This photo was taken last spring when I performed with the Wandering Bindis bellydance troupe at a women’s heart health conference. I didn’t share it at the time because I was still stifled by the worn-out belief that a woman can’t be both feminine and professional.

A professional knows how to put everything else aside to be fully present for another. A professional knows how to stay calm and do what needs to be done in a crisis. A professional steps up, steps in, and competently uses the tools available. A woman can do all those things no matter what she is wearing or how she enjoys her free time.

Feminine power is not the female version of masculine power. It is strength in vulnerability, beauty in chaos, and stillness in change. Feminine power is fearlessly emotional, wild, creative, and loving, and it is a blazing fire when it encounters something no longer serving its purpose. It is accessible within all of us, regardless of gender.

I don’t need to pretend to be less or more or different than I am, and neither do you. We can be whole human beings, expressing all dimensions of ourselves. 

The paradigm is shifting, and it feels like an earthquake. I don’t want to live in a world where women dominate men any more than I want to live in a world where men dominate women, white people dominate people of color, straight cisgender people dominate everyone else, and so on. Let the systems of external authority crumble. They haven’t been working for most of us for long enough. In the new vision, personal power serves the collective good. Lending a hand feels better than posturing, competing, or institutionalizing. We can do this when we do it together. LOVE is the greatest force ever known.