Lady Gaga sings a lyric that goes, “if you’re a strong female, you don’t need permission” and this is very true.  The age old double standard that women have had to bookmark their lives in between can be confusing.  Be sexy, but not slutty.  Be strong, but not so strong as to threaten a male or seem less feminine and vulnerable.  Ironically, it is in this lyric that permission is being given, a sort of understatement that once you realize the full scope of truth of such you say to yourself, “Yeah, what the fuck”.  On the surface it may not appear as harmful, but the daily climbing on the scale to see how much she weighs, and the daily regulation of every bite of food on her fork that must be carefully considered, and being alienated from her inherent strength all together because feminine force is scary to behold once running at full throttle all in all creates little tears in a woman’s psyche and this bleeds out into other areas of life.  This is where her concerns are restricted and she self-sacrifices.  This is where moments come where she wants to speak but just laughs, and doesn’t say what she really is feeling because she’s never really been given full permission to express herself in the grand orchestration of things.

Permission has really struck me as such a powerful force as of late.  This goes way beyond women and our roles in society.  It applies to men, and it especially applies to children because this is where it starts.  When I was a little girl my mom was in a constant battle to get my dad to pay child support.  My entire childhood all I heard from her was how he owed her $100,000 for raising me.  She used to sit down with me and have me compose letters to my dad where she would tell me what to say.  She would have me write about what I was up to, and then she would instruct me to tell him how I needed money for things like a winter coat.  I did what I was told because as children we inherently trust adults to do what we believe is right.  What I see now as an adult is how harmful those letters were in my relationship with my dad.  Not just because she was orchestrating what I should say but because of what was not been written.  Words that would have probably flowed from my little hand to the pencil would not have asked for a winter coat but rather would probably have told stories of conversations I had with my Barbies, and how I played in my Me Ma’s barn and discovered a nest of baby birds.  But I wasn’t being given permission to say what I really felt, and there was hold back within this.  It is a secret exchange of your voice not mattering, and you not being allowed to say what you feel.  The essence of a child or a woman is held in limbo with such, and is carried along throughout life scared to come out because it doesn’t know how to come out or that it even has the right to know how and just be and exist.

Bearing witness is a very powerful form of giving permission.  There is a New Yorker article that was written recently that discusses post traumatic stress counseling with soldiers returning from the Middle East conflict.  One story especially stuck out and that is of a man who tried to tell his wife about his trauma after a night of restless nightmares and she just replied coldly, “Well you knew what you were signing up for when you joined the military during war time”.  Her lack of compassion and lack of actually hearing him in his moment of pain was just as damaging as the war traumas itself.  This isn’t about giving advice or trying to act like we understand:  it is about the much bigger objective of providing the wide open vessel that just listens and in doing so says, “you matter and I will provide space for your humanity”.  In these moments the truths can be set free.

There have been many moments throughout my adult life where I have made decisions from the depths of my heart and these decisions have not worked out and have rather crashed and burned in the worst way possible.  The shitty consequence of such is that you start to not trust yourself.  This is made worse in situations where you never fully were able to flex your voice to begin with.  From here, without realizing it, you stifle and in some cases without meaning to self-sabotage.

There is a guy that I currently have a thing for.  This past weekend was a 3 day music festival called ACL and he was there with some mutual friends.  I saw him on the first day of the festival but I walked the other direction hoping that he didn’t see me even though secretly I would have loved to have joined up with him.  We were going to meet up for this one band we mutually like on the last day of ACL so I decided to just wait and see him then.  Only I chickened out.  I was going to meet up with him at the performance, and I went to the performance but didn’t go up to him.  Instead I watched the show staring at the back of his head.  After the performance I actually ended up running into him at another show, and I briefly hung out with him later that day.  Last night I saw him again and he made the comment to me, “So were you there for all 3 days of the festival or just the last day?”.  This comment stuck with me.  I realized that my inability to do what I really wanted and felt was really fucking….dumb.  Because if I would have really done what I wanted and felt I would have seen him all 3 days (and nights).  And then some.  But I digress (not all fantasies become realities).  The point is that life would have been in a much more vivid color rather than the black and white it was without him there. 

Stemming from his comment I have come to realize how I play small in other areas of my life.  Like my job.  I purposely work in a 100% commission sales field because I like the challenge it gives me.  There has been a tremendous amount of growth for my spirit in this set-up vs the old corporate job of trading time for dollars.  Only I don’t take up the challenge in full force.  Just like my actions towards the guy I like at ACL I shrink back.  I don’t give myself the permission to shine, or to fail.  The bigger truth of things is that no matter what the outcome I’m going to be all right, and the things that might potentially come from such risks are so much greater than what is lost in the hold back. 

There is so much of life that is left on the table in this hold back with all people in all walks of life.  And so much of it is unrealized because it was never given permission to be to begin with.  There is a famous example of this in the Roger Bannister story.  In the 1950s Roger became the first person in recorded history to run a mile in under 4 minutes.  Nobody had been able to do this before he did.  Since Roger ran the mile in under 4 minutes tons of people have done it.  In fact, his record was shattered only 46 days after he set it.  It was like Roger gave permission in his actions for such a feat to take place and the rest of the globe followed through.  There is so much power and ability in such a force.