Your intuition knows something you do not yet

It always makes sense in hindsight

May 31, 2026

It’s Sunday morning. May 31st, 2026. Somehow, writing out the full date feels important today. I am sitting cozily in my desk chair, the skirt I thrifted in Paris draped over my legs in one big pile of flowing white cotton. The loaf of sourdough I am preparing rests patiently on the counter, waiting to be baked. My agenda lies open next to me, tasks pertaining to my home, my wedding, my work, and the rest of my life, scribbled messily in it just moments before I started writing this, the ink still a little damp on the page.

This weekend has been a whirlwind, or rather, it has give me a sort of whiplash; I went from roaming the streets of Paris, entirely alone with no plan at all except to follow my heart’s desires, to returning back to the full thrust of my life here: plans, commitments, relationships and responsibilities taking up almost every moment of space I’ve had since I’ve been back. While I expected this pendulum swing, and even designed it as such, the severity of the shift is still humbling me. I cannot help but notice the huge difference between the intense sense of presence and even ecstasy I was able to reach after nearly fourteen days in my own company, to the energetic stretching that comes with spending so much time split and stretched between plans and people. I am treating it as a reminder of how easy it is, if you do not actively hedge against it, to become a sort of formless conglomerate of all of the people, ideas, and things you consistently expose yourself to in your environment. And how, only upon fully departing from it, can you really see what you have been absorbing, who you have becoming, and who you are, underneath all of that, in the absence of the inputs so familiar to you that you hardly notice them anymore.

I ran into Sherry Ning in the park last night. We ran over to each other, hugged, smiled, and gently stepped apart as she swiftly said:

How was Paris? You look reborn.

I was, I said. And I meant it.

This trip transformed me; it changed me in ways I am still coming to understand, but one thing I feel with certainty is: I have finally returned home to myself. I can’t say I knew how far I had drifted until fully returning, but now that I am back, I can feel with clarity just how good it feels to be home. I do not speak of a place or a destination outside of myself. But the simple sensation of complete ease and presence. Groundedness and centeredness. A stillness that pours out when we are not fighting or resisting anything within ourselves. The feeling that arises when we simply are.

In the absence of my typical environment and routines, and in the quiet bliss of my own company, I noticed all the ways in which I had drifted.

It wasn’t seamless—this return home. It was not painless, either.

To reclaim all of the parts of yourself that you have let go of, you need to come to terms with having failed to protect your connection to them, and confront what you let go of as you let yourself drift towards a less honest and expressed version of yourself. And there is pain in that. There is grief in realizing how easy it is to depart from yourself. How easy it is to let your energy bleed carelessly into your environment, while your environment, in parallel, bleeds into you. There is humility in realizing how easy it is to float through life without conscious awareness focused on what you need, who you are, and what you feel genuinely called to. Returning back home to yourself means finally honouring what feels uniquely right to you, instead of what you think you should do, what makes rational sense to do, or what others expect you to do. It means accepting that listening to the call of your intuition will almost always violate at least one, if not all of these alternative guiding principles. And that the more comfortable you get occupying the sensation of trusting yourself—in all its glory, discomfort, and friction—without permission or approval from others, the more comfortable you will be dwelling in that sweet sensation of being comfortably, perfectly, cozily grounded, right in your center.

I had a feeling—an inclination—before deciding to go away that, yes, I felt a little distant from myself and it feels hard to be in my full expression. But I had no idea how large the distance had grown between where I was and where I like to be, until I was far enough away from my daily life to really feel the difference.

There was an adjustment period where I kept expecting to be pulled into something at home, reaching for my phone to make a plan or tend to a social obligation before remembering that I had none, this instinct to regulate to others operating like a phantom limb in my daily experience. But slowly and surely, the farther I drifted from my typical environment, the more I felt just how much I needed this space. Needed this space. I needed this space. I had known I needed it, but in taking it, I learned just how deep this need was. How visceral it was. How existential it was, actually, to my own well-being, to be here. And just how wise the intuitive call to chase it down was, as well.

One of the most humbling reflections of my time away was just how precise and wise my intuition is. As soon as I gave myself permission to listen to the intense, almost raging call of my intuition to go on this trip and take two weeks retreating from the external world into my inner one, everything began to fall into place. I started to literally feel ecstasy, joy, delight, and euphoria from even the smallest moments and the simplest actions.

I texted my friend that, after walking for an hour through 37 degree celsius weather, standing next to a garbage truck, inhaling second-hand cigarette smoke, combustion fumes and the humid sweat of the scorching Paris air all at once, I was still entirely blissed out. It was as though nothing could bother me, because I was exactly where I wanted to be. Everything felt pleasant and easeful, even when it was objectively not, because I had taken myself where I was called, so I was at peace and at ease. And because I was at peace and at ease, it seemed to me that everything around me was as well.

This was an important lesson in just how important it is to actually listen to yourself. To actually follow the call of your intuition, of what is beckoning to you, of what is imploring that you point your attention at it.

The moon shining over Canal Saint Martin on my last night in Paris

I couldn’t reason or rationalize why I felt so called to go away for two weeks alone halfway across the world. I couldn’t have told you what I was going to learn there, understand, or see about myself more clearly. I couldn’t have told you the peace and stillness I would finally return to in myself. I couldn’t have told you the visions I would have there about the future I truly want. I couldn’t have told you how alive and sentient I would feel in a place where I knew hardly anyone, and how free I would feel to be exactly who I am, now. I couldn’t have told you the way my confidence would transform by simply conversing in my still-improving french that I have been working on all year. I couldn’t have told you how magical the places I intuitively chose to stay at would end up being, as though they poked through the universe with their fingertips to reach out specifically to me, finding me at the perfect time, holding me in the perfect way. I couldn’t have told you how I would end up grieving alone there, separated from my family as we said goodbye to my childhood dog. I couldn’t have told you that I would feel ecstasy and agony in the same minute, stirred by the conflicting feelings of being exactly where I wanted to be, and yet so far from this moment, unable to see his soul off in person. I couldn’t have told you that I would begin to take seriously the visions and desires of living in Paris I had only ever treated as fantasies. I couldn’t have told you that I would fall back in love with yoga, remembering the strength and power of my own body. I couldn’t have told you that I would make peace with the parts of myself that I had been resisting so intensely, that I had forgotten what peace with them even felt like. I couldn’t have told you that I would have had the most productive and ecstatic writing sessions I’ve had in years while sitting by the canal, my feet dangling over the water. I couldn’t have told you that, without trying, opportunities and abundance that had been gestating in my world quietly would suddenly bloom, like beautiful, rich flowers poking through the earth as they come into season, revealing themselves to me on a terrace in Paris as I sipped my espresso and let the sun warm my skin.

I couldn’t have told you any of this, when I knew I needed to go. I couldn’t have told you why I needed to go. I could have only told you that I knew I did. And in simply listening, in bowing my head in humility to the wisdom of my intuition, in letting its guidance course through me as I soothed my rational mind, tapping it gently on the head, giving it a little kiss, and saying, thank you for trying to protect me, thank you for trying to make my life make sense, thank you for trying to always know what is coming so that I can be prepared… but right now I do not need you. All I need is to trust the knowing, the knowing that goes much deeper than you, deeper than logic, deeper than reason. The knowing that lives inside of me, that pulses with every breath I take, that evolves with my own becoming, that stores the wisdom of all of my experiences, and perhaps even the ones of those who have come before me. The knowing that knows where I need to go, when I need to go there, and shows me the way.

This trip reminded me that all I need to be is a humble vessel for my own intuition. That when I listen to her, even when I do not understand her, life blooms, and I discover what is desperately trying to reveal itself to me.

Because I know, above all, that my intuition is wiser than my mind. And that when I go where I am called, life flows effortlessly, what I have been seeking arrives with ease, and it always makes sense in hindsight.

You can read about how it felt to listen to this call before I went, here. I will be publishing the writing I did during this trip, which I will humbly say was some of the clearest and most potent writing I’ve done in years in the coming weeks. Subscribe or upgrade to receive all of it, below.

You can also read past writings of mine in Paris here and here.

Was there a time you listened to a potent, irrational call of your intuition that you simply felt you needed to do? What was it like? What happened? I find that circulating these stories gives all of us more confidence and strength to listen to these calls, even when it is hard, frictional or inconvenient, and to remember that there is always something precious and true waiting on the other side, that will inevitably make sense in hindsight.

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