Strategic power isn't something I wanted. It's something I had to learn to need.

I used to be uncomfortable with the word power.

Not because I didn't want things. I wanted things desperately — to be taken seriously, to have my decisions respected, to build something that lasted, to stop feeling like my life was happening to me instead of being shaped by me.

But somewhere between childhood and adulthood, I absorbed the idea that wanting power was the wrong kind of wanting. That good women were collaborative rather than commanding. That real strength was quiet. That influence was something you earned by being agreeable enough for long enough.

And so I learned to want things quietly. To make myself smaller than I was. To frame every ambition as something I was doing for others, so it wouldn't sound like I was doing it for myself.

It took me a long time to see how much that was costing me.

The realization that changed something

Here's what I've been sitting with lately.

Strategic power isn't the ability to control others. It's the ability to stop being controlled by circumstances, by other people's decisions, by systems that weren't built with you in mind.

It's the ability to say no without guilt eating you alive afterward. To make a decision and stand behind it without waiting for someone to validate it first. To build something and protect it — your time, your energy, your values, your vision — without apologizing for the act of protecting.

That's it. That's what I mean by power. Not domination. Not force. The quiet, firm ability to shape your own life instead of being shaped by everyone else's.

And I've started to believe that not building it — staying comfortable, staying small, waiting for permission — isn't actually the safe choice. It just feels like one.

Why do we resist it

I think most of us resist building strategic power for one of two reasons.

The first is that we've watched what power looks like when it's wielded without integrity. And it's ugly. So we decide that the solution is to want less of it, to stay further from it, to let other people handle it while we focus on being good.

But that logic only works if the people handling it share your values. And they often don't. And then you're left living with decisions you had no part in making, by people who had the power to make them precisely because you stepped back.

The second reason is more personal and harder to admit. We resist power because we're not sure we deserve it. Because part of us still believes that wanting to matter is arrogant. That needing authority over your own life is somehow selfish.

It isn't. Needing authority over your own life is the most basic form of self-respect there is.

What does building it actually look like

This isn't about becoming someone you're not. It's about stopping the habit of making yourself less than you are.

Decision power is choosing what you want — actually knowing what you want — and making moves toward it without waiting for a sign that it's okay to proceed. It's making the call and standing behind it, even when it's uncomfortable.

Boundary power is saying no and meaning it. Not as a performance of self-care but as a genuine act of protection. Your time, your energy, your attention — these are finite. How you spend them is a decision that belongs to you.

Influence power is building relationships and creating value with people who are going in the same direction you want to go. Not networking as a transaction. Showing up consistently, being genuinely useful, and being someone people trust because you've earned it.

Resource power is financial stability, skills, knowledge, and networks — the tangible things that give you options when you need them. Options are power. The more options you have, the less trapped you are by any single circumstance.

Authority power is the hardest one and the most important — stepping into leadership in your own life first. Deciding that you are the person responsible for what happens next. Not because it's comfortable, but because the alternative is letting someone else be that person.

The thing I'm still learning

I don't have this fully figured out. I'm still unlearning the instinct to make myself smaller when I think I might be taking up too much space. Still catching myself waiting for permission I don't actually need. Still noticing when I frame my ambitions in terms of other people's benefit, so they sound less like the selfish thing I was taught wanting was.

But I'm building. Slowly, intentionally, with as much integrity as I can bring to it.

Because the question was never whether I needed strategic power.

The question was whether I was going to build it on purpose — or let someone else build it for me and live with whatever they decided to do with it.

I know which one I'm choosing.

With love,