Bookish Thursday - Prompt for the Book Have You Seen Him

Back on August 28 I posted my review of Have You Seen Him by Kimberly Lee. You can check it out here.

There is a new feature WOW-Women on Writing has introduced to the book review lineup - prompt responses! This a something new they have started recently and this is my second attempt.

My prompt - In the prologue, Olivia fails to follow her intuition, to her detriment. When have you followed your intuition, or chosen not to follow it?

Well...

I followed my intuition. Or rather, I listened to the 'cards' and changed my life.

For a bit of background...

Born in West Tennessee, my family moved just outside Dallas, Texas as I turned 9 and was entering the fourth grade. And I hated it from day one!

I remember being sick to my stomach almost every day at school. We did go back to visit family a couple times a year, loading up the station wagon and driving the 600 miles back 'home'. I had it all planned out. I was going to go to Union University (at that time just across the street from my grandparents and work at the greenhouses of a distant relative in town.

Needless to say, none of that happened.

Instead, I left college (hated business classes) and was lucky enough to hire onto American Airlines when they moved from NYC. First, I worked at headquarters and then after about 6 years moved over to reservations. I got married and quickly realized that was an error in judgement. 

My soon-to-be-ex and I were going through the motions of getting the house we had bought together into his name so we could split. It was amicable - or fairly so. After all, he was still in love with his high school girlfriend. 

A few weeks later, I went and had my tarot cards read. I didn't say anything to the person who was doing the reading. I just wanted to see what she had to say.

She talked about seeing me living in a house with the mountains on one side and water to the front of me. That didn't make any sense at the time.

Then American announced they were opening an office in North Carolina. I even went with 5 other people on a day trip to Raleigh to check out the area. They were planning on transferring. I was still trying to figure out what to do with my marriage and life in general. 

As we drove back to the airport that day, standing beside the road on the exit ramp to the airport, were several deer. Don't see that in Dallas! I realized the whole day I felt like I was 'home' and the drive back to the airport felt like I was leaving home. 

Thinking about the issues of moving 1500 miles away from my immediate family, the whole ordeal of making such a big move on my own seemed impossible. Thinking about the situation I realized a few things -

• My parents had done the same thing - moving away from family to a different state
• Mountains at my back, water in front of me - couldn't be a better description of North Carolina - Smokey Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean!

Out of the 6 of us, I was the one who made the move!

Another marriage and divorce, but two lovely daughters later, I don't regret my years in North Carolina in the least. The only other place I have been to, Montana, comes close to being 'home'. Of course, Montana - Rocky Mountains and the Missouri River - I could live there too.