What is Radical Permission?

Radical Permission is an invitational daily practice of offering oneself “permission” to express oneself and make reasoned actions in life. The practice helps you free yourself to:

• Feel hope, trust, wonder, and to feel like you are enough

• Be confident, courageous, outgoing, kind, generous, compassionate, and imperfect

• Do things like set boundaries, take a break, practice self-care, embrace discomfort, prioritize yourself, start over, and loudly proclaim your own greatness

• Embrace emotions including fear, love, happiness, anger, grief, sadness, and joy

In summary, Radical Permission is the act of giving yourself space to be your whole and authentic self. This includes the good, the not-as-good, and the things you are working to improve.

How to participate?

• You can write down your permission slip on anything like a notecard, post-it, a scrap of paper, or digitally in your notes app or as a tweet. 

• Just take a few minutes at the start of each day to say to yourself “Today I give myself permission to” and fill in what you need from there. 

• If you need inspiration, check out the #RadicalPermission hashtag on Instagram and Twitter. Also, if you feel comfortable sharing publicly, don’t forget to use the #RadicalPermission hashtag

• You can also join the Radical Permission Facebook group

Community Partners:

The Radical Permission project will be working with multiple partners as we expand our community. Our first partner is Andrea Paterson.

Andrea Paterson is an artist and mother with a Master’s in Literature from the University of British Columbia. Following the birth of her first child, she suffered from postpartum depression and anxiety. It took her over a year to recognize that what she was experiencing fell outside the realm of everyday parenting struggles.  At her breaking point,  she reached out to Pacific Post Partum Support Society, joined a support group, and began to find her way back into her own life. As she sat alongside others working through their own postpartum transformations, it became clear that working in the area of perinatal mental health and wellness was the work she wanted to do when she was ready.

A few years later and after having her second child, she began working as a counselor and group facilitator for Pacific Post Partum Support Society. Andrea is filled with gratitude for the opportunity to provide care for those navigating their own journeys into parenthood. She frequently leans on her knowledge of art and literature to help parents create meaningful narratives about their experiences. When Andrea became aware of Hayden Dawes and his Radical Permission project it resonated with her own self-care philosophy. She began using permission slips in her support groups. Creating illustrated permission slips was a natural extension of her own permission slip practice and an opportunity to integrate her artistic abilities and commitment to postpartum healing.  She has deeply enjoyed collaborating with Hayden through Radical Permission.