Intuition, Fellowship, or Both?

I have recently been reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle.

Wow. It is good.

(Which is the least useful book review ever.)

I am reading it on the Boy's Kindle, which I "borrowed" while he is in treatment. Doyle was an addict, then a perfect wife and mom when she realized she was in love with a woman.

I find reading about LGBTQ lives interesting. While I don't believe sexual or gender orientation is a choice, I believe deciding to live an authentic life is. Doyle's story of how she came to live an authentic life is fascinating. She is a rabid feminist, which is great. I consider myself a reasonably well informed feminist and I am learning a lot. Rather, I am seeing things I previously knew from a new perspective, particularly about toxic feminine expectations. (See: "Nice girls don't make people upset" and "You should smile more," BS created by the patriarchy to bring women down.)

As many of you know, the Boy was sent to Wilderness therapy almost a year ago where he spent eleven weeks in the high desert of southern Colorado. I feel like this COVID-season is my Wildie, a time for self-awareness and self-reflection.

(Or, I might take a break from reading books like Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning and re-read Harry Potter or The DaVinci Code.)

I've been working on not needing to take every issue big and small and run it past my committee of friends. In an interview, Doyle said that boys look inward to see what they need, and girls look outward.

I have been looking outward my whole life, asking everyone for advice. Now, I love my friends. I have a kickass, awesome committee that has never failed me. And yet, do I need to bring everyone into my every crisis? That sounds like a huge drag to be my friend. (Thank you friends for supporting me in crisis after crisis!)

COVID season, like Wilderness therapy for the Boy, is forcing me to look inside. Doyle suggests that our intuition, our higher Knowing, often the knows decision we are going to make anyway. If that is the case, do we really need to ask a dozen others?

We all need friends, that is obvious. We need companionship. We need shared experiences. Outside opinions are valuable. But what happens when our inner voice in incapable of hearing itself, or knowing what it already knows? Friends can't replace that.

This may sounds so plain and obvious to some, but it wasn't obvious to me.