Permission To Want What You Want

In my work with women, there’s one epiphany I’m grateful to witness often. An insight that turns the ship around and provides a new lens to look back on a life half-lived.

Sometimes it starts with a feeling.

Guilt. Anxiety. Frustration

And then there’s a moment where the unseen is seen. The common refrain—I don’t know what I want—becomes untrue.

In its place arises something unfamiliar and beautiful. Many wants.

But still no permission to want them.

As women we are so accustomed to cloaking ourselves in the needs and desires of everyone else in our lives that our own oxygen feels selfish to breathe.

Yet when we inhale and imagine, we see a glimpse of what is possible, and we are filled with hope.

This is the shift that can forever change you. It is an honoring of what you want. No matter how you may fail or fumble. Especially because you may fail or fumble. It is agency. It is trust.

It is admitting to those you love that you have wants and they are important. And practicing together. Continuing to remind each other that they are still important, even when they are inconvenient and throw off the equilibrium of the old systems that put your wants at the bottom of the list.

Your wants are worth fighting for even if there’s chaos before you find your order.

We were not taught to want outside the lanes our culture drew for us. And yet every time we unlearn these bounds—we find who we are meant to be.