Blind Faith

 Sometimes we are called to believe in something we cannot see or even fully understand.

We don’t have all the answers.

We cannot see how things will unfold.

And yet, something within us invites us to trust.

This is faith in action.

I have experienced this in my own life, and lately, I have been thinking about it in relation to my health.

I have been dealing with challenging physical issues for quite some time now. There are days when things feel messy, discouraging, and difficult to understand.

And yet, underneath all of that, there is a knowing in me.

A quiet belief that healing is possible.

Even when I cannot see it.

Even when the evidence in front of me doesn’t seem to support what I feel inside.

That knowing has remained with me.

I cannot explain it, and I cannot tell you exactly where it comes from. I only know that it is there.

This isn’t the first time I have trusted what my gut tells me.

Throughout my life, there have been moments when I sensed something before I could explain it logically. Sometimes I understood the meaning only later. Other times, I simply had to take the next step without knowing where it would lead.

I have learned that faith doesn’t always arrive with certainty.

Sometimes it is simply the willingness to keep going when we cannot see the whole picture.

For much of my life, fear taught me to look for reassurance. I wanted to know that things would be okay before I allowed myself to relax.

But life doesn’t always offer that kind of guarantee.

Sometimes we have to live with unanswered questions.

Sometimes we have to take one step without knowing what the next one will be.

And sometimes we have to trust that even when we cannot control the outcome, we can remain open to possibilities we cannot yet see.

For me, blind faith doesn’t mean ignoring reality or pretending that difficult things aren’t happening.

It means I can face what is happening today without deciding that today tells me everything about tomorrow.

I can acknowledge the pain and still hold hope.

I can admit that I don’t know how things will unfold and still believe that healing is possible.

I can let uncertainty be part of my life without allowing it to take away every bit of peace.

Perhaps that is what faith is asking of me now.

Not to know.

Not to understand everything.

But to remain open.

I have spent many years learning to trust my intuition. Now I am discovering that intuition and faith can walk alongside one another. One may offer a quiet inner knowing, while the other invites me to keep trusting even when I cannot see the way forward.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

I don’t know when my body will feel better or what the road to healing will look like.

But I know that I don’t want fear to be the only voice I listen to.

There is another voice within me.

A quieter one.

One that reminds me that the story is still unfolding.

And for today, I am willing to trust that.

Perhaps blind faith is not about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Perhaps it is about believing that there is light ahead, even when all we can see is the next step.

And sometimes, that is enough.

Trusting Our Intuition

 Were you encouraged to trust yourself as a child?

Or were you taught to listen to your parents, no matter what?

I was taught to obey and to discount my own feelings. What I thought, what I wanted, and what I felt didn’t seem to matter. I learned to look outside myself for direction rather than trust what was happening inside me.

Over time, I lost sight of my intuition.

I didn’t stop trying to control things as an adult, but I can see now that much of that control came from fear rather than faith in myself.

Then, during my first month of recovery, something wonderful happened.

I found a therapist who was intuitive, was also in recovery, and taught inner-child work.

I was fascinated by her intuition. I brought my questions to her, trusting that she knew the right answers.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was looking at someone who possessed a gift I had never learned to recognize in myself.

I knew she had intuition.

I didn’t yet understand that I had it, too.

As I continued working with her, I began exploring my own inner knowing. To my delight, I discovered that I had a strong intuition of my own.

It was an exciting realization.

But discovering my intuition and learning to trust it were two different things.

That second part took years.

There were lessons to learn.

There were opportunities to listen to myself and decide whether I would trust what I sensed or return to the familiar habit of looking outside myself for reassurance.

Sometimes I trusted my intuition.

Sometimes I doubted it.

Sometimes I needed to experience the consequences of ignoring it before I understood what it had been trying to tell me.

Little by little, I began to recognize the difference between intuition and fear.

Fear often demanded certainty. It wanted me to anticipate every possible outcome and find a way to protect myself from anything that might go wrong.

Intuition felt different. It was quieter. It didn’t always give me a complete answer or explain what would happen next.

Sometimes it was simply a sense of knowing, a feeling that something deserved my attention, or an inner nudge to pause and listen.

I have come to believe that intuition is a gift but not a guarantee that we will always be right. We can be influenced by fear, old wounds, and our own assumptions. Learning to trust ourselves also means being willing to pause, reflect, and remain open to new information.

Trusting my intuition doesn’t mean I will never make a mistake.

It means I no longer have to automatically dismiss myself.

When I think about that little girl who was taught to discount her feelings, my heart softens.

How could she learn to trust herself when she was repeatedly taught that she was wrong and parents were right?

But as an adult, I had the opportunity to teach her something different.

Her feelings matter.

Her voice matters.

She is allowed to have her own thoughts and opinions.

She is allowed to listen to that quiet knowing inside her.

And she is allowed to change her mind when she learns something new.

I wish I had understood all of this many years ago. But perhaps the journey of learning to trust ourselves unfolds when we are ready to recognize what we were missing.

I am grateful that recovery opened that door for me.

I am grateful for the therapist who helped me begin exploring a gift I didn’t know I possessed.

And maybe the most important part of this journey is learning to trust the person we are becoming.

One decision at a time.

One quiet moment of listening to ourselves at a time.

After all these years, I am still amazed at the wisdom that was within me all along.

Recovering Frozen Parts of Ourselves

 When we experience trauma as children, or even as adults, we may not have the tools, skills, or understanding to process what has happened to us.

Sometimes, we simply do what we need to do to survive.

We push our feelings aside.

We learn not to talk about what hurts.

We become good at carrying on, even when something inside us is still hurting.

Perhaps parts of us become frozen in those moments—not literally frozen in our bodies, but emotionally stuck in experiences we didn’t know how to understand or work through at the time.

I have discovered many of these frozen parts of myself over the years.

Parts of me that were afraid.

Parts that felt ashamed.

Parts that learned to stay quiet, please others, or prepare for the worst.

Parts that never really had the opportunity to feel safe enough to let go of their fear.

For a long time, I didn’t fully understand how much of my childhood I was still carrying.

I knew what had happened. I could talk about it. I could explain it to other people.

There is a difference between knowing I am no longer that frightened little girl and feeling safe enough inside myself to stop living as though I still am.

Lately, I have found myself wondering about the chronic pain I have been dealing with.

Could my body be trying to get my attention?

Could there be parts of myself that still need to be heard, understood, and cared for?

I don’t know but I am curious about the connection between the pain I feel physically and the emotions that have been rising to the surface.

I have noticed how easily physical pain can awaken old feelings of helplessness, fear, and being trapped.

Perhaps, alongside seeking answers for my physical symptoms, I can use this time to listen more compassionately to myself.

To notice what I feel.

To recognize when an old fear has been awakened.

To meet the little girl inside me without asking her to hurry up and heal.

I have spent so many years helping others understand their childhood wounds. I have taught inner-child work, explored my own recovery, and learned so much about the ways we adapt to survive.

And yet, I am discovering that there may still be parts of me waiting for my attention.

That doesn’t mean I have failed at healing.

Healing is not a destination we reach once and for all.

It is an ongoing process of discovering ourselves more deeply, meeting what we find with compassion, and learning new ways to care for the parts of us that once felt alone.

I don’t want to force those frozen parts of myself to thaw.

I don’t want to dig for memories or search for explanations that may not be there.

I want to create enough gentleness and safety that whatever needs my attention can emerge in its own time.

No pressure.

No judgment.

No demand that I figure everything out today.

Just a willingness to listen.

Maybe recovering these parts of ourselves is not about going back and changing what happened.

Maybe it is about bringing the love, understanding, and protection we have now to the places within us that never received enough of them then.

I cannot change the little girl’s past.

But I can be present with her now.

I can let her know that her feelings matter and that we can face what comes one day at a time.

Perhaps this is another part of finding our way home.

Not searching endlessly for what is wrong with us, but gently welcoming back the parts of ourselves we had to leave behind in order to survive.

And perhaps, as I continue this journey, I will discover that there is more of me waiting to come home than I ever realized.