I must know my power.

When we are feeling insecure or threatened, when we are lost in fear, pain, anger, or shame, we lose touch with our power. It is at these moments that we are most likely to revert away from our most evolved selves, back to the ‘power over’ tactics that reign supreme in our culture. Instead of asserting, we attack. Instead of asking for what we need, we manipulate to extract it. And when we hold privileged identities, as we grasp at power we grab ahold of far more power than we realize. Suddenly it is not just us in the room; we have invoked an entire system to crush the people in front of us. The people who we perceive as a threat, but who may be even more vulnerable than we are. It is not power itself that is the culprit; our power to protect, to create, to shape the world around us is sacred. The danger arises when we abuse power, when we use it to harm or to disempower another. And so it is our responsibility to get to know ourselves as powerful beings, to confront anything that alienates us from our power. Because it is when we feel powerless that we are most likely to unconsciously bludgeon others with our power.