You Can Not Build a Life When You Are Not Allowed to Want It

There are moments in life when clarity doesn’t arrive gently. It doesn’t knock, and it sure as hell doesn’t whisper. It doesn’t wait for permission it kicks the door in. Recently, clarity arrived for me with a single sentence that cracked open the architecture of my entire life: I was never allowed to want. Not “I didn’t know what I wanted.” Not “I lost myself.” Not “I got confused.” Nope, I was never allowed to want.

My life wasn’t built from desire. It was built from adaptation. I wanted things because someone else wanted them. I chose paths because someone else approved of them. I shaped myself around other people’s comfort, projections, preferences their wants and needs, and I justified all of it with logic, gratitude, astrology, and convincing myself I was being practical. But the truth is simpler and sharper: Wanting was just never safe.   So, I learned to want what others wanted. And trust me that wasn’t me being confused it was survival at its best.

It started in childhood. Like the day I decided that if my brother could ride a bike, then so could I. It wasn’t rebellion. It wasn’t defiance (which are things I was told that I was doing) It was a rare, innocent moment of pure desire. But in my house, that was enough to get me in trouble.

My father had strong ideas about what a girl could and should do. Every time I acted from my own desire, no matter how small, no matter how harmless there was a price to pay. So, I learned very early: Wanting leads to punishment. Wanting leads to conflict. Wanting makes you wrong. Wanting makes you too much. And the body remembers all of it. But the training didn’t stop there. It wasn’t only about punishment; it was about responsibility.

I grew up in a world where my mother’s happiness was my job. Her life had been shaped by what she would state was her challenges, things like language barriers, a limited education, and a marriage she didn’t choose. Children, in her world, weren’t born from desire, they were born from duty. And those children were expected to take care of you so you wouldn’t end up alone.

And I became responsible for her emotional world. I learned to anticipate her needs, soften her disappointments, and absorb her fears. I became the caretaker not because I wanted to, but because I was trained to be. When you’re raised to take care of everyone else, you lose access to the feeling of wanting. (This comes up so much in session work when asking someone what they want, you can sense the fear of that unknown energy and of what this brings to the forefront)

People who were never allowed to want don’t ask directly. They ask sideways. They make hints, or people please or even better they assume you should already know. Sometimes they wait too long and then ask in a tone that sounds angry, when really, they’re just exhausted from holding the want alone.

This is how all relationships fracture not because people don’t care, but because they don’t know how to own what they want. And for women, it’s even deeper. We’re conditioned to assist, anticipate, soften, serve. Wanting is framed as selfish, desire as indulgent. and asking now becomes you being demanding.

But here’s the truth: Expressing what you want is an act of care.   It gives the other person clarity, choice, and truth. It doesn’t take anything from them, it simply reveals you. I am responsible for myself when I’m with others, but I am not responsible for them. And when I take responsibility for your happiness, I’m not helping you, I’m disempowering both of us. But the structure of my life was built as follows: I was punished for wanting, took responsibility for others, I adapted as part of my identity and SURVIVAL was a personality. Until the day the dream appeared in the form of a spell breaker.

A Dream That Broke the Spell

A few nights ago, I had a dream that felt less like sleep and more like initiation. I saw a woman making pink cakes, they appeared so soft, sweet, unapologetically feminine. She was simply creating. I followed her into a space where another woman stood naked, being prepared for something sacred and ritualistic in nature. She was scared, exposed, and left unprotected, and I knew she was the part of me that was never allowed to grow. The part of me that was never allowed to want. The part of me that was abandoned before she ever had a chance to live.

I kept walking and the floor turned red, bloodline, root, origin, the beginning of the wound. Then it turned black, the void, the place where the old identity dissolves. I didn’t go further. Not out of fear, but out of awareness. I knew that if I stepped into the black, I wouldn’t come back the same. As I turned to leave, I realized I was naked too, stripped of every adaptation, every performance, every survival identity. I grabbed a piece of white cloth trimmed in gold and wrapped myself in it. White for truth. Gold for sovereignty. And in that moment, I understood, I did not escape. I was emerging.

Here's to the Woman at the Head of the Table

For decades, I was the woman who could survive anything. Who could adapt to anything. Who could rise from rock bottom on command. But survival is no longer my identity, my endurance is not purpose and adaptation is not a destiny. The woman I abandoned, the one I saw in the dream, is the one who was meant to lead. She is the one who wants, who chooses and the one who creates. She is the one who sits at the head of the table and wears the crown. She is the one I am returning to. Not the survivor. Not the adapter. Not the caretaker who waits until collapse to move. The original, uncorrupted one who was never allowed to want and is now finally rising.

Here Is the Return

When you realize, you were never allowed to want, you don’t fall apart. Something stirs within the body starts to react. You do the work to get back to yourself and something from within wakes up. You finally meet yourself. You step out of the script you were forced to act from. And This is by no means is not the end of anything. This is the beginning of the life that was always meant to be yours. The woman I left behind is no longer waiting. She’s walking toward me, and this time, I’m not abandoning her, I give her back her crown.

So, when that moment came, the moment I realized I was never allowed to want, everything finally made sense. Nothing ever felt like mine because everything I started was built from someone else’s desire. I kept trying to make those borrowed lives fit, but they were unsustainable. And this is where life begins again, not because I suddenly know what I want, but because I finally have permission to find out. Wanting isn’t a destination for me; it’s a language I’m just now learning to speak. And beneath all of it is the same pure, innocent desire I was born with, before anyone told me I was too dangerous to have it.