How Unity Brings Happiness and Separation Elicits Pain

Let's talk about how love and hate fuel connection and disconnection in women

Ali Hall

Jul 5, 2023

Healthy connection sparks joy and nourishment. Rip this away in any manner of ways, and we experience the pain of separation.

I’m reading The Anatomy of Loneliness, by Teal Swan, recommended by a beautiful friend and AN reader (shout out to you, PC). It’s too early to comment fully on the book, but one short paragraph echoes around my mind.

"There is only one type of pain in this universe, and it is separation.
There is only one type of happiness, and it is unity.
Any time you feel pain of any kind, it means that you feel separate from something."

Our world is full of separation whether we like it or not.

Being separated from a caregiver for the first time.
Changing schools and leaving friends behind.
Moving house or country and separating ourselves from everything once familiar.
Relationship breakdowns and community disintegration.
Career changes, retirement, redundancies, dismissals.

And then, of course, separation is fabricated through polarised politics and social and cultural norms.

Separation isn’t always such a negative thing. Personal growth requires us to separate ourselves from our previous selves. But this initial process of untangling can feel painful.

Feeling separate from another fuels disconnection and can hinder our compassion levels. I’m someone who tries to find our areas of commonality and what unites us instead of focusing on what divides us.

I want to focus on the separation women experience.

Synthetic separation

The world is spinning on axes of pain. It’s become dizzy with hate incited by power-focused agendas.

The perception of separation and our propensity to focus on our differences with those around us fuels hate.

We see what separates us rather than what joins us. This distancing becomes glaringly obvious around certain spheres.

Religion, race, and ethnicity
Gender
LGBTQIA+
Socio-economic position
Age
Disability

Fear of something different is used to weaponize us into a state of hate and suspicion. We have built walls based on labels and identity.

Women are used like fighting dogs and set upon each other. Politicians, religious leaders, and right-leaning media throw hand grenades into the female demographic and watch the frenzy of division arise.

Friction toward other women does not come innately from within the female soul; it’s synthetic and put upon us.

Women supporting women

When you are the one who is perceived as different, the insidious hate rains down in subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways.

Authors Elizabeth Day and Ruby Warrington have written individually about their non-parenting status. One is without children through choice, the other through infliction. Yet both feel separateness from some mothers, who were once friends, who have slowly extrapolated themselves out of their lives.

When you dare to be separate from the masses and tread a different path, suspicion amounts, leading others to scramble desperately for evidence that you are wrong, disillusioned, and can not be trusted. You are perceived as unsafe, a pariah.

I write vehemently about my choice not to have children. Within this paradigm, I recognise the anguish of those who are childless by circumstance, support the individual choices of those who choose to have children, and debunk the pervasive political and social attacks on women without children.

Pronatalism builds separation and division. It tries to oust those without children from the circle and change the women supporting women movement to mothers supporting mothers. This ousting was abundantly clear in the political leadership playground of 2016 when Andrea Leadsom tried to use her “mother” status to her own advantage against Theresa May’s non-mother status.

I am astutely aware of how society tries to pit mothers and non-mothers against each other. But underneath it all, we are all suffering.

“Parents, particularly mothers, and people who are childfree or childless, have more in common than we realize. We often feel marginalized and invisible. We often feel alone and misunderstood. Let’s help each other and focus on our similarities, not our differences.
Maybe if we all respect each other’s life circumstances and not be so quick to judge or compare, we will find a greater understanding of each other.”

I call for better conditions for mothers. We need more affordable childcare, free school meals, and greater equitability in the home. And I want non-mothers to be seen, respected, accepted, and given a seat at the table. It doesn’t need to be either or.

Women supporting women means supporting all women, irrespective of reproduction status, race, religion, disability, age, skin colour, or LGBQTIA+ status.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to meet each other with empathy, compassion, understanding, and acceptance instead of using comparison and scrutiny to tear us apart?

How do you experience separation in your life? I’d love to hear your input in the comments.