I know the title may be throwing you. It’ll make sense once you hear this story. This is actually an episode about stranger angels and manifesting, health scares and synchronicity ...

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Automatic Intuition

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Synchronicity really never ceases to amaze me.

About a year ago, a year and a half ago, I listened to a really cool podcast about synchronicity on the Future Thinker’s podcast I believe it's called. I’m going to find the link for the show notes so you can go check that out. Because I’ve actually never heard a better, more practical, scientific explanation for the phenomenon of synchronicity, like what's actually happening in our brains, why we experience it the way that we do.

But even though I was comforted by the explanation of the scientist who had researched this and who had written a book and was being interviewed on the show, I still receive and process synchronicity through my Magical world view. It's really hard for me to not interpret synchronicity as some kind of message or sign, some way in which the Universe communicates with me or the Divine sort of leaves me these scavenger hunt clues.

I remember one time having a conversation with one of my really super non-New Age super Muggle friends, and we were talking about synchronicity and she commented on the fact that synchronicity is actually the one thing, the one kind of paranormal phenomenon that absolutely everyone experiences regardless of their believe system.

Ever since she said that, I've often wondered what agnostics and atheists have to say about synchronicity. I want to stop people on the street and interview them, but if you know someone, I'd love to have a conversation with them about it. Maybe we can get them on the show.

Alright so I'm going somewhere with the synchronicity thing, I promise.

I have recently had an injured foot, just to put it really simply. For six weeks, I was having pain in my foot. It started out, if you follow me online, if you are friends with me on Facebook, you will notice that about a month ago, I changed my Facebook profile. It's this pretty outdoor sunny leaves and light kind of background. It was shot in a park.

That actual day was the first day this season that I wore my chacos, which are the really heavy strappy sandals that a lot of people wear. It was the first kind of warmish day where I thought, you know what? I'm going to be walking around outside. My feet aren't going to be in the pictures. I'm just going to wear my chacos.

The strap cut into the tendon along the top of my foot, that runs to your big toe. I sort of stripped it out, felt like I bruised the tendon walking around taking pictures, and the pain just never went away.

So then I'm like, in my high intensity interval training class, pulling the medical people that I know in the class, we have a couple doctors, a few nurse practitioners, some nurses, and I keep asking them questions about it, showing them my foot. I was like, is it possible to just bruise this tendon where it just hurts for a long time? They were kind of like, really dude? We're going to do this middle of class?

Anyway, so it went on and on though, to the point where, about a month in, I was in the middle of class and we were doing some warm ups. We were skipping rope and you're really jumping up and down on your toes when you're skipping rope. I thought, you know what? I can't do this today. I've got to leave. It's really hurting that bad.

So it turns out that my trainer, the person who leads all these classes, my fitness instructor, had a stress fracture in her left foot about two years ago. Same thing. She had to wear this boot for 10 weeks and it just so happens that I am friends with her partner. We went to high school together so sometimes I'll do things with them socially outside the context of the fitness classes.

We went to see Rocket Man, the Elton John movie together. We were having cocktails afterwards. She was like, where have you been? I told her what was happening with my foot and she said, you know, I was really in denial about the fact that I actually had a stress fracture and I did not want it to be that. But you need to go and get it checked out because something's obviously wrong. Six weeks is way too long for something to just not get better. At all.

So she referred me to the person she'd seen and she talked me into going to see an orthopedist foot and ankle person. I was like, okay. I can't wander around possibly hurting myself worse. I need to go and just bite the bullet, deal with this. I'm getting ready to go on this trip to Dallas but maybe I can, like, wear the boot when I get back from my trip. It's been six weeks. What's seven?

So I go in there really expecting to have this stress fracture diagnosed, have to wear this boot on my foot for 10 weeks. I mean, that's just my mindset. I was prepared for that. So they did x-rays. Of course, a stress fracture's so small it actually isn't visible in an x-ray, so to diagnose the stress fracture, they use a tuning fork, which is really kind of amazing.

They hit the tuning fork on the desk, and then they hold the end of it up to all the different bones in your feet. You feel a vibration. It's not uncomfortable or anything like that, but if the bone is broken, basically you will scream and then that will be the diagnosis that yes, that one is broken.

So she did the tuning fork. She tested every spot on my foot you can imagine and nothing really set it off. So she talked to me a little bit more, had me describe what I was experiencing, where I was experiencing it when I do different types of motion and all this kind of stuff. She was like, okay, I know what's going on.

So then she whips out the x-rays and she shows me the spaces in between the joints on all my toes - all of my smaller toes versus the space in the joints of my big toe. She said, I was expecting you to complain about both your feet hurting. And I said, that's weird because I said to my mom, the weirdest thing is happening. I'm starting to experience a phantom pain in my right foot that perfectly mirrors the one in my left. And my mom said, maybe you're compensating for the pain in your left foot and you're putting more stress in your right foot. So not you're getting a weird thing in the right foot.

Turns out, I have the same condition in both of my big toes. I have arthritis. And if I hurt myself these days, like I did with the tendon, arthritis will set in to that spot and then it becomes inflamed and then it's like three months of pain, or even ongoing pain. So it's like those spots never really fully heal. They become something else. This has been happening on other parts of my body.

So, I will stew on things. I will over analyse. I will look for meaning where there may only be randomness. Because I’ve lived through some major health scares like having a stroke 16 years ago and anal cancer 10 years ago, I honestly can be a bit of a hypochondriac. And after having my foot diagnosis saying, you know what? You really just have arthritis... I almost felt embarrassed by how much I thought something horrible was going on.

Not that that's not bad and it might not be better over time, but it wasn't what I thought it was. I blew it up into this whole other thing in my head and I took the synchronicity of my trainer having the same spot in the same foot, having the same issue as just like a sign. Oh, well I have the same problem automatically. It's synchronicity.

Dr Julia, who’s an administrator in our Facebook community and she's a friend of mine. She's a cancer survivor herself which she speaks about openly — Julia, do we like that term "cancer survivor"? Have we talked about this? I’m using it because it’s common shorthand and people know what you mean when you say that, but I’m not sure that I like that term.

Anyway, if you've had cancer, you've come out the other side of it and you're still here, I guess you're a cancer survivor.

Anyway, we were talking about how once you have the big c, every little thing that happens, even if you're the most laid back zen person in the whole world, every little thing has this tiny whisper in the back of your mind, “Oh my god it’s back." Every freckle a skin cancer. Every stomach ache is some kind of horrible tumour in your gut.

And so I kind of now, because I KNOW that that phenomenon is taking place, and that I am a little bit of a hypocondriac because of it, I then try to over correct for that tendency by trying to be overly calm and rational and let's not go there.

So if I know something's wrong with me and I have a diagnosis for sure, like if you tell me, oh yeah, you need surgery, I'm like, let's do it tomorrow. I don't want to wait because I know that the only way out is through. So let's just get on with it.

But I do have this tendency to some wait. Maybe two weeks in, I have the thought, I probably need to get my foot x-rayed. But I thought, no, you're a hypochondriac. You're turning this into something it's not. It'll probably be fine. Let's wait and see.

So I do that a lot. And it's not about a fear. It's not a fear of having something wrong. It's a fear of looking like a dumbass because I've gone to the doctor yet again thinking that I need to have my foot amputated and really, it's like, yeah dude, you have a little bit of arthritis but it's not the end of the world.

So I'm actually kind of fearful of looking stupid because of my anxiety around health issues. Okay. That's another episode.

I just have to say this though:

And I do want to say, something that I want to get off my chest is... Don't say that to someone in the middle of chemo even if you believe it with all your heart that they've manifested their cancer. Please. For the love of God, do not say that to someone who has just been hit with a serious health diagnosis.

I’ve had plenty of people in the new age community do that. To me. Recently. And I've seen it done to others in front of me. And it really... Whether you believe that's true, whether or not it is true, you need to check why it is that you would communicate that to someone at that moment in that vulnerable space.

Like, what is it about you that needs to express that and be heard saying it? I guarantee you it's not helpful to the person who is in the midst of chemotherapy and radiation. That's not helpful for them to hear that. So just don't say it.

And check yourself about why you might want to say that. Say it to yourself.

Shit happens to people.

Some things are genetic.

Some things are shitty luck, and I just don’t go through life believing that you’re punished for having negative thoughts.

That’s some Old Testament shit in my opinion. That’s New Age echoes of religious fundamentalism.

No thank you. No! Not doing that.

But I digress with that soapbox.

Being intuitive isn’t as helpful as we’d like it to be when it's you. I even have some instances of some really cool medical intuition. I've had instances of medical intuition consistently around drug interactions and dosages. That seems to be the way in which my medical intuition will come through in a reading or just in interacting with someone.

Sometimes I get information about medications that people are on. It's not something I offer as a service, because it's not something that shows up 100% of the time when I do readings for people. But I'm just saying, like, I can have medical insights for other people, for clients. But when it's MY stuff, it's just... no... It's not helpful. It doesn't work like that. We wish it would.

Everybody spins out over their own personal life threatening shit.

Other intuitives can help you. By all means, if you want to get a reading with someone who might have some insight or thought for you, that can be very constructive. But you need messages from outside the vacuum of your own mind. Especially when it comes to something that you might have a tendency to overanalyze or stew over or be anxious over or be a hypochondriac over.

That stuff needs to be tested and mirrored outside yourself. And that experience happens with other people. So you need some partners. You need some participants, whether it's your mama, your best girl friend, your favourite tarot reader... Whatever.

One of the most powerful ways, the most real ways, that I believe with all my heart that your guides do come through for you, that your prayers do get answered is by putting real people in your paths in the real world who have the training, the knowledge, the wisdom, the tools and the medicine to make a difference.

Signs and patterns are tricky things. My trainer had a stress fracture same foot. She encouraged me. Because of that, to assume that that was what was going on with me. I overly identified with her illness. And then when I got the referral, and it was to the same PA she saw which, by the way, she recommended I go to someone but when I actually, you know the way it works, your doctor often says, okay we're going to get you a referral, and then that office will call you and someone who works the front desk will make an appointment for sometimes a whole group of doctors and physician assistants.

It just turned out that I randomly got assigned was the person that my trainer went to as well. And so, again, tha