By: Dr. Phyllis Bivins-Hudson
Choosing Yourself: When a Woman Stops Waiting for Permission
Because the most powerful shift in a woman’s life happens the day she stops waiting to be chosen.
What if the most powerful decision a woman can make is the one no one else gets to make for her?
For generations, women have been taught—sometimes subtly, sometimes directly—that their value is confirmed when they are chosen and chosen for love. Chosen for opportunity.
Chosen for approval. But there comes a moment in a woman’s life when she realizes something deeper: her worth was never meant to be decided by someone else.
Let me begin with a question:
Have you ever waited for someone to choose you—choose you for love, for opportunity, or even for simple acceptance?
Many of us have. But there is a profound difference between being chosen and choosing yourself. And when you choose yourself—especially over what society expects—you challenge long-standing ideas about worth, belonging, and identity.
Over time, I came to understand six truths about the difference between being chosen and choosing yourself. In recognition of Women’s History Month, I want to share those truths with you.
1. The Early Desire to Be Chosen
Many of us grow up believing that our value is determined by whether someone chooses us. When someone chooses us, it can feel like validation. We feel seen, wanted, and approved of. This belief often begins early in life—shaped by family dynamics, school experiences, friendships, and early relationships.
For those who grow up in unstable environments, being chosen can feel like a sense of safety or rescue. As a result, when you spend your early life hoping someone will choose you, you may begin to confuse acceptance with worth.
2. The Hidden Risk of Waiting to Be Chosen
Waiting to be chosen places your value in someone else’s hands. When that happens, women may remain in relationships that are unhealthy or unfulfilling, sometimes for far too long.
Other risks include shrinking yourself to be more acceptable, silencing your voice, and seeking approval rather than honoring your truth.
Eventually, you begin living a life of reaction instead of intention. When you wait to be chosen, you give someone else the authority to determine your value.
“Choosing yourself is the moment you stop auditioning for your own life and start living it.”
3. What It Means to Choose Yourself
Some people say choosing yourself is selfish. But choosing yourself is not selfish—it is self-respect and self-awareness.
When you know your worth, you no longer depend on external validation. You honor your voice, your needs, and your boundaries. Your decisions begin to align with your values.
And you walk away from what diminishes you. Choosing yourself is the moment you stop auditioning for your own life and stop asking permission to fully exist.
4. The Shift from Survival to Agency
For many people—especially those who grew up navigating difficult environments—choosing yourself is a learned transformation.
It often involves a shift:
• From silence to voice
• From hyper-vigilance to discernment
• From self-protection to self-direction
• From waiting to deciding
In this shift, the very skills that once helped you survive begin to evolve into strengths.
Silence becomes wisdom.
Hyper-awareness becomes discernment.
Self-protection becomes self-direction.
What once helped you endure life becomes what helps you shape it.
5. The Power of Mutual Choice
Healthy relationships are not about one person choosing the other. They are about two people choosing each other while already choosing themselves.
This is because real love says:
I want you.
I respect you.
But I do not disappear to keep you.
The strongest relationships are not built on one person being chosen—they are built on mutual choosing.
6. The Emotional Freedom of Choosing Yourself
Choosing yourself brings a kind of emotional freedom that is difficult to describe until you experience it. It is the moment when you stop chasing validation, stop fearing abandonment, and stop negotiating your worth. Instead of waiting for someone else to recognize your value, you begin to recognize it yourself.
Years later, when I reflected on that turning point in my life, I realized it had become the heart of my newest book, Finding December. Because “December,” for me, is not simply a month on the calendar.
It represents a season of arrival—the moment when a woman stops waiting to be chosen and finally chooses herself. Learning that I had truly chosen myself showed up the day I realized I no longer had to wait for someone else to recognize my value. I could recognize it myself. And you can too.
A Letter to My Older Self
Not long after that realization, I wrote a letter to myself—reflecting on the long journey from waiting to be chosen to finally choosing my own life.
I hope some part of it resonates with you as you find your own December.
Dear Phyllis,
There was a time in life when being chosen felt like everything. When someone chose you—whether it was a friend, a partner, or a mentor—it felt like proof that you mattered. That you were worthy. That somehow you had passed a test you didn’t even know you were taking.
For many of us, that belief starts early. We grow up watching the people around us and learning, sometimes without realizing it, that approval equals value. So we spend years hoping someone will choose us—choose us for love, choose us for opportunity, choose us for belonging.
And when you’ve grown up in environments where safety, attention, or stability were uncertain, being chosen can feel like rescue.
But there is something dangerous about living your life waiting for someone else to choose you. Because when you wait to be chosen, you quietly hand someone else the authority to determine your worth. You start adjusting yourself—shrinking here, softening there, remaining silent when you should speak—just to stay acceptable. You learn how to survive inside other people’s expectations. For a long time, I didn’t realize I was doing that.
What I did know was how to survive. I had learned hyper-awareness. I had learned silence. I had learned how to read the room before speaking. Those skills once kept me safe.
But survival and living are not the same thing. And somewhere along the journey, something shifted. I began to understand that I didn’t have to wait for someone to choose me. I had the power to choose the life I wanted. To choose the relationships I deserved. To choose the voice, I had once kept quiet.
Choosing yourself is not arrogance. It is not selfishness. It is the moment when you stop auditioning for your own life.
And the beautiful thing is this: when you finally choose yourself, the relationships you build begin to look very different. They are no longer about proving your worth or earning your place.
They become about two people standing fully in who they are and saying: I choose you—not because I need you to define me, but because I respect who you are.
There was a time when being chosen felt like validation. But the real turning point in life came the day you realized you could choose yourself. As Robert Frost once wrote, "And that has made all the difference."
The strongest relationships are not built on one person being chosen. They are built when two people who have chosen themselves decide to choose each other.
Phyllis, the most powerful decision you ever made was the day you stopped waiting to be chosen—and chose yourself.
Closing Reflection
Choosing yourself does not mean you stop loving others. It simply means you finally understand that your life was never meant to be lived waiting for permission. It means standing fully in who you are—with your voice, your truth, and your worth intact.
And perhaps that is the real message of Women’s History Month: every woman who shaped history first had to believe she had the right to exist fully in her own life. So if there is a place in your life where you are still waiting to be chosen, consider this your invitation to do something far more powerful.
Choose yourself.
Finding December isn’t about a month on the calendar.
It’s the moment a woman finally arrives at herself.