Weakness and Permission

I am a recovering people pleaser. Perhaps I’m also recovering from patterns of codependency. And something I didn’t realize I’ve been doing until I went to therapy is that I tend to ask for people’s permission to feel what I feel.

It’s right there in my songwriting, too: “Can I just be weak?!”, “Won’t you let me be weak?”.

Photo by Liz Brown, Design by Matt Crummy

I love this song. I am so happy to finally get to release it. I am really proud of how it turned out. I love the production on it, and I love what we did with the arrangement. (Side note: everything you hear on that song was done by myself and Bryan Vanderpool, with the exception of the bass line, which was performed by Jay Foote. It always feels magical to me to be able to create such a big and intricate sound with just two (okay, three) people in a basement. That’s maybe my favorite thing about music-making — the magic. But that’s a post for a different day…)

I am proud of it, but at the same time, I feel almost a little bit embarrassed, because the main theme of the song is presented as a question: Can I just be weak? Is it okay with you if I feel how I feel? Is it okay with you if I’m just a person and not a superhero? Is it okay with you if I have limits?

I wrote this song before I ever saw anything out of the ordinary with these sentiments. Asking permission from other people to feel how I feel and think what I think was not a pattern that stood out as unhealthy to me; it came so naturally. I hate disappointing people, I hate when people are mad at me, and I hate feeling alone — so asking permission from others helped me feel like I’m stacking the deck in my favor. I’m guaranteeing an outcome: that I won’t disappoint anyone, that people won’t be mad at me.

But sometimes life comes at you so hard that you don’t have time to stack the deck in your favor. And that’s what happened to me in 2021 (when I wrote this song). I got beaten down by death and betrayal and trauma all at once, and all I was left with was my frail humanity and a total disinterest in pretending like everything’s fine when it’s not. I came face to face with my limits, and had to accept and even embrace my weakness (I’ll talk more about these things in upcoming blog posts). And now, I’m still working on growing out of those old patterns of people pleasing and codependency. I’m working on choosing honesty over seeking permission.

Photo by Liz Brown

This is the funny thing about writing and releasing honest songs. You get to hear me go through the process of growing as a person — which means you get to hear the mistakes and the foolishness along the way. But honestly, I think that’s kind of beautiful. I hope that this song (and others) will find people at just the right time in their lives — perhaps as they’re wrestling through the same undesirable patterns I was/am wrestling with.