Quietly Becoming Jess
You Don’t Need Permission to Live the Life You Desire
I have lived in this world filled with expectations, social norms, and countless voices telling me how I should live. One of the most liberating realizations I came to in my mid-thirties: I didn’t need anyone’s permission to pursue the life I truly desired. This isn’t about recklessness. Or disregarding responsibility. This is about recognizing that the ultimate authority over me is God. And then realizing I no longer wanted to live my life by anyone else’s expectations. So, I began quietly (and sometimes loudly) becoming me.
How many years of my life did I waste waiting? I waited for approval from my parents, then validation from peers. Heading into adulthood, I waited for endorsement from society. That “right moment”, approval and embrace, never quite arrived. I conformed, all the while battling within. I allowed the idea of acquiring approval to build invisible prison walls around me. I crafted my dreams in secret, harboring them like contraband. I wrote unpublished essays on Wordpress for almost ten years— afraid to bring them into the light without someone else’s blessing.
This waiting game is a trap that can cost us years, decades, or even an entire lifetime. I decided I didn’t give a flying biscuit what anyone else thought of me. It was a process. It is a process still. But, I desire to be unapologetically, authentically…me.
The Permission Trap
From childhood, we’re conditioned to seek permission. We raise our hands in classrooms, ask to be excused, request approval for our choices. While this serves a purpose in structured environments, the pattern becomes problematic when it extends into our adult lives and personal aspirations. We internalize the belief that our dreams are only valid if they receive external validation.
This permission-seeking manifests in countless ways. The aspiring writer who won’t start their novel until someone tells them they’re “good enough.” The entrepreneur who endlessly researches and plans but never launches because they’re waiting for the perfect endorsement. (Did I mention I have files and files of digital art and a business plan? Yeah, that’s part of “it’s still a process”). What about the person who stays in an unfulfilling career because leaving might disappoint others? The individual who denies their authentic self because society hasn’t permitted them to be different.
The truth is stark and simple: most people will never give you permission to outgrow them, to challenge the status quo, or to pursue something they don’t understand. And why should they? Your dreams are yours alone to carry. Your dreams might just be so grand, it makes others feel less-than. And that is not on you. That’s a them problem. Don’t allow it to be a burden you carry.
The Illusion of Consensus
What if we could just get enough people to agree with our path? Would it somehow become more legitimate or achievable? We seek consensus as if it were a prerequisite for action. But this is an illusion that serves only to dilute our vision and delay our progress.
Consider history’s greatest innovators, artists, and changemakers. How many of them had unanimous approval when they began? The Wright brothers were mocked for believing humans could fly. Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime. Every major social movement faced fierce opposition before gaining acceptance.
Waiting for consensus is waiting for something that may never come—and even if it does, it often arrives only after you’ve already done the work and proven the skeptics wrong.
Reclaiming Your Authority
Living without seeking permission doesn’t mean living without wisdom, guidance, or consideration of others. It is the hallmark of a soul guided by wisdom. You’ve weighed the counsel of others and selectively chosen what is worth keeping. You’ve made a commitment to being so honest with yourself that your kindness toward others becomes genuine rather than performative. It means recognizing that you are the author of your own story, the architect of your own life. It means understanding that advice is welcome, but approval is unnecessary.
This shift requires courage. It demands that you trust yourself even when others doubt you. It asks you to value your inner compass over the cacophony of external voices. It means being willing to be misunderstood, criticized, or deemed foolish by those who cannot see what you see.
Reclaiming your authority means acknowledging that you will make mistakes—and that’s acceptable. It’s actually necessary. Every stumble is a life lesson, every failure is feedback. You don’t need permission to try, to fail, to learn, and to try again. These are your inherent rights as a human being navigating your own existence.
The Cost of Waiting
What does it cost us to perpetually wait for permission that will never arrive? It costs us time—our most precious, non-renewable resource. If I reflect upon the moments I could have spent with my children, being the mother God gave them, rather than seeking approval as the mother others expect, my heart aches. Waiting costs us potential—the projects never started, the businesses never launched, the relationships never pursued, the adventures never embarked upon.
It costs us authenticity. When we shape our lives according to others’ expectations rather than our own values, we become strangers to ourselves. We wake up one day and realize we’ve built someone else’s dream, lived someone else’s life, followed someone else’s script.
Perhaps most tragically, waiting for permission costs us the unique contribution only we can make to the world. God made you. For a reason. For a purpose. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Your specific combination of talents, experiences, perspectives, and passions was handcrafted by the Master Creator for a reason. When you suppress or delay expressing these gifts because you’re waiting for approval, the world loses something irreplaceable. There is only one me. There is only one you.
Permission-Free Living in the Making
To release myself from this endless cycle of people pleasing and permission seeking, I had to do the hard work. Sometimes it made me mad, at myself, at people in my life, and at societal expectation. I had to examine where in my life I was waiting for approval. Who am I trying to please? What voices hold me back? Becoming self-aware is quite the journey. It is also the first step to change.
Living authentically doesn’t exclude the people around us. It does help us discern who deserves to be a voice in our life, and who doesn’t. A single line from the Serenity Prayer resonates like a distant homecoming bell: ‘God grant me... the wisdom to know the difference.’ Knowing the difference between when I should seek wise counsel, but not confusing helpful input with the need for permission keeps me grounded. I will listen to insights, then make my own decision.
I had to do more than just tolerate disapproval; I had to embrace it. I realized that when others judge my choices, it is a reflection of their own boundaries, not the validity of my path. With that clarity, I finally gave myself the permission I’d been seeking for years to get the body art I desired. While the reactions are polarized, the ink on my arms has opened more doors for genuine conversations about faith, my story, and salvation through Jesus Christ than any given Sunday I spent working in ministry.
Family is my anchor. I quietly walked away from people who were never going to approve of me anyway, and held close the small circle of friends who are true to me, and to themselves. I’ve realized that I need to intentionally surround myself with people who don’t just tolerate my independence, but actively champion it—even when they don’t fully understand or agree with the path I’m taking. I am learning to pour my energy into the ‘gems’ in my life who offer a safe harbor for my authenticity rather than a list of conditions for their approval. These are the rare, vital relationships I’ve decided to nurture, because they allow me the psychological freedom to grow without the fear of losing my place in their hearts.
Responsibility and Freedom
Living without seeking permission is not about abandoning responsibility. In fact, it requires more responsibility, not less. When you stop blaming others for holding you back or waiting for them to green-light your dreams, you accept full ownership of your choices and their consequences.
This ownership is empowering. It means your successes are truly yours. Your achievements aren’t diminished by the caveat that you were “just following orders” or “doing what was expected.” They reflect your vision, your courage, your commitment.
It also means your mistakes are yours to learn from. Without the crutch of “I was just doing what they told me to”, you develop resilience, wisdom, and genuine capability.
The Ripple Effect
When you give yourself permission to live authentically, you do more than change your own life—you give others permission to do the same. Your courage becomes contagious. Your example demonstrates that it’s possible to chart your own course and survive (even thrive).
You become living proof that permission was never necessary in the first place. The only permission you’ve ever needed is your own.
And you can give it to yourself right now.