Becoming Power

I keep noticing something in my work, in my friendships, even in myself: so many people are starving for permission.

Permission to rest. To stop performing all the time. To tell the truth.

Permission to become stranger, more tender, more sweet. Permission to become more fully themselves.

So many of us learned that belonging required us to perform. We perform competence, pleasantness, productivity… We learned to shape-shift and contort ourselves to survive systems that could not fully hold us. And after a while, it’s hard to remember who we really are underneath all that adaptation.

The conversations I’ve had this season have each, in their own way, done what singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles calls “widening the road.” My guests’ stories make room on the road for different ways of being powerful.  

So today, I want to revisit some of those conversations, not just to reflect on what these guests learned about power, but to help you see yourself in their stories too. 

Because maybe what you need most right now isn’t more advice. Maybe you need a little more permission.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The common thread of truth about power that all of my guests have discovered
• Why stepping into our real power requires us to name and claim our unique powers
• How power calls us to pause and truly witness and honor others and our environments in ways only we can

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• Ep 2.06 Walking Each Other Home: Power, Elderhood, and Belonging with Shirley Showalter
• Ep 2.07 Seen, Known, and Valued: Sarabeth Bickerton on Naming Your Uniqueness
• Ep 2.08 Arriving in Your Power with Brooke Edwards 
• "Sweet Darkness," David Whyte

Do you know what it would feel like to arrive in your power?

We talk about power like it's a destination but I don't think that that's true. I mean, I have had clear, undeniable moments that I can point to and say, yes, that was me. I was lightning. But much more often, it's so much subtler than that.

It's a reaching. A getting a little closer than last time. It's the moment after, when I'm not sure if I lived up to my own high standards and someone who loves me says, “Did you see what you just did?” And because they know me really well, I can go, “Okay, yeah, that was pretty rad.” 

Brooke Edwards has spent 30 years guiding people through some of the most remote wildernesses on earth, keeping people alive in places that do not forgive mistakes. This year she walked into a completely different kind of challenge that required all of her accumulated skill and presence. 

I want you to listen for the moment when she stops wondering if she's the right person and she knows, I am the medicine. This is one of the clearest examples I've ever witnessed of someone arriving fully in their power.

This is a conversation about nervous systems, about trauma, about whimsy as rebellion, and about what it means to return to a place that once hurt you, and not just survive it, but bring healing back with you. 

It's also a conversation about what happens after you arrive in your power.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Brooke learned to truly rest and heal her nervous system after years of 24/7 situational vigilance as a wilderness guide
• Why putting on her “five-year-old helmet” and adding whimsy into her day are essential practices in Brooke’s ability to be a change-maker
• How Brooke’s system unexpectedly rebelled after her experience of stepping into her power
• Why we need guides and mirrors in our communities 
• The moment Brooke fully owned that she could be a uniquely powerful servant and ally to her community
• Why the return from the summit and pausing to integrate what we’ve learned are essential parts of the journey

Learn more about Brooke Edwards:

• Wild World Wanderings
• Facebook: @brooke.edwards.1253
• Instagram: @wildworldwanderings
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Substack: @shinybrookie

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• Buried, Ken Wylie

It was two and a half years ago, but I can still taste it—that mix of confusion, grief, fear, and exasperation from the job hunt after a layoff.

I kept hearing the same things:

“You’re overqualified.”
“You don’t quite fit this role.”
“Your resume doesn’t really make sense.”

Externally, I wanted to push back. But internally, I ingested a more dangerous thought: Maybe I don’t make sense.

After months of searching, I wasn’t just frustrated. I was starting to question whether I had ever even had the value I thought I did.

And I don’t think this is just my story.

We are living in a deeply strange moment in the world of work. And understatement, I know.

We have more ways than ever to describe ourselves, and somehow, we’re becoming harder to see. The systems we’re operating in were never designed to hold the full complexity of a human being. So they flatten us. They reward what can be easily categorized. And they pass over what can’t fit neatly into boxes. Over time, that oversimplification shapes who gets seen, who gets valued, and who gets to access power.

Today’s guest has been working on this exact problem for years. Dr. Sarabeth Berk Bickerton is a professional identity researcher and the leading expert on what she calls hybrid professionals—people whose careers don’t fit neatly into a single box.

In this conversation, we explore a radical and deeply hopeful idea: That your power doesn’t come from fitting into the system. It comes from naming yourself. We talk about professional identity, belonging, the hidden cost of trying to “fit,” and what it means to be seen, known, and valued in a world that keeps trying to simplify you.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How her personal pain point with feeling stuck in a box evolved into over a decade of research and a unique way of solving the problem
• Why naming our unique professional identity is essential for owning your power and standing out against AI
• Why we need to get clear on the language for the intersection of our skills, abilities, talents
• The three levels of belonging and how they impact how we feel seen and valued at work
• Understanding the three core identities and how they help us name who we are and how we can excel at work
• Why it’s essential to have a real, embodied connection with the words you choose to describe your professional identity

Learn more about Dr. Sarabeth Berk Bickerton:

• More Than My Title
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Instagram: @morethanmytitle
• Substack: @sarabethberkbickerton

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• More Than My Title: The Power of Hybrid Professionals in a Workforce of Experts and Generalists
• Seen, Known, Valued: How to Achieve Career Belonging in a Workforce Obsessed with Fit

There are times in the world and in our lives when hope feels abstract. Maybe there’s a little ironic detachment. Maybe it’s more of a passive wish than taking action. 

And there’s nothing wrong with wishing. But what I’m craving, and what I believe we need more than ever, is the kind of hope that gets its hands dirty. The kind that shows up–at community kitchens and school board meetings and in living rooms with our neighbors–that does not wait for the world to get better before jumping in. The kind of hope that asks, what is mine to do here?

My guest today embodies that question in a way that stopped me in my tracks when we met last summer. Shirley Showalter’s life has taken a path from her childhood in a buttoned-down Mennonite community to earning a PhD and becoming a distinguished professor of English, a liberal arts college president, and serving as vice president of the Fetzer Institute, where she spent years in conversation with some of the most thoughtful spiritual leaders in the world. And now, in what she calls her elderhood, she is still asking the question, what does it mean to belong to something larger than myself?

In this conversation, Shirley and I talked about activism, elderhood, spiritual practice, what makes us blush, and the particular, peculiar, and unpredictable journey of becoming powerful and staying powerful across a lifetime.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The deep joy and sense of belonging that Shirley found in nature as a child that she has carried and sought out throughout her life
• How Shirley got involved in her hometown’s school board and invited other community elders and educators to join her
• How being an educator, servant leader, and activist has kept Shirley connected to the “barefoot feeling” of her childhood
• The mission statement that is guiding Shirley through her elderhood
• The practices Shirley engages with to connect a lifetime of experiences as she walks herself and others home

Learn more about Shirley Showalter:

• Website
• Facebook: @ShirleyHersheyShowalter
• Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• "We Are All Just Walking Each Other Home," Blue Ridge Threshold Choir
  • Lyrics by Ram Dass, originally by Rumi
  • Music by Kate Munger
• Modern Elder Academy
• The Fetzer Institute
• I attended the Moms for Liberty summit. What I heard was an erosion of one of democracy's most important principles.
• Grandmas for Love
• Bill Moyers
• Krista Tippett
• Blue Ridge Threshold Choir

This morning, I was halfway through my meditation when it finally clicked. Not in a big, ah-ha way. More like a little sigh.

Yup. I’m scared.

I didn’t know that’s what it was at first. I thought it was just the news, the state of the world, other people’s incompetence making me feel so off. (Yup it’s such a judgy thought! Stay with me…)

But as I tracked my breath, I tuned into my personal signals that I’m overtired, overexposed, and under-resourced.

Why am I talking about fear when this season is supposed to be about hope and imagination? Because I’m willing to bet you’ve been feeling scared too. 

But here’s the thing. Hope doesn’t ask us to feel better first. It asks us to stay engaged. Hands-dirty hope is what happens when we refuse to give up our imagination — even when the world feels fractured, even when fear is loud.

Fear is tricky. When we’re in crisis and overwhelmed, it wears a lot of disguises. Today, I want to bring you in close to look at one way that fear frequently rears its head: the need for control.

Because in 25 years of coaching and teaching, I have never met a single human who doesn’t reach for this at least some of the time when they are feeling overwhelmed. 

So let’s talk about how overwhelm cascades into fear and seeking control, how to turn to our fear with compassion before taking action, and finally, I’ll share a simple exercise that has been enormously helpful in redirecting the chaotic energy that gets kicked up when we are in a fear response.

If you’ve been looking for a hand in the dark, I hope you’ll keep listening.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How too many inputs cause a chain reaction from chaos to fear to trying to exert control on something, anything
• Why compassion and care for the part of us that is scared has to come before action
• A simple exercise for parsing out where you can bring your energy to actually effect change
• Why tending to your fear is necessary to maintain our capacity for nuanced thinking, empathy, and creative problem-solving 

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Picture two spaces. 

In one, a field kitchen bubbles over with life. Under a makeshift tent, pots clatter, onions hiss on a portable hot plate, and someone’s calling out, “We need more rice!” A neighbor who's just lost everything ladles soup for another who’s just walked miles through mud.

In the second space, a yoga studio, breath slows, shoulders drop, the air smells faintly of lavender, bodies move in a quiet synchronicity, finding flow after a day that was herky jerky at best.

Some people can build both kinds of spaces.

I’ve always been fascinated by what it takes to steady yourself when the world around you is in chaos. My guest today, Fiona Donovan, Vice President of Response Administration for World Central Kitchen, has built her career as a student of that very question.

WCK, a nonprofit founded by chef José Andrés, is famous for being first to the frontlines in times of crisis–hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, war zones–anywhere people are hungry and hurting. Their teams set up field kitchens that serve fresh, hot meals with dignity and heart.

Fiona leads those teams. She oversees global relief operations, coordinating thousands of volunteers, local chefs, and community partners to deliver nourishing food to people quickly.

Before joining WCK, she worked in international development and taught in the Peace Corps. She knows what it means to be in the field, boots muddy, adrenaline high, trying to make things better fast.

In our conversation, Fiona and I trace the thread between field kitchens and yoga studios, between cooking for hundreds and centering yourself for one slow breath. We talk about how to lead with listening, how to design trust before structure, and how to tell when your body’s in reactive mode versus responsive mode. And maybe most beautifully, how to come down from long seasons of urgency without losing your purpose.

Fiona’s story is what it looks like when compassion gets operationalized. So take a breath, soften your shoulders, and maybe imagine the smell of something delicious cooking.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The practices and hobbies that Fiona has cultivated to ground herself as she transitions out of the field
• How the work of creating welcoming, safe spaces at WCK has translated into how Fiona approaches teaching yoga
• Why it’s so important for WCK to partner closely with communities when they’re responding to a disaster
• How Fiona approaches being responsive instead of reactive, for herself and her teams, even under immense pressure
• How WCK empowers its field leaders to make decisions during a crisis without getting hung up by perfectionism
• A simple, shared practice of what we’re currently grateful for

Learn more about Fiona Donovan:

• World Central Kitchen

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling, Stephen Cope

I was a shy and intense kid. The kind who always wants to sit at the grownups table instead of running around with the other kids.

But I noticed early on that my intensity could confuse or overwhelm others, so I learned how to be me more quietly. I poured my caring into outlets that wanted me there, like theater, writing, and my horse, who always understood me.

As an adult–at podiums, in boardrooms, and even alone on my yoga mat–I would feel words pressing at my ribs. There were things I wanted to say, wanted to ask about, to try articulating, but my earnestness got buttoned up under a well-honed, cool girl armor. 

What if I showed my full self and it wasn't received? What if my passion made people uncomfortable? 

I learned to modulate, because people love passion, just not when it's too much. And that voice–the good girl, the good boss, the earnest striver–worked. Until it felt like a compression vest.

Eventually, I realized that power that doesn't include caring for everyone in the room is not power I want. The bravest thing I could do wasn't to hold it all together. It was to let myself be seen caring. 

Today, my guest, Samara Bay, and I imagine what a future could look like if more of us cared out loud. And because she is a coach and behavior geek like me, Samara offers us a delicious exercise that we can apply to our daily lives.

Samara Bay is a speech coach, author, and revolutionary voice in every sense of the word. If you haven't read her New York Times bestselling book, Permission to Speak, you're going to want to by the time our conversation is done. Samara is helping us reimagine what authority can sound like, what power can feel like, and how we can bring that into our daily practices.

Samara reminds us that giving ourselves permission to speak is not a surface level change, it's cultural transformation. We are quite literally changing the sound of power.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How internalized risk management patterns keep us from connecting and making a real impact
• How permission to speak creates paradigm-shifting opportunities for what power sounds like
• How rewriting the internal narrative about your audience changes how you show up
• Why we need to consistently practice speaking from connection instead of protection
• Why making our care and effort obvious matters for ourselves and our communities
• Three questions to ask yourself whenever you have an opportunity to speak

Learn more about Samara Bay:

• Permission Inc.
• Instagram: @samarabay
• Connect on LinkedIn

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, Ruth Whippman
• Talk to Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow Into Confident, Caring Young Men, Joanna Schroeder, Christopher Pepper 
• Building Joyful Reflective Practices with Sara Lawson

There are moments in life–many moments if we’re lucky–when we outgrow an old form. What once felt right starts to feel too small. Something inside insists: there’s more than this.

So the seed cracks. The old form gives way. And in that small rupture, something wild, something true begins to reach for the sun.

This episode is about those moments that pop us out of our own confines. The moments when the stories we’ve internalized–be helpful, hold it together, stay in the background–can no longer contain who we’re becoming.

My guest, Kriste Peoples, is a Boulder-based trail runner, writer, mindfulness teacher, and the Executive Director of Women’s Wilderness, where she helps women, girls, and nonbinary folks rediscover agency and belonging in nature.

I’m so excited for you to hear Kriste’s story about raising her hand to become Executive Director and what that moment stirred in her. In our conversation, she reminds us that becoming powerful isn’t about pushing harder; it’s about grounding deeper. And she offers some truly delicious wisdom about how to do just that.

Let’s learn what it means to shed what no longer fits so we can finally meet the sun.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why Kriste had to learn to protect breaks in her schedule herself and not rely on staff to do it for her
• How she called BS on her story of sticking to support roles and raised her hand for the role of Executive Director
• How a memory of literally jumping into the deep end helped Kriste recognize where she was bumping into internalized fears and limitations
• How Women’s Wilderness creates spaces for participants to meet their own personal edges without comparison or competition
• How Kriste is meeting her edges and modeling the culture and experience she wants to have at Women’s Wilderness 

Learn more about Kriste Peoples:

• Women's Wilderness
• Kriste's Website
• Instagram: @kristepeoples

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

We are living in a world that currently feels unsettled, to say the least.

At best, people seem confused. At worst, frozen, or acting out. There is so much anger and uncertainty in the air.

One way I’m coping is by returning to art and story. Because here is what I know: Stories are more than entertainment.

They can be bids for understanding. They can be tests to see if you understand or even agree with another person. And for times like these, they can also be compasses that orient us when the world feels unmoored.

Since January, I’ve noticed myself reaching for historical fiction and speculative fiction as if story itself is a lifeline.

That’s what this first episode of season two is about: How story can hold us and help us make sense when the world we live in feels fractured.

I’ll share a few of the narratives that are nourishing me right now, and give you an exercise I use with clients when they’re ready to write a new story for their own lives.

This is also an introduction to our theme for season two: imagination. Over the coming weeks, you’ll hear from living sages, authors, educators, artists, and activists—people imagining new ways of being, and offering us tools to step into our own power.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Three narratives of agency, creativity, and community that offer fierce hope in the face of oppression and adversity
• A six-sentence exercise to write your own story of muscular hope
• How Emma Cote’s Pixar Story Spine can help us practice, and then live, with hope

To download the Story Spine Worksheet, click here.

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• Parable of the Sower, Octavia E Butler
• The Japanese Lover, Isabel Allende
• Harlem Rhapsody, Victoria Christopher Murray
• The Mars House, Natasha Pulley

Intuition can manifest as a sudden, sharp knowing or as a slowly dawning certainty. 

Regardless of its speed, intuition carries a powerful sense of knowing, signaling us on a deep level, "Hey, pay attention. I have something to say."

Intuition is a powerful force rarely spoken about openly. And when it is talked about, intuition is often seen as a vague, almost mystical whisper rather than a credible guide.

What if embracing your intuition could lead you to tap into more of your power? What if, instead of dismissing odd symptoms or vivid dreams as mere quirks, you recognized them as valuable messages from your inner self and learned how to decode them? 

What if you could refine your intuition so it becomes a helpful guide when you need it most?

Today, we’ll explore how we can reclaim this essential part of ourselves and recognize intuition not as a mystical or unreliable force, but as a skill that integrates our most profound wisdom into our everyday lives. 

We’ll debunk two harmful myths about intuition and then I’ll guide you through an exercise to help you reclaim your wise, intuitive self.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How our cultural emphasis on rationality and logic disconnects us from our intuition from a young age
• Why intuition acts as a complement to, not a competitor of, data and logic
• How intuition reflects our experience and ability to recognize patterns in the world around us
• How we can compensate for implicit bias in our intuitive thinking
• How intuition helps our “emotional radar” and supports our relationships with others and ourselves
• A practice of listening to your yes and no to help you tune into your intuition

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Audre Lorde
• Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, Gary A. Klein
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
• Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman
• The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You, Karla McLaren