How losing and rediscovering my inner knowing changed everything
Today, I live in the serene beauty of Arizona’s White Mountains with my loving goats, cats, dogs – and of course, my supportive hubby. In my online work, I help sensitive animal lovers — who I call animal empaths — understand themselves and their animals through intuition, and ultimately live a life of balance, inspired direction and purpose. But it wasn’t always this way.
There was a time when I was in the corporate world, working as a high-level underwriter in commercial finance. I had a business degree and had been trained to thoroughly analyze everything down to the most minute detail – even the font sizes of my 25-page memos to management.
Because if I missed anything, surely someone above me – or an internal or external auditor would find it. And there would be hell to pay. There was a high level of stress and anxiety in the day-to-day grind, and I was trained to think rather than feel.
Because feelings aren’t the decision-makers in the corporate world. Everything has to be highly analyzed and explained in a way that makes logical sense. It’s a very masculine way of being, and I was the only woman on my team.
The decision of whether to lend a company ten million dollars couldn’t be based on an intuitive thought, or a feeling that it’s the right thing to do. That would seem like insanity.
While living in that unfeeling world, I found an escape. On nights and weekends, I’d go to a local healing arts school, learning to dive back into my intuition that had been hiding for years. Re-learning how to get out of my head and into my heart was a lengthy process.
But that wasn’t how I started. Because as children, we already have that ability. We’re born with it before society trains us out of it. Maybe intuition seemed weird, strange or not part of the analytical business world. Maybe we were told that it was wrong or it didn’t make sense.
Personally, I grew up on a farm as the youngest of two children. Animals were my best friends on those 48 acres of crops and woods – wandering there with my dogs; Gretchen and Cindy.
The quiet isolation taught me to go within and to listen with my heart. And the animals that came into my life taught me a thing or two about being authentic. I already knew who I was, before growing up and forgetting.
So while I was in healing arts school, I began working with people through clinical hypnotherapy, which was the first stage of learning to go deeper into the subconscious level to where our heart and emotions are. The part of us that knows more than we think.
Because society has become cerebral. We spin around in our heads, trying to figure out who we are and what we want to do in life. And we can get lost working with the smallest part of our mind – the conscious. It’s part of why so many of us struggle to lose weight, understand our purpose or feel anything anymore.
We’ve lost the connection with our inner-knowing; that part of us that’s trying to guide us in the best way possible. And it’s where we can find the truth we’re seeking.
After spending over two decades in that world of high level analysis, I had to jump ship. Because I felt like I was wearing a pair of shoes that were a size too small. It didn’t quite fit anymore, and I certainly didn’t feel like I was changing the world in any real way.
And after I left, I went down a winding path of rediscovering myself and who I really was – on the inside. It wasn’t easy, trying to undo the analysis paralysis that I often found myself in. When COVID happened, I went even deeper.
I went into a period of isolation, working with animals at a horse rescue. I learned equine massage, pranic energy healing and dove even deeper into my heart with animal communication – which is understanding what animals are trying to tell us.
And then I went online to reach more people, and into the amazing world of using animal insight to help people with clarity, healing and peace of mind. It’s amazing how it eases people’s suffering around what’s going on with their animals, and helps them to get unstuck and on track in their own lives.
But it requires the deepest level of inner-knowing, through an unseen connection and trust in what we’re picking up. But animals have this ability, and they don’t question it. It’s just part of who they are.
Think of Canadian geese and how they know how to fly in perfect formation without touching each other. We humans have that extra sense too, but we’ve often forgotten how to use it. Or we simply don’t believe.
Have you ever been driving somewhere and got the feeling that you should go a different way, and then realized your intuition was right because there was an accident that was blocking traffic? Or some other experience in your life where you felt what you should do, and when you actually listened to that thought or feeling that came to you – you just knew it was right, and it was.
Well, animals don’t lose that sixth sense. They don’t have that ego that we humans have that disconnects us from who we really are.
And those of us animal parents love them for it, sometimes to the point where we’d rather be around animals than people. Because animals are real and authentic.
Anyone who loves animals understands the unspoken bond between themselves and their animal companions. And when we look into their eyes and hear with our heart, we learn what they’re trying to tell us.
Those who have a dog know how high vibe and silly they can be. Because animals aren’t depressed about the past or anxious about the future like we humans are. Instead, they teach us to live in the moment.
The cat lovers take in their chill vibe, and how cats go within to find peace. It’s like a purring meditation, that teaches us to live at the level of the soul.
And there’s horses, who have the biggest heart; not just physically, but the way they pick up on our energy and reflect it back to us. Any horse lover knows that they’d better be calm and mindful of how they feel, because the sensitive horse will react and let us know that we need to chill out and put our heart and mind in the right place.
That’s why there are programs where people work with horses – from prison inmates to individuals with autism, from grief healing to easing PTSD for veterans. And we can learn so much from simply being around animals.
Because animals roll with the punches, bouncing back to their true selves through life’s ups and downs. And those of us who adore our animal friends, love them for it because they remain our faithful companion without losing themselves. Animals never try to be something they’re not.
So if you feel lost, take a deep breath and go within. Get out in nature, because when there’s no wifi we actually find the greatest connection – the one with ourselves.
And above all, learn to be more like animals. Trust your intuition, and allow it to guide you. It always knows what’s best. Tune in to what your animals want you to know – they’re smarter than you may think, because they listen with their heart.
