35. The Permission Trap: Why You Stopped Trusting Yourself

Women always feel like they need permission. For everything. And most of us don’t even realize we’re doing it.

In this episode, I’m talking about agency - your ability to make decisions about your own life without needing someone else to sign off on them. Where it went, why it’s not your fault, and how to start taking it back.

I’m getting into the research on how girls are socialized from a young age to accommodate, defer, and make themselves easier for everyone else, and how that training follows us into careers, relationships, and the way we move through midlife.

I’m also talking about why women between 40 and 59 have the highest rates of depression, and why I believe it has everything to do with arriving at freedom we were never taught how to use.

And I’m sharing my own experience of leaving my nursing career with no plan and no safety net, and why that was the moment I stopped waiting for permission and started trusting myself instead.

If you’ve been waiting for permission to go after what you want, this episode is your reminder that nobody else is coming to give it to you.

🎧 Inside this episode: • The invisible ways women hand over their authority without realizing it • What happens when the roles you built your identity around start shifting • Why midlife is often when your capacity for agency is at its highest • The small decisions that rebuild self-trust - one rep at a time • Why agency isn’t something you lost, it’s something you were trained to stop using

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If this episode resonated, send it to a woman who needs to hear it. Message me on IG and tell me - what’s one decision you already know the answer to?

Until next time, Stay wild ⛰️💫🌵