The Permission You've Been Waiting For

There is a line from Jennie Garth's new book that stopped me when I read it.

She wrote that sometimes when it breaks, what breaks us sets us free. That when life blindsides you with changes you didn't ask for, divorce, illness, heartbreak, the loss of something you built your whole identity around, it can leave you feeling completely untethered. But the life you thought you were losing was making space for the life you were meant to step into.

I've been sitting with that since we wrapped our conversation on The Tamsen Show (you can watch it here).

Jennie is 53 years old. She grew up on a farm in the Midwest, moved to Hollywood as a teenager, and became one of the most recognizable faces in the world before she was old enough to understand what that meant. She spent a decade playing Kelly Taylor on 90210, a character that an entire generation of women, myself included, quietly measured themselves against. And she spent most of those years working so hard to not outshine the people around her that she eventually realized she was taking the spotlight away from herself.

A friend said to her simply: “It's okay to shine.” She said it changed everything.

I think about how many of us are waiting for that same sentence. Some sign that it's actually okay to take up the space we've earned. To stop softening our accomplishments so other people feel comfortable. To stop whispering the version of our story that won't make anyone in the room feel threatened.

We have been so well trained to make ourselves manageable that most of us have never once considered the cost of it.

Jennie talked about imposter syndrome in a way that I think will land for a lot of women. She was hosting her very first live event, standing on stage in front of a room full of people, and the voice in her head was asking who am I to do this? She went out there terrified anyway because the alternative was not becoming the woman she wanted to be. 

This is the thing nobody says loud enough. Everyone looks more together from the outside than they feel on the inside. The imposter syndrome doesn't disappear when you become successful, you just get better, sometimes, at not letting it make the decisions.

What Jennie did was decide to stop waiting until she felt ready. She turned 50 and told her manager she had ten years in her and wanted to throw everything she had ever wanted to do at the wall and see what happened. The book, the podcasts, the clothing line, the women's summit. Not because she had a perfect plan but because she wanted her daughters to see that she was never afraid of going for it. That she was never afraid of failing and that she showed up anyway.

This is your reminder that you don't have to have it figured out. You don't have to feel ready. You don't have to earn the right to shine before you start. It's already okay.

Listen to the full episode here or you can watch it here.

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