What is Power?
Part I: The Forces We Call Power
Power is like a cold bath.
Something that’s supposed to be restorative and clarifying, but is actually jarring. A shock to the system. Not something you want to soak in for too long.
And yet I am fascinated by power. It’s a bath I want to bathe in.
My own power. The power other people wield. The power of nature. Tidal, indifferent, immense. The power of the unknown.
I think about the deep sea. An entire ecosystem thriving in darkness, governed by forces we barely understand. I think about outer space, the silent expansion of everything. Energetic fields. Invisible structures shaping what we cannot see.
Nothing we create will ever surpass the power that creates us. Stand beside a waterfall and feel the force of thousands of years moving past your body without noticing you exist. Watch a storm form over warm water. Watch land rearranged in a single night. Watch life emerge, multiply, decay, and return again without consultation, without permission.
Nature does not negotiate.
It does not strategize.
It does not seek dominance. It just is.
Life-giving. Life-taking. Destructive and generative at once.
All human power: money, beauty, influence, law—dissolves instantly in the presence of that scale.
You cannot persuade a tide.
You cannot seduce gravity.
You cannot manipulate tectonic plates.
Power without narrative. Without witness.
I want to stand outside of power and observe it.
But I also want to know everything about it.
Power pulls me in.
And then there is the power we created. Human power. The kind we have come to kneel before. The power you probably think of when I say I want to bathe in power. Capitalism. Patriarchy. Ownership. Status. Institutions that decide who is valuable, who is credible, who is protected, who is expendable.
And, for the sake of nuance, I am absolutely interested in freedom.
This is where I do believe there is a particular kind of power in financial wealth. It creates space. It creates time. It creates choice. It expands access. To travel, to education, to rest, to experience. It allows for a different kind of movement through the world. I am not immune to that pull.
But this is not the truest power. It’s only one ingredient, and yet it flavors the whole soup. I want to understand what power actually is before I decide how to use it.
Not the version we inherited.
Not the version we perform.
The version that feels true in my body.
Because if I am going to bathe in power, I want to know what I am stepping into.
I am not interested in power that dominates.
I am not interested in power that extracts.
I am not interested in power that requires someone else to become smaller.
I am interested in power that creates.
That holds.
That multiplies.
That regenerates.
Power that makes more life possible.
Power that feels like a lineage, not a hierarchy.
Matriarchal power.
Not soft. Not passive. Not polite.
But deeply rooted. Cyclical. Enduring.
The kind of power that knows how to build, sustain, and transform without needing to destroy.
The kind of power that does not announce itself, and yet shapes everything.
That is the power I am trying to understand.
Contemporary Matriarchs I admire and whose work I am following on Substack:
Letters from A Young Matriarch by Nergiz
Love in the Cracks by Mekdela Maskal
Mother, Loosen my Tongue by Huda Hassan
Pulling the Thread by Elise Loehnen
This is Part I of a series on power.
Part II explores how power moves through the body, beauty, and attention.