The sisterhood wound runs deep for many women. This is a conversation about what it looks like to finally heal it.

There’s a longing I hear from women constantly – a deep desire for friendship that goes beyond surface-level connection. Something real… where you can bring your shadows, your mess, your uncertainty, and know that the other person isn’t going anywhere.

I know that longing well, because I spent years not knowing how to have it.

When I was younger, I was the girl constantly trying to fit in – doing whatever everyone else was doing, hoping it would work. And when it didn’t, the universe let me know. Mean letters from girls, drama that always seemed to orbit around me, the feeling of being talked about at 12, 13 years old… the kind of stuff that scars you quietly and follows you into adulthood.

I think most women carry some version of that wound. The sisterhood wound. The one that tells us other women aren’t safe, that closeness will eventually turn into betrayal, that it’s better to keep your guard up than to let someone really see you.

And for a long time, I operated from that place – even when I thought I had healed it.

The woman who showed me the mirror

Seven years ago, I met Stephanie Burgos at a Tony Robbins seminar. We were both chasing something outside of ourselves and calling it growth. I was fixated on money, significance, building – anything that would keep me busy enough to avoid the deeper stuff I wasn’t ready to feel. If you had asked me at the time, I would have told you I was stepping into my power. But the truth is, I was just searching.

Stephanie was in a similar place – burnt out, unfulfilled, pouring into everything and everyone except herself. She had achieved everything she thought she was supposed to want. The career, the home, the relationship. And still, something felt hollow.

We didn’t form an instant connection. It was more like a slow recognition. Over time, as we each started peeling back our own layers, we realized our healing was running parallel. She would move through something, and a month later I’d find myself in the same fire. And instead of just supporting each other through it, we started decoding it together – teaching each other through our own lived experience.

That’s when she stopped being just a friend and became something deeper. An ally sister.

When sisterhood asks you to look at yourself

Here’s the thing about deep friendship that nobody really warns you about – it will show you everything you haven’t healed yet.

Stephanie and I have navigated conflict, competition, triggers, dark seasons, business partnership, and spiritual facilitation together. There were moments that felt like two sisters fighting over a toy – murky, sticky, uncomfortable. Times when boundaries were tested and old wounds got activated in ways neither of us expected.

What I’ve learned is that in wounded feminine sisterhood, we unconsciously don’t want the other woman to shine. Not because we’re bad people – but because her stepping into her power asks us to change. It disrupts the dynamic of how we’ve been getting our needs met. And that disruption feels threatening when you haven’t done the inner work to feel safe within yourself first.

Stephanie and I made a commitment early on that we would always prioritize the mirror over the relationship. Meaning – when something came up between us, we would look at ourselves first. What is this triggering in me? What wound is this touching? Where am I still grasping, still needing to be right, still wanting to be seen a certain way?

That practice has been the foundation of everything we’ve built.

The medicine that found us

Something I always find interesting about our story is that for most of our lives, we were both in a pattern of grasping – for success, for validation, for love, for meaning. And then the medicine came.. and neither of us grasped for it. It just presented itself.

We sat with mushrooms for the first time, and from there, followed the path to Ayahuasca in Costa Rica. The journey cracked both of us open in ways we couldn’t have predicted. We were carrying so much – through our lineages, our families, our upbringing, this control body of putting so much pressure on ourselves. The medicine met us where we were, and where we were required a deep, long cleaning.

I won’t sugarcoat it. The early sits were intense. It took me many, many ceremonies to start feeling good. And after ceremony, everything gets more illuminated – you come home wanting your partner to change, feeling triggered by your parents, and every sensitivity you’ve been avoiding is suddenly right in front of you.

What I know now is that sitting with Ayahuasca is not just a moment in a ceremony. It becomes the path of your life. It changes how you see things, how you look at the world, how you see yourself. And one of the most important things Stephanie and I have learned as facilitators is that you need a circle around you that understands. You can’t do this work and then go share it with someone who isn’t on this path – they won’t have the context to hold what you’re moving through.

We were blessed. We had experienced guides, indigenous traditions being passed down to us, and the collective support of safe community. And I believe that came, at least in part, because we weren’t chasing the medicine. It found us.

How we process without fueling the wound

One of the things I’m most grateful for in our friendship is the way we process conflict. When one of us is activated, we don’t fuel each other’s stories. There’s no “I can’t believe she did that” energy. We hold calm, grounded presence for what’s alive – and then we help each other return to love. There’s no addiction to the darkness, no addiction to the drama.

Stephanie has this beautiful practice of approaching conflict by saying, “Hey, something’s coming up for me. I know this is about me. Can you hold space for this?” It immediately takes the attack out of it and turns it into a reflection. She speaks for herself, takes responsibility for her perspective, and asks for what she needs – which is usually just to be witnessed.

I told her once – you have to call out my loops. That’s how much I trust her. I need someone in my life who loves me enough to not let me stay stuck.

And she does. With patience, with grace, and with a steadiness that I deeply admire.

The harmony we hold together becomes the space we hold for others

Stephanie and I aren’t just friends. We run Soul Legacy. We co-facilitate Ayahuasca ceremonies in Costa Rica. We hold space for women who are moving through some of the most profound and vulnerable moments of their lives.

And what I’ve come to understand is that the harmony we feel between us is directly reflected in the spaces we hold. If we’re not clean and clear with each other, everyone in the room feels it. You can’t hold a safe container for others when your own relationship is full of unspoken things.

That’s why the work of our friendship isn’t separate from the work of our facilitation. It is the work. Every trigger we resolve, every mirror we’re willing to look at, every conversation we choose to have even when it’s uncomfortable – all of it feeds the integrity of what we offer.

What I want you to take from this

If you’ve been craving deeper friendship – the kind where you feel seen, where you can bring your full self, where growth is the foundation – I want you to know something.

That kind of friendship starts with you.

It starts with being willing to look at your own patterns. It starts with doing the inner work so that when a mirror shows up in your life, you don’t run from it. It starts with choosing honesty over comfort, accountability over blame, and presence over performance.

Stephanie said something in our conversation that I keep coming back to – whatever you’re seeking outside of yourself, you have to cultivate within yourself first. That’s where the real work begins.

And when you do that work.. the right people find you. Not because you chased them down, but because you became the kind of woman who could hold that kind of love.

This episode airs on March 17th. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

Xoxo, Lauren