The Permission Slip

I used to wait for permission.

Permission to speak up. Permission to take up space. Permission to call myself an expert, a leader, a person whose opinion was worth hearing. I was waiting for someone — a boss, a mentor, a room full of people — to look at me and say: yes, you're allowed.

The permission never came. Not in the form I was waiting for.

What I eventually understood was that it was never going to come from outside. The permission I was waiting for was mine to give.

The Permission Economy

We teach women, from very early on, to seek permission.

Ask before you act. Check before you decide. Make sure it's okay. Don't presume.

There's a version of this that's about collaboration and consideration — genuinely good things. But there's another version that's about keeping women uncertain. About making sure that before a woman does anything significant, she's checked with someone else first. Preferably someone with more authority. Preferably someone who can validate that she's allowed.

This is how you keep capable people small. Not by telling them they can't — by making them believe they need to ask.

What I Was Waiting For

I was waiting for someone to tell me I was ready.

Ready to go for the senior role. Ready to start the project I'd been thinking about for two years. Ready to write the book. Ready to say, in public, the things I'd been saying privately for years.

I kept finding reasons why I wasn't quite there yet. I needed more experience. More credentials. More certainty. More evidence that I was qualified to do the thing I already knew how to do.

The readiness I was waiting for was a moving target. Every time I got close, it shifted. Because readiness, I eventually understood, is not a state you arrive at. It's a decision you make.

The Permission Slip I Wish I'd Had

If I could go back and hand myself a permission slip, it would say something like this:

You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to have opinions and share them without first checking whether they're welcome. You are allowed to be uncertain and do the thing anyway. You are allowed to call yourself an expert in the things you know, even if someone else knows more. You are allowed to lead before you feel ready. You are allowed to write the book, start the project, go for the role, say the thing.

You are allowed to be a work in progress and still show up fully. You are allowed to not have all the answers. You are allowed to change your mind.

You do not need anyone's permission to be yourself.

Giving Yourself Permission

Here's the practical version: the next time you catch yourself waiting for permission, ask who you're waiting for.

Is there a specific person whose approval you need? If so, why? What do they have that you don't? What would their permission actually give you that you don't already have?

Often, when you trace it back, the permission you're waiting for is from a version of yourself — the certain, qualified, ready version — that you've decided you're not yet.

But that version isn't coming. She's not waiting in the future, fully formed, ready to take over. She's you, right now, deciding to act.

The permission slip is blank. You fill it in.

What I'm Giving You

Consider this your permission slip.

You are allowed to go for the thing you've been putting off until you're ready. You are allowed to speak up in the room where you've been staying quiet. You are allowed to call yourself what you are, even if it feels presumptuous.

You are allowed to stop waiting.

The world has been waiting for the real version of you — not the one who's checked with everyone first, not the one who's waited for the right moment, not the one who's earned enough credentials to feel safe.

Just you. As you are. Right now.

You're allowed.

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The full story of how I stopped waiting for permission — and what happened when I finally gave it to myself — is in Confessions of an Imposter. Available now on Amazon — and the audiobook is live this week too. Listen to the audiobook on Audible — narrated by the brilliant Sarah Kowalchuck.