I wrote a newsletter about this word recently—if you haven’t yet, please sign up, link in bio!—and why it’s been bothering me. For one, I think it’s become a bit of a marketing catch-phrase, and invariably has lost a lot of its meaning because we can get lazy with our language, but it’s also typically used in conjunction with women. This company empowers women, etc. It bothers me not because I don’t think the intent is beautiful, valid, and legitimate, but it (unintentionally?) implies that someone, or an entity, can and should empower someone else. That you have power to give, i.e. more power than someone else. I just don’t like it. I wrote in my newsletter about SERVING, if that’s the intention, potentially being a replacement for empowering, and was excited to find this quote in Joan Halifax’s wonderful book, STANDING AT THE EDGE, which much better articulates this idea. She quotes Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen: “Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. [...] When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don’t serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves.” LOVE.