Claiming Our Power

Claiming our power often brings up our insecurities and vulnerabilities. It can paralyze us and habitually return us to focusing on old wounds and problems. 

Sure, we all have challenges that arise, but how we approach them is key. There are many painful and challenging times in every person’s life, but how we react is how we wield our power. 

It is as an opportunity to invent ourselves, or we can be a victim of circumstance. It’s impossible to move forward and grow unless we cut the umbilical cord to our suffering. Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves being fed by the pain of our past, which only creates a very unhealthy state of existence. 

Worry, hurt, and fear are emotions we all have, no matter what age we are. No one has a pain-free or worry-free existence. We do have, however, the ability to understand these emotions and the capacity to learn how to use them in a healthier way. Like living in harmony with nature and the flow of the seasons, we can accept that we have the power to work with them and not be held hostage by suffering. 

Claiming Our Power

Being at peace and choosing kindness can help determine the quality of our life, especially when were loving and compassionate with ourselves. Just like a wound or scratch, when you leave it alone, it will heal naturally. But when we constantly pick at it, it will take time to heal and no doubt leave a scar.

Poet Kenneth Rexroth reminds us that “maturity is having the ability to escape categorization,” and that’s the opposite of the conventional wisdom. For many people, the process of growing up and becoming an adult means trying to fit in and be responsible and stable. 

Rexroth, however, suggests that when we fully ripen into our potentials, we transcend standard definitions. 

We don’t adhere to others’ expectations; we’re uniquely ourselves, beyond all labels and boxes. “Love slays what we have been, that we may be what we were not.” What’s your opportunity to practice and cultivate this sacred practice of stepping into your power?