Or whatever her name is…………..

My inner voice’s name is Clotille Jones and she’s a big, ole Cajun woman.  Your inner voice might be Jiminy Cricket, Houser Snicklefitz or whatever; but, whatever you call it, it knows more than you give it credit for and you really ought to listen to it more than you do.

My new friend Amy is listening to hers and its is telling her to eat mushrooms right now…lots of mushrooms!  We were talking about it yesterday and she can’t imagine what nutrient it is that she’s lacking; but, whatever it is, her body is pretty sure it can find it in mushrooms.  Now, I’ve always heard that mushrooms don’t have much of anything in them; but, according to the fresh mushroom website, they are a great source of B vitamins, selenium and other trace elements.  So, maybe Amy’s body needs selenium, which tastes way better as a grilled portobello than as a Selsum Blue shot, even if it has a tequila chaser.

As I’ve mentioned, I believe that our bodies will often tell us what they need, if only we will listen.

But our inner voices talk to us about more than just food.  Clotille talks to me about all kinds of things including food, exercise, things I’m struggling with and LSU football, even though I graduated from Mississippi State.  Lord! She will just go on and on about Tiger football!  Don’t get her started! Anyway, in my chat with Amy, we talked a little about how we don’t listen to that voice, then we kick ourselves later.  Specifically, we were talking about a woman who had married a man even when she “had a bad feeling” about him.  She didn’t listen to her Clotille Jones and, years later, she was kicking herself about it.

Why don’t we listen to ourselves?

One of my favorite books is The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker.  I’ve gone through about five copies of it, or, more accurately, about five copies of it have gone through me.  I buy them, lend them and never see them again.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  (And if you have one of mine, give it back!) The basic message of the book is that we don’t listen to ourselves and we get ourselves into trouble because of it.  We talk about “hunches” or “feelings” when what we are really accessing is the information that our unconscious minds have gathered and are sending up to the conscious mind with a giant red “high importance” message flag on it.  However, because we cannot find the rational and conscious source of the feeling, we dismiss it, often to our peril.

For instance, you know how some women say that they knew they were going to marry some guy the first time they saw him?  Well, the first time I saw my son’s father, Clotille told me, “Chere (I told you: she’s Cajun), that boy is gone be important to you.”  See? Danger and I didn’t listen.  (Tall, blond and green-eyed.  I was a goner.)

Our eyes see everything.  Our ears hear it all.  Those of us without autism filter most of that extra stuff out, although the mind still registers it. Clotille knows and I have to listen to her when she tells me to eat mushrooms, to leave a certain place or to be wary of some guy … even if he is really cute.