Home is Where the Heart Is
Developing your intuitive skills at home
I remember the moment I realized I was pregnant with my third baby. We’d taken a family trip down to Tucson for the Labor Day weekend, and I brought along a box of tampons because I knew I was due to start my period any day. Four days of pool time, hiking, reading, and chasing my two boys across the hotel lawn meant I wasn’t really paying attention, and it wasn’t until I was packing our suitcases to leave when I realized I hadn’t opened my box of tampons.
“Huh,” I thought.
My husband and I were in a “we’re-not-trying-but-we’re-also-not-not-trying” phase, so pregnancy was definitely a possibility. During the drive home, it was all I could think about. And somewhere, looking out at the desert landscape with the cacti and scruffy bushes, I just knew. I was pregnant. Sure enough, next spring we brought home our baby girl.
This kind of quiet, personal knowing is what we’re talking about today: How the close relationships we forge at home offer constant opportunities to develop and trust our intuitive skills (including the difference between maternal instinct and intuition.) We’ll also explore the connection between intuition and emotional intelligence (a cornerstone of rebel leadership!), and we’ll talk about what happens when we trust a gut feeling…but we get it wrong.
How Close Relationships Sharpen Intuition
There’s something about being in close, daily relationships with other people that sharpens our intuitive senses in a way that we just don’t get in the workplace. When you live alongside someone over the years, you start to pick up on the tiniest cues: a shift in their breath, a slight change in their tone, the way they move their body when something’s not right. It’s not really magic, it’s deep attunement and subtle pattern recognition that can only develop through intimacy and continuous presence. Over time, this daily practice of tuning in deepens your ability to listen beyond words, and that intuitive muscle often expands into other areas of life too.
Maternal Instinct vs. Intuition (Without Falling Into the Trap)
Motherhood in particular offers a crash course in heightened intuition. When my youngest tells me in the morning that her tummy hurts, I can immediately tell if this is a “we need to find a bathroom ASAP” tummy hurt or a “something’s bothering me at school” tummy hurt. But let’s clarify something important here - the difference between maternal instinct and intuition.
Having studied motherhood and worked in maternal activism for years, I’ve seen how the concept of “maternal instinct,” the idea that women are biologically hardwired to nurture, has been used as a weapon. Here’s where I land: yes, I believe there’s a biological component (fellow feminists, stay with me.) The hormonal, neurological, and emotional shifts that happen during matresence (the period of pregnancy, birth, and early parenting) can absolutely heighten a mother’s sensitivity and responsiveness in powerful ways.
But we have to hold that truth carefully.
Historically, the idea of maternal instinct has been used to keep women in the domestic sphere, to undervalue caregiving labor, ignore women’s own needs, and shame those who don’t fit a narrow mold of “good motherhood.” That’s the trap.
So yes, I believe that many women DO experience a profound intuitive boost when they become mothers - not because women are biologically destined to nurture, or that all women should want to. It’s because of what I was talking about a moment ago - being in a deep relationship with another human fundamentally changes you. I don’t think it’s exclusive to mothers or women. Fathers, if given the time and cultural permission, can develop a paternal intuition. (And of course this isn’t limited to the heternormative nuclear family, but I don’t want to get too far off track!)
In short, your home is an excellent place to develop intuition because it is where you spend time in close, emotionally complex relationships with people you love. And part of what makes this intuition possible is your emotional intelligence.
The Link Between Emotional Intelligence and Intuition
Emotional intelligence and intuition are deeply connected. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage your own emotions, AND the ability to tune into the emotions of others. It’s what helps you read the room without anyone saying a word, to sense when someone needs support even if they insist they’re fine, or to adjust your approach mid-conversation because you can feel the energy shift.
In many ways, intuition is emotional intelligence operating at a subconscious level. It’s the brain and body picking up on emotional patterns before your rational mind catches on. While emotional intelligence gives you the skills to interpret emotional information, intuition gives you the sense before your rational mind catches up. They’re different expressions of the same ability to be attuned to yourself, to others, and to the unseen dynamics in any situation.
In fact, some researchers believe that people with higher emotional intelligence naturally develop stronger intuitive capacities, because they are more practiced at paying attention to emotional and relational cues. For leaders, this is important in managing interpersonal relationships, and making effective decisions.
What Happens When We Get It Wrong
But even when we’ve honed our intuitive skills to a high level, the reality is that sometimes we trust our intuition, act on it…and it turns out to be the wrong call. Intuition isn't magic. Just like we can make bad decisions with the “right” data, we can also make a bad decision by trusting a gut feeling.
Here’s the kicker: when we get it wrong based on data and it fails, we tend to give ourselves a pass - “Well, the numbers said it would work. The research pointed us this way.” We can externalize the mistake, put it on the tools we trusted. But when we make a decision based on intuition and it goes wrong? The shame feels more personal, because there’s nothing outside ourselves to blame. We internalize it and start to question our own judgment. We might even start telling ourselves that we can’t trust our hunches, that data is the only safe way forward.
But rebel leaders know that getting it wrong doesn’t mean your intuition failed. It means you’re human, and you were brave enough to lead from your whole self.
Here are a few things you can do next time you make a decision based on an intuitive hunch, and it turns out to be the wrong choice.
Resist the shame spiral. Remind yourself: data-driven decisions go wrong too. Mistakes don’t invalidate your intuition, they’re actually part of the learning curve.
Get curious, not judgmental. Ask: What was I sensing? What felt right in the moment? What might I have misread or overlooked? Approach it like a scientist of your own intuition. (Bonus points for this one, because it will help you identify intuitive hunches in the future!)
Practice repair and recalibration. If your decision affected others, take accountability with care. If it only affected you, take the lesson, and recommit to listening with even more clarity next time.
Intuition at home teaches us to listen closely: to ourselves, to those we love, and to the subtle rhythms of everyday life. It sharpens our emotional intelligence, builds our capacity for attunement, and reminds us that leadership starts in the spaces where we are most seen and most accountable.
But intuition doesn’t stop at the front door. In next week’s post we’ll wrap up this series on intuition with Intuition in the Community: how our inner knowing connects to collective wisdom, cultural memory, and social change. We’ll talk about what it means to lead from intuition in movements, in public spaces, and in solidarity with others - and how trusting our gut can be a powerful act of integrity and resistance.