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

Resources:

Do you know what it would feel like to arrive in your power?

We talk about power like it's a destination but I don't think that that's true. I mean, I have had clear, undeniable moments that I can point to and say, yes, that was me. I was lightning. But much more often, it's so much subtler than that.

It's a reaching. A getting a little closer than last time. It's the moment after, when I'm not sure if I lived up to my own high standards and someone who loves me says, “Did you see what you just did?” And because they know me really well, I can go, “Okay, yeah, that was pretty rad.”

Brooke Edwards has spent 30 years guiding people through some of the most remote wildernesses on earth, keeping people alive in places that do not forgive mistakes. This year she walked into a completely different kind of challenge that required all of her accumulated skill and presence.

I want you to listen for the moment when she stops wondering if she's the right person and she knows, I am the medicine. This is one of the clearest examples I've ever witnessed of someone arriving fully in their power.

This is a conversation about nervous systems, about trauma, about whimsy as rebellion, and about what it means to return to a place that once hurt you, and not just survive it, but bring healing back with you.

It's also a conversation about what happens after you arrive in your power.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

How Brooke learned to truly rest and heal her nervous system after years of 24/7 situational vigilance as a wilderness guide

Why putting on her “five-year-old helmet” and adding whimsy into her day are essential practices in Brooke’s ability to be a change-maker
How Brooke’s system unexpectedly rebelled after her experience of stepping into her power
Why we need guides and mirrors in our communities
The moment Brooke fully owned that she could be a uniquely powerful servant and ally to her community
Why the return from the summit and pausing to integrate what we’ve learned are essential parts of the journey

Learn more about Brooke Edwards:

Resources:

Buried, Ken Wylie

Permission to Become: A Love Letter to Your Power

Arriving in Your Power with Brooke Edwards