What if it isn't luck?
After I graduated from uni, I set out on a four-month backpacking trip. So much of that journey involved learning more about myself and how to follow my own intuition - but I wanted to share one story in particular, because it captures something about how we can talk ourselves through difficult or scary moments.
I spent almost a month in Italy, and almost every time I moved cities, I arrived to another transportation strike. At some point, I began to laugh about it, they became a great part of my adventure.
So I wasn't shocked when I arrived in Venice and was told that the public water transportation would be on strike the following day. But the hostel I was booked into was on a small island, and with only a few days in the city, I knew I wasn't going to stay in that little building all day.
The next morning, I headed out and easily found a boat to the main part of the city. I spent the day roaming, taking pictures, running into people I'd met in hostels elsewhere in the country - seriously, it's a small world. After dinner, I decided it was time to find my way back.
By now it was getting dark, and because public transportation wasn't running, the streets had emptied quickly. I was walking around a dark, deserted city, alone, with no idea how to get back to my temporary home.
My mind started up with worst-case scenarios - potential dangers, language barriers, everything piling on at once. I was walking with no direction, nothing to guide me. Then I remember taking a deep breath and feeling a sudden sense of calm: a small thought that said, if I keep walking in this general direction, I'm going to find a boat back to the hostel. So I walked the dark streets for another ten minutes or so, just letting my body lead. At the end of a narrow street, I emerged by the water, where a small group of people were waiting. Three minutes later, a boat appeared and took us across the waterway - directly to the stop by my hostel.
I love returning to this memory because the experience came long before I would have described myself as intuitive, or in tune with any higher awareness. And yet, I think I've always been good at recognising that sure, steady, quiet knowing when it comes.
I remember hearing that voice in high school, telling me that patience would serve me and that I'd find where I belonged. I remember my body guiding me to the Healthy Life Centre, where I happily saw clients alongside a wonderful group of therapists for years. I remember "randomly" crossing a crowded street in Tennessee and running into a friend from summer camp who lived in Florida - in town for just one day, and we would have missed each other entirely if I hadn't crossed over when I did. I know the feeling that guided me to change hostels in Edinburgh, which led me to meet my husband, seemingly at random, in an unfamiliar city.
Some might call this luck. I know that all of these moments arrived because I was aligned, listening, feeling, and willing to follow.
You are also intuitive, and I'm certain you have your own stories that echo mine. Today, it's worth reflecting on the small nudges, the pings of information, the intuitive hits that helped you or changed the course of things. Take note of the feeling, the sound, the vision, the knowing in each of those moments. Learning to read your own intuition will guide you more gracefully than anything outside of you ever could.
Sending each of you blessings for attunement, alignment, and the willingness to follow your own knowing. Because you do already know the way.
- Jennifer
P.S. If you have any aha moments, hit reply and share, I'd love to hear them. And if you feel called to explore this more deeply, Practical Intuition will hold space for exactly this.
