did you have a window open for your intuition while growing up?
“What’s your earliest memory of using your intuition?”
“When did you know you’re intuitive?”
“Did everyone know how intuitive you were as a child?”
Now that I’m doing interviews, writing articles and appearing on TV (yes TV), I get asked these types of questions all the time.
I wish I had an easy answer, like a huge epiphany or tales of knowing everything and guiding people based on my intuition from early days.
But, alas, I do not.
My upbringing doesn’t reinforce a direct connection to my intuition. In fact, like most of you, I remember feeling the criticism for an overactive imagination, being rebuked for having an imaginary friend and being chastised for thinking I could ask God directly for anything I desired.
My religious background is Catholic, so relieving the guilt associated with expecting anything to be easy has been a process!
Going to church every Sunday, studying catechism and saying prayers nightly doesn’t exactly let your intuition take a front seat.
Yet, I’m super lucky as unlike most of my friends, my strict Catholic mother believes in astrology, so the doorway to the divine opens a crack and lets magic flow into my life at an early age.
I can close my eyes and recall times throughout my childhood where astrology and reincarnation are palpable. My memory at about 7-years-old, where I’m coloring on a sun-filled porch with the daughter of my mother’s astrologer and she can’t pronounce my name, so calls me “Tim” instead of Kim. I can also remember the conversation between my mother and father in the car on the way home with all of the things, Ken, the astrologer has told my parents.
In my mind’s eye, I can see aged and well-thumbed books titled, Sun Signs by Linda Goodman and her more famous work, Love Signs and Jeane Dixon’s Yesterday, Today and Forever. A big hardcover coffee table book appears, The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need by Julia and Derek Parker and I love to rifle through these pages as I’m doing my weekly dusting chore.
I still have a few of these books on my book shelves, where my astrological chart is hand-drawn, stuck in the pages with scribblings of my early attempts at interpretation.
I can also recall one of my mother’s best friends, Annie Carr, who is another believer and the two of them would gleefully sit, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, excitedly talking about the spiritual side of life.
Throughout childhood, I love these mystical books and conversations that flow around me. I daydream and imagine stories and adventures like most children, but mine always have a prophetic vibe. Most of my imaginings come into being, not in my own life, but in the world around me.
I don’t remember anyone else who’s a believer in those early days, but I remain raptured until my late teens. In high school, one of my favorite sayings is, “It must be a sign,” as I’m always searching for the deeper meaning behind the benign and practical. I look starry eyed at the Moon, ponder the meaning of life and explore the unknown, without knowing these are intuitive pursuits.
I play at reading astrology and of course, there’s a terrifying story about using a Ouija board to conjure the spiritual world that even today leaves chills throughout my entire body.
Yet with the achieving mindset of the times, I reach adulthood and leave most of these treasures behind. I go to college and learn about other religions and cultures, which feeds this mystical side, but leave it almost entirely as I pursue my corporate career.
Business replaces religious philosophy; my next promotion supplants the spiritual aspect of life and my latest job title becomes the symbol of my worth. The only inkling that remains of the mysteries is astrology as that’s so ingrained, I can’t forget it.
I see my astrologer once every 18 months or so and have recommended her to my mother as her astrologer has moved to Hawaii and she’s been looking for a replacement.
In fact, at the height of my career, my astrologer tells me, “You would make an incredible astrologer. You should look into that as people would flock to you.”
I look at her askance as I haven’t really entertained this possibility seriously. Yet, I secretly hold this close to me especially during exceedingly trying times of traveling to 4 states a week for my job while getting my MBA at night.
My life is a blur of the next client, next promotion, next city. I thrive on this type of energy and throw myself into learning everything I can about business, sales and leadership.
Astrology doesn’t disappear, instead it holds itself in the background. I like to think it’s the candle burning in the window anchoring my intuitive potential until I can get to it.
With all of the demands in my daily life, I don’t do anything actively about opening into my intuitive being and astrology remains a ‘I’ll get to it someday” wish.
It becomes a whisper of a dream…
I can’t imagine who I would be today if the whisper faded to nothing, yet at this point in my life, it’s an all too real possibility.
Let us know if you’ve ever felt the withering away of your intuitive gifts.
We would love to have a conversation.
xo, Kim
P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for tomorrow’s tale – how you hide from your intuition so it screams loudly at you.
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