Inspired by Sophie Howarth & The Poetry Habit
I was lucky enough to be part of the October 2025 cohort of The Poetry Habit - a course on building a daily practice of reading, writing and feeling poetry. One of the exercises in the early weeks was to write ourselves a permission slip for the month. This felt so positively juvenile, so apt an internal excursion for me to take on a Tuesday, and so difficult?
Growing up I internalized a no excuses mindset, especially for things I decided I wanted to do. Who am I to disappoint myself by not following through? How can I be trusted by others if Iām flaky with commitments to myself?
I decided I had to trust in the process - to leave the laundry for the next day, to leave my desk for a walk, to have a couch day without justification, to stop writing when the words didnāt come, I let myself make excuses this month, and no one noticed. Except me. I thanked myself for not always pushing or trying or feeling the shame for not trying. My days found new ways to center themselves when I didnāt give them such stringent containers full of to-do lists.
We did several exercises through the course, but this is the one I came back to at the end, and as a reminder to myself, I made the permission slip my screensaver to remind myself being right is overrated:
& then, the obsession with permission continued, so I made some for my classmates too:
Take it. Save it. Release it. Youāre welcome <3
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