The title might stick, it’s currently: why?
Because why not?

Yesterday was a fun day. My brain behaved, always good when that happens.
Something to consider in an LEO setting … intuition, experience, and training.
Keep that in mind, for a second or two.

Ellie Conway is the main character of my Byte Series. She has intuition, experience, and a tonne of training.
She spent a long time not believing her own gut. But she was always right. And it became a joke within the team. Her team would follow her to the end of the earth on her gut feeling or intuition and one of them would say she was right because she was. She was always sure that one day she’d be wrong. (“It’s not today.” was a common reaction from one of her team.)
How did that help her do her job? In so many ways. She could feel/see the hidden picture. She could reach out beyond the crime scene in front of her and follow the actions that put everything in motion. She had the ability to become part of the scene and use that to bring other things into focus. Things not seen on the surface. Things that the men in her team couldn’t/wouldn’t tune into.

Think of it like walking into a house you’ve never been to before. You pause in the threshold and let the house speak. What do you feel? Is that house a good place to be? You know if it is or isn’t. I’ve walked into houses and straight away looked for an out. I had to know there was another exit, just in case. When that happens I leave pretty quickly. Amazing how quickly you remember a forgotten appointment in those situations.
Now I wouldn’t walk in, because I know.
I’d been minding my own business walking down a familiar street when I turned around and went back, because? I don’t know but the sense of danger was overwhelming and it’s not worth discounting that. It’s okay to turn around and go a different way to your destination. When I do that, the “Warning Will Robinson” thing stops.

You can have “mother’s intuition”, right? No one questions it.
And as a mother, I know it’s true. You know when something is off. You know when something bad is happening when other people don’t. (That includes the medical profession.) And you fight for the kid with everything in you.
You also know when a kid is lying and it’s up to you to either call them on it or let it ride or just let them know you know. That’s a judgment call. (Depending on the situation.)
If you’re not a parent what do you have? Gut feeling. Intuition, Weird 6th sense.
All valid. All of them. Sometimes, that’s your brain telling you to pay attention to your surroundings.
Don’t discount it. Look up. Put that phone in your pocket. Pay attention!

Yesterday my BFF told me that when she doing her Podiatry training that they were told women would tell you what was wrong and then tell you how they determined that was the case and sometimes they’d have the conclusion without any apparent reasoning to get to it.
Men will tell all the steps that they went through and then say what the problem is.

The point of this post?
Not 100% sure, except that Ellie’s intuition and all the times she thought she was losing her mind or turning into her mother, were her brain creating ways for her to see the truth that was more palatable than just a “gut feeling”. She’d always been good at reading situations and people, that’s what made her so good at her job. But, as that progressed she was reluctant to share the way she came to conclusions or that music spoke to her or that she could see Chance and he talked to her in special comic book settings. Why could she see that? Because if someone else told her (even if they didn’t exist) what she already knew it was easier for her. If she could share what she believed happened with someone then it made more sense. Even if that someone was a construct of her mind.
Before Chance came on the scene she used to see and talk to her dead husband and she didn’t much like it. But that, and the anger she felt toward him was how Ellie processed grief. She shot the “ghost” in the head in her living room. (If that didn’t make her feel completely insane nothing would!)

I think what I’m saying here is don’t discount how you feel about a situation or a person. Your brain knows more than you know. Especially if you’ve got a few years of living under your belt. 🙂

Here’s a link to the wonderful chat I had with Pete Turner yesterday.