Good Girl Recovery, Part 1:
Follow Your Intuition
The most important lesson I learned, at age 35, was to not just listen to my intuition, but to heed it—even when it was leading me in a direction that was the opposite of everything I’d said I’d wanted; what I’d yearned for from near the beginning of my marriage.
When I got married, I agreed with my husband to not have kids. Yes, I wanted them as a teenager, the perfect one-boy-one-girl-white-picket-fence daydream. But I was getting my teaching credential and I knew I’d have 30 kids, five days a week. So that seemed just fine to my 23-year-old-mind.
Within five years, I’d changed it, becoming bold after taking my first-ever personal development workshop. When I got slammed down with a simple, but firm, “No. We agreed not have kids,” I put my tail between my legs and didn’t speak up for many more years.
It didn’t go away—my desire for a child. It was simply buried. Good girls (and good boys) do this. We pretend everything is fine when it isn’t. It comes out in some way, somehow. After a ten-year absence, my asthma returned, and another distraction became important. It was my way of repressing and denying the greater truth: I was unhappy and I had no recourse—or so I thought.
Because my dilemma came tumbling out one day, talking to a relative stranger, I went into counseling. At least I had someone to support me with all the confusing feelings I had running amok in my head.
While I learned of other issues in our relationship, we focused on the baby. I went to the therapist alone. It was my problem. According to my husband, our agreement should be adhered to. Period. We agreed on a date for the final baby-decision. A “yes” by him and a baby would be created. A “no” meant our future would be different than the present also. We’d get a divorce. I was that adamant in my desires, especially since the initial trade off—long trips to foreign countries—was no longer valid, as my husband had begun working for himself.
“D-Day” came and he said, “No kids.” I began the steps to divorce—apartment hunting and a call to our lawyer. Five days later, we went to dinner and discussed our fifteen years together. At that point, he sat back and said, “OK. You can have your kid.” I almost fell over. I wanted to grab him and take him home and make that baby before he changed his mind. But right then and there, I heard a tiny little voice speak up and say, “Stay away, Suzy.” Confused, I stopped all my other thoughts. “The Voice” (as I now often call my intuition), was clear as crystal. Now what was I to do?
Somewhere in my mind, I knew enough to listen to its advice. Somehow, even though it was more than a year before my formal spiritual training began, I realized I needed to heed the Voice. And I did.
For good girls to move beyond their current circumstances, they, first and foremost, need to simply not listen, but to follow, their intuitive guidance. However, there’s a “Catch 22” for recovering good girls. It is that most of us buried that connected wisdom long ago. Or we allowed it to surface only in certain situations, perhaps in areas of danger with our children, or which gift to buy. But we submerged the greater guidance in order to take care of others, make others happy at our own expense.
Because that voice my be buried within you (mine was for 35 years), it may be a challenge to resurrect it. Read the following article to find some ways to encourage your inner voice or intuition to be heard. Then your next step will be to follow it at all costs; another challenge, but one that must be met, if you want to recover from the good girl syndrome ™.
