Honor Your Inner Canary

If you take a moment to watch a baby or toddler, you would see they are pros at trusting and honoring their intuition - more specifically, their connection with their bodies. They eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full; notice their emotions and take time to feel them deeply; and cry when they are feeling pain or discomfort and desire soothing.

Most, if not all, people have this strong connection with their bodies during the earlier years in our lives. Unfortunately, as a result of getting unhelpful messages from the media - as well as friends, family, and others around us - we lose touch with the connection between our bodies and minds. We begin to second guess, minimize, or dismiss what we are feeling and experiencing. We begin to trust other opinions as our own truths, and lose parts of ourselves along the way.

In her book, Love Warrior, by the amazing and incomparable, Glennon Doyle, she shares a story about her great-grandfather who was a coal miner. Glennon explained how the coal miners would always bring a canary into the mine with them:

“The canary’s body was built to be sensitive to toxins, so the canary became their lifeguard. When the toxin levels rose too high, the canary stopped singing, and this silence was the miners’ signal to flee the mine.”

She goes on to discuss how she feels that there are people who are like those canaries, built to be sensitive enough to notice what is toxic in this world. I wonder if everyone has their own canary within them - their intuition and truest self that provides information of their own internal experience, as well as recognizes when something does not feel quite right in their external environment.

However, our world has conditioned people to disregard their own intuition. How many times have you heard these things when you have tried to express yourself (or said these things to other people)?:

-“You’re fine.”

-“You are not hungry. You just ate.”/”Don’t you think you have eaten enough?”

-“Stop crying.”

-“Stop worrying.”

-“You need to work to pay the bills.” (i.e., minimizing unhappiness with one’s career/job)

-“You are too sensitive.”

-“You are too emotional.”

-“Relax.”

Glennon goes on to say, “They don’t want to know how broken the world is, so they just decide we’re broken.” It is easier to dismiss a person’s experience than to acknowledge the actual issue that may be present, whether it be feeling unhappy in one’s marriage or experiencing generational trauma.

In my own perinatal experience, I was told by my OBGYN and her team, on multiple occasions, that what I was experiencing was “normal”. I knew something was wrong. But as much as I tried to communicate this, I was not heard. It took for me to experience severe pre-eclampsia, and what we now know was most likely placenta accreta, before my doctor trusted my intuition.

What feels most sad to me, is that it also took that much to truly trust my own intuition over my doctor's medical judgment. Even though I knew, with every fiber of my being, that something was wrong, I second guessed my experience. I had been conditioned throughout my life to minimize my intuition, and I kept doing so until my body literally couldn’t let me dismiss it anymore. 

I feel regret for not listening to my intuition nor honoring my body’s wisdom sooner. I now try to make a conscious choice every day to be more in line with my authentic self, trusting my mind-body connection, and listening to my inner canary - not only for my own well-being, but also to set an example for my daughters.

Whatever your experience may be, I encourage you to listen to and honor your own inner canary. Please do not allow others to dictate your experience. Even more so, please do not dismiss your own intuition. 

If your canary stops singing, and you notice the empty silence, tend to it. You may need to “flee” whatever is toxic in your life and that which is not serving you. Hopefully, this will point you in a direction towards a life that brings you more joy and fulfillment - one that you can feel like you can truly breathe.

If you are interested in identifying how your own negative core beliefs impact your ability to tap into your inner canary, click here to subscribe for my weekly newsletter and get access to my FREE guide, What’s Holding You Back?: 10 Common Limiting Beliefs in Parenthood!