Gratitude Without Done Asking Permission: Chef Suzanne Barr on Making Room and Space

Did You Ask Permission to Be Here?

Did you ask permission to be here?

That question can linger like the delayed heat from a scotch bonnet pepper while eating a beef patty. It isn't there at first. You're enjoying yourself. Everything tastes good. And then, wait a minute.

Ah. There it is.

The heat arrives unexpectedly and suddenly takes over. It's imposing. All-consuming. You're sitting there wondering, how in the hell did I get here?

Being Granted Permission Made Me Feel Worthy

I've been asking permission my whole life. As a young girl growing up, my mother always told me to be a good little girl and to be grateful for the things offered and received. In grade school, I had to ask for permission. Legs crossed. Raise your hand. Be polite. Hair always done right. I had the fever for being recognized as a good student. I was being invited in, and I loved that feeling. There was something about being granted permission that made me feel worthy. It became a fixture in how I defined myself.

It felt good to sit on that pedestal and watch from above. But somewhere along the way, that feeling gave birth to perfectionism and an obsession with earning praise, gifts, opportunities, and invitations. I learned to do better, do more, work harder and question everything.

Yeah. I'm done with that.

Wondering If I Was Deserving

As I grew up, that need for permission consumed almost every area of my life. It became part of how I defined myself as an artist, a leader, a mother, a daughter, and a business owner. I believed I had to work ten times harder than everyone standing next to me. Asking for permission became less about being polite and more about wondering if I was deserving.

Did I deserve this opportunity?

Did I deserve this space?

Did I deserve this moment?

Self-Loathing Dressed Up as Humility

That questioning became self-loathing dressed up as humility. It created doubt and made plenty of room for a scarcity mindset. As a Black woman with thick thighs, full lips, and a big smile, I learned how quickly I could activate my people-pleasing mode. I could walk into a room and immediately begin questioning the space I was taking up. Could this space hold me?

I've wrestled with pleasing people as a way to make myself feel okay about fitting in. Sometimes it looked like self-sabotage. Sometimes it looked like making room for someone else before I had even considered myself. I am not deserving. Someone else probably deserves this more. Maybe I should step back.

That thinking stains you like red beets. It sinks into you like ink. And the reminder is always there: How dare you take up space? Were you invited? But, girl, you've asked for permission long enough.

I Have Earned the Right to Take Up Space

My hats are big, and I think about all the moments I've had to take one off, figuratively and literally, and all the ways I was taught to be grateful to anyone who offered me something. As if the offering itself created a debt.

But I have earned the right to want things. I have earned the right to ask. I have earned the right to take up space.

You've heard the saying, closed mouths don't get fed. Well, I am committed to staying fed.

I have worked my career toward commanding what I want instead of constantly looking for permission to have it. Please understand, there is still a humble soul in my request. I am not interested in entitlement. But my spirit has already told me, Girl, stop asking for permission. Make it work. Make sense of what you're asking for. Stand behind it. Command the respect that you have offered and will continue to offer as a business owner, mother and daughter.

A Narrative About What Was Possible

Some of this is generational. Or rather, most of it is. My parents were of the survivalist generations. Immigrants building home and community far from the places that made them. Parents who worked hard to create something better for their children. Parents who understood that sometimes you had to keep your head down, work hard, and be grateful for whatever door opened.

So when I told my dad I wanted to be a chef, I wasn't just choosing a career. I was challenging a narrative about what was possible. And here I am. A chef. An artist. A mother. A business owner. A Black woman.

Service Cannot Mean Disappearing

I started my career in film and television as a production assistant, working on film shoots, music videos and commercials. The nature of that work is service. You learn how to anticipate what people need. You learn how to move through spaces without disrupting them. You learn how to make other people comfortable.

There is beauty in service. I believe deeply in it. But service cannot mean disappearing.

There comes a point when you have to check your nervous system and ask yourself: What does it feel like to live the life I actually want for myself? Because sometimes making ourselves small to fit into a space becomes so familiar that we mistake it for safety.

What If My Presence Is Already the Gift?

We are who we are, and we make our work speak through our passion. We show up. We are present. We are dignified. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the narratives and tropes about who I'm supposed to be, and how we are expected to operate in spaces shaped by whiteness, particularly as a chef. There is an invisible and visible language in those spaces. A way of speaking. A way of moving. A way of presenting yourself so that everyone else can feel comfortable with your presence.

But what if my presence is already the gift? What if my presence in a space is not something I have to apologize for? Two things can happen at once.

I can be grateful and know that I belong.

I can be humble and command respect.

I can honor where I come from and imagine something completely new.

Our Ancestors' Wildest Dreams

I think about being our ancestors' wildest dreams, not just because we have achieved things they could never have imagined, but because we get to continue the work in ways they could never have dreamed. As women, mothers, artists, chefs, and Black people, we are allowed to expand the imagination. That expansion is part of the work.

Storytelling through food has been a bridge for me. It has helped unlock my pursuit of standing firmly on my principles and seeing possibilities beyond what I once thought was available to me.

I am allowed to gather all my tools. I am allowed to use what I have learned. I am allowed to craft a place for myself in this society without needing to say sorry, or may I?

I don't need to be invited into every room. I am learning to create the room.

Done With the Debt of Gratitude

Maybe being done is not about walking away from everything. Maybe being done is about deciding what no longer gets to define you. I am done with the debt of gratitude that makes me feel like I owe someone my silence, my labor, my shrinking, my perfection, or my permission to exist.

Gratitude does not require indebtedness. I can appreciate the doors that opened for me without believing I have to spend the rest of my life proving that I deserved to walk through them.

I Am Allowed to Be

I want to be the space I choose to take up. And maybe that is what being done really means. Not that I have nothing left to learn. Not that I have nothing left to give. But that I am finally done asking permission to embody all that I have dreamed of becoming.

I am here. I am present. And I am allowed to be.

Suzanne Barr is a chef and author of My Ackee Tree. She began her career as a production assistant in film and television before moving into the kitchen.