Dear Permission to be Powerful reader,

Have you ever been treated like you’re a pest?A burden?A nuisance?

Fire that person.

Quit.Dump them.Check your prenup.Start hiding assets if you must.

You’re a gift, not a burden.

When someone shows you they don’t want you around, believe them. Leave.

People pleasers snap straight into “please like me” mode the second they feel distance. They twist themselves into knots to win someone who can’t pass the simplest test on earth:

Treat me the way I like to be treated.

Not the way you prefer.Not the way your ex tolerated.Not the way your parents conditioned you.

This is the part people never understand about me:

I want to be wanted.I need evidence.Effort.Initiative.Reciprocity.

And I like watching people over time.How they act in good seasons and bad.Whether they’re the same person when their mask slips.Patterns don’t lie.

Marriage taught me that.Divorce hammered it in.

You can live with someone for decades and still not know them. You think you do. You build your entire life around what you think you know. Then one day, the floor disappears and you realize you were living next to a fantasy they never actually embodied.

Two people.Two universes.Zero overlap.

I’m learning it again with my father.

There were truths about him I refused to see. Not because they were hidden—nothing subtle about that man—but because I needed him to be someone he never was. Someone capable of love.

He resented his children before we could even speak.Then we grew up and surpassed every expectation he had for us. The irony writes itself.

Sometimes you don’t know someone at all.Sometimes you know them too well.

You see right into the wiring of their mind. The circuitry. The blind spots. The limits. And then you realize you don’t share a reality with them. Just a mailing address.

He is who he has always chosen to be.And I finally stopped needing him to be anything else.

That’s the turning point.

Once you figure someone out, you stop confusing fantasy with loyalty.You stop mistaking potential for character.You stop begging for crumbs.

And the shift isn’t in them.It’s in you.

If someone in your life ignores your feelings, breaks your boundaries, treats you like an inconvenience, or acts like you’re optional… they need to go.Now.

You can do better.You will do better.

Life hands you the same chapter until you finish it properly.Close it.File it.Move on.

Once you do, everything changes:

Danger stops feeling exciting.Abuse stops feeling familiar.Respect stops feeling expensive.And “bare minimum” stops passing as love.

The curse breaks.Groundhog Day ends.

Until next time,

Dancer, Writer, Buddhist.

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