stage of a woman's life in every environment in which she may live.  Her internal
          life is smothered by the loudness of social conditioning that infiltrates how she thinks, how
          she feels, how she conducts herself with others, especially those she loves.  Women who find
          themselves on a "distant shore," flock to therapists' and physicians' offices every day, looking
          for  relief.  They are given psychotropic drugs instead.  What the physicians see is the end
          result of a lost ego.  Physicians don't understand the women who stand before them.  What
          they treat is insignificant to the real problem-socialization.

          Women's Journey offers women a deep hope for reclaiming their lives, not for political change,
          but for personal liberation.  Women's Journey leads every woman along a path that tests,
          questions, and discards the myths of feminity.  It invites them to imagine a new way to be
          a woman and experiment with new behaviors that represent the full choice of human life.

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