I was away for the weekend, looking for some peace and quiet to work on my second novel about a group of women struggling with midlife anxiety. Stuck at a certain point in my design, I went for a walk in the woods, wearing earphones, hoping inspiration would strike. I listened to an episode of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday podcast where she interviews her best friend, Gayle King.
I stopped in my tracks when they started discussing the very thing I was writing about – a woman’s intuition that something in her life isn’t quite right. King spoke of coming home one day to find her husband with another woman. When she said she had no idea, Winfrey challenged her – did she really have no idea? They then discussed how, looking back, there is always a “whispering moment.” The question is, why didn’t we listen?
This was exactly what I wrote about and the theme of my novel became clear. These whispers — especially the ones you don’t want to have — are an experience that resonates with many women I know, whether it’s our marriage, kids, career, or health.
Mother-of-two Wendy Thomas was weeks away from her 40th birthday when she went to the doctor with concerns about her right breast. The radiologist told her she was fine, but during her scan they accidentally found something in her left breast that turned out to be cancer.
“To this day,” says Thomas, “I still don’t know why I listened to my intuition; to understand that something was not right in my body. But I’ve learned never to ignore that feeling again, because it saved my life.’
Clinical psychologist and consultant Dr. Kristine Laderoute, who works in Toronto, Canada, thinks this is good advice. Stock image used
However, is there any scientific evidence to support this idea of intuitive knowing? My sister, one of the most rational people I know, is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies the relationship between the brain and behavior. I asked her if the whispers had a neurological basis.
“Well, yes,” she said. ‘That ‘intuitive knowing’ has a source. There are pathways in the brain that take in information that we are not aware of at all. This can bias the predictions we make about the world around us, and is what can create the feeling of an intuition.”
I had my own lesson in listening to the whispers after my first child was born. To me, the first days of his life seemed uncomfortable, even with pain. Something wasn’t right. But more experienced people said: that’s how babies are. He’s gassy. Don’t be so nervous. I had convinced myself: what do I know? At his next doctor’s visit, I couldn’t believe how low his weight was. “Are you sure the scale isn’t broken?” I’ve asked several times. The nurse assured me not. My son was rushed to Children’s Hospital where he was diagnosed with sepsis and soon after a chronic illness. I had known – of course I had known. But I had questioned myself and my intuition. I will always wonder if we could have avoided the magnitude of his illness if I had insisted something was wrong.
I’m now past 40 and I can’t help but be fascinated by women’s lives at this stage where we’ve settled into the big decisions we’ve made about the kind of life we want. We must feel secure and satisfied. But do we? Some women can’t find the satisfaction they expected and instead feel a deep sense of regret in the middle of their lives.
This is often when the whispers first emerge, and when they are most disturbing. A friend of mine is a therapist with a thriving practice and often helps women who are trying to explain why they feel so unhappy or unfulfilled. This therapist friend could empathize deeply with her clients — she spent most of her time feeling the same way. She suspected her marriage had something to do with it, but there was always a reason not to listen to this sentiment: she and her husband had been together for 15 years; they had two children together; they had just finished a renovation of their house.
“The whispers told me, ‘You’re not happy — this isn’t right,'” she says. “But because I’m a therapist and was raised to believe that you stick with a marriage through tough times, I took these whispers to mean that we should go to couples counseling and work hard.”
They did, and life rolled on—until one day it came to a painful screeching halt. Her husband left her and, as with Winfrey’s friend King, my friend felt blindsided.
“I later learned that he had led a double life for years while I was busy with our children. The whisper told me to get out, but I didn’t want to hear it. I probably wouldn’t have gotten out if he hadn’t left. Now I’m working on learning to trust my gut and teaching clients how to do the same.’
IT’S A MORE PRIMITIVE BUT WISER PART OF US THAT INSTINCTIVELY KNOWS WHAT IS TRUE
Clinical psychologist and consultant Dr. Kristine Laderoute, based in Toronto, Canada, believes this is sound advice: “Think of whispers as the more primitive but wiser part of us that instinctively knows what is most true for us; the part free from societal expectations, unashamedly connected to what we need.’
The whispers can be scary and disturbing. Stubbornly.
Not every woman can act on them, even if they hear them loud and clear. In a recent UK survey by YouGov, one in three women with a partner said they would struggle financially (or not make it at all) if they broke up tomorrow. Listening to the whispers is not a privilege that everyone can indulge in.
In my new novel, The Whispers, the main character knows that her marriage is no longer good for her, and maybe it never will be. But she has no salary or bank account. Secretly, one afternoon, she examines with beating heart a one-bedroom rental apartment that would be just about affordable. She stands in the empty room and tries to imagine living there, when she only has her daughter some of the time; the furniture that could fit.
But it all feels too far from the life she’s diligently created for a decade. She goes home, hides the brochure list and tells her husband that she has been shopping. Her heart sinks; she has silenced the whispers again.
“If we ignore or go against the rumours, we usually feel regret or head towards a crisis,” says Laderoute. “But if we learn to listen to it, we can live from a place of clarity and find greater peace with our choices and within ourselves.”
And isn’t this what we all strive for? As we often say to our children, you probably already know the answer to the question you’re asking. We just have to trust ourselves enough to muffle the noise and finally listen.
The Whispers by Ashley Audrain is published by Michael Joseph, £14.99*
*TO ORDER A COPY FOR £12.74 UNTIL 3 SEPTEMBER, VISIT MAILSHOP.CO.UK/BOOKS OR CALL 020 3176 2937. FREE UK DELIVERY ON ORDERS OVER £25.
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