A true story of how your intuition can be used to discover your life purpose (and shut your internal mean voice up). Intuition University Student Spotlight: Jen Williams

How following your intuition can shut your inner mean voice up!

Or how your intuition can be used to discover your life purpose.

Those are both titles I could use for this interview with one of my previous Intuition University and Empath Intuition University students, Jen Williams.  Because both of those are precisely what she did and precisely what she learned to overcome via practicing the tools I teach in my classes and accessing her own knowing! 

Jenn was a student of my Empath Intuition University and also my Empath Intuition University 202 (which is the empath’s equivalent of the “Own Your Intuition” class I have starting up at the end of October.)  For this interview, I met her one evening on her farm where we discussed her journey with her intuition and how owning it has radically benefitted her life.

Her farm and workshop is this enchanting space that felt like it came right out of one of my favorite novels.  It was such a place of beauty and scintillating magic and I hope you get a taste of that here!

What is one (or more) surprising thing you learned about your intuition while in my Intuition University program?

I think the most surprising thing I learned was that my intuition was working, I just wasn’t listening and trusting the messages.  I had lost trust in my internal voice and the learning I did with you in both the intuition class and the empath class showed me that my intuition was working all the time.  I just wasn’t following the advice.  

How has this gone on to positively influence your life?  Give us a real life example if you can of something that you know went differently than it would have had you not learned to hone and trust your own intuition? 

Learning to trust my intuition was an emotional breakthrough for me.  It was hard, sad, and confusing at first. I struggled with believing my inner voice.  By the time I sought help from you I doubted myself, my ability to make good choices for myself, and my own ideas of what I wanted in the future.  With this doubtful lens I looked back on my life and saw a string of mistakes, of chaotic decisions, and path that didn’t lead anywhere or TO anything.  The truth is that I felt terrible about myself. But you changed all of this for me pretty much “by accident” on one of my first calls. You told me that my intuition works perfectly!  It always has. Because my intuition is linked to how I feel in my body when I’m doing something. That the way I am is just right FOR ME. Only by acting on the impulses and messages I receive will I know for sure whether or not it is the best choice for me at that time.  For example, big life decisions I take more slowly. I’ll go a few steps down the path towards a class I want to take or a job that I want or has been offered to me. I move slowly forward then stop and check in with myself asking, how do I feel right now? Does this still feel right?  Then I’ll take the next step. I literally can’t know unless I try. And then I trust that my body will tell me if I’m on the right track or to step back. And I follow the feeling no matter what.  

I also learned how to get still and ask for help and guidance from my inner self at any moment to get clearer about a decision.  Any decision. And I know it right away when I forget to do it and end up somewhere I don’t want to be and course correct as best I can.  Because I feel it in my body and I trust that now. I know that’s how I work. Even if it’s in the middle of the grocery store and I have to get out of there.  I just do it.    

What type of business do you have?  

I have a farm and am a farm and wilderness instructor.  I love teaching, both kids and adults, and being around people-but NOT all the time.  So I also farm and spend time with plants to get rejuvenated. I started selling produce this year after a 10 year-long break under a new farm name, Wild Dreams Farm.  My passions lie around all things related to seeds-seed saving, plant breeding, teaching seed saving and connecting with the earth and the ecology around us. This fall, for the first time, I will be selling the seeds I’ve saved seeds to my community. I can’t wait!  

Why did you start this kind of work? 

I’ve been a grower for over 20 years.  I farmed out of college then farmed this property for 5 or 6 years before my kids got too old and needed more of me.  I turned away from this work and went in many other directions but always I was growing things here, planting, tending, and harvesting from the land.  Somewhere along the line a mean voice grew in me and would tell me that this work was not good enough. That I should be pursuing other, off farm and off island opportunities to “change the world”.  That staying home and farming was not changing the world enough, or big enough, or important enough. This voice overshadowed my intuition and inner knowing for many years. It wasn’t until I learned to listen to and to trust my sensing body that I came back around to farming.  

Yes, I remember that during our courses together you were doing a lot of soul searching— you were really grappling with your life purpose and discovering who you were/are. 

Yes, I was asking questions like, 

“What is my gift to offer the world?”

“What do I want for my work life?”

“What do I want to achieve?”

“What is my dream farm?”

There was a clarifying moment where, through this questioning and tools that you teach, I discovered that what I really loved and was drawn to was seed saving. It led me to realize THIS thing that I’ve been doing the whole while—that is THE THING for me!

And basically you haven’t looked back!  I’m seeing and talking to you now years later (from your class time) and I love that you can’t even remember how much agony you were in about these questions now—because it is all gone!  

Yes! That’s why the intuitive voice is so important because that is the true voice.  The other, the one that says, “you’re not good enough, your farm is not big enough, what do you think you are doing?” that voice is not true. I have to work to make sure my intuition and my feeling body is the voice I am listening to.  When I know I need to get in touch with my intuition, when that other voice is dominating my inner world that is how I know I need to get back in touch with my intuition.  I learned that through our class!

I didn’t feel like I had an intuition.  I didn’t feel like I knew myself or trusted myself to make decisions.  Then over time and practicing the techniques you taught us in class—using the tools, seeing that they work, then repeating, repeating, repeating them. That and a lot of wise words from you– and when those words land– it’s huge. Life changing!  In just a few sentences you just shut my mean voice up one day!  That’s how you work!

What is your favorite part about your farming/seed saving work?  What inspires you about it?

My favorite part of this work is that I’m creating the life that I want for myself, doing what I love- farming and teaching- in balance with other parts like mothering, being an active community member and attentive to my dear friends.  

The earth and the amazingness of plants are what inspire me about this work.  The more experience I have and the more learning I do– the more in awe I am of the natural world, the ecology going on around us all the time, and my place in it.  I am fed by the connection I feel to the earth when I am doing this work.  

I feel good.  It feels right.  And although I don’t know for sure where this will all lead me to in five or ten or twenty years I don’t care.  I don’t think that way anymore.  I just feel and listen and move forward knowing it’s going to be good and right for me for that time.  I trust.  

Beautiful Jen.  Is there someway that my readers can find you to request seeds or hear more about any workshops you do?

I have a website in the beginning stages- www.wilddreamsfarm.org.  You can always contact me through there.  This fall and Winter I’ll be updating what I have to sell and will be selling seeds as well as medicinal herbal teas locally at holiday markets on Vashon Island. 

Can you tell us about the seed saving workshops you teach?

My next workshop is a seed harvesting workshop at then end of this month. It is the third in a series, going through the seasons of the plants and thinking through to the seed and seed saving stage.  This last one we will learn how to harvest seeds then thresh, winnow, and store them for the winter.  

Can you tell us about one thing that inspired you in the last month?

There is no way there is just one thing!  But what comes to mind is a conversation I had yesterday talking about how indigenous people save corn seed with a life long corn breeder from Wisconsin.  He taught me you can grow different varieties of corn together if you grow them in circles. The ears on the outer edge of the circle will be the ones for eating because they most likely got cross pollinated by the different varieties but that the ones in the middle of the circle are for seed because those were being protected by the outer ring and that pollen from the other plants will rarely enter the center of the circle.  Love that!  

Aimée Cartier is an author, psychic guide, and founder of Intuition University and Empath Intuition University. She teaches students who have a hard time trusting their own intuition or don’t know how to use it to get results. She also teaches empaths who are overwhelmed and sometimes debilitated by their sensitivities. More about her Empath Intuition University and her other upcoming Intuition University programs (including “Own Your Intuition” class) can be found on her website: www.AimeeCartier.com