A year ago, I dropped my daughter off at college.
After 24 years of being a full-time working mom, I was entering a new chapter. No more watching softball games, shopping for prom outfits, or making posters for senior nights. The milestones that had shaped such a precious part of my life were behind me, and suddenly, I had time and space to think about myself. What I wanted. What mattered to me. What I wanted the next part of my life to look like.
It was a strange feeling. And an opportunity I hadn't had in years.
At the same time, I was deeply unhappy at work.
I was leading a design team at a Bay Area fintech company in the midst of rapid AI adoption, shifting priorities, and constant organizational change. The goalposts kept moving. Just as we adjusted to one set of expectations, priorities shifted again. We were figuring out new ways of working as we went. My team had questions, and I didn't have the answers. We still needed to deliver, even as the ground beneath us continued to shift.
I was trying to manage my own uncertainty, frustration, and burnout while showing up as a leader for my team. Somewhere along the way, I started to feel like I was reacting to everything around me rather than having a say in where I was headed. And I was beginning to question whether I was spending my time making the kind of impact I wanted to make.
With more space to think and a growing sense that something needed to change, I started exploring what might come next.
But there was something I had to work through first.
My identity was so tied to being a designer that it was hard to imagine doing anything else. The thought of walking away from my design career felt like walking away from a part of myself.
I remembered a phrase a former Design VP I worked with used: “Design or be designed.”
I was being designed.
And that's where permission came in.
I gave myself permission to figure it out.
Permission to explore possibilities I had never considered before.
Permission to be uncomfortable.
Permission to change.
Permission to take a risk.
Starting something from scratch, working for myself, building a business? That was never part of the plan.
But giving myself permission allowed me to question that plan.
Over time, I also began to see that I wasn't walking away from being a designer. I will always be a designer. I'll carry that lens and perspective with me, whatever I do. I don't have to change who I am. I can just add to it.
For me, permission is gentle. Permission is kind. It's a way of challenging the voice that tells us we're not equipped to do something different, that we don't have the right experience or skills. Sometimes, what we need isn't something new. It's a different way of seeing what we already have.
Sometimes, we hold ourselves back by the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we're capable of. We mistake the person we've been for the only person we can be.
What if we gave ourselves permission to question those stories?
To see ourselves differently?
To imagine what else might be possible?
What might you give yourself permission to do if you saw yourself differently?