ONLINE Women’s Therapy Group
Mondays 4pm- 5:30pm Mountain Time
This tarot card was painted by Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. The Wheel of Fortune represents the ups and downs of everyday life. In the description of this card the author writes “Unlike other tarot cards the sphinx does not wield a sword and instead protects the natural world, conveying an eco-feminist message about women’s role in guarding the natural world and it’s creatures.”* In the early 1970’s Leonora Carrington formed a women’s group to raise consciousness. Carrington believed that the future of the world would depend on women’s stewardship
Research shows that women’s therapy groups behave differently than men’s therapy groups. Men’s groups often begin with conflict and competition before establishing cooperative working relationships. Women’s groups tend to prioritize the cultivation of mutuality and interpersonal empathy and then address differences, challenges and changes while maintaining respectful connection. Cooperation thru mutuality that allows for differences in contrast to dominance, competition for position and then cooperation.
“Abuse of power comes as no surprise”
Jenny Holtzer, a conceptual artist from the 1970’s, used words to construct “truisms”, phrases that stated out loud the hard wired beliefs that organize our culture. One of her most famous is “Abuse of power comes as no surprise”. Another is “Protect me from what I want.” When your desires align with what is expected why question them? When your wants challenge the status quo is there a danger?
“Protect me from what I want.”
Joan Didon writes about emotionally isolated women cut off from their own emotional experiences. Internal experiences are treated as inconvenient truths within the social circles they inhabit. Her protagonists while emotionally disassociated from themselves are acute observers of the customs and habits within which they live.
Internal experiences are treated as inconvenient truths
What happens when women form communities away from the constraints of the roles they perform for others? When women share out loud the forces that define, limit and empower?
What happens when women exchange information and explore what’s going on around them?
Go through the ups and downs life together.
A women’s therapy group is an opportunity to speak freely. Step out of your norm and enter into a community where whatever you say is taken in and explored beyond the constraints of how it might effect or be judged by the others in your life.