Bangling Earrings and What Happens When You Ignore Your Intuition
If I could give you one unsolicited piece of advice, it would be to learn how to listen to your intuition. This year I had an experience that reminded me just how far I’ve come and how invested I had once been in ignoring my intuition and the lasting painful effects it had on me even at an unconscious level. Once I started listening to my intuition and acting on what i’ve learned it’s had a powerful impact.
Most of you know that In April of 2019 my family lost my seemingly very strong, and very healthy dad very suddenly. It was a horrible shock to my whole family and in the first 4 weeks after he died it felt like the universe was giving me lesson after lesson in impermanence. One of those lessons was losing one of my favorite earrings in a gym in Ann Arbor. I know that sounds like such a small thing, but when you are in throws of grief even a very small loss rips the fragile scab right off. I took the earrings off and laid them on top of the clothes in my bag before attending a yoga class. I knew it was a bad idea even as I was doing it, but I wasn’t thinking clearly (a horrible side effect of grief). After class I went to put the earrings back on and I could only find one. I looked in the bag, and around the bag, but it was gone and just like that something I wore almost every day disappeared. The earrings were a gold round flat circle with a pattern of squares pressed into them. I’d gotten them at the Kripalu retreat center 4 or 5 years ago while attending a Julia Cameron workshop. I loved them and the way they looked on me. They were simple, classic, plain, and best of all they didn’t make me stand out or draw much attention to me. Not too showy and not too noisy.
I might now, on the outside, look like a fairly confident, fairly put together woman, but the confidence you see now has been a very long time in the making. When I was fresh out of college, I was not confident, nor did I feel like I had it together and I definitely didn’t know how to “look” like I had it together. I was never the girl that felt confident putting together an outfit for going out or dressing up professionally.
When I interviewed for my first “big girl job”, one that I’d end up spending a decade at, my imposter complex took over. I had no idea what I was interviewing for, I only knew I was walking into the biggest most prestigious building in my city and I was more than a little nervous. I over prepared in all of the ways I knew how. I researched the company, scoured their website for vision, mission and core values information, I brushed up on insurance and learned about annuities (something I knew nothing about at the time). I printed Extra copies of my resume complete with a bang up cover letter, and a long list of questions for them tucked into a professional looking black padfolio.
Most importantly to me, I had a suit that I thought I looked spectacular in, which, for me was saying something. I curled my hair with hot curlers in a way that makes me feel confident, then I topped off the outfit with matching white earrings that dangled a little below my chin. These earrings matched my white pleated and lined palazzo pants and white blazer. I thought they brought my outfit together perfectly, but they made a little noise. I imagine about the same amount of noise that’s made by wearing multiple bracelets.
The interview went spectacularly, I was able to clearly articulate my strengths and weaknesses in a way that positioned me for the role they were looking to fill, as well as come up with enough questions that they could tell I’d done my homework. I felt like I’d knocked it out of the park aside from one thing. After the interview my soon-to-be future manager went to get his superior for me to have another interview with, and the woman in the office that had also been interviewing me leaned over like she wanted to be my friend and said, “I like you and I want to make sure you have a chance at this position so when you go into the next interview take the earnings off. The next person who meets with you will think they’re unprofessional”. Ouch!
Her words stung hard, but I believed she had my best interest at heart and after all, she was probably right. I needed to fit in with the grey cubicles I would be joining and do what it took to not make waves, and I needed the job. I quickly took them off trying to hide my embarrassment and mortification while slipping them into my purse. I tried to collect myself, and not let the sting of it affect me and negatively shape my next interview. This was the first of many times at that job I didn’t listen to my intuition. I ignored my own desires and inner wisdom in order to fit it, and not make waves.
Painfully that was only the first of many times that I would ignore my intuition and try to go with the flow to fit into a box I was never meant to be in. They knew it and I knew, as if it was a large secret we were all trying to keep together for as long as it would work. Thus began my tenure of trying very hard not to stand out, trying very hard to wear things that wouldn’t expose who I was for someone to tell me that a piece of me was a little too much. I started wearing my hair in a bun, wearing all black with flats. At work I would put my head down, work as much as possible, as hard as I could and try to ignore the growing dread building inside of me. I figured if I worked hard and didn’t make waves, didn’t stand out no one could spot that I didn’t actually belong.
This incident came to mind like a fresh wound, like an old scar from silencing my intuition when I’d been looking for a pair of earrings that could replace the favorite pair I lost in the gym after my dad passed away. I was browsing at my favorite new age shop among books on personal development and growth, among crystals and incense, when a pair of medium sized gold earrings caught my eye, they were different from anything I’d ever worn but a similar gold color to the ones I’d lost. They were a bit larger than what I was used to, and they dangled.
I bought them without trying them on. Eager to see what they looked like on me, I hurried out to my car, pulled them out of the bag, I ripped them off their cardboard back and put them on. I loved them immediately, the weight, the color, the length, the shapes that had been brought together, the way they framed my face. Then I turned my head as I was pulling out of the parking space and I heard it. The clinking bangling noise that I had been told was unprofessional. I heard it and I instinctually turned crimson. The flood of emotional baggage that I’d left hidden, that I’d left untended to caught in my throat.
I realized that by choosing to wear these earrings that looked great on me, I was uncovering and attending to an old wound. By wearing these earrings I was acknowledging that I was done ignoring my intuition. Now when I’m getting ready to go speak at a panel or in front of a group of women they are often the last item I put on. I wear them proudly as a reminder to myself to keep listening to what’s important to me. A reminder to make waves, a reminder that I wasn’t meant to fit into a grey cubicle. I was meant for big things and so are you.