I was eight years old. Third grade.

I thought I had found my people — a nice group of girls, I was happy to be included, happy to belong. Until I found out that one prominent girl in the group (Elizabeth) had invited every single girl in the class to her birthday party.  Every girl. Except me.

I was devastated. And I had no idea why I was excluded because to my face – it was all smiles – everything seemed well.  Apparently not.

That’s the thing about this particular kind of hurt — there’s no explanation attached. No confrontation. No reason you can name. Just the sudden, sickening awareness that you’ve been quietly removed from something and you don’t know what you did to deserve it.

You probably have your own version of that story. Most Thoroughbred Women do.

One of the best books I’ve read about this behavior is In the Company of Women: Indirect Aggression Among Women by Pat Heim and Susan Murphy. It gave me language for something I’d experienced with “girl groups” in my life but couldn’t quite name. The book details how indirect or relational aggression — gossip, exclusion, withholding information, silent treatment, undermining, forming cliques, “friendly” criticism — hurts women and prevents them from achieving success and harmony in their adult lives.

Watch Mean Girls. Watch any season of any Real Housewives franchise. It’s all there, in the raw – and devastating.

There isn’t a women’s audience I’ve spoken to where every single head doesn’t nod when these behaviors get named. It’s universal. But for Thoroughbred Women, it started early. For me – early as third grade.

Here’s why.

Heim and Murphy call it power-dead-even. Girls are taught from the beginning that relationships are their currency — and that direct confrontation, real feelings, honest disagreement are too risky, too vulnerable and could (gasp!) disrupt the balance of the group. So there’s an unspoken social contract: we stay equal. Equal in power, attention, status, confidence, visibility, success. The moment one girl seems to have more of something — more confidence, more leadership, more presence — the balance feels disrupted.

And the correction is swift, quiet, and invisible.

Not playing dolls the way the group leader thinks you should? A new group forms without you. Get a significant promotion above your lunch colleagues at work? It’s fine – at first.  But then the lunch invitations slow down and the subtle digs begin — “surely you can cover the total tab, you’re doing so well now.”

The punishing part of power-dead-even is this: it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. But it leaves you feeling like you did something wrong that you can’t put your finger on.

That’s hard for a grown woman to understand. For an eight-year-old it’s impossible.

High-capacity Thoroughbred girls become targets not because they’re doing anything wrong — but because their confidence, their momentum, their visibility unintentionally disrupts the room. They can’t name it. You couldn’t name it. So the coping mechanism becomes: What did I do wrong? Was I too loud? Too excited? Maybe I should tone it down. Maybe if I work harder at fitting in.

It’s no wonder women drag this wound straight into adulthood and silently let it control them in running their race!

But here’s what I want you to hear:

You weren’t too much. You weren’t too confident. Smaller people wanted to control the room. You couldn’t see it coming — there was nothing you could have done. This was never about your worth. You don’t owe anyone an apology for being built for more.

For me, healing meant calling it exactly what it was — and then putting it to rest in prayer. Believing that forgiveness gives those experiences no hold over me. I did this exercise with a trusted woman mentor.  Those hurts are in the rear-view mirror now. Not ahead of me. Don’t wait to name it – deal with it now – the earlier, the better!

Maybe you need to grieve some lost friendships. Maybe you need to name this out loud to women you trust. Whatever it is — do it, feel it, and then leave it there.

You don’t have time to wallow. You’ve got a race to run!

And when you find your people — the women who celebrate your promotion, who aren’t threatened by your success, who make the room bigger instead of smaller — hold onto them!  Be that woman for someone else. We have enough petty, power-dead-even women in the world. What we need are women who know how to run and who cheer loudly when another woman finds her stride.