Once power is lost, how do we find it again? No one said it would be easy. I really had no clues about this life and what challenges lie ahead until the day I was run over by a bicycle. Lying on the ground looking up at the neighborhood bully changed my reality. I was eight. It wasn’t the only humiliation I suffered during the years of becoming a human, but among the first to trigger the “I’m It” response. I was “It” for most of my youth and into my thirties. I was tagged, labeled, laughed at, lied to, and generally hog tied to the belief that I was not running my life, not worthy, and not beautiful like the many stars I collected and put in my scrapbook of a fantasy life.

I was so jealous of one of my schoolmates because she was only eleven and singing on the steps of our school. I was ugly and without a voice. Sure I had many strange, unusual experiences, but that did not save me from the little voice inside that said, “YOU WILL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH.” How did that happen to me? I gave up who I was to every individual that seemed a threat.

How could I be in a society that always had me proving my worth? How come, in most people’s eyes, I was the girl in the corner and ugly at that? Toads were ugly, not to me, but they were used in many of the discussions of who was pretty and who was not. Petty things school girls talked about. No one would want to talk to me about little men who wore big black sunglasses and talked without opening their mouths.

As far as I was concerned, everyone I knew was powerful, better than I would ever be. I saw myself as a loser, not just because of one thing, but many. Everyone admired my mother; I hid behind her. My brother became quite smart and landed important jobs. I never had an important job, or one where I felt adequate.

What I did not see was what I was doing with the self that was reaching out to me, trying to grab a moment when the voice was quiet. What I did not see was the core of me speaking my truth. I did not listen. I was too caught up in the world and what it thought. It was not the world, it was my misinterpretation of what I did and saw in the world.

It was my calculation of a world that was not even mine, but someone else’s with my signature. I could not sit around and talk of my adventures, because from my experience I would be put away in some dark room until I could talk of things that mattered. I would sit in a corner until I told the truth. Where was my power then? I believe my power was residing in some nun’s habit, or in some dark confessional. I needed to get it back.

Where does one start when looking for power? If I had had power the day I was knocked down and run over by a bike, the kid would have had tire marks on his forehead. A figure of speech, but I did not believe in me, or even that I was good enough to stand up for myself, which was a bit hard with him sitting on the bike. I came out of it with only bruises and a sore tummy, but it told me something about myself.

The question came up in my mind, “Is this how it will be from now on?” I did not run, because I felt I could stand up to this bully who down the road got his Karma. Someone stole his bike! There were many days of “not running,” but it was because of the fear of rejection, or of what my peers would think of me in a no-win situation. I had to turn that no-win into a positive avenue, one I could stand on and not be hit by a bus! I had to go deep inside to where the power was lying dormant. Dormant, a bit like doormat wouldn’t you think?

It seems we feel our power comes if someone gives it to us. It seems our power comes from the outside of who we are. Something has to happen to us in order for us to realize that the power that we are lies within our concepts of who we are. Who delivered the platter of non-power to me? Did I have to taste it, swallow it, digest it, and live with it? Yes, if I had no clue as to how to master my own destiny. I only saw others with the power, the ego kept saying to me not good enough, and the events kept saying: Find your truth now. Where was that divine person God created? I lived with a mountain of guilt for circumstances that were beyond me.

I only observed and did not participate in becoming a divine human being. I thought I was, and yet to let everyone I felt to be elevated, strong, brilliant, and demanding take away a piece of me at will, soon caused a wrinkle in the fabric of the life I was working toward. I felt guilty because of the secret I harbored of life beyond what we all thought we knew. More as a child, as of course, we were taught guilt before we could speak.

I had power as a small child, but soon lost it due to the indoctrination of society. Never did I feel that the word “please” could do and say so much according to how it was used. Please can have guilt built behind it like a granite fort. Power is the same. Power has fear built into it. Hitler was power. War was power. Fear bred into the young minds of the world is power. I was afraid of power.

Being able to say what I feel, speak the truth, argue for my beliefs, and stand up for my rights is what power is. Not backing down when someone comes after me or argues for their beliefs, is taking back my power. Believing in myself, loving me and what I stand for, not compromising in the face of adversity and realizing that power is all of that! To find power all one has to do is let go of ego, let go of fear, let go of the years of conditioning and actually wake up and find that little hidden self in the closet of intentions that never came to fruition. One has to find what love really means, not just for someone else, but also for the self. The hardest thing to do is to really love yourself and be satisfied with that.

Most of our lives we have looked for love in corners, in airports, at weddings, always looking for someone else to fulfill us, take care of us, tell us how to live our lives, and all the while we just need the strength and the knowledge to understand ourselves and what we are. It doesn’t happen overnight, and yet sometimes it does. Sometimes just a word, an experience, a line in a movie, jolts us out of our nightmare world into sudden and lasting utopia. A new journey begins, and this time we are not afraid of what someone thinks. We are not afraid to be us. We don’t back away in fear because now the strength we have always had at our disposal is easy to reach, because we believe it is there.

The power I had always feared was not the kind of power that limits, but something that rings out and lets spirit become defined in an undefined world. I have found that while looking upon the man who rakes in his wealth and then sits upon it, he has forgotten that being divine is something no one can take from him.

In these times it seems that man is now finding the truth of himself, and that is the love of family, friends, and country reaps more benefits than any pile of gold. When we die we take with us the laughter and pain, the lessons we learned while tramping across the cosmos.

While here, I intend to keep learning, keep searching, while building my fortune in divinity, and nurturing the power that ripens the fruit of wisdom. I find that I am no longer “It” but the whole of a sum of parts scattered to the winds of chance, and I choose to dance in the ashes of the powerlessness I left behind.