Asking for Permission

from people who don't know what they're doing either

Hi, friend,

We’re approaching the Summer Solstice. How did it get to be mid-June already?

Time flies while you’re just trying to get through the work day and deal with life stuff and adult all over the place and maybe get some sleep and stare at the screen or the wall. Meanwhile, my doc changed up the meds I take for my chronic illness and the grass pollen count in the Willamette Valley hit near-record numbers and my ability simultaneously track more than five things at a time diminished to somewhere around maybe three.

In the midst of all this living, I’ve been helping out with my community in ways that are mostly specific to my skillset. I’m so grateful there’s something I can actually do, something concrete and measurably helpful. After which I spent hour upon hour wondering whether I’d said the right thing, whether I’d done everything perfectly, whether I was the only person in the room who felt like they didn’t have a clue. Whether I was somehow lacking in a way that made me more of a burden than a help.

That’s just bullshit.

I mean…intellectually, I know it’s at least mostly bullshit. Intellectually, I understand that no one knows what to say about some things, that there is really no right thing to say even if there are several documented wrong things (everything does NOT happen for a reason). But my inner child who became a perfectionist because they didn’t feel as if they had a choice does not know or understand those things. At all.

That kid constantly teeters on the edge of understanding her worth and fearing she’s not enough and never will be.

You ever feel like that?

My experience of being a child who wanted to be grown so badly because as an adult I would finally know what to do is a common one, the same as realizing once I was grown that adults actually don’t know what to do either a good part of the time is common. We’re all making it up as we go along and we’re all just walking each other home (thanks for that, Ram Dass). In other words, we’re all helping each other understand our own wholeness. We need to do that for and with each other.

I don’t think being enough is what my inner child is searching for. I think they’re looking for permission to make mistakes and learn from them, to be there for other people as best as possible even if their best is different from one day to the next. I think that kid is looking for permission to be a living, breathing, human being in all the perfection and imperfection that entails.

I think that kid has spent a lot of time trying to obtain that permission from someone else. Anyone else. You know, from another one of those grown people who’s also making it up as they go along.

Because of that, you know what will never be enough? Someone else’s permission. That means the only permission that counts is my own.

Arriving at the conclusion is great and all, but it won’t fix the problem—at least not overnight. Emotions will show up in my face or slyly sidle up, waiting for me to notice them.

And my inner adult will need to respond from a place of intention. Even if they don’t know what they’re doing, exactly. Even if there’s no right thing to say or do and never will be.

There’s only one perfect thing, one perfect way to respond. It’s what I hope to give that child, and what I hope to give and receive from all the other people who are walking home with me.

Love.

All my best,
Leslie