for Elizabeth Plamondon Cutler
There is no evidence, says Quora,
that permissioning is a real word.
But last weekend, when a real woman
used permissioning as a real word
to talk about a real practice
of supporting other women
to be their most magnificent selves,
I felt my whole body tingle
with the realness of it.
Permissioning.
I had not known how deeply
I wanted this word,
especially the way she said it
as if it were commonplace,
a word as pedestrian
as gift or yes or powerful or true,
the kind of word you could toss out
on a ski trail as if it were as obvious
as snow in winter,
as clear as a Colorado sky,
that we are here to permission each other
to be influential, to be honest,
to be real as trees, real as change,
real as our dreams, our hands,
our fears, real as the words we dare
to speak with our very real voices.