Restoring Innocence, Instincts and Intuition 

3/8/25

Aloha Precious Gem! 

How are you doing? Overall, are you aware your life is getting so much better, or can be, as you face what held you back?

As mentioned in recent posts, I’ve been having major breakthroughs lately and they’re leading to  a wonder-full changing life (provided I keep intentionally remembering what’s happened and repeatedly (re)claim what I’ve been learning that is :)).

It’s not a perfect upward projection, but it’s definitely getting better as it’s practiced.

I recently wrote about an image I saw when working through abuse that occurred during infancy.  (“Cracking Open the Shell of Pearl . . .”;  2/14/25)

As the protective outer shell I’d developed ‘back then’ started opening, I could see a smooth sheath in the opening of the shell.

The wrapping had a heavier weight/thickness to it, was shiny and pure white. From what could be seen though the opening it looked like it, too, was completely encasing the infant body.

(Before we go any further I have to acknowledge something that just happened. I was listening to an album on iTunes and when it ended a random song I didn’t know came on; it was titled “So True, So Pure” {by Terri Geisel). I consider it an affirmation of what this post is about; thank You, God!)  

Now back to the regularly scheduled post 🙂

Finally got around to “journaling with Jesus” about what the sheath meant. It kinda brings cleansing tears to my eyes with the hope and potential healing from it, and not just for me, but for anyone who has survived human-based trauma and believe it diminished their worth.

It was a protective layer that kept anything anyone did to me from penetrating who I am. And FYI, this applies to you, too. Whatever was done to any of us did not tarnish the purity of the intrinsic value we are all born with.

I’m not going into the details of what I’ve endured here (earliest posts cover some of it), but shame caused me to believe what they did penetrated to the core of who I am and permanently cast grayish/shit brown stain on all that I am, from the inside out. 

It’s something I’ve struggled with all along and had often hoped it’d been dealt with. Beautiful images have come up where God showed me what He knew me (and YOU!) to be – Holy and Innocent in His sight. 

There’s been layers to the healing as it’s gone deeper into the wounds and now it’s time to believe, the core cause of the imagined shame is being displaced with a deeper knowledge and acceptance of my true worth.

Hallelujah!

(Hmmmm . . . Do you think it’s just coincidence that I’ve finally finished this first round of the “Prayers That Heal The Heart” course I’ve been taking, where one aspect I was working on healing was self-condemnation/shame? This stuff works!)

But like a lot of other protective barriers that are put into place when we’re children and can’t defend ourselves mentally, emotionally or physically from whatever trauma we’re surviving, it becomes a detriment later in life. 

It’s one more layer that needs to be broken through and shed, otherwise we live in a bubble we feel safe in but without the capability of being fully vulnerable, seen, and connected to others.

And, perhaps, this film keeps us from discerning ourselves, others, and situations as they truly are because we can’t clearly see through it. 

Which leads me to the belief that our instincts and intuition can be disarmed and twisted when, as children, we were abused out of those natural gifts by learning that defending ourselves only made the hell more painful, and family who convinced us our value lied only in the abuses they inflicted, and it was what we deserved. 

That’s coupled with a society that tells us ‘family is everything!”, “Moms and dads are perfect”, “Family are the only people who accept you unconditionally”. Then to top it all off are the people who claim those (who are doing horrible things to us) are swell. After all, they go to church, run successful businesses, and/or help others, pretending to be saviors in order to cover for what they’re doing when the people they want to impress aren’t looking.

Is it any wonder some of us end up with a repressed ability to tell who’s for good or evil? 

That’s something that just came up with the martial arts instructor I’ve been working with. He made the comment that females have ‘women’s intuition’ and we need to listen and and trust it. 

I denied I had it – examples below speak for themselves.

But what I hadn’t noticed was as while writing this, there has been significant progress in regenerating the instincts and intuition. 

As to the survival instincts, in the past when feeling threatened out of the ‘fight, flight, freeze or fawn’ options my instincts would say I’m too much of a victim to face the perceived threat so I’d freeze, fawn, or occasionally flee depending on the situation. In the moment it never occurred to me to fight. 

But with what happened a couple weeks ago when I had a flashback of being strangled and for the first time was able to think about what to do to fend off the a**hole(s), and followed through with it with the literal action of flailing arms while I was fighting off the predator(s) in my mind. While it was embarrassing for others to witness what I was doing, a major breakthrough came with imagining myself fighting back, and succeeding.  

(It was celebrated in my heart a couple hours after it happened, when the victory was fully recognized and became greater than the humiliation!)

And that’s one more scenario where some of us get to try to figure out if the fear of going out in public is intuition warning us of real impending danger, or just fear of being humiliated by our own minds as we’re working on healing them.

So woo-hoo to me! I’m so grateful for the people who understand and celebrate the victories with me. And I’m humbly proud of what I can make myself do (at times!) knowing there’s a good chance witnesses would rather I stayed home, trapped in a shell, bound by chains and away from their preconceived notions of how others ‘should’ act in their presence. Or we’re to stay out of sight from ‘The Guiltys’ who throw others into those shells to begin with by their malevolent words and actions.

So it looks like the survival instinct is regenerating after all – in more ways than one. Thank God!

When it comes to intuition, right after the conversation with the instructor I did what I shouldn’t have. 

I’m a caring person and hate to see anyone stranded. If someone may need help sometimes I’ll ask first than realize why I shouldn’t have later. 

In the parking lot there was a car with it’s hood up and someone leaning over the engine. I kept a distance of a couple of cars away when asking if they needed help and realized he was working on the vehicle like he knew was the was doing. He replied he was a mobile mechanic. Since I’m perpetually looking for a trustworthy mechanic I was about to ask him for his card when discomfort rose (a little late but it did happen) then the realization I knew nothing about this person and had no reason to trust him. Decided to just beat-feet it outta there.

Another indication the intuition is beginning to work again came during a years long issue I hadn’t let myself recognize was a problem.

Not long after the divorce, I met someone at the church I was attending. 

It was never a romantic/sexual situation, we just talked and went to a couple of functions together as friends. I don’t remember how I learned he had a mental illness.

Didn’t let it bother me, after all, I’d just started therapy for CPTSD, major depression, DID, and attachment disorder so who was I to judge, you know?

When I talked about him my therapist mentioned it would probably be a good idea not to get too involved with the guy, which I didn’t think was a problem. We just had surface conversations while I was trying to support this fellow being who was trying to heal his brain, too.

It didn’t take long to recognize when he didn’t taken his meds he could be a bit of a jerk.   

After witnessing his ‘jerkness’ several times during the short time we were pseudo-friends I told him I couldn’t go places with him anymore (without telling him why) and quit going to the gatherings he would’ve been at.

I moved quite a few miles away and forgot about it until I’d notice him sometimes when I’d be walking my dogs, etc. But it wasn’t often and he could’ve just been visiting people in the area.

After having moved further away I noticed him at the small church I attended (which was a different denomination than where we met initially). I didn’t acknowledge him.

Then a few months ago, just before my dog died, I was slowly walking him around a park when I noticed a truck behind a berm/weeds, and intuition musta kicked in because it bothered me. Then it moved to a parking area closer to where my vehicle was. I wanted to go see who it was just to prove to myself I was being paranoid but couldn’t make myself, then left.

A day or two later I was at a local bank. When I pulled in there was no one in the parking lot and while in the building there were no other customers. When walking back to my vehicle I noticed there was a truck near it; it bugged me but couldn’t figure out why.  Before pulling out I looked at the truck and noticed the driver was looking directly at me, and it was that guy. And the truck was the same one that was at the park. 

Ugh. And that told me he knew my vehicle. Ugh again.

Didn’t acknowledge him and just waited for him to go into the bank before I’d leave. But he never did, after another minute or two he drove off.

I remembered his name was in the news a few years back but hadn’t paid much attention. Just figured he’d probably went off his meds for a couple of days and had to learn the hard way not to do that.

But now I was suddenly interested and looked up the details. 

Turns out, what he did wasn’t as simple as I’d assumed. (Well, duh – he was in the headlines, Pearl!) He broke a few laws but I didn’t find any follow up articles about what/if/when he went to jail and for how long. 

So why am I telling you all this, Precious Gem? 

Because I want anyone who has some sort of history of choosing crappy relationships to understand I too, have had that issue. (Have I mentioned lately about marrying the guy who broke my nose a week before our wedding?)

I want you to understand what I’ve been learning – it isn’t a survivor’s fault for making lousy choices when our intuition has been shut down and we don’t know better. 

But now we do know. And if I can ‘grow back’ the instincts and intuition I thought were destroyed so many years ago, you can too. If you need help with that you can choose one or more of the suggestions below to get started – you’re worthy of doing this!

1. Find the right therapy and professional/working with God in ways that’ll help peel back the layers of self-protection and denial to return to the innocent core of who you are. 
2. Claim a (positive) Higher Power/Jesus to provide strength and wisdom.
3. Journal with purpose. I’d avoided doing it consistently for so long because it can be tedious, but when we hang in there our heart does learn how to inform us of what is best for us as we write.
4. Accept the good friends He brings into our lives who lovingly support us in the positive ways we truly deserve. It takes trial, error, and time, to find the right ones sometimes but we ARE worth it, I promise.
5. Take self defense and/or martial arts classes. They help to pull our psyches out of ‘victim’  mode which can resurrect our intuition and instincts.
6. Celebrate every step forward you make and REMEMBER them, especially when you have those moments when you feel like you’re not making any progress and/or evaluating what your next step(s) will be. What you focus on does expand and displaces the opposing side. 
7. Never give up!! It is so true – it usually looks bleakest/pointless right before a breakthrough.

• After trying myriads of different therapies the most effective healing I’ve experienced is through Communion with God Ministries at www.cwgministries.org  (This is NOT a paid endorsement.)
• If you need help finding a therapist, on the home page is a list of various crisis and help lines. “To Write Love On Her Arms” website has a section where you can (anonymously) find help in your area.
• To find reputable self defense classes or martial arts schools you can look them up online, then check their reviews from several different sources; disreputable businesses can stack some review lists in their own favor.

And just know, You ARE worth the effort and time it takes to do this. 

Amen.

The picture above is of a beautiful angel tree top I found right before Christmas while walking through my favorite park. I’d hoped it’d been put there, for me, by someone who had just walked past; thank you if that is what happened. In any case, I do believe there are angels among us, mortal as well as immortal and I’m always grateful to both kinds :). I certainly don’t consider all people I’ve seen frequently when out and about as threats!