Learning to look within on my spiritual journey
When I first began exploring spirituality, I focused on joining groups and organizations. Pulling back from that & diving more deeply inward has allow me to connect to my intuition in a powerful way.
When I was a child, I thought spirituality meant the pastor’s thundering sermons at our Baptist church, speeches that intimidated me and made me feel small.
In my mind, the idea of “faith” became inextricably linked to the musty scent of that old place of worship, like a grandfather’s attic, and to rituals as precise as its rows of creaky oak pews.
My sense of the divine was intertwined with the scratchy feeling of polyester Sunday dresses against my tanned Florida-child skin. Having a belief system, I thought, meant having to drive somewhere, to find a parking spot, to exchange small talk with strangers hiding behind large smiles.
Coming of age in the 1970s and ‘80s, in a household nearly devoid of rules or expectations, I had the freedom to reject organized religion, and I did, quitting the church by age 16.
It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30s, that I reached for the comfort of faith during an upsetting time in my life.
I was dealing with several difficult situations at once: