I took my younger daughter to get her ears pierced this past Sunday. First of all, when did ear piercing get so dang expensive? $177? For a teen ear piercing? Apparently the gun method causes more problems than it is worth, so people now go to actual piercers who charge a lot of money. And rightfully so. They have super sterile environments and your child sits in a chair that looks like something at the dentist. Gone are the days of just wandering into a jewelry store where they happen to have a piercing gun and blam! Holes.
I was waiting for my daughter’s turn and admiring the multiple stacks of piercings on the ear of a woman sitting next to me. I commented they were lovely and was she addicted to getting them (as I felt I might be should I start even with one extra hole…) She said they were not, and I said, “I had a belly button ring once. It took six months to heal and on the day I could touch it, it literally felt off in the shower and down the drain and I just said, what ever. I didn’t need it anymore.” “We all did that kind of stuff when we were younger,” she said. I paused. “I was 44 when I did that,” I said sheepishly. “A bucket list.” She looked a bit embarrassed at her assumption, but then recovered with a shift in her face of fortitude. “Not a bucket list,” she said. “You gave yourself permission.” I was all a glow! Validation of my permission message from this stranger in the piercing shop. We see the signs when we are on the path of spreading the word.
The day I got the belly button ring, I gave myself a little permission to do something radical randomly on a Tuesday between picking up my young children at school. I was also wanting to smoke pot (I had been clean for a few years) and I knew a piercing would rattle my cage. It sure did. I almost passed out had it not been for the crackers and orange juice, but I never had the desire to smoke pot again. Giving myself permission to redirect to an act that was in the shaping of a new me, I shed the old additive lacking thinking for a new version of abundance.
In my 40’s, since I was late to the game of allowing myself to be in full expression of my unique me, I had to give myself a lot of little permissions like the belly button ring. They often came with a lot of emotional pain. I had to be in pain before I finally said. “Hell no. I am not subjecting myself to this anymore.” Each permission felt awkward, like a pre-verbal child asking for a cookie. I wallowed in self pity days after, thinking it was the worst idea - this act of staring in the face what I stood for and being in the after-muck on it. But slowly over time, through a decade, all those permissions added up until I reached my 50’s and I started to reach for bigger visions and allow myself to indulge in them when they showed up.
At 50, I paid for a junior suite with wall to wall windows in downtown LA for my birthday. I laid on the bed after the party and just basked in the view and what I was creating for myself. I had the desire to take my daughters to Paris and when I found out a concierge who could book your hotel and all your experiences was reasonable, I dropped the cash to have help running all over Paris. I liked the idea of saying “I have a concierge” and I gave myself not only permission to own it, but to know that I had earned the money to spend on this service that made me less of a travel agent on my vacation.
So many more example exist of in my up-level, and even then I continue to look for signs to affirm me that women are telling each other that they gave permission (so they recognize it to build more of those acts of self serving). They are also giving each other permission all the time. I am continually saying to women when they breathlessly tell me about a dream, “Girl, you are on fire. Go for it.” I can see in the flush of their cheeks the real potential that lies within. A week later, I ask, “How did that work out?” and I take in the dull sallow of their eyes and the light is gone. What happened? I’ll tell you what transpired. All the crap in their head got to them that held more power and potency than the will to permit.
They’ll find that permission. We all will. As long as we keep bit by bit, little instance by little instance, see the permissions we give each other, note the happiness and joy in the results, watch for the expansion of wealth within this shift, and push for more.
What have been some small permissions you have given yourself lately? The sky is the limit when it comes to how much we can permit ourselves to be.
Love this post. Little permissions move us forward. Incremental steps toward something most meaningful, it seems to me. Yesterday, I gave myself permission to be a football fanatic and spent hours watching the NFL playoffs. I rarely do that. This time it felt great. Today, however, I pushing the permission rock down the road and taking a long walk, meditating, and writing. Permissions, yes, but markers of my better existence. Thanks for the post.