"She Used to Love School—Not This Year"
The quiet beginnings of sisterhood wounds and how we fail our girls when we don't intervene.
She’s only ten.
Bright, sensitive, full of creative sparkle—and lately, heartbreak.
My great-niece has been coming home from school feeling like she doesn't belong. Once a place of friendship and fun, her classroom has become a quiet battleground of whispers, exclusion, and cruel side glances. She's learning—far too young—that other girls can turn cold, that safety in community can suddenly slip through your fingers, and that silence from adults can sometimes hurt just as much.
This is the beginning of sisterhood wounding.
We often talk about the “mean girl” dynamic as something that emerges in the teen years, but it starts much earlier. Before there’s language for it. Before there’s understanding. And far too often, before there’s any meaningful support.
But how do the “mean girls” become mean?
Why do they turn on each other?
Where does this need to isolate, control, and intimidate come from?
These questions haunt me—not just as someone who loves this little girl, but as a woman who remembers her own early wounds. As someone who has spent years guiding women through the tender process of repairing these very same fractures decades later.
In most cases, these young girls aren’t inherently unkind. They’re afraid.
They’re absorbing unspoken lessons from the world around them:
That power comes from dominance, not connection.
That closeness is dangerous when it can be turned on you.
That being accepted means playing the game—even if it means hurting someone else.
These are not just personal wounds—they’re cultural ones. Systemic ones. The kind that get passed down like invisible inheritance, showing up in schoolyards, sleepovers, boardrooms, and women’s circles.
And when adults don’t name it—when teachers don’t intervene, when school systems prioritize academic performance over emotional wellbeing—these wounds deepen. Silence becomes complicity. The girl who is excluded begins to believe she’s not worthy. And the girls who isolate her often don't even understand the damage they’re causing.
This blog post is for my great-niece—and for every woman who still carries that ten-year-old version of herself inside. The one who learned it wasn’t safe to trust other girls. The one who shrank, or hardened, or stayed quiet to survive.
Because if we want to heal sisterhood, we must start here.
We must look at how it begins.
We must talk about what we're teaching girls—consciously or not—about belonging, empathy, and power.
And we must create spaces where the next generation can learn a new way.
Let’s Not Look Away
If you’re a woman reading this, I invite you to pause and remember:
Where were you when you first learned that other girls could turn on you?
When did you begin to hide parts of yourself to stay included, stay safe, stay quiet?
This isn’t just about schoolyards. It’s about a cultural pattern of disconnection that runs deep in our collective story as women. And it often starts early, long before we have the words to name it.
So let’s name it now.
Let’s stop brushing off “mean girl” behavior as a phase.
Let’s stop assuming our daughters, nieces, and students are fine just because they’re not crying.
Let’s stop pretending that staying silent keeps the peace.
Instead, let’s be the generation that sees it.
That speaks up. That interrupts it. That models something different.
Because every time we choose compassion over competition, courage over silence, and connection over isolation—we’re not just healing ourselves.
We’re changing the story for the girls coming after us.
She used to love school.
Let’s make sure the next girl still can.
