Listicles can be annoying. I don’t really love them, the format is gimmicky and reductionist and shallow especially when we’re talking about intuition and how to develop a good relationship with your own.

However, and not at all ironically I do use this format all the time. Lists of 5 or 8 or 10 Things To Remember, Know, and Learn are often how I organize and distill the most important concepts I teach about intuition in our culture, a culture which marginalizes intuition and turns it into something you should be afraid of.

So maybe I love lists a little bit, especially when I enter into combat with the Great False Context of how we perceive intuition in our culture. Which is that we (very loudly) turn intuition into something rare, unreliable, and dangerous. The goal is to straightjacket it into weirdness, evil and immorality. So, in order to clarify that it’s none of those things, a list can be an uncomplicated and straightforward way to counteract the insidious programming we’re constantly subjected to.

Lists are also really good for making things clear by keeping things simple. Lists are the big stick I carry while I’m speaking softly.

So please indulge me in a list of one, if you will. What follows is the #1 rule of intuitive development and the most important guidance I can deliver to you about having a good relationship with your own intuition:

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Friends,

Here we are again, just a couple of weeks before the actual midterm elections (it feels like we have been saturated with speculation about them for two entire years since the shock wore off of the horrifying Dem loss in 2024). I wrote to my followers shortly before the elections in 2020 about how to navigate the incredible tension and fear that builds in the zeitgeist ahead of pivotal points in our nation. Once again I have been watching stress levels rise sharply in myself, my clients, and loved ones over the last few days and weeks, understandably.

I have some experience particularly as an intuitive empath that might be helpful.

If you continue to read on, please take what you like and leave the rest.

Also, please understand: Science may not be interested enough in people like me to research or validate what is happening when I and those like me describe the experience of feeling the thoughts and feelings of others as if they were our own. But that does not mean I don’t believe in science. I do, and always have, just as I believe in facts. Science often catches up with us, and while that is intensely validating, it won’t ever be able to fully describe the connection all of us have to one another, and how sacred that connection is. What’s most important is to remember the purpose of intuitive empathy, that it is one of the main features of compassion and empathy, and it is by design a part of our humanness that helps us be kind to one another.

I have a lifetime of experience of extreme sensitivity to others’ emotions, individual and collective. That alone does not make up the totality of my intuitive gifts, but it is a foundational piece. I have had to work hard to honor who I am and keep it from developing into an occupational hazard, but it has been a moving target for sure. What I have gotten really good at is immediately recognizing when I am carrying the stressful thoughts or feelings of another person that I picked up but did not set down.

Of course, my own feelings and thoughts are in play when this happens, and I’ve often said that it’s my caring and compassion for others that connects me to their deepest parts. If, when I am traveling in the energy that makes all of us human, an energy that is like a connective tissue that binds us all to one another, then it makes sense that when higher levels of distress ratchet up, I feel it.

I spent years waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, and it’s taken me just as long to realize it’s rarely my own fear that I’m feeling. I am proud to say that I’ve learned how to untangle myself from the fear that hitchhikes into my own psyche, and that I sleep well now, even if sometimes I’m interrupted.

Some election cycles I’ve gotten sick with headaches and colds, and in 2020 the inspiration for this original piece was one particular night when I woke up at 2am clenching my jaw so tightly it was giving me a headache that lasted for 24 hrs. before it loosened its grip on me.

So here’s a review of some good tips on how to practice good intuitive hygiene when you are in it, full stop, and cannot seem to disengage from stress or emotions that feel like they are not entirely your own:

Move. Go for a walk, preferably outside.

Stay hydrated.

Take a bath with Epsom salts.

Watch a funny show or movie.

When you’re rushing, intentionally slow down. Build in short “wastes” of time that force you to stop being full-throttle productive.

Get into action. Do Something. I cannot recommend this enough, especially if you are angry and fed up. If directly participating in democracy is frightening to you (protests, canvasing, making phone calls) do something that feels manageable. Or, support the people who are doing those things. Bake for them. Make them dinner. Tell them you appreciate what they are doing. Consider becoming an election worker, give rides to the polls, write postcards. VOTE.

Also extremely important: take breaks from or abstain altogether from alarmist and fearful social media, (which at times is all of it). Remember that posting on the socials is not the same as taking direct action to support free and fair elections. Expressing your opinion is absolutely important, but more important is listening to and elevating typically marginalized voices. Never, ever feed the trolls. Use your energy for actions which support your values.

Tell the truth about how you are feeling and reach out to your beloveds when you feel overwhelmed.

BREATHE~breathe, breathe, breathe.

Send love into the Universe, to whoever needs it (especially to yourself). Feel how much love you are actually able to channel. You can send love anonymously to whoever you want on your behalf, even to those who have not earned it. You inoculate yourself against the stress of observing humans acting shamelessly and harmfully when you are willing to send love out into the world anyway.

Repeat as needed.

Above all, know this: what you’re feeling is not just yours. We are all connected to one another. When one of us hurts, or suffers, or is afraid, or succeeds, or is jubilant, or is kind, we all are. You are only responsible for your own growth and awareness, so hit that shit as hard as you can, and then rest.

Holding you all in my heart always,

Susan

p.s. this is by no means an exhaustive list, btw! Let me know what your favorite energy self-care rituals are!

“It was only a dream”

Pay attention to your dreams. It’s one of the best resources for a conversation with your intuition. It talks to you through your dreams, and you can learn to listen to it.

Remember, though, that our society is always working hard to prevent you from trusting the guidance you find within your dreams, and it does this by contextualizing dreaming as something weird, useless, or disturbing, just like it does with your intuition. Remember “rare, unreliable and dangerous”?

So your first task is not to minimize this very important communication channel.

Don’t dismiss your dreams. You’ll only be hamstringing yourself. The reflex to reject them is horribly limiting, since intuition often sets up shop at night specifically because sleep prevents us from interfering while the unpacking of all the emotions and experiences of our daily life commences.

For so many of us, sleep is the only time we ever slow down. But that’s often when the deepest messages show up.

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Ten years ago on October 3rd I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I was about to turn 50 and in the earliest stages of repairing my life after losing my husband and my children’s father to gastric cancer.

It had only been 14 months since he’d died.

I was in the midst of planning a party for myself, which had felt like risky, really new behavior. It was my personal declaration of resilience. It was meant to be a celebration of deciding to find joy again, a ritual of opening my most internal doors to the world again, a party that was fun and happy and one that honored the real seeds of hope that were sprouting above ground and growing in our lives, even alongside the grief and loss that had fertilized them.

That’s when a regular mammogram saved my life.

It detected the tumor that had probably been growing in my right breast for quite a while, but which had fairly exploded in size since my last screening the year before. It had evaded detection even though I’d had several ultrasounds meant for surveilling a cyst, which ironically had completely resolved.

(I wrote about my experiences in a blog series called Welcome To The Boob Lounge which you can read here).

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The trauma of this diagnosis coming so soon on the heels of the previous wrenching, loss, wounded us again by amplifying both. It was confusing and terrifying all over again. Both events were in constant conversation with each other. What did it mean? What do you do when the worst can’t possibly happen and then it does?

I would not wish the months after my diagnosis on anyone. Had I been tricked by my husband’s death into preparing for mine? Was I orphaning my children? Layers of grief for what my husband had gone through pushed their way up through numbness and shock, and destroyed any composure or peace I’d returned to since he’d passed. Any moment in which I was alone and my kids couldn’t hear me, I decompensated into the deepest sobbing I’d done since he was diagnosed.

The rest of the following weeks were spent at the full time job that getting a second opinion and deciding on treatment options required. I kept crying in secret, more tears than I ever would have thought I had left.

Then I had a surgery date and time to rest for a few weeks. I chose to have a double mastectomy, which is major surgery. I lost a tremendous amount of blood during and had to have another emergency surgery the next day. The recovery was long and difficult.

Then there were two revision surgeries. Tattoos. While I’d been healing from the first surgery I found out that my oncotype score was so good that I would be spared chemo, and the first bit of lightness returned to my outlook. I would need a new reason to wear the sexy pink wig that had called to me.

And then, suddenly, I was on the other side of it.

Immediately I started to notice some new things about myself. I cried more easily certainly but I also laughed more freely. I developed an antipathy for drama, for emotional immaturity, for stinginess, for fear. I did not wait to do the hard thing, the fun thing, the generous thing. It was like someone had added a brighter overlay to all the parts of my personality and gave me a new way of being in the world that required my most authentic self to lead.

Here’s what it feels like 10 years later:

The life we have lived this last decade is one that is exactly reflective of real life. There isn’t any part of our lives that is immune from what life is and will always be: beautiful, horrible, agonizing, ecstatic, devastating, liberating, hideous, magical. Full of suffering and healing. Crushing with its cruelty and full of infinite blessings. There have been surprises, spit-takes, more goodbyes. There have been stunning, brilliant miracles alongside chapters that felt like walking through fog.

But all of it has been transformative. All of it has sloughed off the parts of us that are inessential and cumbersome and a waste of time and energy. Every year what we didn’t need died off and left us a little more newborn.

October is already my favorite month. It’s easily one of the most beautiful in Maine, and my birthday often falls during peak leaf color. October is when the signs are everywhere that Nature’s big sleep is coming, and that it is good. It’s filled with reminders that it’s time to prepare for a cozy life as the great regeneration that winter will provide us is on its way.

But this year I am present to even more of an abundance of gifts in every moment. Every breeze, every sunset, the movements of clouds at all times of the day. The good sleep that comes with a cool bedroom. The warmth of packed away sweaters, like conversations with old friends. The way I can feel every sensation of a deep breath, every second of the in, and every bit of the out.

My senses have just exploded. There is no layer between my consciousness and any of it. Good coffee, plaintive and hilarious looks from the dogs, listening to the sounds of their joy as they play. Every bite of delicious food. Lemon water when I’m thirsty. A hot shower.

But also I am more aware of all the examples of kindness I see between humans, dozens every week. The bristling against those that are selfish and unkind has given way to how I am feeling the deep feelings of all the people I know and love, but also of the strangers I move amongst. I absorb the really truly good intentions of most of us. Of the rest of it, I certainly feel the hurt and fear and shame that propels them into the mistakes they make thinking their cruelty and selfishness keeps them safe.

And then I release them to the peace that is available to all of us in the Universe. I’m not carrying anything but a true longing for their anguish to resolve.

Every breath, every movement is overwritten with a highlighter pen of sensitivity ~but I’m not uncomfortable. I am so fucking replete with gratitude for the simple fact of being alive. I am well aware that turning 60 most definitely means I have fewer days in front of me than behind me, which constantly presses upon me the choice every moment presents: what do I want to spend my time and energy on?

I probably do think about death too much now. At least once daily, which is a little dramatic and morbid, but at the same time I am also feeling permanently separated from the undertow of ego. And all I really want is to have a soft heart and opportunities to be of service.

I know, after this decade, I am not perfect and never will bet, but I think I don’t care very much about that anymore. It feels more important that I want to share the love I feel filled with and receive the love that is shared with me.

I am alive. It is such a real life, too. There is and will be pain in real life, even suffering, but I have never been less afraid of it and never have I ever been more grateful to be in this exact story that we are all living through now, together. Each morning I get up and put one foot in front of the other, to the sound of the most beautiful music, that of humans trying their hardest everyday to try and make love more real on this planet that is our home.

I am alive, and the celebration has gathered steam.

Holding you in my heart always,

Susan

Hello Paid Subscribers, it is I, your friendly neighborhood intuitive, who unfortunately was waylaid from publishing your second meditation last week, by ~cue scary organ music~ the dreaded stomach flu.

I do not need to describe how awful it was because a) you absolutely already know via your own personal experiences how horrible it is to get struck down, even for only 24 hours, by a virus that makes unconsciousness an aspirational and worthy goal, and b) I am still a little wiped out from it all and do not want to further tempt back the sensation of it still having one hand wrapped round an ankle. The only blessing is that it is fast, a fact that I mentally chanted like a freaking mantra to bolster fortitude during the worst of it. I am pointed in the right direction, which is the total and opposite one away from this mofo, and for that I am grateful.

So, let’s continue with the blacking out of any memory of gastro distress, shall we?

There. Good.

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Shifting our focus now, to a tool that instantly resets our mindset when we are anxious to one that builds trust in our intuition: As you’ve heard me say ad infinitum, in the presence of fear you cannot access your intuition. At all. So your first job when you feel tense or anxious or afraid is to calm the fear before you do anything else.

A couple of decades ago, I began to notice my clients and others were finishing their sentences with “I don’t know” repeatedly while they were describing to me whatever particular situation was bothering them. Any time their agitation peaked, or when they got to a point where it became clear to them just how stressed they had been, they would conclude “I don’t know”, sometimes like an incantation. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know….”

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I was awoken by the phone ringing on my nightstand around 9am in San Diego on September 11th, and after fumbling to pick up the receiver I heard my sister’s voice screaming at me, “Turn on the TV turn on the TV oh my god turn on the TV a plane crashed into the World Trade Center!!”

I stumbled into the living room and turned on the television, trying to wake up from a deep, jet lagged sleep (we had just returned from 2 1/2 weeks in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia the day before). I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. One of the towers was on fire, the top quarter belching smoke into the sky. My sister had been on her way to work in Los Angeles when she’d heard the news, and she’d immediately turned around and headed back home. So had everyone else, the freeways were eerily emptying out by the mile.

Then, along with everyone else who bore witness that day, I watched as another plane came into view, and slammed into the 2nd tower.

I stopped breathing. Blinking at the screen, I could not comprehend any of it. My brain, shocked beyond outrage, served up the only rationale it could to explain what was happening. I was suddenly very, very angry at the idea that some movie producers thought this was entertaining. They’d gone completely outer limits. “Whoever pitched this disgusting idea has lost their humanity entirely,” I thought.

But it wasn’t a pitch. It was real. It was live.

I dragged our land line from the kitchen onto my lap so I could be connected to my sister, my friends, my husband who was suddenly realizing he was the only person in the building at work, having arrived at 7am Pacific Time, well before the events of the day would begin.

I would sit on the couch in my nightgown for the rest of the entire day in a stunned stupor.

When he arrived home, I rushed to him, sobs finally breaking free from the numb horror I’d been frozen in all day. I would be replaying the moment when those poor souls began jumping for days and months. I still do. I remember with utter clarity what it felt like to watch what was the best option for so many.

Every year on 9/11, more stories find me, of more forced choices from that day. The choices of passengers on planes, firefighters who rushed into the towers without hesitation, of the people stuck in the buildings who perished. Stories of the bereaved, of the helpers that mobilized all through the city and across the country, and the globe. Stories of those that survived, and the ways their lives were changed. Stories of bystanders on the streets. Of those whose health was ruined by the poison in the air.

Stories across all of our lives, that began as we woke up on September 12 after a fitful night’s sleep (if we slept at all) and stepped into a new world, one with starkly fewer illusions protecting us from the way hate poisons. Maybe not yet understanding the way fear was already wedging itself into our hearts like a virus, and which for decades afterwards would be invisibly embedded into our consciousness. Stories of the lives ruined by the suffering that ignited the event, that precipitated a war based on lies in its aftermath.

Stories of the terror that tried to rip us apart. But that ultimately failed to kill off hope. For me, the more I learn about 9/11 the more I understand it’s a story of how terror failed, just as it always will.

However. If you’re looking for evidence that terror always fails, you are likely going to have to go agains the tide. We still struggle to hope, in a world that has become ever more complex and challenging in the following 25 years. The loudest voices still characterize our human experience by its struggle, greed, suffering, and cruelty, so much so that it often feels incredibly naive to assert that joy, healing, compassion, empathy, any of these even have a seat at the table of our beliefs anymore.

But what is enduring for me, even though I still feel every inch of my feelings each September 11th, are the stories of the helpers, and my memories of what I’ve come to understand are evidence of the essential ways we humans are always able to activate the connecting force for good that lives in all of us. Before, during, and after all of the most important events that shape our individual lives, against the backdrop of civilization.

The trip we took to Oceania was part reset, part escape, and part bucket list. We had been trying to get pregnant for a long time to no avail. I’d had a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy. We had tried everything and were looking down the barrel of IVF, but before we decided to go that route we decided to get lost in another part of the world.

Well, not get lost, not really. It was a highly structured trip with a planned itinerary. A change of scenery such as this was an incredible luxury, and we knew it. We hoped to ride a wave of newly activated gratitude and clarity. As we leaned into the adventure of being so far from home, after only a couple of days, we began to feel lighter, clearer, more hope filled.

And then, on September 8th, 2 days before we were meant to begin the long series of flights home, my back went out so badly I could barely walk. Aided by a massage, lots of pain relievers and muscle relaxants, I made it home but I was still in so much pain I felt paralyzed. It felt like my body had sabotaged the trip of a lifetime.

A couple hours after I got the call from my sister, I realized I hadn’t eaten, and got up from the couch, making it all the way into the kitchen before I realized I’d done it all without any pain. I’d forgotten to take my paid meds as well. By the end of the day, it was official: my back had spontaneously healed. I’d hardly been able to function. And yet, the pain was completely gone.

In the following days, clients started reaching out, with their own stories of distress that had concentrated itself in their bodies and psyches, which had also suddenly resolved immediately after the event. Most notably:

~a client whose son in 3rd grade developed such horrible anxiety the week before the attacks, he absolutely refused to go to school and could not explain why except that he was terrified to be away from her, also evidenced by the severe stomach cramps and vomiting he developed every morning, until the morning after the attacks when they spontaneously disappeared and he went back to school without incident.

~another client whose dear friend was a colleague and friend of one of the murdered flight attendants, who called to tell me her friend had had horrible nightmares in the weeks before 9/11, ones in which she’d be standing in the galley of an airplane watching blood drain down her arms and hands because her throat had been slashed.

And then there was my own premonition on a girl’s weekend the summer before, celebrating my friend’s upcoming wedding on Catalina Island. We were all having drinks before dinner in the hotel bar, when suddenly and completely out of context I was penetrated by a piercing sadness that scared me. I became incredibly cold, and excused myself to go back to my room to grab a sweater. On my way back I was consumed by the knowledge that something very awful was going to happen soon that would cause a long war. I couldn’t tell what this inciting incident was, and I knew it would not affect my family directly, and I was as filled with grief. Back at the bar and not wanting to be a downer, I took one friend aside to tell her what was happening, but apologized, explaining that I couldn’t really describe what I was seeing because it just looked like tall buildings falling in a city, an American city but one not close to ours. The feelings I felt were of such deep loss and horror, and I begged her forgiveness for having to share it. She was one of my dearest friends, understood how visions often worked like this, and graciously listened.

Then I promptly shook it out of my consciousness and we went back to celebrating.

The morning of September 11th, when I called her from my sofa, she reminded me that I had foretold the day’s events. I had forgotten about it completely, or maybe I had blocked it, or stored it deep within me until more information was revealed. “Of course you didn’t understand what you were seeing,” she assured me. “No one could imagine anything so terrible”.

From the moment we were on the other side of that line in our imaginations, the stories of those of us who were tasked with holding space for the pain about to unfold, in our bodies and hearts, have become the most important to me. It reminds me that we are never alone, that our natural state is in connection to one another, and that our primary purpose is to be as helpful as we can to one another. Sometimes that is through direct action and sometimes that is in emotional solidarity. In the face of all that was hideous on that day, the devastation and the ruin, I remember that there were thousands of people across the world who were on alert, ready to be swept away with tenderness. We had been prepared, or at the very least we could not stop the activation of our natural capacity for intuitive empathy.

In this way, I am eternally hopeful because I know we are never far from one another, never alone.

Holding you in my heart always,

Susan

Thank you, paid subscribers! I am so grateful for you. Your support is invaluable to me, and as part of your paid subscription I am always open to hearing from you about what you would like to discuss and learn. That said, one of you asked me last week if we could do a series of meditations, which I think is a fantastic idea.*

Starting this week, I will be offering you these meditations in a snackable format. These meditations are meant to be tools you can use quickly and easily in a variety of situations, whether it be to begin your day, help you pause and reflect throughout it, or end it on a peaceful note.

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Today is my dedicated writing day for the week, and the plan was to spend the afternoon updating an older blog post that speaks well to the bravery needed if one is to be an intuitive person in the world. I write a lot of posts like these. It’s always felt risky in our culture to trust our intuition, but especially in the last 10 years intuition is cast as a rare, unreliable, and dangerous pursuit, so by default much of my work centers around helping my clients pick the cobwebs of terror off of their own still, small voice.

This week’s can wait.

Because as they say, we make plans and God laughs. I had a wonderful morning at work, mostly because I am back at work. My broken arm is doing so well, mostly because it’s not broken anymore. The soft tissue is healing under the expert care of a wonderful PT, and my energy is improving too. The weather is phenomenally pleasant, as we are on the eve of the two most spectacular months in Maine. I arrived home jubilant about all of this, made myself some lunch, and after I finished and was walking over to the sink to rinse off my plate, Bill looked up from his phone and said, “Oh no. Dolly’s gone”.

Can I tell you how much in that moment I wanted there to be another Dolly so badly? But of course there isn’t. She is the only one.

She was a genius, who could dash off labor anthems as easily as she gave voice to laments of deepest heartbreak and adoration. We know so many of these songs by heart, where we keep them nestled and safe forever.

In her life she was the most stunning example of what kindness and generosity look like when we trust ourselves to be capable of both. She showed us what it looks like to simply choose to be a good human, made sure we all knew that we all have at least some good within us and that it's there in order that we share it. She refused to judge anyone and showed us how soft and lighthearted that makes us. She never took herself seriously and yet she was somehow always so put together she personified perfection.

She was beautiful inside and out, stunning and sparkly and light.

And so, this afternoon I’m writing this instead. I’m so desperately sad, crying on and off, trying to make this piece worthy of how much I appreciated the example she set for all of us. Someone I know posted a picture of her with the comment, I didn’t even understand she was mortal….which made me realize, I didn’t either. I mean of course she was a human being, but she wasn’t like most of us.

And I admit part of me thought she would be here forever. She brought balance to the absurd levels of cruelty, greed, and fear abounding through the world right now. I am unmoored knowing she isn’t here anymore.

She would probably remind us that her spirit never died. That her essence is eternal.

Also I could have sworn she had a cameo on The Good Place as God or an Angel, because I remember crying through the whole episode, but I can’t find any information online that confirms it…..

…..which probably confirms it. It’s all the proof I need.

RIP, Dolly, and thank you so very much for the time we had with you. Our memories of you are already such a blessing.

Susan

UPDATE: Dolly played an angel on Grace and Frankie in the final episode!!! Not The Good Place ;)

Also, check out this podcast from 2019, Dolly Parton’s America, produced by Jad Abumrad of Radio Lab fame, whose father was Dolly’s friend. More than anything else I knew about her, this podcast taught me how who she is is forever embedded into what we think of as a true American icon.

Friends, I do not rock it old school. I am not a member of the Crystal Ball Contingent.

When I had a physical office space, which was airy and light and comfortable, you would catch nary a whiff of any lingering trails of incense. I did not greet you dressed in flowy tunics or a shawl (or two) draped about my person. There were no candles burning, mostly due to fire regulations, but still.

Now, in the post-pandemic world we meet on Zoom. I work in my home office, and even if you look closely, you’ll still only find a couple of New Age-y trappings in the space. Perhaps you’ll see the small group of crystals on my bookshelf, including the beautiful, perfectly heart-shaped amethyst that was left to me by a dear client who passed away. Or the tarot/divination decks within reach since I use them as part of my meditation practice and in the weekly Everyday Intuition Group as well, where participants are learning how to use them.

Mostly you’ll see a ton of amazing art adorning the walls, including some by my incredibly talented friends, and on other surfaces, a print by Helma af Klint, a few Lego crystals that I built (with help), and a tiny pedestal that displays beautiful note cards with the appropriate illustrated Zodiac sign for the month. That’s it.

I also keep a ton of plants around, disco balls that hang in the windows and scatter light during the day, comfy furniture, and huge bookshelves crammed with great fiction (mostly historical), memoirs, essays, and poetry, as well as plenty of books on spirituality and human development.

On the surface, you might think you were in a very open-minded therapist’s office. But even though I am not a therapist nor do I play one on TV, the vibe is very far from Gypsy Ouji Seance Mystery Realm. To be clear, I am not anti-Gypsy Ouji Mystery Seance Realm. I owe deep respect to my very talented friends and colleagues that are representatives of the Gypsy Ouji Mystery Seance Realm. I have absolutely nothing against that aesthetic at all, but I am on a mission to teach as many people as I possibly can that intuition is not a rare and strange thing that only the slightly kooky among us experience. Intuition has been shoved into the margins of human ability and it needs to be yanked out and normalized above all else. And so, I think the vibe I’ve cultivated is more Your Intuitive in Mom Jeans more than anything else.

Long ago I joined the PTO at my kids’ elementary school because that sounded like an intersection of roles I should take on, a stereotype-challenging choice that broadened the idea of who everyday parents were. Intuitive and coordinator of the bake sale. Unfortunately, for reasons having nothing to do with my unusual talents, and everything to do with being an exhausted parent of young kids who was clearly neither well-rounded nor crafty nor organized enough to be an asset to the organization, it didn’t really work out. I was happier as a room parent, and left the PTO to make room for a parent who had more to give.

But I still intentionally dial back on anything that even sniffs of stereotypical interpretations of my profession so I can show by example that being intuitive is as natural as breathing air. We don’t need props to access our intuition. We all have access to it. It’s abundantly available, like oxygen.

And it’s completely normal for any of us to use that natural resource anytime, to access the guidance and insight that’s available to us, either via the mind’s eye, the capacity to feel others’ feelings as if they were our own, or by honoring the hunches that we can and should count on completely.

Of course at this moment in our human history, intuition isn’t widely considered normal, at all, by many.

Facing this absurdity, I continue anyway. My work is about pushing the needle on it just a little more, everyday.

When someone comes to see me for a private session, this is what will happen: we have a discussion. It’s rather one-sided frankly since I’m the one doing most of the talking, but I do make ample time for questions. What you want to know is important, and even though I usually get there first, in the rare times I don’t, it’s important that you need to feel comfortable asking me about it.

First off, though, I explain what intuition is and how I work.

The information I am relaying is sourced by three main categories of intuition. Clairvoyance is the ability to see images that do not appear to others and that contain meaningful information. Some clairvoyants are objective clairvoyants, who perceive those images in real time and space. Some clairvoyants are subjective clairvoyants, who see images on a movie screen in the mind. I experience both, but for the purposes of a private session, I fall back on subjective clairvoyance. When I take a seat in my personal movie theatre, I can see a variety of things projected onto the screen: moving pictures, slideshows, sometimes strings of words in bold, or even maps.

A good way to understand the difference between objective and subjective clairvoyance is this: say we’re all at a cocktail party. An objective clairvoyant might glance over at a chair and see someone sitting there so clearly they’ll assume they are one of the guests in attendance. A subjective clairvoyant will look over, know that there is someone sitting there, but only see the details in their mind. When I experience moments of objective clairvoyance, I only usually realize it afterward when it’s clear I saw something nobody else did.

I access another level of information using intuitive empathy. Empaths feel the feelings and understand the thoughts of other people as if they were their own. We are prohibited from invading their privacy, by the way which I wish more people understood. No one is reading your mind in line at the grocery store.

This is probably the most common form of intuitive ability and one that most people can relate to since it is similar to emotional empathy. I’ve met more people than I can count who don’t consider themselves intuitive at all but suddenly start nodding when I explain how intuitive empathy works. This ability is much more universal than anyone realizes.

Intuitive empathy is different than just being able to relate to another person or feel compassion for them. An empath can experientially put themselves into another person’s shoes, insomuch as they directly feel what it’s like to be that person emotionally and intellectually. There’s no effort involved. An empath’s gifts give them access to a literal inhabiting of another person’s reality.

If you’ve ever walked into a room and felt unexpectedly angry or sad or anxious, or suddenly felt those things when someone else walked in, you are getting a taste of what it’s like to process information about others through your own emotional system.

In order to do our work well, empaths must be motivated completely by compassion. The best empaths are true examples of the ability to be curious about people in the most imaginatively kind ways. To get the most information for our clients, we must set all our preconceived notions and opinions aside, because we learn very early on how useless it is to judge. We focus our caring for others like a laser on the parts of their lives where they need the most help. Intuitive empathy is not a form of mind-reading or eavesdropping. True empaths are helpers. And the deep compassion that motivates us becomes the gateway through which we can help the most.

Possibly my favorite part about being an empath is that once I’ve established a strong enough connection to read a client with steady accuracy, they become like the hub of a wheel whose spokes connect their emotional/spiritual energy to the energy of all the people, places, and situations they are invested in and care about. So I can travel up and down as many of the parts of that wheel as needed to gather information about the significant people in their lives and how they approach my client, offering clues to mystifying or challenging behavior. And clairvoyance often highlights what needs emphasis like a slide show in the background.

And there’s also this fun little feature: just as I can travel quite deeply into the lives of others, I can also pull up from that perspective, and take in the big picture, looking at things broadly and watching how they and their loved ones are moving through their lives. It’s like shifting between microscopic focus to a bird’s eye view of the same life. That’s very valuable because I can often offer reassurance, take note of what’s unfolding and at what speed, point out hidden opportunities, and issue cautions if necessary.

But what’s especially fascinating is to compare the two points of view. I know of no better tool aside from experience itself to help us see how our own opinions and fears are usually the only things holding ourselves back from the lives we yearn to live and make sense of. Many times I’ve helped someone who was naively assuming that “there’s nothing to see here” in a situation, spot a bear in the woods so to speak, and thus avoid a serious personal or professional miscalculation. Conversely, I’ve also been able to offer a new set of glasses to the timid by pointing out what they thought was a menacing threat, was actually a tree.

The third category of intuitive ability is mediumship.

Mediums in our culture are described in so many different ways it’s confusing. Some people think that all intuitives are mediums, which is not the case. All mediums are intuitives, but not all intuitives are mediums. That’s because a medium is not necessarily clairvoyant or an empath. Some (like me) are, but not all.

Basically, mediums are folks who have the ability to perceive and interact with life independent of the physical human form. That means some mediums can communicate with plants and animals as well. Out of all the intuitive gifts, it is the one that’s the most especially marginalized, and therefore considered super mega woo-woo. To understand it, it’s best to wade in slowly and keep it simple. Think about it this way: Animal communicator? Medium. Herbalist/master gardener? (very likely) a Medium. Talking to dead people/spirit guides? Medium.

Years ago, I was in the middle of a session with a young woman in her 20’s who had found herself at a crossroads and had become mentally paralyzed trying to make some important decisions about her life. She was really down and it seemed the more she tried to get unstuck, the more stuck she felt.

In the middle of the session her maternal grandmother, who had died when my client was a teenager, “sat” down in a chair next to her granddaughter, simply beaming with love for her. This is a very common thing to happen in a session with “the disembodied” as I now affectionately call them. They make their presence known in different ways, but they are always full of love for us, even more so than they were able to express when they were in human form. Sometimes they have a lot to say and jump right in. Sometimes they arrive early but wait until the very end of a session to speak up, just quietly waiting and just sending that powerful love along. Occasionally there will even be a big crowd waiting when the session begins, and I’ll have to tell everyone to form a queue.

My client’s grandmother continued to send loving energy to her, and eventually began to speak about their cherished memories together, filled with important details that would help my client relax into the understanding that she was really there and available to help. Instead of telling her granddaughter what she should do, she reminded her what a strong and self-directed little girl she’d been, how she had always been confident and able to trust herself. “How on earth do you know these things?” my client asked me, her eyes welling with tears.

“Well,” I started to explain.

— “I mean,” she interjected, “….it’s, so…normal, like she’s right here next to me having a conversation and I remember what it feels like to be totally myself,” she said. “That’s how I always felt around her. Free.” Then she said, “It must be so weird to have this happen all the time to you”.

“Actually,” I shrugged, “I don’t find it odd at all”. This kind of questioning from a client is a very important teaching opportunity for me. The key is to keep the focus on how we all can access our intuition. I usually continue by sharing how it was really my own resistance to the idea that I was a medium that had caused me stress in my life, but once I accepted it and realized I couldn’t stop it from happening, it stopped burdening me and became a gift.

But then her grandmother interjected. “Excuse me, Dear,” she said, “Just a quick point.” I paused and told my client, “Hang on a sec, she’s got some other things to say,” preparing to receive the rest and relay it to her.

“Well, this isn’t really a big deal,” she continued, “I mean goodness knows we don’t want you all to worry about how to talk to us over here. But we just thought you should know, it’s considered a bit rude to refer to us as ‘dead people’. Spirit unbounded and all that. Again, not to worry if you forget, but just keep in mind we’re actually more alive than you”.

I burst out laughing.

Turning to my client, I explained. “I think I just got schooled by your granny”.

So there you have it, friends. Intuition is groovy enough without the turban.

Holding you in my heart always,

Susan

If you’ve been following me for a while, you might have noticed that I go nuts over flowers.

I love flowers. With every atom of my consciousness I adore them. I will never get over how gorgeous they are and how amazing is the simple fact of their existence.

I have a seasonal job as part of the spring/summer downtown beautification project in my city*, designing, installing, and maintaining over 150 planters, hanging baskets, and beds. Like the water sign I am, I get to drive around in The Gator which is kitted out with a 60-gallon water tank, weeding, talking to folks, occasionally letting kiddos “help” and giving treatos to dogs. Heaven.

There’s a bit of a joke’s-on-me element to it, given that it’s only been in the last couple of years that I realized I actually have a yen for growing things. Seriously, for most of my life I assumed I was an imminent horticultural disaster, when mounting evidence clearly pointed in the other direction (Note to those of you who just assume you’re not intuitive).

I had a huge garden for over 20 years when I lived in New Hampshire, and while we’re just now getting around to installing some modest beds to our home here in Maine, over the last 6 years as the Junior Gormans have been leaving the nest, I have amassed almost 200 plants in my home. Add that to the 150ish I care for at my volunteer job at Maine Needs, and we have a tell me you’re an empty nester without saying “empty nester” situation on our hands. It’s definitely my midlife surprise, I’ll say that.

“But Susan,” you might ask, “Flowers are cool and everything but the world is burning. Every single day the firehose of bad news blasts me right in the face with the latest assaults on humanity and decency and civility, attacks on our rights, the environment and democracy. Plus I thought this was an Intuitive Recharge. Why are we talking about flowers? What do they even have to do with intuition?”

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Since breaking my arm last month, I’ve been mostly able to stick to my regular publishing schedule here. I usually write at the beginning of the week, which was my plan until last Monday morning when Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was murdered a mile from where we live.

We drive through the intersection where it happened every day, because it sits on the only direct route into town especially if you’re heading to 95 south. The memorial continues to grow, and it’s very beautiful. All week there has been a constant presence there, of people paying their respects, media, influencers, and several members of the community that have taken it upon themselves to be guardians of the space.

This is a new kind of grief for us. We are very conscious of being able to go about our lives, which feels like such a bizarre privilege, yet some of the normality feels very strange. Our emotions are strong. We are moving in and out of rage, sadness, anxiety, and something that’s like shock, in moments suddenly stunned by the beauty and joy of life when it breaks through to remind us it’s still present. Connection to community in general and to Biddo in particular feels so precious right now, especially witnessing so many people who proudly care about being part of the solution. If you’re looking for the helpers, come to Maine. The streets are full of them.

On Friday afternoon, we went down to Mechanics Park for another protest, and after a week in which I had started to see and feel real improvement in my mobility and pain levels, as I stood in the crowd my arm started to feel uncomfortable. By that evening I was experiencing intense pain radiating up and down my shoulder, in and out of my armpit and pectoral muscle, and back and forth between my elbow and wrist. It’s not involving the break site, and all my bruising has resolved, so this is what’s left, nerve pain that is so horrible it’s sent me back to bed everyday since.

One of the features of being an intuitive empath is that we carry emotion and pain for others, reflexively. I work on energetic boundaries all the time, and it is also true that I have limited success shielding and grounding when I am vulnerable. To be clear, I’m sure that the act of standing in solidarity with a huge crowd of open hearted people who demand the abolishment of ICE accelerated my healing, but multiple truths can exist at the same time and I am sure I also picked up the communal pain we are all feeling as well.

Losing function in my dominant hand/arm has triggered more than the pain of its reconstruction though. I can’t do very much at all. My restlessnes dovetails with the deep sorrow and frustration I often feel, that I am just one person, who right now feels especially limited, not just in attendance to my own plans (ha) and hopes, but in response to all the cruelty and greed that terrified unhealed humans wreak upon others. Learning to reaffirm my love for the world and our civilization, exactly as it is, is my spiritual practice, full of days of surrender, acceptance, and the motivation required to put my faith into works. I believe in doing something, and I’ve seen how right action transforms.

I know I don’t have to carry everything I pick up. And while I know I’m pointed in a forward direction, (even if life is a cha-cha of sorts) it did not feel like it this weekend as I cried and worried. I’ve been me for my whole life and I believe that being able to travel the energetic pathways that connect us all is a gift, but it is one that doesn’t mean I’m going to be blissed out all the time. So it was with deep gratitude that this morning I woke up calmer and not in as much pain. I have a sense that when I see the doctor this week it will confirm I’m doing great and that my nerves are just real busy right now rebuilding their pathways.

That’s all the typing I can do today. Next week I have an amazing story to share with you about a message I got the night before I fell, and how it’s helped me reaffirm some sense to what happened. For Johan’s family, I can only offer my entire heart, sharing their grief, praying that they find ease and grace as the days unfold.

Holding you in my heart always, (and a little extra this week),

Susan

If you’d like to help a group that has been continuing to provide direct mutual aid to so many families in Biddeford who are now sheltering in place again, please visit Better Biddeford . Thank you.

“Hey, Susan, it’s all well and good that I’m grooving along here trusting my intuition but what if my spouse/loved one/partner doesn’t believe intuition is real?”

This is a really important question.

First off, I feel strongly in the benefits of good internal boundaries. Meaning, everyone has the right to believe, think and feel whatever it is they believe, think, and feel. Full stop. I don’t have to agree with anyone, ever, and no one is ever required to agree with me.

That said, no matter who they are to me, anyone that has ever had my heart has also had my back.

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Hi Friends,

Last week while on our way to dinner with friends in the Old Port, I tripped navigating a tree “pit”, which is what they call the space for in-ground tree plantings that don’t have a grate covering them. I fell and broke my arm.

The good news is that it is a basic fracture that will not require surgery, and I did not suffer any other injuries like a concussion. I have good insurance and support from my own personal hero, Bill, and the rest of my family and friends who have been amazing. With rest I should be back at it in approximately 6 weeks, best case scenario. Hopefully. Ok, whatever, it might take a little longer but lie to me, right now I need it.

The other news is that it is my right arm, and I am right-handed. So typing this today without pain is a major fing miracle. I’m not supposed to do a lot of it, but I wanted to get this out to you to let you know I will be attempting to stay on my regular writing schedule, but admittedly I actually have no idea about how it will go, so your patience and grace is appreciated.

Trust me when I say this is not at all what I wanted my summer to look like. This feels like the ultimate record-scratch against the loveliest melody of a season I long for all winter, one which this year included a new job as part of the downtown flower project in my city, which I was having an absolute blast doing.

During this pause I will of course be annoyingly able to find multiple silver linings and intuitive convergences and ponies of positivity at the back of a stable that is currently one I am desperately trying to muck out. Honestly though, right now I just feel covered in horse poopy.

I’ve had a lot of surgery in my almost 60-years on this planet, have had a couple of serious illnesses and have birthed two humans, and I have to say, getting the pain managed on this mofo was hard. But I’m doing okay today (hence, this missive) and my mood is also improving. I’m still pretty sad and dealing with a lot of self-recrimination.

So, onward, into this imposed spiritual retreat of sorts, in which I am luckily and currently highly entertained by the brain’s plasticity, because my left hand which is learning how to do all the things, and quickly too, is blowing my mind a little. The body mechanics of getting up and down, both into and from sitting and lying down positions, are things I totally took for granted, because why wouldn’t I?

I am grateful for things I never really included on my daily catalogue of appreciations: top of the list, my new electric toothbrush.

Holding you in my heart always,

Susan

Like all of us, I am frequently asked, “So, what do you do?”. It’s one of the rituals of being a human in society that I know often catches some side eye because occasionally saying “Hi, how are you?” or “How’s your day going today? or, “Have a nice day!” sounds trite and stale. We assume saying the words isn’t the same as meaning what they say, because it’s so automatic and requires so little effort.

But I think the willingness to enter into this kind of social contract with someone, anyone, usually a stranger, even using basically the same worn customary phrases, is still an expression of human kindness. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re phoning it in, and even if we are, so what? It still means, “Hey, Fellow Person. I see you there. I acknowledge you. Like me, you are also alive.”

I’ve seen so many people sincerely light up when I participate in this ritual. Sometimes in the name of sincerity I’ll add a little flourish, like a compliment or a smile, but I think as long as you mean to be kind, it lands that way.

But “What do you do?” is a bit different, in that both the ask and the answer attempt to establish a deeper social context. We’re showing cursory interest in another, but it’s also a prelude for another level of connection. To ask someone what they do for a living communicates that you’re curious enough about them to be interested in their lives, but it also indicates you’re categorizing them too. Maybe even sizing them up a little. And in our late capitalist society, it regrettably defaults to establishing someone’s worth by their socio economic status. “So, Fellow Person. How do you spend your time and procure your income? I’m inquisitive about you in a potentially benevolent way that may lead to more connection.

But before I commit to that I’m gonna have to see some ID”.

In my case, it goes something like this:

I’m asked what I do, and I answer as I more or less have for almost forty years, “I’m an Intuitive.”

And then I wait. For the awkward pause. Which always comes.

Sometimes their mental scramble is quickly disguised by a chirpy and polite, “Oh!”, which seems to mean anything from “How interesting!” to “I think I know what that is but I’m not sure,” to “What the heck is that?”. Sometimes people use their out-loud voices to say those things instead of just thinking it, which I find refreshing and charming. I actually love it when that happens.

Mostly because I’m under no illusions about the world we live in, which has marginalized intuition and made it a needlessly complicated concept for most of us. When I say, “I’m an intuitive,” it’s not meant to be deliberately provocative. Yet, it can cause an instant brain kerfuffle for those who weren’t expecting it, which let’s face it is most people. So out of kindness and for the sake of clarity, I’ll often add, “It’s a fancy word for someone who is psychic”.

But that can be a perilous endeavor. Because if you thought “intuitive” was risky, “psychic” can be the conversational equivalent of the scratching noise a turntable arm makes as it’s ripping across an entire LP of social expectations. Or perhaps like the sound of a car’s screeching tires just before it slams into a wall.

Or alternatively, a loud fart. On a first date.

In the beginning, I used to just say that I was a psychic. But there came a time when I just couldn’t do it anymore. It felt like every time I said it my forehead would light up with a flashing neon hand with the red letters P S Y C H I C inside it, and then I’d get to spend the next several seconds watching whoever I was talking to attempt to get away from me. As they’d wade through layer after layer of misinformation and stereotypes, ever more confusing because they didn’t seem to apply to me, I’d wait hopefully to see if they might come to the conclusion that I seemed way too normal to be a psychic.

Which not everyone is willing to do.

(For the record, I don’t read fortunes. I don’t read minds. I don’t cast spells.

I am not Sybil Trelawney).

I am usually hopeful because in those cases where I might have ended up on some sort of Seems Okay Avenue in the giant mental cosmic Monopoly board, my categorization as such preserves an opening for both my conversational partner and myself. Which can often lead to great questions that I am happy to field. But more often than not, “psychic” just didn’t work. As quickly as the word left my mouth, it hovered in the air and became clear justification for any sudden doubts about my overall sanity and fitness as a functioning member of society.

I got used to the sound of a mind snapping shut.

On my website, it says that I don’t use the word “psychic anymore…since it conjures up images of a boozy redhead w/a crystal ball, and that, Dear Friends, is over. (No offense meant to boozy redheads. Or crystal balls).” It’s just not real to my experience, although in the mid 2000’s I had an unfortunate experience with boxed hair dye that sent me down a path of, shall we say, vibrancy that was truly jarring, and which also compelled me to apologize profusely to my stylist for even thinking for a second that it was a good idea. Just, yikes.

I’m actually less concerned with avoiding stereotypes than I am about educating folks about what intuition actually is, how we gain access to our own abilities, thereby improving life for everyone.

And even though I can do that just by living my life and telling the truth, I am pretty passionate about making a difference if and when I can. Over the years I’ve experimented with every single way of describing my work, trying to figure out the perfect way to describe it. “Spiritual Counselor”? No. Has a religious connotation and I work with people of all faiths and of none. “Medium”? Majorly misunderstood and only one part of what an intuitive’s skill set involves. “Intuitive Coach”? Ick. “Intuitive Counselor? Getting closer” . “Interpreter Of The Intuitive Arts?” Nope, nope, nope.

Air travel, funnily enough, became a fabulous practice ground. No matter what my seat mate thought about me once I revealed what I did for a living, they were without exception polite and mostly truly curious. Also, they couldn’t leave. Think about it: if you are someone’s captive audience, you want to be able to survive whatever kind of crazy could possibly be coming at you for the next several hours. Best to take it slow and steady, feign interest, and then just pretend to fall asleep after the drink service. But I also found that sitting next to a complete stranger while simultaneously being above 30,000 feet in a metal tube going very fast occasionally creates a kind of intimacy where people will share more than they might on the ground. Like the unspoken “what we talk about in the air stays in the air”. I’ve found some travelers to be more open-minded than they would have been on the ground.

I was also more relaxed in the air for exactly the same reasons. So I took a “no harm/no foul” approach, in that sense saying what I did for a living became the great leveler. If my seat mate reacted, shut down, and the conversation ground to a halt, no problem. I’d have the next few hours to read my book or watch movies. If they said, “Really. That’s fascinating. What is an intuitive, I don’t know anything about it,” I’d take it as an opening and prepare to spend a few minutes answering questions.

Sometimes, there were a lot of questions.

Over time, “Intuitive” seems to be the job title that has served me the best. It’s the most comfortable for the greatest number. It’s still way more mysterious than I’d like it to be, but it does create access for the genuinely interested while at the same time being a very accurate description of what I do. Maybe it’s probably never going to be what you’d call a crowd-pleaser, but it doesn’t freak people out like “psychic” does. And for some reason, if a person’s going to judge me anyway, “intuitive” seems to elicit one that’s a little less harsh, or at least their confusion buffers me from them thinking it too loudly in my direction.

Ultimately though, since intuitive is the description I’m most comfortable with, that may be why it works so well. Because my ease with it communicates safety and normality better than words or descriptions I’m using for the comfort of others. We marginalize what we are afraid of, and then we mistrust what we have marginalized. Back and forth ad infinitum until we learn otherwise. Intuition is unfortunately still straightjacketed by the context we put it in, believed by most to be rare, unreliable, and dangerous. Our intuition is weird to us, by default.

But some of us are lucky to know that intuition is quite easily the most rock solid, powerful, and helpful part of our human capacity, one that is sorely needed in our lives and in our world. It’s my favorite natural resource.

So for now, I’m sticking with intuitive. I keep it at the ready like a business card, for use at cocktail parties and meetings, sometimes if I’m feeling brave enough, for intake forms and applications, first dates and of course, on airplanes. It’s easy to say, and for folks that are ready to learn more, it’s a great conversation starter.

It’s not only what I do, it’s who I am. And it may be the truest thing about me.

Holding you in my heart always,

Susan

When we first moved to Exeter, New Hampshire, Alan took the Downeaster to Cambridge every workday. Since the Amtrak station was a five-minute walk from our house, trains arriving and departing were part of the soundscape of our daily life. The first northbound train at 6:40 am was a Really, You Need To Get Your Ass Out of Bed Now alarm for anyone stealing just five more minutes, then another five, and then another five more. The midday trains punctuated my lunch if I came home for my break.

But the evening trains were the backdrop for one of my favorite intuition stories from those commuting years. My dogs always knew which train he was on.

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It is clearly a Jokes On Me situation.

Within months of the Junior Gormans leaving for college our small collection of houseplants steadily became a….proliferation. One that screamed “tell me you’re an empty nester without telling me you’re an empty nester”. In addition to all the newbies I was acquiring, I’d gradually taken the plants that Bill brought into our relationship into my care as well and whaddyaknow, they all started thriving en masse. Bill started telling everyone I had a green thumb.

Which made me wince.

I didn’t think I did. Like, at all. Plants had always made me pretty nervous, actually. I never approached them with anything like confidence, and the 3 total I’d owned in the entirety of my adult life had only lived because they thrived on neglect. I also have several friends with Master Gardner certifications, others who don’t have the official seal but who have large gardens that grow even more lush each year, and I? Well, I didn’t think I was like them.

Then the woman who was the “plant lady” at Maine Needs* left the staff. I had formerly followed her lead, when she’d asked me to water specific plants, I did. After a couple of weeks I came in and noticed no one else was taking care of them.

So I took over. And immediately a specific plant, one we shall call Tim the Holiday Cactus, being that it was February, but being a plant who was probably purchased as a Thanksgiving or Christmas Cactus because that’s when they usually bloom, and who had never bloomed, cleared his throat when I walked by the bookshelf he lived on. And told me he was thirsty. And lonely.

I watered him (interesting that I experience many plants as sometimes having a gender, and often none at all, but this little guy was definitely a “he”), dusted him off, and put another plant next to him so he could have a buddy. I do this without exception now~no loners. Tim the Holiday Cactus is the plant who taught me plants prefer to grow in groups. I’m sure there are exceptions, so don’t @ me, but my experience is that they are generally happier together.

The next week I came in for my regular shift and Tim had a blossom! Now if you know holiday cacti, they don’t do this. They don’t bloom overnight, and they bloom all at once, not one at a time.

Suddenly I started thinking about all of the plants that had told me “night night” in the fall as they began their long sleepy dormancy, and then “thirsty!!” and “still thirsty!” and “hungry” in the spring as the woke up. The way some of them craved being on my porch, or in the bathroom, or in quiet shady corners. And told me so! The ones that liked to rotate through different spots according to the season, the ones that wanted filtered water, the plants that didn’t read books about plants and didn’t do what the experts said they should: ferns that needed to dry out occasionally and succulents that got thirsty.

I had listened to them all without exception, but I hadn’t actually recognized what I was doing. An intuitive just intuits, and like every other way I live every other moment, automatically breathing into and from the interconnected tissue called energy that exists for all sentient beings, it didn’t register.

A couple of months later I took all of the plants home, to stay safely with us while Maine Needs moved to its new location, and then brought them all back into their new space when the transition was complete. There were a lot of plants at our house during that time. (Thank you Bill).

Once somebody noticed me racing around the new 16,000 square foot facility and commented that it must be a big job keeping all those plants happy and alive. I deflected, as per usual, that it wasn’t really a big deal. But it got me thinking. How many plants was I taking care of at Maine Needs?

It was almost 125.

So then of course I decided to do a census of our plants at home.

Another 150.

What the what.

This got me thinking about:

~My big garden when we lived in Exeter,

~The oak tree on our property line at the back of our yard that called out to me one summer and told me she was dying, and couldn’t breathe because there was so much bittersweet that had wrapped itself around her trunk and lower branches. I spent an entire day pulling away and chopping the aggressive vine, saving her from what I found out later was girdling. The tree thanked me every single day afterward,

~My favorite tree in the center of Northwestern’s campus, a maple that I used to hug on the sly when I was a college student, the first tree that ever made me gasp when she changed her colors in the fall and returned to leaf in the spring. The tree I made a beeline for when I brought Junior Gorman the Elder to visit as a potential student. She was still there! Much taller, though,

~The chit chat time, in my out loud voice, that I overhead myself having with all of the plants, both at Maine Needs and at home.

Had I mischaracterized myself (incorrectly) as someone who didn’t know that much about plants?

I had. I thought I didn’t know enough, that my garden wasn’t big enough, that since I’d lost a few over the years, didn’t know their scientific names, genus or species, or even sometimes their common names (“it’s the purple one that blooms in September) it meant I was disqualified from being a real plant person.

And once I’d decided, that was that. But it was starting to look like I was wrong.

This January, in the middle of a snowstorm, I got a zap to call over to Public Works to ask about putting in an application for a Downtown Flower Team position. I had met my supervisor, the woman responsible for the creation and implementation of this significant beautification project, two years ago. For nearly a decade she has designed over 100 plant boxes, 40 hanging baskets, and two dozen stone and in-ground beds, and I saw her while getting my morning coffee during my summer ritual of walking downtown in the early morning. She was doing what I do now, watering the lovely flower boxes outside of Time and Tide.**

I asked her if she liked her job and we got to chatting. She told me I could always put in an application……but I wasn’t a real plant person, so I didn’t.

Fast forward to now.

You’ve probably figured out that this is a parable about what our assumptions rob from us. Rejecting ourselves outright in the way that I did it is a direct copy/paste for what so many of my clients tell me is their major block to developing a close relationship with their intuition; they just don’t see themselves as intuitive people.

And even though I am an intuitive I did the same thing! I have over 40 years of experience coaching and teaching folks about intuition. But it’s patently clear how much it costs us when we don’t confront the social context we use to straitjacket our intuition, deciding instead that is rare, unreliable, and dangerous. And that’s that

It’s so insidious. I’d been using my intuition to take care of plants my entire adult life, but I didn’t believe that it was a valid approach, and so my talent stayed in my blind spot.

That is, until Tim the Holiday Cactus cleared his throat.

Holding you in my heart always,

Susan

p.s. I’ve heard it said that you don’t become a real plant person until you lose a few, but I never understood why. This adorable prayer plant confirms that the 2 others I couldn’t keep alive is exactly why he is. I learned!

It still breaks my heart when a plant dies on my watch (thankfully it’s rare) but what I learn helps the next one thrive.

*where I have volunteered for 3 years

**best. coffee. ever.

Come visit Biddeford and say hi! I’m the woman with the huge smile on my face driving the Gator, listening to the plants giggle and telling them all the gossip!

I know, I know. Bear with me.

I’d like to make the case if I may, that this world of ours, even in its current perilous incarnation, is still worthy of our acceptance exactly as it is.

That our lives, with their consummate stress and struggle and challenges (which are all part of living a very human life in said world), are still worth our approval, exactly as they are.

That our lives should be lived as fully as possible, anyway. Right now.

We don’t get off this timeline by giving up on joy. The fulfillment of our dreams and hearts’ desires, of our humanity’s promise, of the potential of the compassion, creativity, and kindness that are our superpowers, none of these die off when life becomes hard. They don’t even whither. In fact, it may be these particular periods in human history, in which we spend a lot more time than we expected wondering how we ended up here and how to help, that our finest human qualities truly activate.

Intuition shows us the way, and the way is always lit by captivating us toward the highest good for the greatest number. What leads us to the best experiences of our lives, full of meaningful connection, community and opportunity, always catches our attention in the simplest, most profound way.

By being fun.

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If you are reading this, congratulations, and welcome. It is no small feat to find me here in my tiny corner of the digital space we semi-ironically call the interwebs.

It’s not easy to find any of the quieter voices, actually. I’m sure you’ve noticed that as the socials become more crowded, even our curated feeds are still crammed with suggested accounts and posts. There is no way to escape it*.

In the race to capture your attention, which in the Information Age is your most precious commodity, what wins is the screaming. The loudest, most dramatic, fear-and-rage-based click-bait, designed to grab you by the adrenalin and never let go. There is no second place in these rules of engagement. It’s what I suspect makes social media in particular almost intolerable these days. We simply do not have the natural bandwidth to consume and process all of the information being blasted at us, firehose style.

Unfortunately, for those of us who are here to teach you about your natural relationship with the still, small voice within, well, we get drowned out as a matter of course. I used to be very upset about it, when it became obvious what was happening in digital spaces everywhere, but the kinds of things one is required to do to constantly drive engagement on social media are increasingly out of my value system, and so I have dropped out. I’ve stopped doing them.

It’s pretty obvious that as an intuitive, I can’t teach you about contemplation and meditation if I’m yelling at you, I can’t teach you how to listen to yourself if I’m bombarding you with constant information. Even the attempt to get your attention is effortful in the wrong ways. If I am to walk my talk, which to me is an absolute ethical requirement of my work, I must continue to create an entirely different kind of experience for you here: softer, slower, more peaceful, a true respite from the internet at large, one that is hopefully inviting because it is safe from the constant solicitation that digital spaces have become.

My work here is founded on the simple truth that I either have your attention, or I don’t.

It’s much more peaceful for me this way, and I hope I continue to connect with you in a meaningful way.

Holding you in my heart always,

Susan

(*Even when my viewing settings are adjusted to “friends and followed accounts only”, Instagram in particular shows me only a couple of the news accounts I follow on repeat, which entirely defeats the point and feels pretty dystopian. There are dozens of other ways Meta in particular works around our attempts to slow down or hush the onslaught, this is just one of the most insidious.)

No matter where you are on your intuitive journey, you are going to have many experiences where one of two things will happen: you’ll have a strong feeling about a person, place or situation and you’ll listen to it…or you won’t.

You will also at times confuse very strong emotions (about said people, places, and situations) for intuitive guidance.

But each time you do listen to yourself you’re learning you are capable of taking the risk to trust yourself, whether you end up being right or not. And the times you don’t listen also teach you an important lesson about the price we pay for not trusting our gut.

This is the path, even though it can be frustrating and hard. Eventually it gets easier, I promise. Your intuition is built to be fluid and clear, but showing up to learn how it works is grueling at times.

I wish it were easier in the beginning. We do however, need a wide of variety of intuitive experiences in order to learn what they mean.

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Show of hands please, who thinks that being an intuitive person also means achieving levels of super-wise ultra sagedom? Where our daily existence is a permanent state of meditation, achieving the highest levels of spiritual evolution?

Yeah, nope. Unfortunately, the expectation that in order to make intuition a foundational part of our lives, we must sacrifice the parts of our humanity that make us, well, human, is prolific. I notice this perfectionism in new students of intuition, and it smacks of a kind of religiosity that is really counterproductive. It neutralizes all of our quirks, struggles, goofiness, all of our divine imperfections. It forgets that we’re here to actually live life as a learning experience. For me, that’s the whole point of why we would want to have a strong relationship with our intuition in the first place. It’s our most natural resource and guides us through life so we can access wisdom and compassion, not to consume it, but in order to share it. We’re not Pac Man. Striving to be more advanced, evolved, or actualized is not the point. Being part of the highest good for the greatest number is your intuition’s priority, and what it really unlocks is what makes our humanity the precious force for good that it can be. Intuition helps us make an earnest attempt to be as loving as we can.

There’s no need to use our intuition to master some kind of spiritual superiority.

This too serious take is one of the ways our culture marginalizes intuition, by the way, categorizing it as a rare, dramatic and wrenching phenomenon. Even though our experiences are undoubtedly real it’s good to remember that while intuition can be sublime, it also can be garden variety regular.

Here’s a story about that:

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