A noun. To give permission. To give the necessary time and opportunity for.

An ugly thing when we don’t give it to ourselves. A sweet thing, a chocolate truffle of a thing, when we sneak it between our lips to know how voluptuous life can be. And a daring thing when bestowed on another, like an offering or a promise to see what might unfold between willing hearts and an open road. Mostly though it is a thing just outside my grasp.

I can’t always tell what it is. I can only track it by its footprints.

Like when I banished the box of ghosts I’d hidden in my closet. It’s not my responsibility to carry them with me everywhere I go. I am allowed to move on from my past and the things from the beyond that are happiest when I’m in Purgatory. Or the time I jumped off the merry-go-round because I wanted to feel solid earth against the soles of my feet. I’m allowed to stop running in circles, going nowhere fast. I’m tired of being dizzy and clinging to toy chariots. I taste it in when I wrap my lips around the word “no” and feel the heady rush of the time I’ve freed up for myself, the obligations I’ve released in favor of protecting my solitude.

I’m beginning to figure out what it feels like to allow.

Sometimes I even find it in the things I’ve given away. The too-tight dress. The ugly thought. The buttoned-up book from the person who wished I were, well, a little more buttoned up. I’m allowed to be loud in who I am, even when my soul is found in the hush of a spring morning and the quiet of my garden, hair loose around my shoulders, feet bare, eager to kiss the soil with their heels and toes.

I’m allowed to feel joy even when the world isn’t always a joyful place. It has taken me so long to find the sunshine within my ribcage that I refuse to lose it now. It is my seed that I coaxed into blooming. And what wonderful flora it has made! What wonderful medicine it will become when the flowers fade and dry and are ready to be plucked and stored in one of my many bottles and pots. My home apothecary is made up of many a preserved feeling so that when it rains, I can dip into my jar of sunshine and remember that stormy weather is a fleeting thing.

Here’s what else I allow myself:

A quiet place. Space. A blank page to see what happens next.

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