Why do women still feel like they need permission to have a life?
It’s something I’ve been noticing more and more, in ways that are not always obvious at first.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a post from Eshita Kabra announcing her pregnancy.
It was beautiful news. The kind of thing that should feel simple, joyful, almost obvious. And yet the first line stayed with me longer than anything else. She said that many ambitious women find it difficult to share what is meant to be very happy news.
I remember pausing there for a moment, because it’s such a quiet sentence, but it carries something underneath it that feels heavier than it should.
Why is that still true?
That same week, something slightly unexpected happened. Tiffany Drake, whose writing I’ve followed for a while, particularly her ‘rule of five’ approach to consumption, reached out and asked if I would be open to a short interview about ‘life editing.’ No context, no preparation, just a quick call. I said yes without thinking too much about it, which in hindsight was probably the best way to approach it.
I joined the call already a bit tired. It was one of those days that start early and don’t really give you space to arrive anywhere fully. Kids on holidays, clients, volunteering day at SmartWorks, everything happening at once. You move through it, but your mind is still catching up. And because of that, I didn’t prepare anything. I didn’t think about what I was going to say, or how I should sound. I just showed up.
At some point she asked me about my comment on Eshita’s post, motherhood and work, and how it changes things. And I realised, while she was asking the question, that I didn’t really have a clean answer, because I don’t think it works in a clean way.
I had my first child when I was 23. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was still trying to understand myself, let alone another human being. There was no strategy behind it, no sense of timing, no idea of how this would fit into a career later on. Life just happened.
And for a long time, I tried to organise it in a way that made sense. I separated things. My work over here. My children over there. My personal life somewhere else. Trying to find balance by keeping everything slightly apart, as if that would make it easier to manage.
Only a couple of years ago I started to see that the separation was the thing that made it harder.
Because it creates this quiet feeling that parts of your life need to take turns existing. That you can be one thing now, and another thing later, and maybe (if everything goes well) you’ll eventually find a way to bring it all together.
What I have always resisted, though, even without fully realising it, is the idea of becoming just one version of myself. Just the mother. Just the professional. Just the woman who holds everything together quietly.
There has always been something in me that wanted all of it to stay alive at the same time. Not perfectly, or in balance all the time. But present.
I’ve always found it interesting, the way we talk about children as something that might affect our careers, as if they take something away.
That hasn’t been my experience. If anything, it has done the opposite.
Not in a polished, easy to explain way, but in the way life forces you to grow. To make decisions faster. To understand what matters. To hold more than one thing at once.
Things that, whether we say it or not, shape how you move professionally as well.
And yet, when I look around, I see how often we are still negotiating that. Not openly, but in small decisions. What we share. What we don’t. What we tone down. What we delay.
Even something as simple as announcing a pregnancy can become something that requires consideration, timing, almost justification.
It made me realise how much of our lives we are still editing. Not because we don’t know who we are, but because we are trying to make that version acceptable.
Acceptable at work. Acceptable socially. Acceptable in a way that doesn’t disrupt the image we think we’re supposed to maintain.
And the more I think about it, the more exhausting that feels.
Because there is no version of this that works perfectly. You can have children early and it will be questioned. You can have them later and it will be questioned. You can prioritise your career and something will feel out of place. You can prioritise your personal life and something else will feel compromised.
There is always something.
So at some point, it stops being about finding the right way to do it, and it becomes a decision. A quiet one, but a very clear one. To stop waiting. To stop editing yourself into something more acceptable. To stop asking for permission to live your life in the way that makes sense to you.
And this doesn’t just show up in life decisions.
It shows up in something much smaller, and much more daily.
In your wardrobe.
In the way you get dressed in the morning.
In the hesitation before wearing something that feels a little more like you. In the way you adjust it, soften it, bring it back into a range that feels acceptable. In the quiet question that sits underneath it all - is this too much? is this appropriate? am I allowed to look like this?
Clothing is one of the first places where that need for permission becomes visible.
Because what you wear is not just about clothes. It’s about how much of yourself you’re willing to show without negotiating it down first.
And most women are still editing there too.
Softening and simplifying themselves. Making themselves easier to read, easier to accept.
Until, at some point, you realise you’re doing the same thing everywhere, and it stops being about finding the right way to do it.
And it becomes a decision, a very clear one.
To stop waiting.
To stop editing yourself into a version that feels easier for everyone else to understand.
To stop asking for permission to live your life in the way that makes sense to you.
(On a regular day, wearing an origami beret hat by Darryl Bedford - @vectoriseart - No permission required ;)
Because, truth is, no one is going to come and tell you that now is the perfect moment.
That this version of you is the right one.
That everything aligns and makes sense and has been approved.
That moment doesn’t exist.
What does exist is the choice to stop adjusting constantly.
To let the different parts of your life exist together, even if it feels messy, even if it doesn’t look the way you imagined it would.
To accept that there isn’t one clean version of you that replaces all the others, but many that need to coexist.
And maybe that’s what that sentence was really pointing to.
Not the difficulty of sharing good news.
But the weight of feeling like you need to explain why your life looks the way it does.
At some point, it becomes simpler to just… not.
With love,
Carolina
P.S. If you enjoy this kind of thinking, where clothing somehow turns into identity, and identity turns into everything else, you’ll probably like being here.
I write every Thursday. You can subscribe, or just reply and say hi. I read everything, always.