You don't need permission
Do you know the feeling when something suddenly clicks?
When you've been searching for something for a long, long, painfully long time, and you a) didn't even know what, exactly, you are looking for, and b) you didn't find it anyways - until suddenly, one day, you do?
It's the most exquisite experience of your life.
Better than bad sex.
Better than chocolate.
Better than a good book (!!!) (and that's really saying something).
That's what happened to me last week.
I've been on a path of self-empowerment/being my own, badass self/stop caring what everybody else thinks for a while. A very long while. (It's been years, kids. Decades, if we're being honest here.)
And last week, on an ordinary Thursday, it suddenly hit me.
I finally, finally realized what's been holding me back all these years.
I was waiting for someone to give me permission.
Not consciously, of course. Not even my dreamy, slightly delusional self expected a Dumbledore-like person to walk up to me, put his hand on my head and tell me with great gravitas: "You may follow your dreams now, and all will be well."
But subconsciously, I was waiting for it BIG TIME.
I was so afraid of disapproval. That was my biggest fear: That someone (even a stranger on the internet) may disapprove of me, my opinions, or my choices.
I desperately wanted everybody to like me.
But, even more, I didn't want to do anything that would upset my parents. Even though that ship sailed long ago when I ran off with an old, not-quite-divorced, father of 4, I still (or because of that?) wanted them to approve of how I lived my life.
Even though, deep down, I knew that was never going to happen.
We are polar opposites. I wrote a post last week about a conversation my mom and I had the day before they left, highlighting our profound differences in how we approach life.
It took me until that conversation to realize that we will never see eye to eye. And that it's okay.
Just because they birthed and raised me, doesn't mean that we have to be the same people. We are not.
And it just hit me now, at 37 years of age, that that's okay.
I can be my own person, do the things that I know they would never do, and I don't need their permission.
I don't need anybody's permission.
Neither do you.
As adults, we can do whatever we want, as long as we are able to still be comfortable with the person looking back at us in the mirror each morning.
Ideally, we try to do good and don't hurt anybody as well, but that's really secondary.
We can do whatever the hell we want.
This message just hit me less than a week ago, and I've been on a high ever since.
Do you know how many possibilities this opens up?
How many more chances I can take now?
Do you know that, with that knowledge, the only limits we have are the ones we set ourselves?
It is dazzling. And it makes me more excited for things to come than I have been in a long time.
Watch out, world - this girl just lost her shackles.
How about you? Will you lose yours, too??
xoxo Miriam
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Vol. 34