By Amber Tamblyn
From these stories, we have ventured out into a vast land of intuitive inquiry and discovery. We have located the landmarks and land mines of our history, of what women before us have built, demolished, detonated, and birthed. We have wandered through valleys of different experience, rivers of testimony, mountains of observation, dense forests of evidence. We have come to crossroads which mirror our own and read as each choice was made along the way. We recognize all the shared obstacles: the forks in the road, the steep inclines of our learning, the dizzying hills and severe bends which beg us to slow down, look, see, listen.
We have recognized parts of our paths in each of these journeys: a past pain in a current ache, a familiar howl in a future hymn. We have found our sit spots, our quiet spaces, new knowledge from the knowing. We contemplate our reflections, what we see in our mirror. We tune inward, toward what makes us hold, what fills our chests with dread, what trembles in our gut—what thrusts us into action or what brings us to our knees. We do this in order to save lives, to harness what can heal from Earth’s bounty. We eat from its dirt like our sorcery’s in it. We follow rainbows toward their signs, glean from the faces of clocks what will soon be lost. We sit in a circle, open to the field, dream of earthquakes, of fathers, of fire, of wolves. We parent ourselves in order to better parent our children, our careers, our relationships, our art. We pull wounded stories from our bodies and give them back to their unruly pasts. We get down in the dark of our own quiet, nose pressed against a question, fingers digging deep into its answers. We hold space for all of it. Even when we fear, we doubt, we attempt to distract—we hold space for all of it. We honor the volatility of being human, the difficulty of being Woman.
Here, at the end of this book, something else is being born from its pages. Some new beginning that belongs to you and only you. Yes, you. If we have read evidence of each woman’s map—how she finds a window within and listens through to what is being intuited—then there is a map for you, too. Let us chart it together, outlining a unique way in, pushing past any resistance, struggle, or deflection used to stop it from happening. Let us let it happen, together. Take all that we have learned from these explorations and build a blueprint to be followed, toward that window inside you that’s been waiting, all your life, to be opened. It is your gift, a sacred rite to be realized: what can be ignited when your body and your mind align, allowing your intuition, your inner voice, your knowing, to actualize.
It might take days or even weeks to get there. It can be rough terrain in uncharted territory—mapping a path to your intuitive voice—but one that gets easier with practice and perseverance. You might find yourself starting over and over again, like a pole vaulter propelled toward the bar, until finally, after much practice, you reach the other side. Let us reach the other side, together.
The next time a question is asked of you that requires deep contemplation or a decision must be made under difficult circumstances, follow the map:
First: Hold.
Focus on the question. On what you want an answer to.
Pause any quick thought until you can feel
something in your body other than its own living.
Look for signs in your pulse,
in your breathing,
in alternative sensations;
some foreign desire moving or sitting down inside you.
Keep holding.
No one deserves the answer before you do,
and you owe no one a thing.
You owe no one, anything.
Don’t speak just to appease the silence.
This silence was born for you to hold it.
Once you feel something in your body, see which way it leans.
Does your mind translate a meaning from its tilt?
What is the answer your mind wants to give you?
Before you agree, check back in with your body:
Does the answer from your mind feel correct to your body?
Correctness doesn’t mean safety. The answer may not make you feel safe, at first.
You might want to pull away from what you hear, what you discover, to recede toward an easier answer. Maybe your body’s way of aligning with your mind’s response is by feeling in complete opposition to it. Maybe your body feels ill, your throat tightens, your stomach seizes, you feel revulsion, nervousness, a sense of extreme fragility, a need to run. Or maybe your body’s way of aligning with your mind’s response comes with more ease, making you feel spun of gold, warm and calm, fluorescent, bright—rich with possibility.
Either way, you are doing everything just right.
So continue to hold.
Suspend your reaction to this discovered answer for however long it must take. Give this pause your grace, the space to make you feel whatever needs to be felt to continue.
Whisper to it, out loud now: You’re doing everything just right. I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you to get here.
Keep holding.
Let it try and take you away from the answer, make you cry, fill you with anger or make you numb.
Let it try and distract you with other, shinier, easier outcomes.
Always return to the holding.
You’re doing everything just right. I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you to get here.
When the reaction has quieted, has calmed its tantrum, try and separate your fear from its truth;
Split yourself in two: the you that is feeling this reaction, and the you that is in authority. Be a parent to it. A mother to your child. Or big sister to your little one. Be a map to your road, or the woods to your wolf.
Move delicately and with compassion into a state of confrontation with your resistance to this newfound answer. Your resistance may not want to hear it, but it is your job to help it be heard. This is the most valuable relationship you will have in your life, and the more you take care of it, the easier the listening will become.
Speak to it, hold it, listen to it as if it is separate from you, even though it isn’t.
What does it say to you?
I am afraid of this answer because it will destroy the life I’ve built.
Because it will hurt someone I love.
Because my children will be affected.
Because it will bankrupt me.
Because my community will think differently of me.
Because I am not good enough.
Because I don’t deserve it.
Because my family will be ashamed of me.
Because my peers will laugh at me.
Because it’s far too much work and will take too much time to achieve.
Because I will have to let go of so much that I have worked so hard for.
Because I will have to think about what happened to me and I don’t want to.
Because my mind already told me I couldn’t.
Because the world around me won’t allow it.
I won’t allow it, for myself.
Keep holding.
You’re doing everything just right. I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you to get here.
Soon there will be an acceptance. Soon there will be a release. Soon what was trying to take you out will give in. It might feel like resignation, or failure, a deep sadness or a grave loss. It might feel like emancipation. It might feel like freedom.
Your body has given you an answer, and while your mind tried at first to dissuade you, you held. You kept holding. You pushed through to the window until you heard what you needed to hear from within. It may not have been easy. You may feel broken or, for the first time in your life, restored.
Either way, you have the answer now—the one reached and born from you and only you. From the collection of your instincts, of your whole life’s experiences, of the practice and application of your most vital intuitive voice.
You are doing everything just right. It belongs to you now, this knowing. It is yours to decipher from, newly excavated from the dark, ready for your light.