One Woman’s Journey to Admitting Her Power

by Sofia Platti

Women Hold The Power

I stepped foot into my very first Women Over Dinner event in November of 2022; the inaugural Women Over Dinner. The dinner was hosted in New York City at a beautiful venue with exquisite dim lighting. There was a video playing on a wall that happened to be right behind me — it felt like sensual art, neither static nor two-dimensional; I was drawn in immediately.

There was a woman sitting at my table who I knew and had previous conflicts with and yet this scene and this table was an equalizer. I immediately felt love for her, perhaps simply because she was willing to sit at this table with me. It seems that is the way of a woman’s power. We all have our own fears and desires, challenges and pitfalls, and we learn to love our own as we see them reflected.

I was reminded of the ways that I, to this day, fear the power that lives in me. I have been seeking all my life, in bars, in men, in religions, spiritual practices, and nothing could satiate the hunger deep in me, until I found myself at this table where who I am and my power is not only accepted but encouraged. I was reminded of the ways that I would take down other women even from a young age. One of my best friends in high school happened to have the same name as me and as our friendship grew, so too did my discovery that she was sexual and liberated in her expression of it. I found every possible way to shame that part of her because I had no access to that part of me. It wasn’t until years later that what I thought was wrong with her was everything I demonized in myself.

Everything that I previously thought to keep secret, to keep to myself in the basement of my soul, I shared at this table. I laid it all out with these women. It was so nourishing to hold no parts of me back.

We ended the night full from an incredible meal cooked by Free Food, and nourished by the honesty and connection that was created that night. Any conflict I came in with dissolved with the immersion I had into the darkness that lay at the depths of me. This is where the riches are. It was down there that I found beauty in myself, my imperfections, my fears. And I saw that beauty in the eyes of every woman sitting at my table.

A year later, I found myself sitting at that same table. Although it was a different physical table, surrounded by different women, I found that same exact experience come alive in and through me and the women I sat next to and across from. We would meet exactly as we were with whatever was alive in us. It was during this event that the desire to be a part of this movement and these dinners in a bigger way lit up in me.

We recently had someone ask us, “Where does the transmission in Women Over Dinner happen?” I began scanning through the whole event; is it the questions asked? The conversation that comes alive? The message that women hold the power? One of the women answered, “It’s all of it.” From the moment we say yes and all that unfolds from there. The admission as a woman that yes, I hold the power. And then the only natural response from there is ‘yes and’ I want every woman to remember.

To our collective remembering.

Since 2019 Sofia has been a volunteer with Unconditional Freedom when she helped launch Free Food and hosted the weekly volunteer prison pen pal call for the Art of Soulmaking. She is a part of creating the Red Thread Women’s Movement and Women Over Dinner bringing her unwavering passion for women’s sovereignty and the realization of our full potential.