In my Sunday newsletter, I shared about why I love doing power work.

I shared about a kaleidoscope of fantastic things I experience through Wayfinding and with this wonderful community. It is enormously rewarding on so many levels, and there is also another realm of personal reasons why I’m passionate about my body of work and this service.

 

I am also personally invested in this work because I've experienced poignant moments of f*ckery and Shadow Power both as a customer and as an employee.

I’ve learned a great deal from experiencing what I don’t want and what corrodes relationships, teams, trust, and safety — both in my own life and from my work supporting hundreds of other people. As a result, I have become wholeheartedly devoted to helping others learn to jiu-jitsu Shadow Power and stand for Power that Serves the Whole.

Below, I'm going to share some of my experiences to:

1. Fuel honest conversations about the types of power abuse and Shadow Power encounters we can have at work.
2. Give permission for you to reflect on moments where you may have put up with (or are currently putting up with) dynamics that feel violating.
3. Role model that transmutation of past hurts is possible and can fuel our Power that Serves the Whole.

 

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// Trigger warning: the following contains descriptions of physical and verbal abuse //

 

WHEN I WAS A CUSTOMER…

• Shortly after having a near-fatal fall off a waterfall, I was screamed at by an EMT while I was seizing on the ground, bleeding out internally. Obviously this didn’t help. Then the EMT team forgot to secure my backboard to the gurney in the ambulance, so I slammed into the front and back of the cab every time the ambulance accelerated and decelerated driving from Golden Gate Park to SF General. The compound effects to my physical and psychological trauma from this were significant, to say the least.
• After emergency surgery that day, the hospital staff rolled me into a staff locker room and forgot me there. I was left there overnight with the windows open in January, temperatures in the 20s and 30s, and no call button to ask for help. This also created unspeakable additional trauma.
• I spent 16 months, 50+ calls, and hundreds of hours navigating bureaucracy with my health insurance company when I finally realized I was actually double covered, and they should double pay my expenses, rather than me double owing on the $47K total bill. A manager hung up on me when I realized this and I had to escalate my case to the Chief Medical Officer appealing to their organizational values to honor their policies.

 

Are you breathing? I’m breathing. It’s ok.

 

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WHEN I WAS AN EMPLOYEE…

• I was repeatedly backhand slapped on the arm by my manager and yelled at while carrying trays of food out to customers as a waitress at a 5-star resort. He did it to many servers. I was grief-stricken after my dad’s death and it took me weeks of experiencing this to stand up to it. One day during a slammed lunch shift, he did it again and I snapped. I whipped around and punched him in the arm he had slapped me with, giving him a dead arm. He cocked his fist on the other arm to punch me and fully on instinct, I intercepted his swing, punching him again in the offending arm. I yelled at him to never touch me again and all the staff in the kitchen started a slow clap. He stopped after that. But I wish none of this had gone down that way. I wish I’d known then what I know now about power.
• I was relentlessly bullied for months by a senior leader and Partner at a design firm I worked at. My health rapidly deteriorated from the stress and I wasn’t confident the CEO would care about my experience because the offending leader was her best friend. I finally raised my case to the CEO, citing this was not only a horrific experience for myself, but that this leader bullied many other team members as well, and it was a threat to overall business success. The CEO thanked me and acknowledged the truth, but I left shortly after because it had all cut too deep.
• At a different firm, a Senior Partner put his hands around my throat and verbally threatened me right after thanking me for my time with the team as I was preparing to leave. He let go, laughed, and went and sat behind his desk, telling me to keep in touch (to him putting his hands around my throat and threatening me was a joke, to me it took a decade to process and release). Afterward I told the CEO what happened and he said it was my choice whether to tell HR or not, and that if I did this Senior Partner would likely lose his large acquisition payout that he had worked for for ten years. No one had my back, so I didn’t say anything.

These are tough stories to resurface, but they’ve taught me a lot.

 

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I love doing power work to help others heal from such experiences and to prevent them from happening.

These stories are real, but I’m not a victim to them.

Through my own practice of power embodiment and power literacy, I’ve healed these wounds in myself, the solidness of my inner stand is greater, my Power that Serves the Whole is brighter and my fierceness in holding boundaries to Shadow Power are stronger.

Now I love helping others realize, name, and diffuse the Power Abuse or Shadow Power encounters they’ve been tolerating or gaslit into overlooking as part of their personal power journeys.

 

Suffering at work is real.

I know many of you have experienced it too.

And that’s part of your dedication to being a heart-centered leader creating different ways of working.

Power literacy is an incredible skill you can use to prevent harmful encounters from happening and deftly transmute and navigate them when they do arise.

 

If you feel inspired or motivated to tap into your greatest power,

If you want to come experience this utterly unique and truly life-changing work,

Then join me for the October Regenerative Power Embodiment Accelerator.

Enrollment closes on September 20 and this is likely the last public cohort I’ll be holding until Feb 2025.

 

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