Renee Mustered: Learning to Trust Your Intuition After Loss
Renee Mustered turned an unbearable loss into a way to help others hear their own inner voice again.
Some of life’s biggest decisions show up with no warning. A diagnosis. A sudden loss. The end of a marriage. One phone call and the world you knew stops making sense. The logic you’ve always leaned on stops being enough, and you’re left asking a harder question. How do you trust yourself again when nothing feels certain? Many people wrestle with that question. According to the World Health Organization’s fact sheet on depression, roughly 332 million people worldwide live with the condition, and the risk climbs sharply after major loss or a traumatic event.
One of the hardest parts of grief is figuring out which voice in your head to listen to. Fear is loud. It shows up fast, imagines the worst and demands you do something about it right now. Intuition works differently. It doesn’t shout or rush you. It waits, quietly, until there is enough stillness for you to hear it.
Renee Mustered, founder of Vilomah, learned that difference the hard way. After her son died following a motorcycle accident, she spent months at his side in the hospital before facing a grief that disrupted her days. Panic attacks. Anxiety that never fully let go. A life that used to move constantly shrank to the point where leaving the house felt like a task too big to manage.
She searched for a way to make sense of what happened. What she discovered is that healing doesn’t move in a straight line. It asked her to slow down enough to notice that the fearful voice in her head wasn’t the only one. Beneath it was something quieter, a steady sense of knowing that pointed her toward healing.
That experience eventually became part of the reason Mustered created Vilomah, reflecting what she had learned about the isolation and uncertainty that can accompany grief. The app grew out of her own experience and her desire to explore how people might feel more connected as they navigate loss.
Fear is loud, but intuition is quiet
Trauma tends to put your nervous system on edge. Uncertainty can start to feel like danger, even when nothing is actually wrong. The American Psychological Association often points to this as one of the ways trauma lingers after the event itself. The anxiety pushes you toward avoidance, always scanning for the next threat while intuition feels more settled, even when it’s steering you toward a hard choice. Telling the two apart takes time and patience with yourself, which is often the harder part.
A lot of that difficulty comes down to what each one asks of you. Fear wants guarantees before you move an inch. Intuition rarely offers guarantees. It simply points to the next honest step, even when you can’t see the whole staircase.
Small moments rebuild trust
For most people, trust doesn’t come back through some big breakthrough. It comes back in pieces, often in ways that seem too small to mention.
Sometimes it’s just getting through another day. Sometimes it’s a conversation that lands at the right moment, or a coincidence that offers a bit of comfort you weren’t expecting. As those small moments accumulate, many people find their perspective begins to shift. Early on, the question tends to be “Why is this happening to me?” Later, a different question may surface: “What can I learn from this?” That shift doesn’t make the pain smaller or excuse what happened. It just leaves room for healing and purpose to sit next to the pain instead of somewhere far away from it.
Mustered has talked about finding strength this way, not because life got easier, but because she learned to hold both the broken parts and the hopeful ones at once. Looking back, moments that made no sense at the time eventually offered her something to learn from, even if it took years. Not every hard season explains itself right away. Staying open to what it might teach you can still change how you move through it.
The present moment matters most
One thing that tends to surface after a person goes through something this hard is how much the present moment matters. When you’re staring down months of uncertainty, the future can feel like too much to hold. Fixating on what you can’t control usually makes anxiety worse, not better. Coming back to today, one conversation, one walk or one breath at a time can make the journey more manageable.
Patience turns out to be its own kind of teacher. Most people expect healing to move fast, then feel discouraged when difficult emotions return. Recovery rarely runs on a straight track. Some days feel lighter. Others reopen old wounds. Accepting that rhythm helps you stop treating a hard day as a step backward and start seeing it as part of the process.
Staying present can also help you notice small pockets of peace you might otherwise miss along the way. Rather than waiting for life to look the way it used to, some people find they can begin healing by paying closer attention to the life in front of them.
The brain can learn hope
Growing research in neuroscience points to another habit worth cultivating: intentionally paying attention to good moments. This isn’t about pretending things are fine when they’re not. It has more to do with neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to adjust based on what you focus on and repeat over time.
Research from the National Institutes of Health highlights how regularly expressing gratitude, noticing small wins or acknowledging moments of kindness may gradually shift attention away from constant vigilance and toward a greater sense of possibility. One way to reinforce that pattern is through simple, intentional habits.
For example, using a gratitude journal, listing moments that went well or reflecting on something peaceful can help train your attention over time. Visualization can help too. Something as simple as building a vision board or picturing a future goal can open up a sense of possibility outside your current situation.
The language you use with yourself matters just as much. Repeated thoughts tend to form beliefs, and beliefs drive what you do next. Swapping self-defeating thoughts for more realistic, steadier ones won’t fix everything overnight, but it can change how you approach the next hard thing that comes your way.
Resilience grows one choice at a time
Mustered also talks about taking ownership of what comes next, even after a loss no one would choose. Nobody gets to pick their tragedy, but over time, many people can choose how they respond to it, even if that process is gradual and requires support. Research backs this up.
A 2024 study of 625 adults who had lived through disasters found that resilience was associated with lower levels of post-traumatic stress and depression, suggesting that emotional recovery can be strengthened over time. In practice, that often begins with small, manageable choices, such as asking for support, staying present, noticing moments of gratitude or simply choosing to keep going one more day.
Intuition was never about protecting what happens next or dodging every hard thing life throws at you. It’s about cultivating enough calm within yourself to recognize what feels right, even when the road ahead remains uncertain.
Life keeps handing people moments that make no sense at the time. Some of them won’t make sense for years. But learning to quiet the noise, stay grounded and trust that the next small step can help you find your way back to an inner compass that holds steady, even when everything around you doesn’t.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, please consult a medical professional or healthcare provider.
