Healthy Women Change the Atmosphere: Choose Your Circle Wisely, Do the Work, and Be the Light.
Healthy Women Change the Atmosphere: Choose Your Circle Wisely, Do the Work, and Be the Light.
Women who genuinely support other women are some of the real MVPs in this world. There is something beautiful and refreshing about being surrounded by women who want to see other women healthy, growing, succeeding, healing, and becoming everything God created them to be.
As women, we carry and experience a lot throughout our lives. We navigate relationships, family responsibilities, careers, motherhood, marriage, friendships, aging, changing bodies, disappointments, grief, rejection, betrayal, childhood wounds, church hurt, insecurity, comparison, and sometimes trauma that follows us long after the experience itself has ended. Life can leave wounds, and some of those wounds run deeper than anyone around us may ever know.
That is why I have grown to deeply appreciate women who have done the work and women who are still doing the work. I am talking about women who recognize that healing and growth are ongoing. These women may not have everything figured out, but they are willing to examine themselves, take responsibility for their behavior, establish healthy boundaries, apologize when necessary, seek help when needed, and continue growing.
There is no shame in still doing the work. In fact, I would much rather be surrounded by women who can admit that they are still growing than women who believe everybody else is always the problem.
One of the most important lessons we can learn is that we are more valuable than the trauma we have endured. What happened to us matters. Our pain matters. Our stories matter. But our wounds do not have to become our permanent identity, and the people around us should not continually have to pay the price for pain they did not cause.
We All Bring Something Into the Room
Whether we are at work, church, serving in ministry, attending a social event, sitting around a dinner table, participating in a women’s group, spending time with family, traveling with friends, gathering for brunch, conducting business, or simply having a conversation, we all bring something into the spaces we enter.
Sometimes you can almost feel when an unhealthy woman enters the room. The atmosphere changes. Things may become heavier, more negative, competitive, critical, uncomfortable, or centered around conflict. This does not necessarily mean she is a bad person. Sometimes it simply means she is operating from places within herself that have not yet healed.
Unresolved insecurity can become competition. Rejection can become jealousy. Hurt can become bitterness. Trauma can become defensiveness. Anger can become unnecessary conflict. Pain that has never been properly addressed can sometimes cause us to bleed on people who never wounded us.
Those wounds can show up as gossip, passive aggression, constant criticism, cliques, manipulation, unnecessary competition, controlling behavior, exclusion, suspicion, or always finding something wrong with somebody else. Unfortunately, these behaviors are not limited to one environment. They can appear in families, friendships, workplaces, businesses, social groups, ministries, and yes, even churches.
Being in a spiritual environment does not automatically make us emotionally healthy. We can genuinely love Jesus and still have areas that require healing, maturity, accountability, wisdom, and growth. That applies to all of us.
There Is Something Different About a Healthy Woman
Just as unhealthy patterns can affect the atmosphere, there is something noticeably refreshing about a healthy woman. She brings a different kind of presence into the room. She brings peace, wisdom, encouragement, virtue, direction, and value without needing to dominate the conversation or become the center of attention.
A healthy woman understands that another woman’s beauty does not diminish hers. Another woman’s success does not mean she is failing. Another woman’s opportunity does not mean God has forgotten her. Another woman’s gifts do not threaten her own. She can genuinely say, “Sis, I am happy for you,” and mean it.
She can compliment another woman without adding something negative afterward. She can celebrate another woman’s success without secretly resenting her. She can disagree without becoming disrespectful, establish boundaries without becoming cruel, and tell the truth without intentionally humiliating someone.
She can also receive correction. She can apologize. She can admit when she was wrong. She can protect another woman’s name when that woman is not in the room, and she does not need to participate in gossip just to feel included.
Those kinds of women are refreshing.
Healthy Does Not Mean Perfect
Being emotionally and spiritually healthy does not mean being perfect. A healthy woman may still have triggers, insecurities, difficult days, and moments when something from her past resurfaces. She may still need prayer, counseling, therapy, wise counsel, or time to process certain experiences.
The difference is her willingness to recognize what is happening and take responsibility for it. She can acknowledge, “That reaction came from something deeper in me, and I need to work on that.”
There is tremendous maturity in self awareness.
We should be careful not to become so focused on identifying unhealthy women around us that we stop asking God to reveal unhealthy things within ourselves. Sometimes the woman who needs to do the work is us, and recognizing that should not produce shame. It should produce growth.
Your Trauma Is Part of Your Story, Not Your Entire Identity
Many women have survived things nobody knows about. Some learned survival before they ever experienced emotional safety. Some became guarded because people betrayed them. Some became fiercely independent because they learned early that they could not depend on anyone. Others learned to fight because fighting was the only way they knew how to survive, while some learned to shut down because expressing emotion never felt safe.
We should have compassion for those versions of ourselves. However, there eventually comes a point when survival patterns that once protected us can begin damaging the relationships God is trying to give us.
Healing requires us to ask difficult questions. Is this behavior still protecting me, or is it preventing me from becoming the woman I want to be? Is the way I respond today appropriate for the life I have now, or am I still responding to something that happened many years ago?
We can honor what we survived without continuing to live from the wounded version of ourselves. You are more than what happened to you. You are more than who rejected you, the friendship that failed, the relationship that broke your heart, or the mistakes you made while trying to survive.
Your trauma may always be part of your story, but it does not have to become your entire identity.
You are Not 15 Anymore
It’s time to heal what hurt you, grow beyond what shaped you, and become intentional about the woman you bring into every room. The Rebellious 15 Year Old Cannot Keep Leading the Grown Woman
This is another area I believe we need to lovingly confront. Sometimes grown women are still allowing the rebellious, wounded, defensive 15 year old version of themselves to walk into every room and speak for them.
She comes to work. She comes to church. She comes into marriage and friendships. She comes into family gatherings, ministry spaces, social events, and disagreements. She especially shows up when someone corrects us, challenges us, disagrees with us, or makes us feel rejected.
Perhaps that younger version of us had legitimate reasons for becoming defensive. Maybe she was hurt, neglected, bullied, rejected, abandoned, betrayed, misunderstood, or forced to grow up too quickly. Maybe rebellion became her protection. Maybe anger became her voice. Maybe defensiveness became her armor. Maybe shutting people out was the only way she knew how to feel safe.
Have compassion for her. Understand her. Pray for her. But also recognize that you are not 15 anymore.
The behaviors that helped us survive one season may become the very behaviors preventing us from thriving in another. At some point, we must stop allowing our younger wounded selves to make decisions for our grown selves.
That does not mean rejecting that younger version of ourselves. It means surrendering her to healing. It means being able to say, “I understand why you became this way. I understand what happened to you. But you do not have to fight every battle anymore. God has brought us further. We have learned. We have grown, and we are still growing.”
That is maturity.
We cannot be 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, or 70 years old and continue responding to every uncomfortable situation from the emotional posture of a rebellious teenager. At some point, we have to learn, heal, grow, recognize our triggers, take accountability, and stop excusing dysfunction with the phrase, “That’s just how I am.”
Sometimes “that’s just how I am” is really another way of saying, “This is an area of my life I have not yet been willing to confront.”
There is no shame in discovering that. The responsibility comes in what we choose to do after we recognize it.
Have compassion for the 15 year old girl you once were, but do not keep handing her the microphone in every room you enter. You are the grown woman now. Let wisdom speak. Let maturity speak. Let healing speak. Let love speak. Most importantly, let the Holy Spirit lead.
Healthy Sisterhood Should Feel Safe
Healthy sisterhood does not mean everybody agrees about everything. It means there is enough maturity within the relationship for differences to exist without destroying the relationship.
Healthy women can communicate through disagreements. They can establish boundaries, celebrate each other, tell each other the truth in love, share opportunities, and sit together without secretly competing. They can encourage another woman to shine without believing her light somehow makes theirs dimmer.
Imagine how different our workplaces, churches, ministries, families, friendships, women’s groups, businesses, and social spaces could be if more of us entered them with the intention of leaving the space better because we were there.
That does not mean pretending everything is wonderful or avoiding difficult conversations. Healthy relationships sometimes require truth, accountability, correction, and boundaries. The difference is that those things can be handled without unnecessary humiliation, gossip, retaliation, or drama.
Choose Your Circle Wisely
There is another side of this conversation that cannot be ignored. Women, we need to be mindful of our circles.
Pay attention when someone enters your life, friendship group, workplace circle, ministry circle, or social circle and you notice yourself beginning to change for the worse.
Maybe you had stopped gossiping, but suddenly you are gossiping again. Maybe you had worked through bitterness, but now you find yourself becoming bitter again. Maybe you had learned not to compare yourself with other women, but suddenly you are criticizing, analyzing, and competing again. Maybe you had developed healthier communication, but now you are becoming argumentative, suspicious, judgmental, negative, or easily offended.
Perhaps you had finally found some peace, but now drama seems to follow every conversation.
Pay attention to that.
Not every person who enters your life is supposed to have intimate access to you. You can love people without giving everybody a front row seat in your life. You can be kind without making everyone your confidante. You can pray for someone without allowing unhealthy patterns to continually disrupt your peace.
Proverbs 13:20 KJV tells us, “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”
Our circles matter. The conversations we repeatedly sit in matter. The attitudes we continually expose ourselves to matter. The voices we allow to influence us matter.
Pay Attention to How You Feel and Who You Become
One thing I have learned is to pay attention not only to how I feel while I am around certain people, but also to who I become after spending time with them.
Do you consistently leave someone’s presence feeling drained, heavy, confused, bitter, angry, depressed, jealous, or dirty because the entire conversation was filled with gossip? Do you find yourself becoming suspicious of people you previously had no problem with? Are you suddenly offended by someone because another person convinced you that you should be? Are you picking up attitudes and behaviors you had already prayed about, healed from, matured beyond, and worked hard to leave behind?
That matters.
Now think about the people whose presence leaves you feeling peaceful, clear, hopeful, grounded, encouraged, inspired, empowered, closer to God, more compassionate, more focused, and more accountable. Think about the people who make you want to pray more, grow more, love better, think differently, and become a healthier version of yourself.
That matters too.
Of course, we should not judge someone’s entire character based on one difficult interaction, and healthy friends will not always tell us what we want to hear. Sometimes the person who loves you most will tell you a truth that makes you uncomfortable.
The key is to watch the patterns and the fruit.
If spending time with someone consistently brings out a version of you that you have worked hard to leave behind, do not ignore it. Stay alert and ask yourself, “Is this relationship helping me become healthier, wiser, more loving, more peaceful, more disciplined, and more like Jesus, or is it continually pulling me backward?”
Choose your circle wisely.
But What Are You Bringing Into the Circle?
Discernment cannot only point outward. We cannot spend all our time analyzing what everybody else brings into our lives without examining what we bring into theirs.
What do people become around you? Do you encourage gossip or shut it down? Do you stir division or encourage reconciliation? Do you feed insecurity or remind women of their value? Do you encourage competition or collaboration? Do you make everything negative, or do you help people see hope?
Perhaps one of the hardest questions to ask is this: Do women leave my presence healthier or heavier?
We have to be willing to consider whether we might be the person somebody else needs stronger boundaries with. That is uncomfortable, but growth requires honesty.
Yes, choose your circle wisely. But also become the kind of woman who can contribute something healthy to someone else’s circle.
Be Intentional About Your Light
For those of us who follow Jesus, this conversation is ultimately bigger than emotional maturity or friendship compatibility. We are called to become more like Him.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:13–14 KJV that we are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” That calling follows us into our homes, workplaces, churches, ministries, friendships, businesses, social gatherings, online spaces, and everywhere else God allows us to go.
We have the ability to bring light rather than continually reproducing darkness, but we must become intentional about our light.
If we are not intentional about healing, growing, renewing our minds, examining our behavior, and becoming more like Jesus, it is very easy to default back into what is familiar. Sometimes what is familiar is the darkness we experienced, the darkness inflicted upon us, and, if we are willing to be truthful, sometimes even the darkness we participated in creating ourselves.
Pain that is never examined can become a pattern. A pattern repeated long enough can become a lifestyle. Eventually, we can begin giving other people the very experiences we once prayed to escape.
We cannot control everything that happened to us, but we can become intentional about what happens through us.
We can decide that the hurt does not have to continue through us. The gossip does not have to continue through us. The bitterness, unnecessary competition, constant defensiveness, rebellion, and chaos do not have to continue through us.
The cycle can stop, and something healthier can begin.
Healing can begin. Growth can begin. Wisdom can grow. Peace can become familiar. Accountability can become normal. We can learn a different way of showing up in the world.
The World Needs More Healthy, Happy, Healing Women
The world already has enough darkness, division, gossip, jealousy, bitterness, competition, drama, and wounded people wounding other people.
Our families, workplaces, churches, ministries, friendships, communities, businesses, and women’s spaces need more women committed to becoming healthy, happy, healed and healing, peaceful, mature, compassionate, accountable, and Christlike.
Not perfect women. Growing women.
Women who can say, “I have been through some things, but I refuse to become the darkness I survived. I may have learned unhealthy behaviors, but I can unlearn them. I may have wounds, but my wounds will not determine how I treat everyone around me. I am older now. I am wiser now. I am learning. I am healing. I am growing. With God’s help, I am choosing to show up differently.”
We owe ourselves the opportunity to become that woman. We also owe the people we love the opportunity to experience the healed and healing version of us, not only the version our pain created.
Before You Think About “Her,” Look at Yourself
It would be easy to read this entire blog and immediately think of another woman. You may even be thinking, “I know exactly who needs to read this.”
Maybe she does.
But before we send it to somebody else, we should sit with it ourselves.
Am I safe for other women? Can another woman share good news with me without worrying about how I will respond? Can I celebrate someone who is succeeding in an area where I am struggling? Do I protect women’s names when they are not present? Can I receive correction without immediately becoming defensive? Can I apologize when I am wrong? Do I bring peace into environments, or do I repeatedly bring tension?
And perhaps one of the deepest questions is this: Am I actually healing, or have I simply learned how to hide my wounds better?
Healthy women are willing to ask themselves uncomfortable questions because they understand that self examination is part of growth.
Keep Doing the Work
If you are doing the work, keep going. Keep praying, healing, learning, growing, setting healthy boundaries, and learning how to communicate better. If therapy is part of your healing journey, keep doing that work. Continue examining your heart and allowing God to show you the places that still need His attention.
And when God places other healthy and healing women in your life, treasure them. Support them. Pray for them. Celebrate them. Speak life over them. Protect their names when they are absent. Make room for their gifts and remind them who they are when life causes them to forget.
Hebrews 10:24 KJV says, “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.”
What if we carried that standard into every room? What if we intentionally brought it to work, church, ministry, family gatherings, friendships, businesses, women’s groups, social events, and online spaces?
May we become women who add something beautiful to the atmosphere. Women who have done the work and women who are doing the work. Women who understand that healing is not weakness, accountability is not rejection, and another woman’s light does not diminish our own.
May we choose our circles wisely while also becoming healthy members of somebody else’s circle.
Healthy women do not just enter rooms. They help make the room healthier because they were there.
That is the kind of woman I continually want to become.
Summary
Healthy sisterhood is about more than having people around us. It is about becoming intentional about who influences us and what kind of influence we are becoming in the lives of others. Our trauma deserves compassion, but it does not have to become our identity or determine how we treat the people around us.
This is an invitation to keep doing the work of healing, maturity, self awareness, accountability, and spiritual growth. It is also a reminder to choose our circles wisely and pay attention to the fruit our relationships are producing in us.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to be salt and light. The world needs more women committed to becoming healthy, happy, healed and healing, peaceful, mature, compassionate, accountable, and Christlike.
Choose your circle wisely. Keep doing the work. Stay alert. Be intentional about your light. And become the kind of woman whose presence adds something good to every room you enter.
Reflection Questions
1. What do I consistently bring into the spaces I enter, and how do people tend to feel after spending time with me?
2. Who am I becoming around the people closest to me? Are my relationships encouraging growth or pulling me back toward behaviors I worked hard to overcome?
3. How do I consistently feel after spending time with my closest circle? Do I leave feeling peaceful, clear, hopeful, encouraged, and empowered, or drained, bitter, confused, negative, and caught up in gossip?
4. Are there survival behaviors from my younger years that I am still carrying into my adult relationships?
5. When I feel rejected, corrected, misunderstood, or challenged, is my mature adult self responding, or is a younger wounded version of me taking over?
6. Are there behaviors I excuse by saying, “That’s just how I am,” that actually need healing and growth?
7. Can I genuinely celebrate another woman’s success, beauty, relationships, opportunities, gifts, or growth without comparing myself to her?
8. Do I protect women’s names when they are not present, and can I receive correction without immediately becoming defensive?
9. Are there relationships in which I need stronger boundaries while still remaining loving, gracious, and free from bitterness?
10. Do the people closest to me encourage me to become more like Jesus?
11. Am I the kind of woman I would consider a healthy addition to someone else’s circle?
12. What is God currently asking me to heal, release, change, surrender, or mature in during this season of my life?
A Final Reflection and Prayer
Before identifying every unhealthy woman around us, perhaps one of the most powerful things we can do is turn the mirror toward ourselves.
Lord, continue to heal me. Give me wisdom about the people I allow close to me. Help me recognize when an environment or relationship is pulling me backward, but also show me what needs to change in me. Help me have compassion for the younger wounded version of myself without allowing her wounds to control the woman I am today. Help me not to bleed from old wounds onto people who did not cause them. Teach me to bring Your love, wisdom, grace, truth, peace, and light into every room I enter. Help me choose my circle wisely and, equally important, help me become the kind of woman who is healthy enough to be part of someone else’s healthy circle. Let my life reflect You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Be compassionate with the woman you were. Be intentional about the woman you are, and be hopeful about the woman you are becoming.
Keep healing. Keep growing. Keep choosing wisely. Keep becoming more like Jesus. And above all, choose the light.
Always With Love,
Waydia 🤎
Christine, thank you for your very insightful response. It truly encouraged me. I totally agree. Staying stuck is a choice, and growing is a choice. We have to intentionally choose the latter because growth doesn’t just happen. If we don’t make that choice, it can be so easy to remain stuck and become stagnant.
Life is amazingly beautiful when we choose to let go of past negative experiences, learn and grow from them, and allow those experiences to make us better instead of bitter. We may not be able to change what happened, but we can choose what we do with it and who we become because of it.
By the way, what is the name of the book you mentioned? I would love to read it. Thank you again for such an insightful and elevating response. It truly added even more value to the post. 🩷
Very insightful Waydia! We indeed carry a lot as women and oftentimes do not relinquish past trauma and negative experiences as quickly or as completely as we should.
In the whole process of growing up and maturing we have to decide for ourselves, just who we are! We cannot allow others or our circumstances to define our identity. Time and again we have to examine our experiences and measure our reaction to them to see if it is in keeping with whom we’ve determined ourselves to be. In those moments of honest reflection, the truth will be unearthed and the shedding of negativity should follow, apologies can be made, a space and opportunity for healing can be discovered and a brand new page turned to continue our path to wholesomeness !
The woman who takes time to reflect on who she is and what’s her inherent worth is usually in a great position to rise above those circumstances that could otherwise define her journey as one of pain, loss, unresolved trauma and tacit dysfunction.
One of my favorite authors advanced the idea that as women we are always” becoming”…
That concept teaches us that old experiences do not define us and is not our true identity because growth and maturity is always a constant part of our journey; if only we embrace it, let loose of failures and destructive patterns of behavior and give ourselves grace to grow into ALL-that God has intended us to be.
Our growth into healthy womanhood is on a continuum! It’s not static! You nailed it perfectly! The girl at 15 with all her mixed up moods and attitude should not be the person that shows up at 40, 50, 60 !
Thank you for delving into this discourse of healthy womanhood! I look forward to reading more of your work…
-Christine M