Lucy – Before, During & After
A large part of practicing mindfulness is about being able to connect deeply with your intuition and make decisions based solely on the physiological cues/signals that your body sends you. Your body is always letting you know which way to go and what choice is right for you. Whether you call this voice your gut, intuition, inner wise person, source, or God, we have greater joy and thrive in life when we do not override this internal navigation system and instead, honor and strengthen it.
If you have a minute, try out this guided exercise that will help you easily identify your body’s signals…
Fortunately, as we continue to expand our awareness on a collective level, we now have access to a myriad of tools and practices to help us understand ourselves more deeply. Choosing which tools work for you is often a process of experimentation; below is a description of one of my favorites…
One of my favorite introspective tools is human design. Human Design generates design types based on your birthdate, time and location. The designs themselves are a way to understand how to best utilize your energy (make decisions) to maximize your potential and purpose. I favor this over the Enneagram or other areas/tools of study because it gets super in depth and also has a very specific take away – it gives you an “authority” and a “strategy.”
The authority is the way we make the best decisions for ourselves based on the signals we get from our bodies (based on your intuition or internal navigation system) and the strategy is exactly that – it’s a plan of action about what steps to take that is best for your design and will allow you to utilize your energy to it’s fullest. That’s why I like it so much, it provides a tangible system for being able to make decisions that will best utilize your energy. And it never fails me.
For example, I’m a manifesting generator design type, my authority is emotional (solar plexus) which means I will always receive a really deep feeling about any decision in front of me and my strategy is to wait to respond. For me, this means no matter how deeply I feel something emotionally and feel compelled to act, waiting for the emotion to subside before responding always leads me to the clarity I need to make the best decision.
There are 5 human design types and I highly recommend diving in if you feel it might resonate with you…
The other important part for me, is that part of my design type functioning best is to pay attention to and only do what lights me up. This could change day to day but once I started really paying attention to it and acting accordingly, things in my life really started to change and almost magically come together.
So what exactly does that mean?
When I feel a strong impulse, even “out of no where” I follow it.
For example…
About 4.5 years ago I got an impulse to sell a 3 story town house I had been living in. A friend of mine was introducing me to his cousin who just started his real estate business and suggested using him if I ever was interested in selling. I hadn’t been thinking about selling but the idea suddenly lit me up and I thought okay, let’s try. I didn’t think all of my selling conditions would be met but they were, within 4 days we had two full offers.
I had no plans for after the sale because I hadn’t actually been planning on moving and suddenly needed to figure it out. The impulse to travel and be nomadic lit me up so I decided to make that my next plan. I put all of my things in storage, chose to travel for the Summer and was really interested in the idea of continuing to travel during the following year, possibly changing cities every month.
When September hit, I suddenly felt the impulse to pivot and buy another house, seemingly out of no where. I tossed the initial plan aside and went with the strong feeling. I knew internally it was the right move and knew I wanted a one story house, needed a yard and wanted it to be near Maitland. I didn’t plan any of those things and had never really considered them before but felt really strongly about doing it. I had really wanted to continue to travel and be nomadic but something was pulling me towards this path really really hard.
Less than two months after I bought the house my dog Lucy became terribly sick with encephalitis. She lost her ability to walk, use the bathroom, lost sight in one eye, lost feeling in her hindquarters and spent what felt like the longest week of my life at a specialty vet, getting worked on around the clock to save her life. OUT OF NO WHERE.
Lucy had been my right hand woman and co-pilot for 9 years, every year we took a road trip from Florida to Michigan, stopping along the way in various states to visit friends and site see, she was everything to me and I was devastated. I remember half way through that week the Doctor calling me to tell me to come in to say goodbye to her, they didn’t think she would make it through the night.
When I got there they had to carry her in and I had to wear a gown and gloves because she was so full of radiation from all of the treatments. She could barely open the one eye she had and I remember her being so out of it, in so much pain that I felt like she couldn’t even see me, that she was looking right through me.
I remember asking the Doctor about her inflammation count, she told me the normal number was from 1-40 and it starts getting really bad at 1,000. I asked how high Lucy’s was, she said 5,000. I asked how high the worst they had ever seen was and she said far less than that.
I remember sitting there thinking that this couldn’t be it, that there had to be a way, that if they have never had a dog this sick that maybe it would just take longer for the treatment to work. I remember them telling me that wasn’t the case. And then I sat down on the floor beside her and held her face and told myself to be brave and upbeat because she could feel my energy but I just couldn’t; I was so broken by it.
So I cried and I held her chin and I tired to connect with something bigger than us both and I thought if she couldn’t see me that she might be able to hear me and so I begged and made her a promise, I told her that if she came back to me, even just for a day and I knew that she could really see me and connect with me that I would say goodbye and let her go if that’s what she needed.
And then I asked for more because I knew, even if she was ready, I wasn’t. I knew that she had been sent to me to help me along in the most difficult decade of my life and it was far from over. I asked her that if she came back and stayed with me until she knew I was okay and could do life on my own, as my whole self, that I would do any and everything, every day for the rest of our time together that she needed. I would promise and deliver on taking care of her every need no matter what it took.
She didn’t reply but I knew she had heard me. And I asked the Doctor’s to keep trying and to wait another day, I wasn’t ready to pull the chord on her. I went home that night and felt so defeated. I sat in my room looking out the glass door onto the screened in porch and saw a red bird land on the table. I thought I was hallucinating, the door to the porch was shut and the screen didn’t have any holes in it, there was no way for that bird to have gotten in. But there it was. I stared at the bird and it stayed totally still and I thought to myself okay, here goes. If this is some magical or heavenly moment, I’m all in – I meant what I promised Lucy and furthermore I would like her to get her eye sight back, be able to walk and move her head again and come back to life. I blinked and the bird was gone. I ran out to the porch and tried to figure out where he had come from and how he had gotten in and there were no answers.
The next day I went back to the hospital to see her and could feel a difference in the air when I walked in. I sat in the little room waiting for the Doctor and I heard this click, click, click coming down the hallway and thought “I know those clicks”, but how in the….and sure enough the door opened and she was standing there, with some help from a harness but standing nonetheless, those little click, click, clicks were her walking down the hallway.
I was in shock. The Doctor was shocked. We both stared each other trying not to cry, because guess what else? Her legs worked, her neck moved and her EYESIGHT CAME BACK. No medical explanation, they had never seen anything like it, they were shocked. I was beyond elated. It was a HOLY SHIT moment times a million.
We took her home that day and spent about 6 weeks nursing her back to a somewhat normal state. We had to use a harness to teach her how to walk again, she had to re-learn how to be potty trained, she required round the clock almost infant like care with multiple weekly vet treatments, ongoing chemo, dozens of pills and lots of cuddling. I promised her I would do anything and I (we) did.
Nearly 4 years later she can run, has about 70% of her mobility back, her hindquarters never fully recovered but she doesn’t notice, her eye sight still works, she still has chemo every other month and takes about 15 pills a day and has a few other outstanding issues but other than that she is a happy, round, nugget. So much so that people still often mistake her for a puppy. Her spirit is so upbeat and youthful which I think is a big part of how and why she survived.
And here’s the thing….after Lucy got sick she became unable to climb stairs, had to have her own space with a large crated area, and had to have multi weekly vet specialist appointments. Full circle back to the beginning of the story…the house I randomly had the strong impulse to buy for no reason that went against all my best laid plans? It’s a one story, with literally the largest laundry room ever, with a yard and is about a mile from the specialty vet we had to start going to when she got sick.
We moved in 2 months before she got sick. Ignoring the impulse to buy another house to force myself to stick with my original plan or if I had tried to talk myself out of getting another house thinking I was just fearful of change and doing something different would’ve sucked.
Something was leading me and guiding me, speaking to me through sudden impulses that uprooted my best laid plans in such a strong way that I couldn’t ignore it. It made zero sense to me at the time but set me up in the most divinely perfect way to handle what was coming.
My parents also divorced suddenly the same month Lucy got sick and my nomadic travel plans wouldn’t have worked out well for both reasons and if I had still been in a 3 story house I would’ve had to sell it to take care of her properly, she still can’t climb stairs.
It was nothing short of magical and divine…so to bring it back to human design…
The areas of my life I feel the most attached to (egoically) typically feel the most insecure for me which leads to uncertainty and confusion when making choices. When I get re-centered and follow my strategy and authority and FOLLOW them, I always reap the benefits. So with the house, I wasn’t particularly attached or insecure with this area of my life so it was easy for me to readily of identify the impulse, trust it and act accordingly and it ended up putting me EXACTLY where I needed to be for what was about to unfold.
Your intuition, higher self, spirit, soul whatever term resonates with you, is always dong that, pulling you towards where you need to be on a path that will unfold your best life. It’s up to us to unpack our old conditioning and baggage so we can trust ourselves enough to listen to it and then act accordingly. It’s worth the unpacking ❤️ (Lucy thinks so too)