I keep noticing something in my work, in my friendships, even in myself: so many people are starving for permission.

Permission to rest. To stop performing all the time. To tell the truth.

Permission to become stranger, more tender, more sweet. Permission to become more fully themselves.

So many of us learned that belonging required us to perform. We perform competence, pleasantness, productivity… We learned to shape-shift and contort ourselves to survive systems that could not fully hold us. And after a while, it’s hard to remember who we really are underneath all that adaptation.

The conversations I’ve had this season have each, in their own way, done what singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles calls “widening the road.” My guests’ stories make room on the road for different ways of being powerful.

So today, I want to revisit some of those conversations, not just to reflect on what these guests learned about power, but to help you see yourself in their stories too.

Because maybe what you need most right now isn’t more advice. Maybe you need a little more permission.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The common thread of truth about power that all of my guests have discovered
• Why stepping into our real power requires us to name and claim our unique powers
• How power calls us to pause and truly witness and honor others and our environments in ways only we can

Learn more about Valerie Black:

• The Change Agency
• Becoming Power Newsletter
• Coaching

Resources:

• Ep 2.06 Walking Each Other Home: Power, Elderhood, and Belonging with Shirley Showalter
• Ep 2.07 Seen, Known, and Valued: Sarabeth Bickerton on Naming Your Uniqueness
• Ep 2.08 Arriving in Your Power with Brooke Edwards
• "Sweet Darkness," David Whyte