The Name I've Been Afraid to Use

There's a name I've been sitting with for months now. I write it in notebooks. I say it quietly to myself in the car. I even bought the domain — which, if you know anything about me, is basically my version of a blood oath.

The name is The Permission Studio.

And I have not told almost anyone, because saying it out loud makes it real, and making it real means I have to decide — and deciding means I might be wrong, and being wrong means I might have to admit that Give Yourself Permission, the name I have poured years into, the name I genuinely love, is not quite the right container anymore for what I'm actually building.

That's a lot of weight for a name to carry. But here we are.

What I love about the old name

Let me tell you what I love about Give Yourself Permission. It's an invitation. It's warm. It speaks directly to the person on the other side of the screen, and it says: you are allowed. You are allowed to want what you want. You are allowed to begin. You are allowed to take up space. That was the message I needed to put into the world when I started, and I still believe in it with my whole chest.

But here's what I've noticed: I keep outgrowing the edges of it.

The work has gotten bigger. It's not just me writing essays about permission anymore — it's a creative space. A container for projects, for workshops, for collaboration, for the kind of slow, serious, sometimes-messy work of building something that matters. A studio, if you will. And the name "Give Yourself Permission," as much as I love it, is starting to feel like a doormat that says Welcome when what I actually need is a door.

The Permission Studio gives me that door.

It keeps the word permission — the soul of this whole project — but it adds something. Studio implies work. It implies craft. It implies that this is a place where things get made, not just a place where you get pep talked and sent home. It signals that I'm not only here to reassure you; I'm here to make things with you. That feels more honest about what the work has actually become.

So why am I still scared?

Partly it's the practical stuff, which I will not pretend doesn't matter. The SEO that's been built up. The brand recognition, such as it is. The social handles. The email subscribers who signed up for one thing and might feel confused — or worse, abandoned — if the name on the tin changes.

But if I'm honest with myself (and I've built an entire brand around being honest with myself, so I kind of have to), the practical concerns are not the real fear. The real fear is this:

What if changing the name means I'm saying the old name was wrong?

What if I'm betraying past-me, who was so proud and so certain when she landed on those three words? What if the people who found me because of that name feel like I've pulled a bait-and-switch? What if I lose the thread of what this was always supposed to be?

And then, underneath all of that, the quieter fear: What if I make the change and it still isn't right?

The thing I keep coming back to

Here's what I keep coming back to, though. Fear of this particular shape — the fear of claiming something larger, the fear of stepping into a more serious version of yourself — is almost always a sign that you're on the right track. I have written about this. I have coached people through exactly this. And now it is my turn to sit in the chair.

The question is never really about the name. The question is: who do I need to become to run The Permission Studio?

And the honest answer is: someone who trusts that the people who belong here will follow — not because of a brand name, but because of the work. Someone who is willing to let the container evolve without pretending the journey never happened. Someone who understands that growth is not betrayal.

Give Yourself Permission was the beginning of the sentence.

The Permission Studio might be where the sentence is going.

Saying it out loud

I'm not making any announcements today. I'm not ready for announcements. I'm doing something harder and more necessary first: I'm saying it out loud, here, to you, and seeing how it feels to stop keeping it a secret.

It feels terrifying. It also feels like relief.

Which is, if you've been around here for any length of time, basically the Permission Studio's origin story in miniature.

Maybe that's the sign I was looking for.

With love and mild vertigo,

Priya