Still Life: Permission
Words, images, and questions for paying attention.
When I told my dad I was getting married after six months of dating, he told me he wasn’t coming to the wedding and stopped talking to me for three months. He eventually came around. Came to the wedding. I remember him leaning over to me on the dance floor with tears in his eyes and saying, “This is the best wedding I’ve ever been to.”
Imagine his shock when I told him I was getting divorced. Or that I was moving to Mexico. By myself.
I turn 40 tomorrow. I’ve been giving myself permission to do things that people in my life didn’t understand since I was a girl. I always danced to the beat of my own drum. Grew up in Simsbury, Connecticut, feeling different, wanting a bigger, more expansive life. I knew there was more out there, and I was determined to find it. I moved to Oregon when I was 18. All the way across the country, the first person in my high school to go to the University of Oregon. Most of the people from Simsbury didn’t even pronounce Oregon correctly.
That’s not rebellion. It’s something else. Something closer to survival. I’ve always felt like I needed to be true to myself or there was no real point of anything. That feeling is what has driven every major decision I’ve made. Because denying myself of what I need would be stifling. And a stifled life isn’t a life I’m willing to live.
I think there’s a version of this essay where I list the permissions like trophies. Left the marriage. Moved to Mexico. Had a baby across cultures. Built a life that makes no sense on paper. And those things are true, and I’m proud of them. But I don’t think permission is really about the big dramatic leaps. I think it’s about the daily, quiet practice of choosing yourself when it would be easier not to.
