What does it mean when you hear that someone is empowered? How does one get to be empowered? I was curious. Was I empowered? Does everyone have power? Power to accomplish? Power to persuade? Power to simply be? Power to not be taken advantage of?

I looked to those women who are stepping forward today and are using their power to get retribution against those who have hurt them both physically and emotionally. After their sad experiences, these women felt powerless and were made to feel less than the beautiful soul they are — until they felt empowered enough to speak out. What had turned on that switch for them?

Simply by living life, most of us at one time will experience a sense of powerlessness and at another time a sense of being powerful. What makes the difference?

I’ve learned by experience that if we give ourselves permission to be truthful and honest no matter the circumstances, we have a certain sense of POWER because there is no longer anything to hide and no one can hold something over us. If we withhold that something, we live in fear of it being exposed, which allows that fear to make us feel powerless. What holds us hostage to that feeling of powerlessness?

In our society, there tends to be a price to pay for someone who speaks out, particularly, if it goes against a personal belief or the general beliefs of the society we live in. For example, how many think if a woman goes into a man’s hotel room, she deserves to get whatever comes about? There are many men and women in our society today who believe that.

Yet, if we can agree that empowerment is an individual’s allowing her or himself to take action, what happens when anyone caught in a position where wrongdoing occurs wants to protest it by speaking out? The results aren’t always good. Any sense of empowerment created by taking action and speaking out quickly becomes a sense of feeling and becoming powerless when:

• He or she is harshly judged and/or ridiculed for their involvement;
• The protest is made against a perpetrator who is in a more powerful position, and the protest is not believed or warranted noteworthy.

Usually the instigator for taking action come about when a person says, “Enough is enough!” A time is reached when it becomes too painful to remain silent or in a comfort zone and more is wanted. Even if you do something and nothing changes, you create a sense of empowerment knowing you’ll never have to live in a state of regret of not having taken action. You have that power of knowing you at least tried.

Let’s look at empowerment beyond the blaming and finger-pointing. Empowerment in its simple form means giving yourself the power to take action, no matter what it is. It’s not limited to speaking out against someone else. It’s taking action to do anything you want to do or have.

Believing that, when I asked myself whether I felt empowered and my answer was a resounding, “Yes!” I had to look at why I felt that way.

I realize we all are empowered by being able to make the choices we make each second of each minute of each hour of each day, and so forth. We create the life we live by our chain of choices. And, to be able to create our life is the most potent sense of empowerment anyone can have. So, does everyone have power? I rest my case.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of CHOICES Magazine