Give Yourself Permission

One of my great joys this week was listening to one of my grandson’s sing♪song the word Nooooooo. It seemed to have so many syllabus if not also rhythm and timbre. He’s learning, you see. What he wants, what he doesn’t want and how to communicate those intense desires with the people around him. Our goal as the growing-olders of his stomping grounds is to allow him the space to cultivate his wants and wishes as he organically uncovers them and conveys those back to us so we can shine the light for him to find his own way.

Sometimes in our conditioning, we pick up customs, rituals, quirks or even cast in stone ideals about who we are and how we move through the pristine waters on the lake of life. Maybe we were told by our parents, or other elders how we should behave, what we should wear or who we should love. We likely picked up more rules and regiment when we made our way through classrooms in the neuroplasticity playground of Becoming. Our peers, our ex’s, the old lady on the bus who gave us the side-eye when we wore that shirt with the words that made her cast so much shade as if she knew something about who we were and how we would never get asked to the prom.

We took it all in, even when we swore to ourselves in the dark of night with tears on our pillow, we would not become one of them.

However even though we find ourselves today so far removed from the early influencers — we still carry the seeds that shaped our self esteem. And unless we are willing to take them out into the light and really look at them from every angle…. unless we are willing to feel the pain that we pretend is not there … unless we are determined not to get distracted by the ego itSelf telling us we are unworthy … then we may never realize just how awesome we are even in our broken-ness.

Part of looking at our second hand habits, may open up new possibilities and opportunities to learn not who we were told we would be, but to really find out who it is that we ARE, without pretense, without trying to make ourselves “look good”. In all our messy head and unmade bed if we give ourselves permission to exhale because we realize we’ve been holding our shoulders up close to our ears for far too long.

But pleasing the public image that we try to pull off, day in and day out is exhausting. Is it not?

What if
for just a moment
we close our eyes and imagine
we are enough …
Just as we are ..
Just were we sit.
What if
we could glimpse
the possibility
that we are worthy
of not only love
but bliss and abundance
What if
All we needed
Was for someone
To give us
Permission
To do one thing different
That made our lives
Not just easier
But actually POSSIBLE
Because we haven’t been living our lives
Until we agree to stop living the lies
We were told when we didn’t know how to say No
Indeed no one ever taught us that it could be
A multisyllabic word with a beautiful melody ♪♫♪♪♫♫♪♫♫♪