Part 2 : 58 Times I Said Yes to Myself
58 Permission Slips for 58 Years
Hello lovelies, welcome!
I’m Soul Surgeon, Dr. Tamy, inviting you into the journey of self-discovery.
Permission Slips is your weekly breath of truth - a blend of soul stories, ancient whispers, and grounded tools for the journey home to yourself. With poetry, art, and raw reflections from the battlefield of raising five wild-hearted humans, this space is for seekers, feelers, and those learning to stay awake. Wherever you are on the path - come walk with me!
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Part 2 : Today’s focus
Section 3 : Body, Health, and Aging - clearly an emotionally loaded section !
Section 4 : Relationships and Intimacy - another tender territory, for sure !
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Dear Soul Family,
Welcome back to Part 2 of my 4-part series: 58 Times I Said Yes to Myself through 58 Permission Slips (PS). I invite you to read the full intro by clicking this link to access Part 1, though it’s optional and you can proceed to read each of these parts independently.
Today, I’ll share another sixteen juicy PS.
So grab your tea and fuzzy blanket, and settle in. This is a slow unfolding, a love letter to the woman I've become, to the one still unbecoming, and to the one who keeps coming home to herself. These PS will offer you a glimpse of my lived experience, deep lessons learned through grief and joy, love and loss. It’s the journey I’ve walked to transform from an exhausted, stressed-out, yet outwardly successful plastic surgeon to a grounded, mindful, presence-filled Soul Surgeon who named herself Skye.
I chose the ones which I’ve lived most deeply into. Not perfectly, but honestly. I’d say I’m at about 90% proficiency (which I think earns me an A - overachiever pops through, haha).
Truthfully, I wrote these not just for me, but also for YOU, dear one. Let them serve as a doorway. A quiet invitation. A gentle hand on your shoulder reminding you : you don’t have to wait to feel, to rest, to let go, to love, and to be seen. Everything you’ve ever wished for is right here for you.
May one line, one permission, one reflection remind you of your own deep knowing. Thank you for walking this path with me, after all, we’re just walking each other home.
In love and presence, Dr. Tamy ✨Skye
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Let’s continue with Part 2, Section 3 :
Body, Health & Aging
These PS focus on embodiment, illness, aging, and living in relationship with the physical body.
I GIVE MYSELF PERMISSION TO :
Live In My Body, Not Just My Mind
*this has been one of my most sacred permission slips of all.
I’ve come home to my breath, my belly, my bones. For so many years I lived in my mind - overthinking, overdoing, analyzing, fixing, over-functioning. I called it intelligence, productivity, responsibility. But really, it was survival. A clever strategy to avoid feeling what the body had always known.
Now, embodiment is my medicine. The body - ahh the body - it’s no longer something to control. It’s my home, my anchor, the sacred terrain that carries my spirit through this life. Not a project to perfect, but a living, breathing altar of truth. I no longer escape it when discomfort arises, instead, I place my hands on my belly and let it speak to me. I rest when I’m tired. I cry when I need to. I move, shake, stretch, and breathe - not to perform, but to return. Here. Again and again.
I learned that the mind has ideas about healing, but the body knows. It knows how to release, soften, and find its way back to safety and wholeness - if only I let it be. I’m learning, over and over, to trust it. To return to this sacred vessel that asks me for presence, not perfection.
Coming home to my body has been one of the greatest returns of my life. And I’m still arriving.
Accept My Sacred Body Through the Ache
Illness has had a way of stripping me down to the bone, not out of cruelty, but as a kind of holy undoing. It’s taught me to listen more deeply and slow way down. The things I once outran with busyness or bypassed with willpower began to rise up and ask to be witnessed. And slowly, as I let it, illness became my teacher of deep truths. Among them : acceptance.
It’s the moment I stopped fighting my body and allowed myself to be with the what is. Pain. Swelling. Itching. Vertigo. Migraines. Uncertainty. Illness taught me that control is an illusion because no amount of effort, perfectionism, or spiritual bypass will protect us from being human. But in the surrender, something miraculous happened : I stopped abandoning myself.
Acceptance is the kind of freedom where pain became my friend, my teacher. I now honor my sacred vessels cycles, signals, and limitations.
To Let the Body Age Without Apology
After working as a plastic surgeon for two and a half decades, I finally let my body age. No apologies. No longer fighting gravity or time. I offer gratitude to the thighs that carry me, the face that tells the truth, the hands that still create with paintbrushes, not scalpels. I honor every wrinkle, every softness, every shift as a sacred unfolding. I release the need to erase time and instead chose to embody it - gracefully, proudly, and with deep reverence for all this body that has carried me through 58 years. I vow to age with reverence, not resistance.
Use the Breath as a Bridge Back to Myself
To breath is everything.
For much of my life I didn’t have a relationship with my breath. I didn’t even know it was here, expect when I was gasping through airports running to make a flight or chasing my five toddlers, breathless and scattered.
I thought I would find peace somewhere out there. In success, money, achievements, accolades, or love. Now I know better. I know it’s not lurking out there anywhere, not even in my beloved chocolate.
I close my eyes, inhale deeply, and come home to myself. Again and again, my breath is the bridge, reminding me : I am here. I am safe. I am whole.
Break Up with Emotional Binging. With Compassion
I give myself permission to release the shame around emotional eating and meet my past with compassion.
Years of sleepless nights in medical school and surgical residency, followed by raising five kids while running a solo medical practice, left me exhausted and disconnected from my own needs. Food became my coping tool - something to reach for at any time, regardless of the emotion - happy, sad, joyful, frustrated. Chocolate, snacks, whatever was within arm’s reach - not because I was hungry, but because I was overwhelmed, lonely, tired, or simply trying to feel something. Or trying not to.
I’ve made peace with this egregious habit and no longer punish myself for it. I see now : I was doing what I knew how to do to survive. Today, I feed myself with what I was truly hungry for all along - presence, tenderness, and truth.
I give myself permission to eat mindfully, to nourish rather than numb, to honor my body instead of override it. To meet my emotions with curiosity, not avoidance. To release shame and replace it with grace. It’s about coming home to myself - one conscious bite, one gentle breath at a time.
Remembering Wholeness : Nothing to Fix
After attempting to fix, better, and perfect myself for decades, I give myself permission to stop chasing healing. I know now that I am already and always whole. Healing isn’t a destination, it’s a return. A sacred, messy, magical ongoing dance of coming back to what was never broken - infinite consciousness.
Letting Pain Be My Teacher, Not My Punishment
I give myself permission to stop running from emotional pain. No longer numb it, curse it, or label it as punishment. Instead, I invite it in, softly and bravely, as a sacred teacher. I ask it : what have you come to show me? And then I listen.
Pain has shaped me with wisdom I couldn’t have learned any other way. It stripped what isn’t real and revealed what is. And though it arrives uninvited, I learned that pain doesn’t come to destroy me. It comes to awaken me. Each and every time.
Rest Without Guilt
After years of measuring my worth by output, especially as a busy surgeon, I’ve unlearned the lie that rest is laziness. Now, I honor stillness as sacred. I let my body exhale, my mind soften, and my soul recalibrate. I don’t have to prove I’m enough by doing more. Rest is not reward. It’s a holy right.
Section 4
Relationships and Intimacy
These PS honor connection, boundaries, and redefining intimacy with self and others.
I GIVE MYSELF PERMISSION TO :
Outgrow People, Places, and Patterns
I’ve learned that letting go of people, places, and patters is an honoring of who I am becoming. It’s about gaining clarity. It’s not about blame, rather it’s about truth. I no longer shrink to fit old versions of myself. I choose alignment over attachment, peace over pleasing, and the quiet power of walking away when something/someone no longer feels like home.
Break Generational Patterns
I choose to stop passing down what I never asked to carry. The mother wound ends with me. I’m walking a new path - one of awareness, compassion, and courage. My daughters will not inherit the silence, shame, and ache I once held. I’ve become the loving ancestor I longed for. The healing didn’t start with me, but it continues because of me. And for this lifetime, let that be enough.
Be Seen in My Power and Softness
Raised by a soldier dad and go-getter mother, I was taught to live in my masculine - push, achieve, protect, and perform. Softness wasn’t part of my conditioning, and yet, I’ve always been inherently deeply sensitive. My softness leaked out quietly in childhood art and poetry - the places where my soul could safely breathe.
Now I no longer hide it. I know that fierce and gentle aren’t opposites, they live side-by-side within me. I’m both healer and human, soul and skin. Strong and soft. Grounded and tender.
Redefine and Invite Intimacy
I give myself permission to invite intimacy into every corner of my life - not just in romance, but in the quiet spaces where soul meets soul.
I’ve redefined intimacy as connection in its purest form : the way a bee lands on a red petal nearby, the hush of puffy clouds passing overhead, the brush of wind against my cheek, a lingering toothy smile, or a tender watery gaze.
I open - gently and bravely - to being seen, felt, known. I no longer wait for intimacy to find me in grand gestures. I meet it in the ordinary, and find that it’s everywhere.
Say Yes to Love, Fully. From Without and Within
As I age and deepen on this spiritual path, I no longer shrink from the tenderness I once feared. I let love in now. Without deflecting it. Without earning it. Without proving I’m ready. Without hiding behind old armor.
I give myself permission to be loved - deeply and completely. Yes, resistance visits sometimes, but I meet it with gentleness, not judgment. Because I know : my heart is worthy of soft landings. And I am safe to open and receive.
I also remember - I am love. Not because someone told me so, but because I’ve felt it rise from within when I’m quiet, present, and fully myself. Love isn’t something I find, it’s who I am when I stop forgetting.
Celebrate Myself Without Waiting for Permission
I give myself permission to celebrate myself - loudly, joyfully, and without waiting for anyone else to say it’s okay. I no longer need others to validate me to feel my own radiance. I am the confetti, the cake, and the guest of honor. I’ve stopped waiting for permission slips signed by others. These days, I write my own - and they come with sparkle, dance breaks, and a wink in the mirror.
Not always be the strong one
I give myself permission to lay down the weight of being the strong one. I don’t always have to hold it all together. I’m allowed to fall apart. To be held. To soften into someone else’s arms. Strength doesn’t always look like standing tall. Sometimes it looks like letting go and trusting that I don’t have to do this life all alone.
Let Others Have Their Experience
I give myself permission to let others have their experience - without fixing, rescuing, or making it better. I’ve learned to honor that each soul is on their own sacred journey, learning in their own way, in their own time. Including my five children (the hardest of all). I release the weight of responsibility that was never mine to carry. I no longer need to be the hero, the healer, or the solution.
I trust others with their path - even when it’s messy. I offer presence, not interference. Compassion, not control. Because love doesn’t always mean doing. Sometimes, oftentimes it means simply being there.
✨Coming Up
Thank you for making it through ! I hope you enjoyed Part 2 of : 58 Times I Said Yes To Myself. These powerful invitations are now calling out to YOU - to live with more honesty, softness, and freedom, as they have done (and continue to do) for me. May these slips become keys to unlocking more of your own becoming. 🙏
I invite you to use these as tools for self-inquiry and reflection.
Let them spark something inside you.
You can pick one each week and gently explore :
Where am I ready to give myself permission? What might shift if I did?
Part 3 will land next week with Sections 5 & 6.
Stay with me. Stay present. Stay awake.💙
Self-Inquiry Journaling Prompts✨
When was the last time you truly paused to connect with your breath? What feelings or thoughts arise when you slow down and return to your breath?
Reflect on a recent painful experience. What lessons did it bring? How might embracing pain as a teacher change your relationship to suffering?
What does ‘I am love’ mean to you? when do you most feel this truth in your body and heart? How can you nurture this knowing more regularly?
*p.s. i love you❣️
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Wisdom shared with authenticity gives everyone one more permission slip — sometimes the very first one they've ever allowed in. Thank you for Being and for sharing That which you Are. 💕
This entire piece feels like a sacred offering. Your words are tender and powerful and your permission slips are invitations I didn’t know I needed today.