Unbound: A Woman's Guide to Power

Begin sentences with the pronoun “you”—“You will,” “You can,” “You are,” “You get to.” Be concise; don’t explain your motivation for asking. Give extremely specific instructions, telling the other person exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. So instead of “Be more romantic,” you will say, “Clear your schedule on Sunday night and take

In that case, it won’t matter what you say, so much as how you say it. And because your attention is out, you will see how your suggestions and corrections land with the other person. (A truly embodied domme’s attention is so far outward that she practically disappears to herself.)

you make a list of everything you complain about, from the way your tech-bro boss fist-bumps everyone in the office, to the run you found in your stocking this morning, you will find that some of the desires masquerading as complaints can be easily dispatched: if you bought ten pairs of better-quality stockings, then getting dressed in the morning

Beginning to feel these desires is an essential first step. But power is inviting others to participate in the creation of your envisioned reality. Before we can go after these desires and invite others to participate in collaborating with us to make them come true, we have to refine them, separating them from the fears and expectations that often

You know when you’re really going to feel like you’re strong and powerful? When you can rely on yourself to speak, no matter how inappropriate the question or how badly it triggers you. When you can navigate another person’s opposition to your ideas with generosity and skill, recognizing it as an opportunity for intimacy or access to critical infor

Power isn’t a feeling. Power is influence, which means it must take place in a dynamic.

That is the submissive state I want you to envision, one in which you are completely and safely held by someone else’s attention, and can therefore relax and concentrate only on what you feel. Your role as a submissive is to turn your attention inward, and to feel what you want so completely that every cell in your being is saturated with it.

You’ll note that I say “out,” as opposed to “outward,” because that is how I want you to think of it. Your attention goes out, onto, and into someone else’s body. In this case, “out” is not a direction or a suggestion, but a location.

In this book, I will use the term “dominance” to describe the state when your attention is focused out and what you do from that place, and the term “submission” to describe the state of attention turned inward, and what you feel from that place.