the doors for me.”

you ask,

“what is it that you have

to show me?”

she says,

“only the simple truth.

there is only one way.”

you ask,

“what is it?”

she answers,

“trust in yourself.

you have all the answers

you need within you.”

whenever i think of all the times

i should have listened

to my intuition but didn’t,

a part of me twists with sadness.

how much heartbreak could

i have been spared if i hadn’t

ignored that churning feeling

in my stomach.

how many tears would

never have fallen if i had

done the hard thing and said no,

or walked away.

so i listen to my intuition now

for the girl who didn’t.

whose scars i now bear.

whose grief i now carry.

one of the first things i learned about my mother is that she is almost always right:

her predictions about the friends i make or the people i date almost always come true, even if i don’t want to believe them at first.

and sometimes when the ending she predicted arrives, i want to ask why she didn’t do more to protect me. which is not to say that she doesn’t protect me, because she would if things became dangerous, or excruciating. but there have been times when she knew her daughter better than her daughter knew herself—stubborn and always wanting to see the best in people who didn’t deserve it. so she would say, i don’t think that girl is a good friend, or he will do it again, he does not deserve your forgiveness, and i would argue back viciously, the way only mother and daughter can argue, until i’d come home crying one too many times. and she would hold me each time without fail, knowing that i was learning the lessons she could not teach me herself.

—sometimes, mother does know best

your body has seen more than you know and remembers more than you realize. it still knows the touch of a lover you haven’t thought of in years. it would pick their voice out of a crowd in an instant. it holds memories your mind might have long forgotten: how you got that scar on your knee, how old you were when that freckle formed, the exact way their mouth tastes. your body knows more than you could ever understand, and sometimes, it realizes something faster than you want to accept. so while it’s screaming at you that whatever you’re about to do is a bad idea, and your mind is working overtime to explain why it’s not, take a moment and think about all your body has been through and how much of its experience you can hardly recall. think about how much the body remembers. and trust it.

—gut feeling

a woman’s intuition:

many will fear it,

and many will doubt it,

but you should do neither.

it is one of the greatest weapons

you have.

sometimes

i feel as if i’m watching

my life play out in front of me