The True Meaning of Authority: Returning to Ourselves

I’ve been sitting with the word authority lately.

Turning it over in my hands like a stone pulled from a river—

Weathered. Heavy. Familiar.

It’s a word we hear all the time. We’re told to “respect authority,” to “listen to the authorities,” to follow their rules, their recommendations, their systems. But what does the word really mean?

If you trace it back, “authority” shares a root with the word author.

To be in your authority means to be the author of your life.

But most of us were never taught that.We were taught that authority lives out there.

In governments. In school systems. In experts with titles and degrees.

In priests and parents and politicians and professionals.

Anywhere but in us.

And so, we gave it away.

We handed over our sovereignty in exchange for safety.

We deferred responsibility in hopes of approval.

We silenced our inner knowing for the comfort of belonging.

We let others write the story of our lives.

I’ve seen it in myself.

In moments I dismissed my gut because a doctor said “everything looks fine.”

In how I questioned my parenting instincts because a teacher said my child needed to “behave better.”

In the years I walked hallways of institutions, bowing to best practices while my body whispered, this doesn’t feel right.

I see it everywhere now.

Parents handing over the education of their children to systems that no longer reflect their values.

Women taking medications that numb rather than heal because they were told it’s the only way.

Communities accepting policies that harm them because “the experts know best.”

This is not to say there is no value in knowledge, training, or expertise.

It is to say: credibility is not the same as authority.

Someone can have knowledge and still not have wisdom.

Someone can have credentials and still not have integrity.

Someone can wear a uniform and still not have your best interest at heart.

We have confused external validation with internal truth.

And in doing so, we’ve created a world of disconnection.

A world where we live out of sync with our bodies, our children, our communities, and the Earth.

A world where we’ve been taught to second-guess the sacred.

Where we outsource our power……and wonder why we feel powerless.

So what’s possible when we remember?

When we reclaim the pen and remember we are the authors of our lives?

When we honor our bodies as wise and sovereign?

When we teach our children to listen deeply to themselves rather than only obeying others?

When we gather in circles instead of hierarchies and lead from shared knowing?

We begin to live in alignment.

We stop deferring and start discerning.

We become co-creators of life rather than consumers of someone else’s design.

This isn’t a rebellion.

It’s a remembrance.

Of what it means to live in trust.

To walk with our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls in communion.

To hold ourselves with enough love to say:

I hear you. I see you. I trust you.

This is the return to true authority.

Not control over others.

But authorship of self.

And that changes everything.