You could say we live in dangerous, revolutionary times, and I’d agree. I’m an astrologer and a writer; I see meaning in the movements of the planets and try to find language for what I see.

Ever since dwarf planet Pluto moved into Aquarius last November, but even more so in recent weeks, I started to think about power again. My own and other people’s. The power of a collective. The way that the word itself is so slippery and, at least in my mind, inspires caution: damp fingertips hovering near a wall socket. A river, fat with fresh rain, tearing through the landscape. Power has an untameable core, which begs the question: what place do we give it in our lives? What shape? The death-dealing faces of power are all around us. But what does life-giving power look like? A power that is self-directed but not self-interested? A power tuned to liberation instead of oppression?

As I thought about this, I pulled J. Ruth Gendler’s The Book of Qualities down from the shelf. It came out over forty years ago but you wouldn’t know it. In that one slim book, Gendler poetically describes 84 different emotional experiences such as Doubt, Trust or Ecstasy. Here’s her entry on Power:

‘Power made me a coat. For a long time I kept it in the back of my closet. I didn’t like to wear it much, but I always took good care of it. When I first started wearing it again, it smelled like mothballs. As I wore it more, it started fitting better, and stopped smelling like mothballs.

I was afraid if I wore the coat too much someone would want to take it or else I would accidentally leave it in the dojo dressing room. But it has my name on the label now, and it doesn’t really fit anyone else. When people ask me where I found such a becoming garment, I tell them about the tailor, Power, who knows how to make coats that you grow into. First, you must find the courage to approach him and ask him to make your coat. Then, you must find the patience inside yourself to wear the coat until it fits.’

What strikes me about Gendler’s vision of personal power is the subtlety: The tailor’s coat is a gift. You cannot buy it. It’s a piece of power but not the whole, raw thing. It’s as much as you can safely handle and the shape is as individual as your fingerprint (‘it has my name on the label now’). Whether your power is deeply quiet or loud and fierce doesn’t matter. It’s yours.

I first read those words about ten years ago, in my late twenties. I had not yet found the courage to approach the tailor. But I thought that, perhaps, if I found a way to avoid any further grand mistakes in my life, I’d finally qualify for a coat and wear it proudly. It wasn’t so. I turned thirty, then thirty-five, I made more mistakes, I failed and I fucked up and Power made me a coat, despite all my flaws. And I started wearing it, awkwardly. I started to claim my power, awkwardly. It was confusing at first: I had spent so many years trying, and failing, to ‘be better’, to control things and engineer perfection because I thought that would give me access to my power.

But as my coat started to settle on my shoulders it slowly hit me that power, the kind you have to grow into, is not about control at all. It is about being rooted in a fluid, bright place within yourself. From that place you can face reality, which is the one thing that will bring each and every one of us to our knees. But we can rise in it, too.