📚 Glossary & Frameworks: A living resource for Balance Shared

Welcome to the Balance Shared glossary — a collection of guiding concepts, sacred frameworks, and evolving definitions that shape how we lead, live, and build community. These terms are not just words; they are blueprints for a world rooted in care, collaboration, and transformation.

🔧 Leadership & Decision-Making Models

Flat Leadership

A structure that removes hierarchical pyramids and centers shared power, mutual responsibility, and relational accountability. Inspired by matriarchal systems, flat leadership organizes around empathy, consensus, and collective wellbeing rather than domination or individual authority.

Regenerative Leadership

Leadership that prioritizes sustainability, reciprocity, and the cyclical renewal of people, systems, and resources. It centers care, healing, and interdependence over burnout and extraction.

Healing-Centered Leadership

A leadership practice rooted in trauma awareness, care, and self-reflection. It values lived experience, integrates rest into strategy, and restores dignity through wholeness.

Consensus

A decision-making process rooted in shared understanding and collective agreement rather than majority rule. Consensus honors every voice, seeks alignment rather than coercion, and values the wisdom of the group over speed or hierarchy.

Majority Rule

A decision model based on 51% wins. It can marginalize minority voices, and it reinforces dominant power structures in unequal systems.

Tyranny

Control held by a single person or a small group without consent. Tyranny silences dissent and enforces dominance, fear, and hierarchy.

🏡 Systems & Structures

Hierarchy

A top-down power structure where value and voice are concentrated at the top. Hierarchies reinforce exclusion, dominance, and competition.

Patriarchy

A system that centers male authority and suppresses care, interdependence, and emotion. It shapes institutions and internal beliefs.

Matriarchy

A community-centered system grounded in the well-being of mothers, children, and all living beings. Matriarchy is not about domination — it is about interconnectedness, shared power, and cyclical wisdom.

The Third Way

A visionary framework that brings together patriarchy and matriarchy to imagine something new — a holistic synthesis. It integrates logic and empathy, structure and flow. It’s not compromise; it’s transformation.

The Messy Middle

The transitional space between what was and what is becoming. It’s where transformation happens — a space of discomfort, uncertainty, and growth.

Fascism

A far-right authoritarian model that merges state and corporate power, suppresses dissent, enforces conformity, and controls culture.

Zero-Sum Thinking

A scarcity-based mindset where one person’s gain is another’s loss. It blocks imagination and collaboration by assuming power is finite.

501(c)(3)

A tax-exempt nonprofit organization primarily focused on education, outreach, and charitable activities. These organizations cannot support or oppose political candidates and are limited in the amount of lobbying they can conduct.

501(c)(4)

A social welfare organization that can engage in lobbying and advocacy, including naming elected officials, as long as it remains aligned with its mission. It cannot primarily exist to support political campaigns, but it has more flexibility than a 501(c)(3).

PAC (Political Action Committee)

An entity formed to raise and spend money to support or oppose political candidates. PACs can endorse candidates and contribute to campaigns, enabling direct participation in electoral politics.

Hired Lobbyists

Professionals who advocate for specific policy outcomes by engaging directly with elected officials and decision-makers. In the context of power-building organizations, hired lobbyists work alongside organizers to advance community priorities through legislative strategy.

⚡️ Power Models

Power

The ability to act — to choose, influence, and shape outcomes.

Power (Organizing Definition)

Organized people, organized money, and sometimes organized ideas. Power as strategic, collective influence.

Power Building Organization

A power-building organization exists to shift systems by organizing people and leveraging political influence. Often structured as a network of entities — typically a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a 501(c)(4) advocacy arm, and sometimes a PAC (Political Action Committee) — this setup allows the group to operate across the full spectrum of civic engagement.

The 501(c)(3) focuses on education, community outreach, and base-building. The 501(c)(4) allows for more explicit advocacy, including naming elected officials and lobbying for or against legislation. A PAC can go further, directly endorsing and supporting candidates for office.

These organizations are often run by the same staff, who allocate their time according to legal boundaries. They typically hire community organizers to develop grassroots leadership and build collective power — especially in historically excluded communities. They may also employ registered lobbyists to advance policy change at local, state, or federal levels. Together, these roles bridge the gap between everyday people and the halls of power.

Key practices: Base-building, direct action, civic engagement, electoral strategy, policy advocacy, and organizing as a long-term investment in liberation.

Power Over

Domination-based power that enforces control, scarcity, and coercion.

Power With

Shared power rooted in consent, mutuality, and collaboration.

Power To

The generative power to act, create, imagine, and build change.

Power Within

Inner power — rooted in dignity, purpose, and spiritual alignment.

Shared Power

The intentional distribution of voice and authority. Shared power invites collective wisdom and rejects domination.

💖 Economy & Exchange

Gift Economy

A system based on generosity, reciprocity, and intention — not profit. It invites abundance through trust and care.

Capitalism

A profit-driven system based on private ownership and competitive markets. It prioritizes the individual and rewards extraction.

Socialism

An equity-based system where resources are shared or regulated by the community. It centers care and collective wellbeing.

🌕 Cycles, Cosmology & Sacred Structure

Astrology

The symbolic study of celestial movements and their reflection of our inner and collective stories. It offers archetypal insight and timing.

Astronomy

The scientific study of celestial objects and the physical universe. It helps us measure, observe, and understand cosmic events.

The Age of Pisces

An era marked by spiritual disconnection, illusion, and obedience to authority.

The Age of Aquarius

A new era of sacred rebellion, decentralization, collective awakening, and visionary change.

🌙 Lunar Wisdom: The Eight Moon Phases

🌑 New Moon: Set intentions. Begin again.
🌒 Waxing Crescent: Prepare and gather what you need.
🌓 First Quarter: Revise. Ask for help.
🌔 Waxing Gibbous: Observe. Breathe.
🌕 Full Moon: Reflect and celebrate.
🌖 Waning Gibbous: Share your lessons.
🌗 Third Quarter: Release what no longer serves.
🌘 Waning Crescent: Complete and rest.

↺ 🌏 Seasonal Wisdom: The Wheel of the Year

Imbolc (Feb 1–2): The spark returns
Ostara (Spring Equinox): Plant intentions. Celebrate balance
Beltane (May 1): Ignite passion. Create with fire
Litha (Summer Solstice): Celebrate light and abundance
Lammas (Aug 1): Harvest and evaluate
Mabon (Fall Equinox): Honor balance. Let go
Samhain (Oct 31–Nov 1): Descend. Grieve. Connect to ancestors
Yule (Winter Solstice): Embrace stillness. Trust the dark