When Fear and Intuition Sound the Same

The other night I was making supper for a dear friend and myself — wild rice, squash, and miso Cannellini beans… just something simple before heading out to a group meditation.

Throughout our short visit we talked of relationships, death, grief… just keeping it light you know? We found ourselves laughing and crying through the vulnerable human moments we shared with one another. I lit a few candles before I came back to the stove and stirred the beans; aromas of leeks, ginger, and garlic filled the kitchen. She eventually got quiet and then in a voice just a hair above a whisper…

“Emma… I’m having trouble trusting my gut… how do I know if what I’m feeling is my intuition or fear?”

I nodded, absorbing the words she shared before responding.

With a wooden spoon I scooped up the rice, squash, and beans filling a bowl for each of us, adding some local sauerkraut as a finishing touch.

I exhaled and handed her a portion of the meal I had prepared.

“May I be bluntly honest?” I asked, checking to see how much truth she was wanting from me.

“Of course!” she readily exclaimed, “that’s why I asked — I want your opinion. Don’t be gentle - be real, be honest. Please.”

I laughed quietly at my inner thoughts — It’s these relationships that I really love. The honest, loving, and silly ones. Where we can cry one moment, laugh the next, and be truthful in a really caring way, all while enjoying a nice meal together.

Taking another moment quietly to gather my thoughts, I closed my eyes.

Memories of my son’s dead body flooded my senses, his perfect little face, his smell, his soft blue skin. I had always feared loosing a child and now I am living the reality of it. I was no stranger to this contemplation of intuition versus fear — Did I know all along that I was to be the mother of a dead child… was my intuition speaking to me? Or, was it just fear, based on the ancestral pattern of child and infant loss my blood and bones knew well?

Opening my eyes, I offered a little smile as she awaited my response.

This is what I told her:

I think you’re asking the wrong question…

I’ve had people disagree with this, but stay with me for a moment… there might be something here for you.

Firstly. If you go on the internet and ask this question to the coaches and healers of the world, you’ll hear every one of them and their dog tell you what they think the key to this specific discernment is … I’ve heard phrases like: your intuition is a whisper while your fear is loud and chaotic OR your intuition is simple — fear has a story to prove itself.

Maybe there is an accuracy to these ideas and maybe there isn’t… And in no way am I saying that I have the answers. What I do have to offer is a story and potentially a different way of framing this question. With that in mind, please also take what I say with a grain of salt. Use this as something to ponder more so than receiving it as the gospel.

Just ruminate on it and see if anything feels accurate to you.

With that preface out of the way, let’s dive in shall we?

Practically speaking, from a linear timeline perspective, to unequivocally know if a feeling is fear or intuition can only be truly established in retrospect, and even then there can be ambiguous nuances.

During my pregnancy, my whole life really, I had feared stillbirth and child-loss. This was a type of grief I had seen my whole life, and it was a pain I never wanted to have to endure myself.

So when I got pregnant, and that fear came up louder and stronger. I dove into it. I did my very best to face it, knowing that the very act of bringing a child into this world would make me vulnerable to experiencing my greatest fear. That is to say, having and loving a child in and of itself opens the door to risk having to mourn said child if anything were to happen.

Now, a year and a half after my son died, I’ve come to ponder this very question over and over again.

My fear of child-loss: was it anxiety, was it my intuition, did I manifest this reality based on my thoughts alone as the book The Secret would have me believe?

I’m not actually asking to hear your thoughts on this right now because really… I’ve heard it all.

And the truth is: if my son was alive… the response would be:

“It was just fear! Every mother feels the same way. Every mother fears the death of her child.”

But is that true? If it’s not something you’ve been intimately connected to, is the weight of this particular fear really the same?

Now that he’s dead, do I automatically lean towards believing that my intuition was trying to warn me of something all along, prepare me perhaps?

The projections of others have echoed in my mind since his passing as well. That my intuition was indeed speaking to me and I didn’t listen well enough. Their own fears and anxieties that the birth would not go well, now being proven a “correct intuitive feeling” based on the outcome, when before it was brushed off as a fear of what was unknown.

And that’s when it hit me like an anvil on my heart.

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

Because evidentially it doesn’t change anything.

This wasn’t…isn’t — a lesson about trusting my intuition.

“Was this my intuition or was it fear?”, “How can I discern which is which?”, “How do I learn to trust my intuition?” All of which are entirely the wrong questions to ask.

I don’t need to trust my intuition, and neither do you.

Now, just wait before you start commenting something before finishing what I’ve got written here.

The more appropriate question to reflect upon is this:

“Can I trust myself?”

Pause here for just a second and read that question again.

Can I trust myself?

… to the depth at which, no matter what I may be faced with… I will show up.

Can I trust that I will respond to the events of my life with humility and integrity and honesty and reverence.

Can I trust myself to act when it is time to move, be still when it’s time to pause, speak when there is something to say…

Can I trust that no matter what happens, I will do my absolute best to learn what I can from the steps I have taken?

Can I trust that I will take responsibility for my path?

These are the more appropriate questions to ask — and here is why:

For context… I’ve been in physically and verbally abusive domestic relationships before now, and looking back I can definitely see moments where the red flags were waving very obviously in my face. Even moments when my “intuition” was nudging me… but for one reason or another, I didn’t see, I didn’t hear…

Until I did.

What mattered most was not that I saw and listened to those red flags right away — because really, abuse is an ongoing repeated thing that you can only really know to be what it is after some time passes — You can’t see a pattern before it becomes a pattern, before the repeated behaviours reveal themselves.

What mattered most was that, in the moment when I knew: No. This is unequivocally not okay.

I did something.

I called my mother.

I told her what was going on, I packed my things, and I left.

I didn’t get out of that situation because my intuition told me so. I got out because my trust was placed in my ability to respond to what presented. If I had honed my ability to listen to my intuition sooner, maybe the abuse wouldn’t have gotten that bad in the first place…

In that same vein: If I had listened to my intuition better, maybe my son would still be here…

And you know something — at this time I feel it’s imperative to highlight that very important semantical word: maybe.

Maybe things would be different.

Maybe there could have been something I could do that would astronomically change my reality so that I could be chasing an almost-2-year-old right now instead of writing about my dead baby.

Maybe.

And, maybe not.

Regardless…

I can’t go back and change anything.

Life doesn’t give you do-overs.

But we CAN learn.

And we can trust ourselves to learn from whatever situations, experiences, and life events we find ourselves in.

So what if the question to ask isn’t, “how can I learn to trust my intuition?”

Rather, “how can I learn to trust that I will HOLD MYSELF no matter what happens or what I may be faced with?”

The real truth is that no one knows anything. We can’t know alternative outcomes, or predict with any semblance of accuracy the woulda’s, coulda’s, shoulda’s, and if only’s… what we can do is hold ourselves with tenderness NOW.

We can learn to be kinder and more loving,

we can allow ourselves to be humbled in really beautiful ways,

we can drink in the medicine of our experiences,

and ultimately we can lend our wisdom and be of compassionate service to others.

For through every darkness we may endure, our ability to love is carved out beyond anything our minds may attempt to conceive previously.

So was it intuition or was it fear? Was it a mix of both?

Ultimately, from where I stand now, those questions feel moot. Irrelevant in a profound way.

Because regardless, life will happen the way it will. Sure we can do our best to have some positive influence over what may occur — and the spiritual internet people will tell you that “you create your reality”… but would they actually say that to a woman holding a dead baby in her arms? How much do they really believe that?

Is it more important to be able to discern your intuition from your fear in order to protect yourself from a negative experience… which to me honestly feels like a new-age spiritual way of emotional avoidance and running away…

Or, is the muscle we need to exercise rooted in holding ourselves no matter what we may be faced with?

Can we learn to strengthen our ability so that if and when we come face-to-face with our worst fears, we can live to share the medicine story that comes out of it?

Can you hold yourself as you fall apart in a crematorium while your most precious love turns to ash?

Can you trust that you will grow and learn from every hardship in one way or another?

Can you learn to love your grief?

To not resist what hurts.

—

The Tao Te Ching says that: to be human is to experience misfortune.

Pain is not personal. It’s not a punishment. It is.

It’s a part of being human we so often try to fix and avoid.

So much so that we turn away from it, honing our intuition to as to not experience pain. That’s the natural human orientation isn’t it? Turn towards pleasure and away from pain? We all do it… but is it serving us if we do it all the time? Do we live in a hedonistic culture to the point that we think we can outsmart suffering? … Outsmart death? Nature?

As my therapist says: “we can’t turn off the hard emotions, because that’s where the growth is”.

Now, I’m not saying any of this is truth with a capital T, or that you need to agree with everything I say, or to never ever listen to your intuition again.

I just offer this as a contemplation.

What if we’re asking the wrong questions?

What if trying to differentiate between intuition and fear is really just an indirect way of leading us towards more presence… more tenderness?

How do you know that something that very well might be painful in the moment, isn’t guiding you towards something more beautiful, enlightening… magical even?

How can you know for certain that your suffering isn’t the exact right path closer to God or Love or whatever your path is leading you to…

So, if your intuition is simply a tool to lead you away from pain, and is just another human control mental mechanism to “protect you” from something your ego deems as undesirable, is it possible you are also delaying your communion with God or meaning or purpose or enlightenment or whatever it may be…

What if it wasn’t about learning to trust your intuition after all… rather, a medicine of surrender, to be with what is without attempting to control anything or sway reality to be what you think it should be…

What if suffering was actually the path towards oneness?

And of course, as a mother with a dead baby… my only desire has been his life — for him to be safe and well and joyous and healthy.

So please know that I don’t say any of this lightly.

If there was anything I could do to alter my reality so that he could be here now…

alive…

I would.

Every single time.

But, that is not the world we live in.

That is not reality.

This is simply where my wonderings have left me… deeply struck by this heartbreaking curiosity — that maybe holding my son’s lifeless blue body and the lifelong pain of mourning him that follows is actually a medicine path to oneness.

Perhaps this has been my initiation into learning to actually hold all the pieces of me with more love and integrity.

What if there was never anything to fix, what if my intuition wasn’t actually wrong or off… rather it was my subconscious already deeply aware with a God-like perspective informing me of a deep initiation to come, something that would change me completely from the inside out.

What if it’s all just a lesson of love?

What if all of this is just a mystery… something not meant for us to know...

—

Just something to ponder over.

At least, this is what I told my friend.

By now we had finished eating our meal. I blew the candles out that we had lit as she got her coat on and headed home, while I did the same and made my way to sit a meditation.

It was a challenging hour to say the least — spent sitting still, breathing, all the while my mind spinning yarns trying to make sense of things, and still I returned to the breath and the mystery that is this life.

—

And in case I didn’t say it enough today:

I love you Floyd, my sweet boy. Endlessly and forever.

Thank you for being my greatest teacher to ever life

and to ever die.

In reverence to you always,

Emma Cardinal (mommy)