Before You Can Listen

​“If you don’t feel it, you don’t listen.”

I heard that once at a conference, and it stuck.
Not in the moment—but later.
Once I actually started feeling.

It speaks to a truth I’m only just beginning to understand:
We can’t fully take in the hard stuff unless we let ourselves emotionally connect to it.
And that means feeling it.

According to research, emotional intelligence—our ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions—shapes how we listen, how we process, and how we change. Without that emotional connection, truth just... skims the surface.

And truthfully?
I’m a professional surface-skimmer.

There’s never been a time in my life when I wasn’t busy.
High school? A blur of sports and activities.
College? Working every spare minute to make it work.
Then came the career—first a teacher, then an administrator.
And somewhere in between, the family: marriage, a dog, and now—soon-to-be four kids.

It never stopped. I never stopped.
I just kept moving, chasing, achieving, stretching…
Trying to become the next version of what I thought I was supposed to be.

And when the signs showed up?
The quiet nudges. The heaviness. The sense that something was off?
I called it growing pains.
I brushed it off as temporary.
I told myself I was fine.
That I could handle it.
That I always did.

I didn’t know how to slow down.
And worse—I didn’t think I was allowed to.

So I pushed through.
Until the wall came.

It wasn’t sudden. Not really.
But when it hit, it was the first time things got quiet enough for me to actually feel what I had been running from.
And in that stillness, I finally heard what had been whispering to me all along.

Now?
Now I’m learning to sit with it.
To feel.
To listen.
To slow down—on purpose this time.

I’ve been using the Noticing the Moments in Between journal to check in with myself, to name what’s stirring beneath the surface, and to hold space for whatever shows up.
Not the noise around me.
But the quiet truth within.

And here's what I’m realizing:
That hum of misalignment?
It was there long before the crash.
I just didn’t know how to honor it.

But now I do.
And I’m beginning to believe that slowing down isn’t weakness—it’s wisdom.
It’s the beginning of something new.

So if you’ve felt it too—that low hum, that subtle ache, that sense that something isn’t quite right--
Maybe the wall isn’t the end.
Maybe it’s the invitation you didn’t know you needed.

What might you hear, if you gave yourself the space to listen?