(Content warning – despair and mild suicide reference.)

I’m leaving my marriage.

💔

I was in my late twenties, and I had everything a young woman could want: a car, a career, a trendy new flat, and my dream wedding to my gorgeous husband.

I’d picked my sexy, sleek wedding dress, and had the white-gold Celtic band wedding ring inscribed with a Tibetan Buddhist prayer on the inside. We’d held the ceremony at the perfect chalk-walled Eco-Centre where I’d greeted my Buddhist teacher the autumn before.

Whilst choosing the ring, my friend and Reiki master had offered to do a Rune reading for me. I got the XX – and she told me it looked Celtic, so it was a good sign to choose that ring. I’d intuitively felt it meant NO. Don’t get married. But I swallowed that down and didn’t mention it, thanking her for her advice, instead.

On the day of the wedding, with all our family and friends gathered in the round-house style venue, my best friend as my bridesmaid and my Dad to walk me down the aisle – again I had a moment of intuitive panic. NO. Don’t do this. I gasped as I entered the room. And knew that I couldn’t do anything to stop it from happening.

Because – although it looked like I had everything that I could want – in truth, I didn’t have anything that I truly desired. And I had no idea how to verbalise or ask for what I needed. I’d had no role models, no teachers on this. I had no idea that I could do it.

In my daily life, making the commute along the motorway to the secondary school where I was creating my career as an English teacher – most days, I just wanted to crash my car into a wall and leave it all behind.

❣️

I felt disconnected from my body – living only in and from my head. ‘Doing well’ and ‘being good’ had been my refuge. So I’d pushed through the social barriers to my education and become a first-generation scholar at university – the first of my immediate family and friends to be educated to that degree. Studying English Literature because it was my passion, I naturally chose a career as a teacher where I could pursue my ambition to be of service and ‘do good’ in the world.

But inside me, my world was falling apart.

Ugh. How many times had I NOT listened to my intuition to get to this point in my life?

I’d followed all the rules. Did everything that I thought I was supposed to do. Yet my job was leaving me burnt out, overwhelmed and exhausted; and there was nothing in my life that lit me up or made me smile.

❤️‍🩹

I sat in the cafe above Canterbury Wholefoods, with my journal open in front of me and a pen in my hand. And I began to write.

This time, I asked myself questions with one hand – and I allowed my other hand to answer them. I wrote the questions with my normal writing hand, and the answers with my non-dominant hand. I had this sense that if I could listen to the side of myself that didn’t usually get the chance to speak, I would discover something that I didn’t usually give myself the chance to hear.

I wrote and wrote at that small wooden table for one. A wide, blue ceramic cup of Rose Tea cooling beside the pages that were filling with my words. Filling with my own voice of wisdom that I had kept silent for so long.

I’d always had a sense that I’d wanted to write – I loved writing and was a Teacher of English, always correcting other people’s writing – so writing had become something that had a function and a purpose and a clear right or wrong. This time I allowed myself to write freely. To listen to what the silenced parts of me had been desperately wanting to say.

And it didn’t take long for them to tell me.

❤️

Finishing my tea with fresh tears filling my eyes, I saw myself laid bare on the pages in front of me for the first time. I saw the truth of who I really was and what I truly wanted and needed and desired for my life. That there was nothing exactly *wrong with what I had been doing – but it wasn’t what I wanted and it ultimately would never have been *right.

Giving myself permission to see myself so clearly – with the pages of my journal as a mirror to my inner reality – was the first step in reclaiming the life that was truly meant for me.

I left my marriage, home, and the career that had been so suffocating.

Since that time, I’ve been on a journey of learning to listen more deeply to the inner voice that’s guiding me. I still use journaling as the key to reconnecting with my intuition and a way to tap into what is truly right for me.

💞

Now, I run my own business supporting Visionary Writers to release writer’s block and connect with their own inner wisdom on the page. I have the courage to speak my truth – because I have had the courage to meet myself as I truly am in all the messy pages of my journaling. And I have a relationship where honest and open communication is a valued and welcome part of our daily life together.

The best part for me is that I always have my journal with me to do the deep-dive work when I need to, and that my intuition flows more freely for me now. I’ve attuned myself to the inner wisdom that whispers quietly, so that I can hear her voice more naturally and pay attention when she’s speaking to me. I feel more embodied and connected to myself in ways that I never had done before, and I trust myself to speak my truth and ask for what I need.

These are often steep skills for a woman to learn – with all the cultural conditioning that has told us to stay small and silent in so many ways and for so many, many, ancestral generations. Trusting my intuition, speaking my truth, and listening to my body’s inner wisdom can still feel scary and challenging for me at times, but every time I do it I strengthen my own courage and connection to the web of life.

💗

Does this story resonate with you?

If you’re curious about listening to YOUR intuition and finding out where it could lead you – and you’d like to deepen your self-confidence and connection with intuitive journaling through the Seasonal Cycle of the Year – join me in the Intuitive Journaling Circle, starting in December.

Please click here to find out more and save your seat.

I would love to connect with you.

💖