I Give Me Power
Two feet in the ground, or two hands pushing away. Standing in my power, or giving it away. Energy in, or energy out. Being where my feet are, or constantly lunging forward. Independent, or codependent. Boundaries, or enmeshment. Content, or restless. Sukha, or dukkha. Open handed, or clinched fists. Santosha, or parigrah. Receiving, or grasping.
They’re all part of the same thing: Kelly accepting her Truth and power, or Kelly in denial of it.
Admittedly, I haven’t been living in my power. I never even knew that was a thing. Power always seemed this She-Ra-like quality that was only reserved for the super heroes on TV.
Or God. Yes, that’s exactly it: I only believed that God was supposed to have the power and his was a booming patriarchal shame more than anything else. If my lowly femaleness tried to be powerful, it would only be blasphemy.
Power was opinionated, strong, overwhelming, fierce. That is what we see all around us. We don’t grow up seeing power as something quiet.
I remember being in yoga therapy training back in 2010. It was a time where I felt completely powerless. I was desperately clinging to my marriage that was crumbling. I was trying to forge a career in the yoga world, and our country was in the midst of recession, meaning we were completely broke. Feeling strong and grounded was the antithesis of where I was at.
At the end of our training, we sat in a circle with our cohort for an exercise in receiving and being seen. After a year of plunging into every facet of ourselves, hearing feedback, and rummaging through the shadows, it was a welcome sigh of relief to be affirmed.
Our validation exercise went as such: scrawl your first name on the center of a 3x5 card, then pass it around the circle. Each person would write a word that reminded them of you on the card. By the time your card made it back to you, it was bursting with affirmations. There were many tears shed because, honestly, humans suck at hearing that they actually have redeemable qualities.
There was one phrase on my card that has always stood out among the rest. It did back in 2010, and nine years later, it’s still the one that I come back to.
QUIET STRENGTH.
Me? Strong? Quiet, yes. That’s always been my M.O. But strength? I never associated myself with being strong (unless it was my calves–I knew my legs were strong).
All I could see then was weakness. All I could muster, or so I thought, was the strength to put out my arms to those around me and either beg for approval, or push away. Both were a state of submission.
But that’s not what these women saw. They helped expose a power and a strength that I didn’t know existed, or that could exist. All I can think of is Botticelli’s Birth of Venus–this glorious divine feminine emerging from a pastel clam shell with wide eyes and flowing hair. Her face was content, unphased by the forces around her. She stood in this sort of effortless power that I remember even twenty-five years after seeing it in person.
They saw that divine feminine in me. Thank goodness because I sure as hell couldn’t see it in myself. But sometimes we need others to be that mirror, right?
My strength, if I could call it that, was in giving myself away. Which is why it’s not really a strength at all. What it is, though, is a great recipe for resentment and anger. And that leads to a whole lot of outstretched arms trying to cobble together boundaries that I didn’t have the tools to build. Or perhaps I did have them, but I was completely unaware.
Which is exactly the point: how much power do all of us have that we’re completely unaware of? Not the power to put up walls between you and your foe or pull people out of destitution, or salvage barren relationships, but the simple power to stand firm.
Galatians 5:1 says: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
Even though my Bible is a bit dustier these days, in writing this, that verse immediately came to mind. I’ve always loved it, but never understood why. Perhaps I was grasping so hard for that freedom, pining in the recesses of broken relationships, and overthinking for a way to get free, that I missed its Truth. The Way was there all along: STAND FIRM.
Power is freedom, reimagined. When you acknowledge and accept your power, you are acknowledging that you are a liberated being; one that doesn’t depend on attachments for worth, but one that is worthy from birth, bare feet planted on the floor of a slimy clam shell.
So, that’s where I stand. It may not feel like I’m doing much, but I am. I am being reborn, wide-eyed, naked and unashamed of the immense power I have in just being myself.
(Now go listen to “I Give You Power” by Arcade Fire and Mavis Staples)