The Meaning Behind the Name

For much of our lives, other people are eager to tell us who we are.

We are given labels. Expectations. Roles. Assumptions about what we can do, who we should become, how our experiences should affect us, and which parts of our stories we should keep hidden.

Sometimes those definitions come from society. Sometimes they come from the systems meant to support us. Sometimes they come from people we love. And sometimes, after hearing them long enough, they become the definitions we place upon ourselves.

Permission to Define exists because I believe we have the right to question all of them.

We have permission to decide which parts of those definitions belong to us—and which ones never did.

We have permission to change.

We have permission to grow beyond who we once needed to be.

We have permission to tell our own stories in our own words.

And we have permission to define ourselves.

What Permission to Define Stands For

Permission to Define brings together education, professional training, consulting, collaboration, and lived-experience advocacy with one central belief:

Understanding begins when we become willing to listen to people as the experts in their own lived experiences.

My work is rooted in creating spaces where complexity is welcomed, assumptions can be challenged, difficult conversations can happen with curiosity, and lived experience is treated as a source of knowledge rather than something that must be separated from professional understanding.

Whether I am educating about Dissociative Identity Disorder, speaking to professionals, collaborating on a new project, developing psychoeducational programming, or advocating for greater understanding, the goal is not to tell people what they should think.

The goal is to help create the conditions where we can think differently, understand more deeply, and make meaningful change possible.

The Permission Is Yours

The name Permission to Define reflects my story, but this work was never intended to be only about me.

It is about every person who has ever been reduced to a diagnosis, a label, a stereotype, an experience, a profession, a past, or someone else’s expectation of who they should be.

It is about professionals willing to question what they think they know.

It is about organizations willing to listen before assuming.

It is about creating conversations where lived experience and professional knowledge can exist together.

And it is about recognizing something I have spent much of my own life learning:

You do not have to accept every definition you are given.

You can question it.

You can challenge it.

You can outgrow it.

You can rewrite it.

You have permission to define what comes next.