Letting Intuition Lead Me Home

 A few years ago, I wrote a sentence in one of my books that has stayed with me:

Let my intuition lead me home.

I have thought about those words many times.

But what does home really mean?

Perhaps home isn’t a place at all.

Perhaps home is my true self.

The place inside me where I am most authentic.

Where I am no longer trying to be who someone else needs me to be.

Where the life I am living begins to match the life my soul is calling me toward.

Many years ago, I began to hear a voice inside me.

I have called it my knowing voice.

My intuition.

Sometimes, I have thought of it as the voice of God.

It is quiet.

It doesn’t demand attention.

It doesn’t bully me.

It simply knows.

I’ve done my best to listen to it throughout my life.

But I have also made plenty of mistakes.

There were times I thought I was listening when I was actually listening to fear.

Times when I confused what I wanted with what I knew.

Times when I ignored that quiet voice because I was afraid of where it might lead me.

I don’t judge myself for that anymore.

I was learning.

I’m still learning.

But something feels different in me now.

At this point in my life, I feel a deep commitment to listen more carefully.

To slow down.

To become quiet enough to hear.

To trust that knowing, even when I don’t understand where it is leading me.

Maybe that’s what coming home really means.

Not finding a destination.

But returning to myself.

Returning to the truth.

Returning to the quiet place within me where intuition, faith, and my deepest knowing meet.

I don’t know exactly where this voice will lead me.

But I know I want to follow.

With everything I have.

And perhaps, after all these years of searching, surrendering, letting go, and learning to trust…

my intuition will lead me home

Climbing the Next Mountain

 This September, I’ll have been in recovery for 31 years.

When I first began this journey, there was an overwhelming amount to learn. I needed help—lots of it. And God, in His wisdom, seemed to know exactly how much support I needed.

There was therapy. There were meetings. There was twelve-step work. I was even promoted to office manager at a treatment center. My life became immersed in recovery.

Looking back, I can see that I needed every bit of it.

There has never been a shortage of work to do. Recovery taught me that growth doesn’t end just because we’ve been on the journey for a long time. There are always deeper places to look, old beliefs to uncover, and new lessons waiting to be learned.

And now, I find myself standing at the bottom of another mountain.

This time, the mountain is my health.

For the past several years, my body has taken me places I never expected to go. There has been pain, uncertainty, doctors, tests, treatments, and moments when fear has felt bigger than I knew how to handle. And underneath all of it is the temptation to believe the frightening stories my mind tells me about what might happen next.

But perhaps this mountain isn’t here to defeat me.

Perhaps it is here to teach me something, just as every other mountain has.

Recovery taught me how to face what is in front of me one day at a time. It taught me that I don’t have to understand everything before I take the next step. It taught me that asking for help isn’t weakness. And most importantly, it taught me that I am not alone.

Thirty-one years ago, I had no idea where this journey would take me. I certainly couldn’t have imagined all the mountains I would climb—or all the valleys I would walk through.

Yet here I am.

Still climbing.

And maybe this next mountain doesn’t require me to be fearless. Maybe it simply asks me to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to trust what I’ve learned, to be gentle with myself, and to remember that I have climbed mountains before.

This is simply the next one.

Fear is a Bully

 Having been raised in fear, it is hard not to look back now and see that fear was a form of bullying.

It was how we were controlled.

How we were taught to behave the way our parents wanted us to.

Not because we were bad kids.

We weren’t.

We were good kids trying to navigate a world that taught us to be afraid.

Fear was used as a way to teach us.

And I learned the lesson well.

As I moved into adulthood, OI became my own bully.

I criticized myself.

I punished myself.

I expected more from myself than I would ever expect from someone else.

I carried the voice of fear inside me.

It wasn’t until I came into recovery that I began learning something completely different.

Kindness.

Gentleness.

Compassion.

I began to understand that I didn’t have to hurt myself into becoming a better person.

But even then, fear was never far away.

It simply changed its form.

For me, fear became control.

If I could control enough things, perhaps I could prevent something bad from happening.

If I could make the right choices, keep everyone happy, and stay one step ahead, maybe I could finally feel safe.

But control was just another way fear kept me in its grip.

Today, I have surrendered omuch of that.

I don’t want fear deciding how I live.

And yet, I can still feel fear trying to bully me back into my old ways.

But I am learning to recognize the voice.

Fear may still knock on my door.

It may still try to intimidate me.

But I don’t have to let it run my life.

I have surrendered the need to control.

And I am not going back.

Fear is a bully.

And bullies lose their power when we stop believing they are in charge.

Weathering the Storm

 We all face storms in our lives.

I have certainly had my share.

My childhood.

A marriage to a narcissist.

Overcoming addiction.

Watching my daughter struggle with addiction for eight years and then losing her.

The many losses that followed.

And now, my health challenges.

Each storm has asked something different of me.

And each time, somehow, I have found the courage to face it.

Not because I was never afraid.

Not because I always knew what to do.

And certainly not because it was easy.

I simply kept going.

There were times when I wanted to give up.

Times when the storm felt bigger than anything I could possibly handle.

But I learned that I don’t have to know how the storm will end.

I only have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The one thing I cannot do is give up.

I think of the words from A Course in Miracles:

“All things are lessons God would have me learn.”

I don’t always understand the lesson while I’m living it.

Sometimes I question why I am being asked to walk through yet another storm.

But perhaps I don’t have to understand everything.

Maybe my job is simply to stay open.

To listen.

To learn.

To trust.

Every storm has changed me.

Some have broken my heart.

Some have humbled me.

Some have shown me strength I didn’t know I had.

And perhaps this storm will teach me something too.

I don’t know what is waiting for me on the other side.

But I know this:

I’ve weathered storms before.

And I am still here.

So I will keep walking.

Keep trusting.

Keep learning.

And when the next storm comes, I will remind myself—

I have survived every storm I’ve faced so far.

And I can learn from this one too.