I have watched it happen in the corporate world, and I have lived it myself. A woman I worked with—talented, accomplished, brilliant—saw me getting noticed. Saw me building something. And instead of reaching out, instead of saying "let's figure this out together," she started diminishing me in meetings. Making comments about my ideas. Keeping me out of rooms where decisions were made. She wasn't being overtly cruel. She was just protecting her territory. She was terrified I would take what she had fought for, even though that made no sense. I wasn't trying to compete with her. Like her, I wanted a seat at the table. I wanted to do it while we lifted each other up, not while clawing past each other. But the system had already taught her that there was only room for one. And so I became her enemy instead of her ally.
The Scarcity Myth: Why We Learned to Compete Instead of Collaborate
Here's what nobody tells you: the reason women don't support each other isn't because we're catty, jealous, or naturally competitive. It's because we were taught, from childhood, that there isn't enough. Not enough attention. Not enough opportunity. Not enough space at the table. The patriarchy doesn't actually want women to succeed. But it will let a few of us through, but just enough to make the rest of us believe we have to fight for it.
This is the scarcity mindset, and it's one of the most effective tools the patriarchy ever installed.
Think about how women are told to advance in the world. You have to be the best. The smartest. The most likeable. The most ambitious. The most sacrificing. You have to prove you deserve it. Meanwhile, men are simply assumed to deserve it. They walk into rooms expecting a seat. They build networks that lift other men up automatically. They don't have to compete as hard because the system was literally designed for them.
But women? We get to fight for one seat. Sometimes two. And the message (both spoken and unspoken) is that if you're not the one who gets it, you failed. So when another woman starts to rise, it can feel like a threat. Like she might take the seat you've been clawing toward. Like if she wins, you lose.
That's not a character flaw. That's a design feature of the system.
What the Patriarchy Gains When Women Compete
The brilliance of the scarcity myth is that it divides us without the patriarchy having to lift a finger. We do the work for it. We compete. We diminish each other. We keep secrets. We hoard opportunities. We make it smaller for the woman next to us because we're convinced that her success means our failure.
And while we're busy fighting each other, we're not building anything together. We're not unionizing. We're not demanding systemic change. We're not recognizing that the real enemy isn't the woman across the table, when it's actually the system that convinced us there's only room for one.
When women compete instead of collaborate, the patriarchy wins. Full stop. It keeps us fractured. It keeps us small. It keeps us from realizing our actual power, which isn't individual. Rather, our power is collective.
I've seen this play out in every arena: corporate jobs, creative industries, academia, motherhood, friendship. A woman gets a promotion and the others resent her instead of celebrating her. A woman gets published and other writers question her credibility. A woman has a large following and people whisper about how she doesn't deserve it. Not because these women are jealous, but because they've absorbed the lesson that there's only so much success to go around.
Why Your Success Doesn't Have to Cost Me Mine
Here's the radical truth: your success doesn't take anything from me. Not a single thing.
If you get a promotion, there are still opportunities for me. If you build a thriving business, that doesn't shrink my market. If you're brilliant and visible and loud, I don't become less brilliant or visible or loud by proximity. In fact, the opposite is true. When you go feral, when you stop shrinking, when you refuse to apologize for taking up space? Well, you give me permission to do the same.
This is what the patriarchy doesn't want you to know: that female success is exponential, not zero-sum. When one woman raises her voice, other women find theirs. When one woman sets a boundary without apology, it becomes easier for the next woman to do the same. When one woman refuses to dim herself, she creates space for the rest of us to stop dimming too.
But we have to believe it first. We have to genuinely, viscerally understand that your win isn't my loss. That I can celebrate your brilliance without diminishing my own. That there is actually room for all of us at the table; AND, that if there isn't, we can build a bigger table. This is why going feral isn't just about you. It changes how you move through the world in relation to other women. It fundamentally shifts your relationship to female solidarity.
What Solidarity Actually Looks Like in Practice
Solidarity isn't performative. It's not a hashtag or a slogan or a performance of sisterhood while you're secretly hoping the other woman fails. Real solidarity is built in the small moments, in the choices you make when nobody's watching.
It looks like this:
- Celebrating a woman's win, even if it stings a little. Especially if it stings a little. That sting is the scarcity myth talking. You can feel it and do the generous thing anyway. Envy is a real emotion that you are allowed to feel and acknowledge.
- Giving another woman credit in the room instead of hoarding it. Pulling her into conversations instead of keeping her out.
- Sharing the resources, contacts, and opportunities you have instead of treating them like your personal treasure. Knowing that what you give away often comes back multiplied.
- Speaking up when other women are being diminished, even when it costs you something. Even when it makes you unpopular.
- Admitting when you got scared and competitive, when your Goblin told you another woman's success was a threat to yours. And choosing differently.
- Refusing to participate in the diminishment of other women, not just in big, obvious ways, but in the tiny ways. The comments about her appearance. The questions about whether she really earned it. The whispers about her ambition being selfish.
- Calling out the system instead of blaming the woman. When a woman is thriving, don't resent her for it. Recognize that she figured something out, and ask yourself: what is she doing differently? What can I learn from her? How can we do this together?
Solidarity also means understanding that not all women are at the same place in their journey. Some women are still learning to survive in the system. Some are still deeply tamed. Some are just starting to wake up their Feral Unicorn. That doesn't make them your enemy. It means you might need to extend extra grace, extra patience, extra space for them to find their way.
Real solidarity is messy and imperfect and requires you to keep checking your own Goblin, your own scarcity mindset, and your own fear.
How Going Feral Changes Everything
When you start to go feral and stop shrinking, stop apologizing, stop dimming yourself for other people's comfort...something shifts in your relationship to other women. You stop seeing them as competition. You start seeing them as mirrors. As allies. As fellow wild things trying to break free. A woman who is truly secure in her own power doesn't feel threatened by another woman's power. A woman who has raised her own unicorn horn doesn't resent another woman for raising hers. A woman who has claimed her own space at the table celebrates when another woman claims hers.
When you're going feral, you realize the scarcity myth is a lie. You realize that the system wants you to believe there's only room for one, because if you believed there was room for all of you (if you truly believed you could rise together) you'd be unstoppable. You'd organize. You'd demand change. You'd build something that the patriarchy can't control.
And so you start to move differently. You start to take up space without apology. You start to celebrate other women's wins like they're your own, because they kind of are. You start to pull other women into rooms, share opportunities, build networks that lift each other up. Not to practice being a good person, but because you've realized that your power is only limited if you're fighting alone.
This is what solidarity looks like when you're going feral: it's not a guilt-driven obligation. It's a radical recognition that we're stronger together, and we always have been.
The Goblin's Lie About Female Friendship
Your Goblin (you know, that internalized voice shaped by the patriarchy, capitalism, diet culture, and the good woman curse) has a very specific story about female relationships. It tells you that women are catty. That women can't be trusted. That female friendship is fraught with jealousy and competition. That you can't be best friends with someone you work with or someone who's successful in the same arena as you. That if another woman is winning, you're losing. This story is so embedded in our culture that we barely question it. We pass it on to our daughters. We perform it in TV shows and movies. We treat it like fact.
But it's not fact. It's the Goblin's lie. It's what the patriarchy needs you to believe to keep you fractured.
The truth is more radical: women are capable of extraordinary loyalty, brilliance, and love when we're not busy protecting ourselves from the scarcity myth. When you have women in your life who are truly going feral those relationships become some of the deepest, most nourishing connections you'll ever have, because those who've done their own work to dismantle their own curses. You're no longer competing. You're witnessing each other. You're celebrating each other. You're building together.
The Goblin will tell you this is dangerous. That if you celebrate another woman too much, she'll leave you behind. That if you support her too openly, you'll look weak. That if you share your resources or opportunities, you'll run out. These are lies installed by a system that profits from your isolation.
What Happens When Women Actually Support Each Other
I want to tell you what I've witnessed when women choose solidarity over scarcity. When they decide to go feral together instead of alone.
I've seen women build businesses that would have failed alone. I've seen women get promoted because another woman vouched for them in a room they weren't in. I've seen women reclaim their bodies, their sexualities, their ambitions - not despite the women around them, but because of them. Because someone said: "I see you. Your dreams matter. I'm going to help." And that changed everything.
I've watched friend groups become networks. Mentors. Accountability partners. Collaborators. And what's remarkable is that their individual success doesn't diminish one bit. It multiplies. Because they're not dividing their energy into competition and secrecy. They're pooling it. They're amplifying it.
This is what the patriarchy fears most: women who actually support each other. Women who've realized the scarcity myth is a lie. Women who are going feral together.
Your Turn: From Competition to Solidarity
Maybe you're reading this and recognizing yourself in that story at the beginning. Maybe either as the woman being diminished or as the woman doing the diminishing. Just know that this isn't a character flaw. You were taught this. You learned it. And you can unlearn it.
Going feral means releasing the grip of the scarcity myth. It means looking at other women's success and feeling genuinely happy for them. Not performing happiness. Not the kind of celebration that comes with a side of resentment. Real joy. Because you've realized that their rise is part of a collective rising. That we're all better off when more of us are free.
This is where Find Her Again becomes so important. Because it's not just about you finding yourself. It's about learning to show up differently in your relationships with other women. It's about recognizing the curses that have been installed: the scarcity mindset, the good woman curse, the internalized belief that there's only room for one. An then choosing to dismantle them. Not just for yourself, but for all of us.
When you go feral, you don't just change your own life. You change the lives of the women around you. You give them permission. You model a different way. You show them that female solidarity is possible, even when the system has spent decades trying to convince you it isn't.
The woman from the beginning of my story and I never repaired our relationship. I moved on and never saw her again. But I learned from it. I learned that the only way forward is to refuse the scarcity myth, to celebrate other women fiercely, and to build something with them instead of against them. If you're ready to do the same—to release the competition, to raise your horn in solidarity with other women, to go feral together—Find Her Again. Your Feral Unicorn is waiting. And so are the women who are ready to rise with you.
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