Love Is... Long Distance (Part 2): The Calgary End of the Story
I left you at the airport.
That's where Part 1 of this story ended — a real-life long-distance love that began across continents, built on a strange and specific set of circumstances that made no logical sense on paper. This is Part 2. This is the nitty gritty:
the final struggles, the flight itself, and what it actually took to follow intuition all the way home.
The Airport, and Everything That Almost Fell Apart Before It
Here's something nobody tells you about following your intuition all the way to a departure gate: the closer you get, the louder the doubt gets too. Not the intuition itself — the doubt. For a while, the two are nearly impossible to tell apart.
I won't pretend the lead-up was easy. There were logistical obstacles, last-minute complications, (the retrieval of gas canisters) moments that genuinely felt like the universe testing whether I meant it (hello visas and C*Vid paperwork). And underneath all of that stress, there was something else — quieter, steadier, unmoved by any of it. My gut. My nervous system. Simply certain, even while the rest of me was panicking.
Shared Panic Attacks at 30,000 Feet
Then came the flight.
I'd love to tell you it was a serene, cinematic moment of clarity in a window seat. It wasn't. There were panic attacks — plural. Mine, and, remarkably, one of my closest friends living in Calgary, at the same time, without either of us knowing (is this quantum entanglement? Love some casual emotional physics).
It wasn't peaceful — it was my body registering "this is enormous". I knew what I was up to and could breathe through it, the knowing that the universe has my back. And even mid-panic, the knowing didn't move. That's the part worth sitting with: intuition isn't the absence of fear. It's the thing that stays steady underneath the fear, the whole way through.
The Calgary End of the Story
Here's what I didn't fully understand until recently: Calgary wasn't just where this relationship happened to end up. Calgary had been calling me back, year after year, long before I understood why.
There's a version of intuition that's quiet and internal — a feeling in the body. This is what I felt when I first saw Ian's photo. And there's a bigger version — a pull toward a specific place, a patch of earth that keeps tugging at you for reasons you can't fully explain. This city held my heart in more ways than I realized. Full of energy, genuinely — Calgary was a magnet, drawing me home long before I knew what "home" was actually going to mean.
What Intuition Actually Feels Like
So here's what this whole story is really about, underneath the airports and the flights and the shared panic attacks: an unwavering knowing in the gut and nervous system. The kind that doesn't disappear even when the logistics say it should be too hard, too risky, too far.
That's not a mystery. That's information — energy, moving through the body, telling you something true before your mind has finished arguing about it. This entire journey was me slowly learning to stop overriding that.
The Invitation
Maybe you've got your own version of an airport gate right now — a decision that terrifies you and also feels completely certain, both at once. That contradiction isn't a sign to stop. It might be the clearest sign you'll get.
Your intuition is a skill, not a mystery — and it can be taught. If this story made you curious about your own inner nudges, I'd love to work on it with you.
Hx
Book a session at Ember 'n Echo and start learning the language your body's already speaking.
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Tending the ember, honouring the echo.
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