Respectfully… You’re Asking for Permission When You Really Want to Burn It All Down

Welcome to Coming Home, my weekly newsletter for people who are healing, remembering, and occasionally sharing cat memes about boundaries. I’m Natasha Levinger—inner child intuitive, energy healer, and author of Inner Child Healing: Reparenting Yourself for a More Secure and Loving Life.

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Last week, one of my wonderful clients told me she had been hanging out with someone who she just couldn’t put her finger on why, but being around him made her feel terrrrible.

Later that night, long after they had been together, she kept arguing with him in her mind, trying to figure out exactly how he had crossed some invisible line or been wrong enough to justify the feeling she had in her body.

I took a look at their energy together and saw yes, he was definitely pushy, definitely boundary-crossing. It wasn’t so much in an obvious “Oh wow, he crossed a line” kind of way, but more in an energetically sticky, hard-to-articulate but impossible-to-ignore kind.

But also, the fact that he was like that didn’t actually matter. Hmph! Why would you say that, Natasha?

Thank you so much for asking. For this reason: if she wanted to leave, didn’t want to talk to him anymore, or simply never wanted to hear that man’s opinions about anything ever again…she gets to. This is true with him behaving how he was or if he was as respectful and kind as our patron saint of all that is good, Mr. Rogers.

I told her, “You don’t need permission to set a boundary. You don’t need an explanation for why someone bothers you. You get to have a boundary just because you want one.”

But this here newsletter is not about boundary setting with difficult people (although I can do that one if you want, lmk in the comments and I will!) —this is about how ultimately that knee-jerk angst about disappointing someone (sometimes when you don’t even like them) is not about another person.

It’s about your relationship with your own fire.

When You Almost Trust Yourself (A Love Story)

What is fire exactly? Well, I’m not talking about passion or anger, although it can include that. I’m talking about the the thing in you that knows who you are at a gut level. Not thinks, not hopes, but knowwwws.

It’s the you that was never confused about who they are even if everything and everyone else is. It’s not loud necessarily, it’s not always comfortable, but it’s unmistakable when you stop managing it long enough to feel it.

In my client’s case she felt it when she felt that urge to end the conversation, when she heard that NO inside herself, but it made her understandably a little squirrely, so she doubted it. She tried to argue with it (and him—in her head).

We've all done this. Capitulated to other people's yeses when we were a no, prepared and prepared instead of actually showing up, sided with the person who thought less of us, dragged ourselves to the thing because it would be rude not to. (The list, as always, goes on.)

But the reason it feels dangerous isn’t because our fire is actually destructive. It’s because it’s specific.

Our fire knows exactly what it is and it doesn’t apologize for that.

And specificity—really being something fully, without hedging, is the most vulnerable thing there is. Because the more specific you are? The harder it is to hide.

Specificity is what allows your life to take the shape that you are. It’s the difference between being a vaguely warm light and becoming a beam that lights the way. It asks you to occupy your own space without apology.

We all have our own origin story for why we do this. I know in childhood I was targeted if I succeeded or if I struggled. And if you were socialized as a woman your fire is constantly being extinguished or threatened to be.

So you developed an inner child who became the gatekeeper requiring a REASON to let the fire out. They need to see a notarized doc explaining your whys, friend (if that is your name)! Do you have what it takes to exist as purely yourself? You’re going to have to convince them first!

Turns Out the Permit Office Was Imaginary

Your fire doesn’t need permission. And you don’t need a reason to let it out.

You are allowed to be this powerful just because you are. Not because you’ve earned it, prepared enough for it, made it safe enough for it. Not because you’ve found the perfect moment or the perfect words or the perfect offering. Just because it’s yours.

And here’s something to help you own that:

The fire and the fear of the fire are the same energy.

The intensity you feel when you think about being fully visible, fully powerful, fully yourself (which is the feeling underneath everything from setting a small boundary to leaving your job/relationship and starting a whole new season of life) that feeling of danger?

That is likely not the warning system going off. That’s the fire itself. You may have been mistaking the sensation of your o