The Permission Slip That Changed Everything - Newsletter #55

I still have it framed in my office.

Mr. Leadbetter taught my Modern English Literature class. It was one of those classes that quietly changes the way you see everything.

Before we opened the first book, he started the class by showing us the movie The Running Man, a dystopian story about a future authoritarian society where prisoners are forced to run for their lives on a televised game show, exposing how propaganda and entertainment can be used to control the public.

For a kid growing up in the comfortable suburbs of Cook County outside Chicago, it was the first time I started to see the machinery behind the curtain: authoritarianism, propaganda, war, capitalism, media spectacle, the kinds of forces you don’t always notice when life around you feels orderly and predictable.

Mr. Leadbetter didn’t just teach literature.

He taught us how to see the world through a different lens.

In his class, we read the kinds of books that stay with you long after the semester ends: George Orwell’s 1984, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.

Stories about power, war, truth, and what happens when systems forget about humanity. But the lesson I remember most didn’t come from one of those books.

It came from a moment in the hallway.

One morning, I was running late and rushed past his classroom.

“Any chance you can write me a pass so I’m not tardy to my next class?” I asked.

He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote:

Heather

To wherever she wants to go. 

2/3 

RSL

1st period

Stamped not by a system. Not by an institution. A teacher.

I said thank you, looked down at the pass, and smiled. He nodded back.

“Well… go,” he said.

And I did.

Mr. Leadbetter was a brilliant teacher who changed lives. The kind of teacher who didn’t just teach literature, but helped his students realize they were allowed to think for themselves.

I was one of them.

I keep that permission slip framed in my office because it reminds me of something I see all the time and helps me remember.

Most people are still waiting for permission.

Permission to change careers. Permission to speak up. Permission to trust their own thinking. Permission to call themselves experts.

Women especially.

Women are often taught to wait for validation before claiming space. To soften our voices. To shrink our certainty. And when we don’t, when we speak clearly, lead boldly, or trust our instincts, we’re often told something familiar:

You’re too much. Too outspoken. Too ambitious. Too opinionated. Too confident. But “too much” is often just another way of saying you didn’t wait for permission.

So if you’ve been waiting for someone to hand you a permission slip, consider this one delivered.

Permission to trust what you know. Permission to speak the thing you’ve been thinking. Permission to take up more space than the room expected.

The world doesn’t change because people stay quiet. It changes because someone decides to step forward.

Permission granted.

Go wherever you want to go.

After all, that was the assignment.

Empathy makes us human; actions make us warriors.