When sisterhood gets slippery

FRIENDSHIPS BETWEEN WOMEN—ESPECIALLY among groups of women, where tendrils of energy and intuition entwine and collide like the offshoots of willful plants—seem to come with so many attendant complications. Ideally, everyone is growing toward and reaching for the same sun. But what if you’re battling for the same air and water? What happens when petty resentments become destructive lesions, or when envy chokes off reason? The promise women have made to one another, once unspoken but now a kind of noisy anthem, is that all women must support one another, all the time. But deep in our hearts we know it can’t always work like that, perhaps especially with those who are closest to us. Because women are people, and conflict between people is inevitable. Familiarity may nourish intimacy, but it can also breed that other thing, as damaging to a friendship as