here’s your permission slip

+ facing reality in the ER

Dec 16, 2024

Listen to me read this letter out loud to you here:

0:00

-8:53

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Cowering (a poem)

I’m feeling like cowering down
and avoiding. 
This is my greatest invitation 
to function otherwise —
if I’ll just take it.

Or, I can just feel small
and scared my whole life.
No dice…

This choice is up to me.
What’s too much.
This life has been, in ways.
Am I going into another
that is much the same?

Am I giving up on this one 
too easily?

I’m not sure, 
of anything.

Dear reflective human,

I realize lately I’ve been waiting for a permission slip — a blessing or stamp of approval from someone else.

This came up for me while sitting in an important meeting with Andrew recently, talking over some big possibilities with another. I glanced over to him realizing — I don’t know what we’re waiting for, other than us, to tell us this is doable.

I’ve been waiting for a framework when there isn’t any. When we’ve created this life from nothing. There’s just…us.

Getting met with pushback and uncertainty has reminded me who we are, what we are after, the ways we operate differently than “the norm,” what matters most, and the reasons we’ve made the choices we’ve made.

I’ve been telling myself lately, “it’s all too much.”

When the truth is, I can handle a lot more than I think, when it’s not all living upstairs.

There are all these things our mind thinks up and labels as threats, that can feel urgent or even like emergencies.

Then there’s this leveler when things get stripped down to the bare bones, to the human form in need of urgent care.

As we sat in the ER in our Christmas sweatshirts after the parade, while waiting for updates on the human we were there for, we couldn’t help but listen as the stories rolled in through the sliding glass doors.

I saw the dad with the new baby.

The college kid who nearly cut his finger off.

The mother holding her toddler in distress.

“Code stroke, room 11,” I heard repeating over the loudspeaker. My stomach dropped as I thought of the older woman, someone’s aunt, who had come in minutes before. She didn’t know her birthday. The room number matched the one I’d heard them say as they wheeled her away.

Hours before, I couldn’t have bet we’d be sitting in there, observing others in pain.

But things happen. And we confront them. And somehow as unsettling as they are, they’re never as scary as what’s living in our head.

Our own loved one was cared for, and is on the mend.

And this situation reminded us of the reality of this existence, and how we don’t want to sit around preparing for the worst.

We want to live out our best case scenario, like we always talk about.

I can do hard things.

We can do hard things.

I borrowed these words from author, Glennon Doyle, some time ago and they’ve played on repeat lately.

In the same breath, life will be a lot harder if we keep thinking there’s a perfect answer, outcome, direction, or choice at every turn.

That’s where I keep myself stuck.

I don’t know about you, but that’s where I need to give myself permission to trust and just step and see.

Knowing I can always reroute.

Knowing I can turn around.

Knowing I won’t know anything from the waiting room.

I took a walk in the woods with my near and dear friend TA, last week, and we sat together on my favorite bench.

The bench I often run to to clear my head.

The bench I listen from and pray from.

The bench where things make sense.

She and I sat and talked about the things that were getting in my way:

» The limiting beliefs of scarcity.

» The self-doubt of things being too much to manage.

» The “how could I possibly do this” questions that come up in the face of any daunting change.

» The need for faith and trust, at least for us.

» The need for letting go as we step into new phases of our journey.

She reminded me this whole life I’m living is “risky” and that we are operating on trust all the time.

How easily I forget (everything I need to remember).

When you’re in it, it’s a lot less scary, because you’re in it. I need to remember this without having to visit the ER. The truth is I do pretty great in a crisis. When there’s something real to deal with. It’s the mental gymnastics that trips me up.

This summer was all about facing some of my biggest hurdles internally and breaking through.

We were riding momentum, and without that momentum in these recent months, I’ve cowered.

Some of it’s come with the seasonal shift too. The invitation to slow down, to face up, to look in.

It was emotional for me looking back at our Colorado time, where we readied ourselves for more, and didn’t know the roadblocks to come.

Andrew put together a teaser of our YouTube video and when he shared it with me — it said everything I needed to remember.

I recorded this clip of my talking the day I relaunched Learning to Float. I could feel the vastness. I was seeing the infinite possibility. I was giving myself permission to lean into the belief and trust needed for the kind of life I want.

It’s about running, but mostly it’s about believing in yourself. Here’s the minute-long clip:

If you’d like to watch any part of the 51-minute full-length video on our YouTube Channel documenting our time in Colorado this summer, and the lessons we’ve absorbed and taken with us — it’s right here, too:

Here’s your permission slip…

If you’re like me, coming up on the closing of a season, the transition into another, and a new calendar year, all while being inside more… you’ve had time to reflect.

My question to you is — what do you need to give yourself permission for? What is it you’re waiting on someone or something else for?

— A big decision?

— A move you’re feeling called to make?

— Letting yourself off the hook for something?

Here’s our version of an old-school, “xeroxed,” permission slip made for you.

If you are an Apple iPhone/iPad person you can hold down on the image with your finger and save it to your photos.

Write on it digitally. Print it out if you want.

Or just use it as a visual reminder:

You have the power to give yourself permission for anything.

You don’t need permission from anyone else to live your life.

Right now, I’m giving myself permission to not know (a lot of things), and to not feel like I have to decide (on any of the big ones).

I don’t know exactly when or how our pending mural projects will unfold when the weather warms up.

I don’t know if our potential insurance change is worth it or what coverage we will need next year.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with a big opportunity we are open to bringing to life.

I don’t know how anything will play out, to be honest.

(Neither do any of us).

But I’m giving myself permission to give it up to something bigger than me in the way I haven’t done in quite some time.

Being willing to step and see.

Trusting it’ll all unfold as it needs to.

Back in December of 2018, we saw a Facebook event happening later that day in our hometown. A home tour of #thereuseboxtruck.

We’d almost given up on our mobile-living dream because we couldn’t find anything in our budget that seemed feasible for full-time living.

That all changed the moment we stepped into a converted U-haul and met Alex, a fellow plant-based oddball we connected with immediately.

A couple weeks later we looked at our first box truck option. It looked strange in the photo on Craigslist, like… a big marshmallow?

We saw a lot of good, but we were scared still. Could we do it? Could we afford it? How can it all possibly work?

We let it go. Pursued other options. Kept looking. Tried to make it all work.

And two months later it came back to us.

“You guys still interested? I’m willing to come down on the price,” read the text message.

The Marshmellow (spelled mellow because we want to be more mellow) became ours.

A year and a half later, she became our full-time home.

We buried this note in an hole underneath our flooring during our build, so it could journey with us. I’d written it on this tiny piece of paper the first time we stepped into her shell.