Embodying the Essence of Your True Power
Since my days as a campaign strategist, I became acutely aware of the ways women are expected to compartmentalize themselves at work. I moved within professional spaces that saw my heritage, appearance, and intuitiveness as a threat to a carefully constructed hierarchy. While I was "allowed" to move up in the ranks, the truth was that those who were actually a part of the communities we were advocating for – myself included – were shut out of core positions of leadership.
Were they unworthy or incapable? Not by a long shot. Did they possess the power to lead? Absolutely.
I began to notice, both in myself and the women I worked with, that we were in a liminal space. Women were not yet fully aware of the tools they possessed to transform through the deep discomfort of being in this space. While it seemed that the only way up was following hierarchical belief systems that elevated european philosophy and masculine culture, this linear trajectory of leadership simply was NOT it.
These women, predominantly black, brown, indigenous, and of immigrant heritage, were placated with a seat at the table that held less equity than their white counterparts. How were we supposed to do more with less? And when we were given a seat at the table, we realized, the table was never going to be ours. I felt out of touch with my power, and the spiral of burnout led me to many more questions.
Though I saw my work contributing to change on smaller scales, I asked myself what would happen if my ideas were allowed to take up more space? If I was allowed to take up more space?
Answering these questions and many others required me to step away from my long-held career to recover my truth.
As I began to recover the roots of my identity, I remembered the expansiveness of myself. I was reminded of the experiences of my lineage, the truth that my power stemmed from, as the daughter of indigenous parents migrated from Latin America to the US. And it became clear to me, in that I only needed to dedicate myself to helping other women tap into their own power from this place.
We are told to lean in to achieve success in our professional careers. But what happens when we are leaning in from a place of instability and lack of identity? What if we are not connected to the source of our intuition? What happens when leaning in becomes falling into a trap – a cycle of disembodied experiences?
Some forms of leadership coaching do not account for the effects of colonized mindsets. There is a disconnection that strips away our agency and keeps us in our "place." I knew that the work I was being called to do would require me to identify what power meant from a decolonized perspective.
I knew that women of diverse cultural and racial heritage are already leaders and deserved more than a seat at the table. They deserved to build another kind of table altogether, with an entirely different cosmovision.
When the system at play prevents us from being in roles where we can change the cosmovision, sometimes it seems like the only option is to stay quiet and disengage. A permanent depression or disengagement also runs the risk of becoming disembodied. We become disconnected from the roots of our experience, we begin to deflate, and we take up less energetic space, losing this magical power that lives inside of us and crosses the ancestral experiences of seven generations.
Who are you when you are standing in your ancestral power across seven generations?
The time I spent aligning the information of my ancestral lineage with my essence led me to fortify my personal embodiment practice. With somatic work rooted in ancestral understandings, I was able to initiate the living connection between myself, the earth, the elements, and other beings.
True power comes from the embodiment of your essence.
This isn't something reserved for only a select few people. Your power as a physical and energy body comes from the depth of your story, the knowledge in your bloodline, and your inherent purpose as a being born into this world. It isn't something that can be taken from you, but dominant culture does a damn good job of shrouding it from your view.
The real work comes in the practice, the intentional and consistent embodiment of possibility that resides in you.
And the work never ends. It ebbs and flows just as you do, in every season you move through in life. Finding your power and standing in it is an act of self-commitment, as well as compassion for yourself in times of struggle.
As you reclaim your power process, you'll begin to emanate an energy that will connect you to people who will become your support system. I know in my journey, I was able to lean on others who chose to walk their own path alongside me. Our strengths began to function as a living organism, each offering the other something in an exchange of energy, accountability, and love.
Genuine, rooted power is an opportunity to make deep connections that benefit not only us but those we share it with. Rejecting the view of power as dominance, we can explore the abundance of possibility as the whole individuals we came here to be.
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