Читать книгу Silenced and Sidelined - D Lynn D Arnold - Страница 22

Beyond cognition and emotion, women may be spiritually shrouded in the sense of loss of self. She feels disconnected from her core, the idea of who she is wired to be in this world, and often senses a void in her being or soul. She may feel trampled, misplaced, and without an anchor.

Not every woman I spoke to about her experience of feeling silenced shared a spiritual impact. Some were atheists, others were devout in their chosen faith, and the rest nested somewhere in between. As a social scientist, I was not investigating their religious beliefs. Instead, I was interested in their level of consciousness and their way of knowing. Consciousness is a challenging topic to study. It can be as simple as being awake, or as complicated as being aware of ourselves and aware of the world. As far back as 1842, scholars have been attempting to categorize all the ways we know or the way we sense. In 1983, Wagner, who was influenced by the psychological consciousness work of all the smart minds preceding him, identified four elements of the self. The material-self is comprised of what we own. The social-self is what others notice. There is an ego-self, which is our sense of identity and sameness. Last, there is the spiritual-self—our inner being.^[4]

How did each woman’s inner being change as a result of feeling silenced? Based on my interviews, at least half described some loss of inner self. In my linguistic analysis, the internal loss was not specific to losing a job, a relationship, or anything tangible. Some language examples include, “I lost contact with the heart part of me.” Or, “I found myself losing my connection to myself,” and, “There was so much of me that I lost.” Another powerful example from an executive who opted out of leadership to become a coach said, “Well, the first thing that comes to me is, I just think I kind of withdrew my personhood.” Last an African American executive working at a global engineering company said it this way:

From a spiritual standpoint, I felt like I kind of lost my way. That I didn’t have that grounding. That thing that kind of kept me steady just felt off, you know? I felt like I was less sure of what I needed to be doing and who I was.

While some named their spirit as suffering, others found solace in their spiritual practices. This, in turn, created a way for them to heal slowly. Using spiritual practices to manage and move to voice is integrated into many strategies women use to manage silencing.

Additionally, many women interviewed described their search for something to fill the void when they were silenced, and this often led to some physical ramifications that are covered in the next chapter.

In summary, the silenced are not just bullied, lacking in confidence, or behaving like victims. They may feel victimized; they may be on the receiving end of a bully’s power, and they certainly experience shifts in confidence when they are silenced. This dynamic goes beyond one encounter and one dip in certainty. When women feel consistently and egregiously silenced—they change. This change does not just impact them on a cognitive, emotional, or spiritual level. When a female leader experiences pervasive silencing, she will also experience it at a physical level.