My spiritual journey shifted towards the metaphysical when I was 18. Maybe I shared this story with you before. It is the story I always share when people ask me how I learned about intuition.
I met a group of women at a metaphysical bookstore. Each of them helped me understand and connect intentionally with my gifts. It was the first time I had language to speak about my life long experiences. When I talked about seeing, feeling and hearing spirit, it wasn’t weird to them. To them, my gifts were amazing. They taught me about ‘crystals’, tarot, astral projection, spirit guides and psychic phenomena and oh so many things. Our time together helped me release my fear from young childhood about sharing my gifts. It was a very spiritually focused experience. I could be my spiritual self there.
Then when I was back in my sociology classes discussing behavioral science and then in my literature classes dissecting great works, my intellect got expanded in a way that fed me deeply. I loved the critical conversations. It was a very academic and analytical environment. I could bring the intellectual and cognitively curious parts of myself to the conversations. Though it wasn’t a place to discuss spirituality or intuitive abilities. No more than the bookstore was a place to be academic.
It felt a bit like I was two different people. Then there were the other parts of me that got expressed with my friends and family. It was like there were all these different aspects of me that didn’t have one place to be.
Does that resonate with you?
Feeling like you have had to manage what parts of yourself are allowed in what places? Certain situations where parts of you fit and then in other circles where those parts don’t so you swallow em’ up? It can be exhausting and isolating.
For a lot of years, I felt weird. Not the ‘I am unique, wonderful, and awesome. One of a kind.’ kind of weird, but more the ‘I am odd, peculiar, and so different that I can’t find my people or where I belong’ type of weird. I did wonder if there were other people like me. Woo Woo and Practical. In the real world and the spiritual one.
Here is what I learned. The definition of weird does includes odd and peculiar but it also includes inexplicable, otherworldly or supernatural. I was focusing on the wrong part
Meaning I was looking outside of myself for where I belonged. Belonging was inside of me first. Here is my favorite definition of true belonging by Brene Brown:
True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.
Why did I share all of this? I hope to inspire you to know that being weird is the biggest gift of my life. I hope to encourage you to not only be who you are but to be willing to share it with the world. We need people like you to bring their unique gifts and voices.
PLUS I want to share some hope. Cause guess what happened as soon as I made peace with being in the wilderness as Brene describes it. I met a shit ton of other people who are like me. They are literally everywhere. Bringing a practicality to spirituality and bringing intuition to business and people talking about how science is catching up with ancient wisdom.
Recently I met Courtney Strosky. She had me on her podcast called “The Unique Way”. We had a super deep and fun conversation about the intersection between spirituality and science. Below I share how you can listen to the episode.
I am sending you lots of love and letting you know that we are each other’s people. Really.