Power With
A Wednesday Short Post
Hello beloved reader,
We interrupt our regular programmingđ (of the serialization of my book) for a brief dispatch from real life: a story of how I went looking for an ally and got a mirror instead. One gentle reminderâmeet it with compassionâand an old pattern transformed.
I feel privileged and grateful to be part of a community that practices a different kind of powerânot power over, but power with. A community that knows each of us has a shadowâour âmuck,â and like the lotus, we grow because of it, not in spite of it.
When weâre identified with ego, we slip into comparisonâsuperior or inferiorâand we forget our shared humanity.
But when we gain awareness of ego, when we can observe it clearly, something loosens. We can cultivate what the Buddhist monks across the road call muditaâjoy in the happiness of others. Not envy. Not competition. Joy that expands the heart instead of contracting it.
This doesnât mean we never get triggered. We do. I do. But hereâs what changed me:
One day I was venting about someone in the community. I wanted agreementâsomeone to take my side. Instead of piling on, the person I was speaking with reminded me to look with compassion, because every one of us is shaped by our conditioning.
That moment broke the old pattern.
No triangle.1 No superiority. Just two humans remembering something true: weâre all doing the best we can inside the stories that made us.
This is living reciprocityâa cycle of support. Not perfection, but presence and compassion.
Maybe this is what many Indigenous cultures understood long before colonial arrogance arrived declaring the âone right way.â
Maybe harmony with each other and with the Earth isnât something to achieve. Maybe itâs something to remember.
May we remember.
May we grow from our muck.
May we keep choosing compassion, again and again.
âĽď¸đđď¸
Iâd love to hear where you may have experienced power with in your lifeâand how did it feel in your body?
And what helped you remember compassion when ego wanted to be right?
drama triangle: victimâpersecutorârescuer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle)



Oh, Camilla! Thank you for being open to seeing a pattern that was in your way, and for sharing that moment of learning and metamorphosis with us! I think these times ask us to look in the mirror and re-vision what we see, and step as best we can into our better selves. Blessings to you for being the kind of person who can show us how to do that.
Yes, something to remember, be with. Beautiful Camilla.