$358

I took a client to Nordstrom once.

She was a bestselling author. She'd spent her career giving voice to other women, characters she'd built whole worlds around. What she hadn't done was give herself one.

She came to me as a mom, an accomplished writer, and quietly, privately, exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that comes from a life of giving energy to everyone except yourself.

We went shopping with the goal of buying her some new pieces that would make her feel styled. So we started at Nordstrom, with me handing her a pair of True Religion jeans. Dark wash, beautifully made, the it-jeans of the moment. They were also practically illegal in my book, retailing for $358. She had never tried on jeans at that price in her entire life. Which was my exact lesson in the dressing room.

I want to be clear: I didn't take her there to buy them. That was never the plan. I took her there to feel something I knew she would never let herself feel on her own.

I was outside the dressing room, waiting for her to call me in. When I finally opened the door, she was standing in front of the mirror in the jeans, completely silent, tears streaming down her face. She didn't look up. She just stood there, looking at the woman in the glass, and said one thing.

"I never knew it was possible to feel this way in a pair of jeans."

A woman who'd given voice to everyone in her life was, for the first time, looking at the woman she had been keeping silent inside her own body. $358 worth of permission to take up her own space in her own life. And she didn't have to spend a dime of it to get the message.

This is what a dressing room can be, when it's honest. You are practicing permission. The piece is the form it takes. And the piece doesn't have to cost anything. Resourcefulness is its own kind of elegance. What matters is the piece you've been refusing to let yourself wear.

PUT ON the piece you've been telling yourself is too much. Keep it in the dressing room like I did with my client. You don't have to buy a thing. Just meet the woman in the mirror, and let her show you what permission feels like

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