Getting curious & my first intuitive experience (that I remember)
I’ll never forget the first time I heard my intuition speak to me. I was in 6th grade and we were going to wish my great grandpa good luck on his surgery. After our visit, we were getting in the car and something inside me, as loud as day said, “this is the last time you’ll see your grandpa, go and give him another hug.”
So, I did.
After he got out of surgery, I felt a little bit of relief but not as much as I had hoped I would. Every ounce of my being wanted whatever I was hearing to be wrong. I didn’t want the man who made the world’s best lemonade for Sunday dinners to die. I didn’t want to have to experience death for the first time and all that surrounds it. I didn’t want to be right. But I was.
A few days after his surgery, my great grandpa passed away.
At the time, I really don’t think I thought too much about it other than the child-like shrug off of “that was weird.”
Throughout high school, I had other intuitive experiences, but I was so in my head that I never really tuned into what my inner self was saying.
It wasn’t until I was in my sophomore year of college that I really started to explore these gut feelings further. I was having more and more intuitive experiences and wanted to know whether they were worth exploring. As someone who likes answers, I decided to start researching and reading up on intuition as much as I could. In fact, I was so into what I was finding that I ended up writing not one, but two, theses on the subject.
As I reflect on my time in college when I felt the need to learn everything and anything about intuition, I realize that I still felt like I needed confirmation that I wasn’t the only one experiencing these feelings. I wanted to know that I wasn’t alone and that these experiences were real. What I have come to realize is that I needed this because I wasn’t ready to trust myself.
Trusting yourself takes practice and it takes a whole lot of courage. I’m still not perfect at it and that’s ok. I have found that some of the best intuitive experiences I have had and lessons I have learned, have come from me doubting myself at first, but trusting myself regardless of my doubts.
Intuition has always been something that has intrigued me – an inner voice telling you all that you need to know seemed way too good to be true. Sometimes, the voice is quiet and other times it’s screaming for you to listen, so you have no choice but to. The loud, booming “LISTEN TO ME, I KNOW SOMETHING” is really easy to tune into. The quiet, timid “hey, I think this is something you should pay attention to,” isn’t as easy but it’s just as if not more important than those loud, in-your-face intuitive moments that we can all likely think of. Those quiet moments that start as a slow simmer should be stoked, as they often tell us exactly what we need to hear, even if we don’t know it at the time.
After years of both pushing that voice to the side and fully embracing and leaning into it, I have learned that our intuition really is the best guiding force that is within each and every one of us, all you have to do is be willing to listen.
I will leave you with this piece of advice: get curious. Get curious about yourself, about your wants and needs, how you’re truly feeling about certain situations, and whether you are truly getting what you want out of life. Become so curious that you start to unravel insights that you had no idea were living inside of you all this time. And once you get curious – get quiet and listen. What do you hear? What are you saying to yourself? Write it down and reflect. Mull it over for a few days, a week, a month. But whatever you do, don’t tune out what you need.
xx