in RCT, power is the capacity to create change — and all power is relational. Power-with develops in mutually empowering relationships, where influence flows both ways. It stands in contrast to power-over and makes greater creativity, justice, and collective action possible.

With power-with, what we create together can exceed what any of us could have planned alone. We contribute, respond, and discover possibilities through the exchange. Someone's growing capacity can strengthen the relationship and widen what others can do.

Power-with can develop where roles and responsibilities differ. A therapist, teacher, or group leader still has responsibilities that others do not. The work is to make influence real: whose knowledge shapes the purpose, who can change a decision, and who has the resources to participate? Those with greater authority carry greater responsibility for changing arrangements that exclude others.

In Women and Power (1982), Jean Baker Miller questioned definitions that tied power to domination. She described power as the capacity to produce change, including movement in our thoughts, relationships, and social conditions. Women's work of fostering other people's growth offered evidence of power that prevailing definitions overlooked. Increasing another person's capacity could also increase our own.

Janet L. Surrey gave this alternative an explicit name in Relationship and Empowerment (1987). She described power-with as emerging through interaction, where participants build connection and enhance one another's capacity to act. Power need not be a fixed amount people compete to possess. Surrey also described a workshop supporting women to speak out for nuclear disarmament. Through responding to one another, participants developed a shared vision and prepared for action. Collective action was already part of this early account.

Judith V. Jordan's The Movement of Mutuality and Power (1991) clarified the openness this requires. In mutuality, we affect another person and remain open to being affected ourselves. Our differences can enter the relationship and change it. This gives power-with a meaning deeper than dividing up tasks: the direction of the work develops through the relationship itself.

Maureen Walker placed these possibilities within racial, economic, and cultural hierarchies in Power and Effectiveness: Envisioning an Alternate Paradigm (2002). She emphasized that all power depends on relationship, including destructive power. The question becomes how we use power and remain accountable for its effects. Jean Baker Miller's Telling the Truth About Power (2003) added that, in unequal roles such as therapy or teaching, the person with greater power bears primary responsibility for fostering the relationship and the other's growth.

In the third edition of *Relational-Cultural Therapy* (2024), Jordan's glossary explicitly connects power-with to collaboration, creativity, and action. Harriet L. Schwartz carries this into educational practice in Connected Teaching (2019). She describes how a teacher can learn from students and be changed by their contributions while remaining responsible for teaching. Power-with expands the possibilities for learning as both people participate in shaping what happens.

BCC's definition brings these threads together. Power-with involves the new possibilities people create through mutual influence, alongside the conditions that make participation possible. Its connection with justice asks us to attend to who can help shape our shared world and whose knowledge and needs remain excluded.

Choose a small, shared task with someone you feel comfortable working with: planning a gathering, preparing a meal, or making something together. Leave one part of the plan open and explore it together. Notice how an idea changes as each of you responds and adds something.

Afterward, look for what emerged through the exchange. Perhaps the plan changed, an unexpected possibility appeared, or you found a way forward neither of you had seen alone. If a new experiment feels difficult, remember a past experience of creating something together. Simply noticing what made that shared influence possible is enough.