I sat at the edge of my mother’s bed while she laid curled up in the dimly lit room, tears gently rolling down her face as she voiced her fears, her sadness, her deep anguish.
I don’t remember the words I said to her to soothe her aching heart. I only remember the feeling. Calm, gentle, flowing through me like they had been waiting for their cue to be expressed. It was their turn to be heard and it took no effort on my part to access them.
“How do you always know what to say?” My mother asked me.
“I don’t,” I replied. “I just feel it. It’s God’s voice speaking through me.”
“How do you know?” She questioned with hopeful curiosity.
“I don’t know how, I just do. How do you not?” I asked, equally curious.
I was 8 years old.
The truth is I didn’t know. I was raised with traditional Christian teachings and didn’t know if it was “God” but those words of comfort didn’t feel like mine alone. They were words of hope, of solace, of a knowing faith that seemed to move through me as quickly as they were summoned. My quiet knowing always seemed to know what to say.
At my mother’s lowest moments they became even louder when both she and I needed them most.
My mother struggled with manic highs and debilitating lows for the entirety of my childhood. Her first month long hospitalization for emotional and mental instability occurred when I was 9 months old.
From my infancy until her death by suicide 14 years later, I had only known her in her quest for solace from an internally chaotic life.
I had used my voice of knowing as often as I could to offer her any semblance of peace. As the child, my own needs depended on it.
After her death, my trust in that voice was compromised.
I didn’t know who “God” was and I no longer knew what I believed.
I did not hear a quiet companion of hope but a wavering optimist. The soft knowing I once was comforted by felt replaced by the cries of confusion and loneliness. The only knowing I felt sure of was not wanting to be hurt that much again.
I began to overthink my decisions and felt overwhelmed when I didn’t have a clear view of the repercussions that would follow.
Trauma theories suggest my voice of knowing had more static interference when I was re triggered over and over again when around people I love in pain, including myself. To guard me from injury, my fear voice, my protective voice, became louder than my faith.
It makes sense.
When I look back on my major choices from adolescence through early adulthood, I can see how the logic, and often the fear in my head, won out over the tender knowing of my heart.
The “safe” college I went to, the friendships that didn’t serve my wellbeing, the relationships I gripped on to well past their expiration dates. The jobs I despised, the fear I’d never have enough or be enough. The countless times I said yes, when I really wanted to say no- or vice versa.
Trying to maintain the image of following through with what the “right” choices were so I’d be accepted and not left behind.
It makes sense that the more life experiences we have, the more pain we feel, the more fear we are fed by the skepticism around us, the softer that knowing voice becomes. Not mute, but quiet. So quiet that it’s hard to hear when fear is the loudest voice in the room.
My own disconnect and distrust of this voice is also what led me to study how to reconnect with her. That little girl, that knowing and the strong faith in her ability to cut through the noise and hear her true self.
In my quest, I have studied varied ways to connect with this voice through science based techniques and spiritual traditions and practices. I’ve experimented with countless neurosensory exercises to regulate my nervous system and dove deep into energy medicine to grasp the flow of our energy systems. They all work. They all have merit, and they all have one common goal- to feel good. Balanced, whole, and fulfilled…in whatever ways we can.
To be clear, I don’t think the goal is to abolish our fear. In order to live this life fully, we need both. We need our natural protectors to look both ways before we cross the street, just not 245 times and still never cross.
One of my favorite practices to connect with the knowing voice is when making a decision or crossing the road is to ask myself “If I took the fear out, what would I do?”
This not only helps to identify the fear, but also which voice has been trying to make the decision. The voice of knowing is generally calm and without fanfare. The voice of fear is that which will sound the alarms when we threaten to change the status quo.
Taking out the fear when making a decision does not take out the fear as we take action on that decision, but it is an amazing practice to tune into which voice is trying to take the lead. One that will be needed over and over again as we keep moving forward in new territories with unknown outcomes. One that we can fall back on on when the inevitable crossroads meets us again.
What is your relationship like with your intuitive voice- your gentle knowing? What times in life did you feel most connected to it? What moments did you feel it went silent? How easily do you trust its guidance? What would it be like to acknowledge its presence and let it lead the way?
Article originally posted on Elephant Journal.