What is Shared Power?

Our working definition

Oct 06, 2025

In front of an orange and peach sunset background, five people of diverse backgrounds are thoughtful and smiling as they have conversations about shared power.

A while back, one of my coaches gifted me a tiny, powerful book: Wolfpack by U.S. Women’s Soccer Legend, Abby Wambach.

At first I flipped through it, thinking, “Yeah, OK … women’s empowerment … I know all this stuff!” But I decided to read just a few pages at a time anyway – one chapter each night – because I really don’t like to miss anything.

Because I’m about as far as one can get from an elite athlete, I wanted to know more about this international soccer champion’s views on leadership. And I’m so glad I did.

Wambach not only affirms my approach to stepparenting, she lifts up my deep belief that power is abundant.

I find that power is too often defined by its use. When we say “building power,” we imply that power is something positive, something to be desired – so we work to get more of it. When we say “power dynamics,” we imply that power is a problematic force. The issue is usually raised because someone or a group is being denied power.

I don’t see a lot of discussion of power that captures its potential (not just its use).

Still, we believe power itself is neutral, and we’re often making choices about whether we’re hoarding power or sharing it. In fact, historical and systemic oppression is a study of the use of power: to restrict power from other people, based on identity.

At Freedom Lifted, our commitment to anti-oppression means that we work with people who are committed to sharing power as much as possible.

When we commit to shared power, we make an ongoing, intentional, and concerted effort to ensure that everyone in a community, regardless of their identity has:

Resources: access to needed money, space, connections
Visibility: recognition as inherently valuable, as well as for contributions
Voice: input in decision-making that affect them
Agency: ability to make choices about their life and body
Safety: physical and psychological freedom from harm

Shared power is also concerned with eliminating dominance of any particular person or group over others.

Dominance means people or groups with power who hoard it by exercising or using their power to limit, restrict, or take away resources, voice, visibility, or safety from others, consciously or unconsciously.

We don’t equate power and dominance.

So much of our work boils down to helping people understand that power is not dominance. Power has been used as a way to dominate and restrict, and we’ve assumed that power is finite. That’s also impacted our efforts to share power.

We want to work for equity, but we see things like resources, voice, visibility, safety, and control as scarce. We create tension, because we’re afraid of losing whatever portion of these things we may have.

It’s hard for so many of us to imagine sharing power… without losing it.

I understand that most of us have been hurt by power in very real ways. We have been harmed by those with power hoarding it. Our communities have been decimated by people using power to exploit, marginalize, erase, and attack us.

We associate power with being dirty or bad because our bosses, our partners, our governments, and others we’re supposed to trust have often betrayed us by wielding power against us.

These experiences with power are seared into our memory.

But when we realize that power isn’t dominance… when we realize that power is a tool of dominance… we also realize that power can (and has been) used in other ways, too.

There are other histories of power. There is a record of people accessing and using their power to set us free. There are those who have risen up and demanded that power be shared. There is a history of people using their power to build communities of care – spaces where we’ve intentionally worked to make sure people are seen, heard, and have what they need to survive.

If we try, many of us can access memories of the people who have used their power to make sure we had the resources we needed and the rights we deserved. They fed us, clothed us, opened doors for us, marched for us, and held us when we cried.

There have been moments when those of us with power invited others to speak, deeply listened, and took what we heard into real account. There were times when we willingly passed positional power to those who have been historically denied it. There were decisions people made to demand, to testify, to protect, and to defy the law under real threat because they had dreams of freedom.

People have put their resources, safety, and bodies on the line so that I could be free.

These are our models for when power is shared, not hoarded.

Let’s not only remember when the powerful betrayed us, but also remember when power was used to buoy us and draw on this history of resistance and solidarity, too.

Like Abby Wambach says:

“The idea that power can’t be shared is a baseless lie rooted in scarcity and motivated by fear.”

But we don’t have to believe the lie: We can do our work with a spirit of abundance. There is enough power for all of us.

Working for justice means relentlessly working for everyone to be seen, heard, resourced, and safe – regardless of how we identify. We must pay particular attention to those of us who have been historically and currently restricted by systems of oppression because of their identities and repair the harm done to our communities. Reparations are required.

How can you share power at home, in relationships, at work, and in your community?

I invite you to join me in conversation when you leave a comment below. Become a paid subscriber to get access to the comment section – or send me a message.

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