You get the chills, or a nudge you can’t explain, and you talk yourself out of it before it has a chance to land.

You were taught to be rational, so you learned to rationalize it.

In this episode, I share my first experience with the spiritual world outside of church, and it started with my cats.

Then came the dreams, the perfume, and the footsteps in the attic, and I started to embrace a side of myself that I had been afraid of for years.

I also share what happened when I first heard “gather the women” and tried to make sense of what it meant.

And how in the last year or so, I’ve leaned so far into the practical that I started to feel I wasn’t woo enough, until a nudge told me to pay attention.

I close with an invitation to notice why your intuition may be feeling more online in the forty days from the end of September to the early part of November.

* AI Transparency note: AI assisted in writing the show notes

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Have you ever had an experience that felt a little otherworldly at the time?

You could've sworn maybe you heard something that wasn't physically there?

Or maybe you had a presence in the room with you that you couldn't see?

Or maybe the hair on your arm stood up when someone was talking about something?

We've all had these experiences, but too often we like to explain them

away, or we try to rationalize them, or maybe you even embrace it and

wonder what was the message for you.

Hi, I'm Erica Voell, and I want to welcome you to the Unfolding Podcast, where

we explore midlife and human design.

I'm a human design guide for women in midlife, and my work is all about helping

you connect the dots of how you're designed so you can see the whole picture

of yourself and your relationships, and understand why you need a few days to

make a decision that you won't regret, but your partner seems to know instantly, or

why you keep overthinking and replaying the same conversation in your mind.

It's all connected.

My clients often tell me, "It makes so much sense, and I see that

there is nothing wrong with me."

And I would love to invite you, my listener, to start connecting your own

dots in a dot connection session with me.

It's available to all paid Substack subscribers.

It's a one-on-one, 30-minute session built around what you share with

me beforehand, whether that's a challenge you're experiencing or

something you're simply curious about.

We'll walk through the highlights of your human design chart that

connect most directly to that.

You can learn more at ericavoell.com/connect.

That's E-R-I-C-A, V as in Victor, O-E-L-L.com/connect.

I've had several experiences in my life, like the ones I described earlier.

I mean, most of us know what it feels like when we have goosebumps on our arms.

The first experience I really remember sort of freaked me out at first.

It was more than just chills.

My cat Chloe had passed away earlier that day.

It was just two months after my other beloved cat, George, passed away.

They were two peas in a pod, and they were always together until

they were separated by death.

I wasn't sure how I would recover from losing both of my fur babies

so close together, and that night my husband and I were lying in bed,

and I felt a cat jump on the bed.

Now, there were no cats living in our house to jump on our bed.

I remember laying there thinking I was going crazy.

I had never had an experience like this before, and then I felt this ghost cat

walk between my husband and I a few times on the bed before settling at my feet in

the exact same way that Chloe had done in those weeks after George died, circling

around twice and then laying down.

I turned to my husband and I said, "Did you feel that?"

He had felt it, too, but he had been sensing a cat on the bed for

several weeks after George died, but he didn't want to tell me because

he was afraid it would freak me out.

But as we talked, I felt this calm come over me, knowing that they

were both still there in some way.

And for a few weeks, it was the same routine.

We would settle into bed, we'd feel the ghost cat jump on the bed the

same way Chloe had, walk between us, and then settle at my feet.

And there were other times when it felt like both of the cats were on

the bed at the same time tumbling around, which is why they were never

allowed to sleep with us at night, because they were so rambunctious

at night when they were alive.

It was my first real experience with the spirit realm, and after that I

had dreams of not just these two cats, but former pets visiting me, either

to introduce me to their new friends on the other side, or to introduce me

to the lady in white who was their new friend, who was actually helping them

come back to this realm to visit me.

Since then, I've been more open to allowing the messages to come through.

Our previous house was the house where my grandmother grew up, and I would

smell her perfume outside of the bedroom where she slept when she was a kid.

I would hear footsteps in the attic of the house, but it let me know that I

wasn't alone, that we weren't alone, and it actually brought out a part of me

that I had always feared a little bit.

I was sort of fascinated by ghosts and witches as a kid, but I…

as I got older, I got a little bit afraid that I might dabble

into something that was bad, so I just shut that part of me out.

Now, I will tell you, my ancestors settled in Salem, Massachusetts in 1630.

So I have felt that fascination of the Salem witch trials for a really

long time, I think because when I was a teenager, when I was so

fascinated by it, I had no awareness that my family had settled there.

So fast-forward a few years to 2022, and I was in the middle of burnout.

I had just completed a sacred feminine spring equinox ceremony with Sarah

Jenks, and I was getting water from my fridge when I heard, "Gather the women."

The voice was that of an older woman, and she was so calming.

She repeated herself multiple times, and I had to check to make sure

that the TV was off just in case.

It was, but the voice remained for three days, whispering, "Gather the women."

But what was so fascinating is that this was not a whisper that

I was hearing in my head, it was a whisper I was feeling in my body.

I had no idea how to respond, and I didn't even think to ask how it

was happening or what did it mean.

The first time I heard it was two days from the 20th anniversary of my

grandmother's death, the same grandmother whose perfume I smelled when we lived

in her childhood home At my next therapy appointment less than a week

later, I mentioned it to my therapist,

and she asked me what I thought it meant.

I said I had no idea.

All I knew was that the frequency I was feeling during the ceremony was

one word that I wrote down: "Blossom."

By the end of our session together, I knew I needed to explore

coaching certifications because I felt like I was being called to

something more than library work.

I had been feeling it for a while but kept trying to push

through, which was burning me out.

I went back to my notes from that session recently, and it said,

"Sometimes the greatest struggles bring the biggest shifts."

If only I had known then what I know now.

And if you've followed me for a while, you may have heard this story before.

I thought "gather the women" also meant something literally, so I

started to invite people over to my house for solstice circles, but

I felt like I was playing a part.

It didn't really feel like me.

I tried for over a year to host gatherings, and each time

I thought, "This is great."

And at the same time afterwards, I was like, "This is not me."

And I wish I could say that all of my experiences with these

sixth senses of clairaudience and clairsentience were good.

With every intuitive gift, there are actually two sides,

and it's not always rainbows.

Sometimes when you have these gifts, you're so sensitive, and you can't

ignore it when you feel something else.

In our new house, it never quite felt light.

There was a heaviness about it.

There was a, almost a sadness.

And the more I tuned in, the more I realized it wasn't just

COVID or the matte gray walls.

There was a sadness within the house that was deeper than that.

So I asked my Reiki teacher to come energetically clear it, and

she found energies that were not ours and helped them move on.

So my sense that I felt was right.

But then I started to learn more about human design, and I started working

with clients, I found myself m- leaning more towards the practical parts of my

work, the kind that I can do a workshop on, and my human design profile is

known as the practical leader, the 5/1.

And the more I've learned how practicality comes into play in my

design, the more I've really leaned into a lot of embracing that practical

side of me, that logical side, and not trying to be something that I'm not.

But something has happened over the last month or two, and I can't ignore it.

I have felt this spiritual side of me gently tapping, and then

something happened t-today.

On the way home from seeing Practical Magic 2, I heard a nudge.

Not a voice, just a nudge.

It said, "We're still here.

You don't have to hide us."

It was like, again, like "Gather the Women" from four years ago.

It was calming, and this time it felt actually a little sparkly.

In the personal development realm, we talk a lot about not hiding your light and not

playing small and not hiding your magic, but they all really mean the same thing.

They all point to the same thing, of being afraid to bring your

full self out into the world.

And I will say, for centuries, it was not safe for women to be fully

out and to be fully themselves.

But this was a reminder for me that I have been hiding parts of me.

I have felt that I either needed to be practical or woo.

And in some ways, I was worried I wasn't woo enough.

But I know now we can be both, and embracing both is a life lesson.

Because for centuries it's not been safe for women to be spiritual in

any ways other than Christianity or other organized religions.

But in the last 10 or 15 years, women have started to embrace a

more spiritual side of themselves.

We've been taught to ignore our intuition or our sixth senses.

We've been taught to be rational and practical, and there's a bit of, "I

have my crystals, but I'm not too woo."

As my friend Charlotte Webb describes it, she said they check

their spirituality at the door when they go into a corporate office.

But what if instead of being either spiritual woo or practical, we could

embrace both sides of ourselves?

To share our stories of when we get the chills, or when our spirit animal

repeatedly appears in various forms, or to trust that inner knowing and not

have to rationalize it to other people.

Or someone says something or you read something and you get the chills because

intuitively you know it's exactly what you need to hear at that moment.

We love to embrace the witchy movies, especially at this time of year,

or that witchy side of ourselves.

We'd like to dress up.

But what if we didn't have to dim our light or hide our magic

at other times of the year?

I know it's October when I'm recording this, and the veils are thinner, and

we're in a highly spiritual season.

And it's not surprising that over forty days between the last days of

September and the first four or five days of November, that the sun moves

through every gate of the intuition and instincts center in human design.

There are seven gates within this center, and as we move through all

of them over these forty days, we are more sensitive at this time of year.

But we've been taught to ignore that intuition and that sixth sense we have.

So where have you been dimming your light?

Where have you been hiding your magic?

Or where have you been playing small and not trusting that inner knowing

because it doesn't make sense?

You don't have to explain it to anyone.

In fact, you might not even be able to explain it to your own mind.

But it's all messages for you to either pay attention or a sign

that you are on the right track.

As we move through the energies of the intuition and instinct center

in human design, notice where your intuition feels like it's more online.

It carries different flavors when the sun moves into a different energy, but they

are all related to that inner knowing.

One might have felt like the fear of the future and your

mind trying to figure it out.

Another is all about the patterns and the potential with a fear

that the past will repeat itself.

We all have an intuitive sense, and it shows up differently for each one of us,

and we'll be exploring more about how our intuition shows up this fall as we explore

more about relationships and looking at the centers within human design.

And if this episode resonated with you or something, like, brought the

chills to you, I want to invite you to a Dot Connection session with me.

It's available to all of my paid Substack subscribers.

It's a one-on-one, 30-minute session built around what you share with me

beforehand, whether it's a challenge you're experiencing or something

that you're simply curious about that's coming up in your chart.

We can walk through the highlights of your human design chart that

most directly connect to it.

You can learn more at ericavoell.com/connect.

That's E-R-I-C-A, V as in Victor, O-E-L-L.com/connect.

Thank you for joining me.

Be well