Girl, Stop Apologizing for Being “Woo”
We are disempowering ourselves as women by diminishing our spiritual practice
Recently I had a dream where I was burned at the stake. No joke. I was wearing an old-fashioned bonnet and flames surrounded me. It was the most vivid dream I’ve ever had. I smelled the smoke. I felt the heat of the encroaching fire.
I looked over and a friend of mine — a real-life girlfriend but in this dream also wearing an old-fashioned bonnet—was at a nearby stake and set afire. Then I started to burn.
I woke up and thought, maybe past lives are a real thing. The dream was just too visceral. Maybe my friend and I were once burned at the stake.
Or, maybe I was processing intergenerational trauma that we women have locked in our DNA: a deep cellular memory of being killed for our spiritual beliefs, our healing abilities, our intuition, our connection to nature. That is, being burned alive for being “witches.”
“Woo” or “woo-woo” is not a word used to honor spirituality. It is a word used derogatorily.
In all dictionary definitions I’ve read of “woo-woo” there’s mention of at least one of the following: science, evidence, logic, or rational thought. As in, what is woo-woo lacks that.
In today’s mainstream cynicism-criticism of women in the wellness space (hello, Gwyneth), “anti-science” or “science denialist” are charges leveled. Or worse.
You can be spiritual and believe in science. Both/and, you dummies.
Seeing mainstream media, and social media, slander or mock spiritual women is enough to put the fear of the witch hunt in us.
And I don’t mean the fear of a proverbial “witch hunt” — as a term co-opted by male politicians — but a subconscious, real survival fear epigenetically inherited from actual witch hunts that occurred from the 13th to 17th century.
I’ve witnessed myself and other women share their spiritual beliefs or practices publicly, or with family and friends, and then immediately tag on a non-threatening “I’m woo like that,” or “into woo-woo.”
A few weeks ago, I told my mom I’ve been seeing a hawk every day, which is a strange occurrence in our city. She replied, “Whenever that happens I always wonder what it means…” but then cut herself off as being “into woo-hoo.”
Nowadays, when I hear that self-denigration or self-dismissiveness of one’s actual beliefs I also hear the subtext: “Please don’t kill me.”
Part of the problem stems from not knowing our history. And by history, I mean our pre-history when goddess worship was the norm and not the fringe.
In The Chalice & the Blade, cultural historian Riane Eisler writes about how in Paleolithic and Neolithic times the feminine, or the Great Goddess, was worshipped widespread as divine for her life-giving powers. Gynocentric images dominated art and religious objects. Nature too.
Most importantly, women and men were equal in what Eisler calls non-hierarchical “partnership” societies. There were no images of warfare.
If the feminine was valued again, if true equality was reached, I don’t think women would be apologizing for being woo-woo.
At the start of this piece, I linked an evidence-backed article so that my opinions would look more credible to you, my reader. I’ve fallen victim to the trend of using science, evidence, logic, and rational thought to legitimize what is by definition not those things.
Spiritual truths are different from scientific truths.
Yet meditation didn’t reach mainstream acceptance in the West until there was scientific research showing its health benefits. Before that, you were a kook or a hippie for meditating.
Nowadays you download an app to meditate because your doctor said you need to reduce your stress.
But that’s not what meditation was originally for; it was for spiritual enlightenment.
Perhaps we can use it for both: to lower our cortisol levels and to experience unity consciousness. Both are urgently needed right now.
The mainstream media has largely dumbed down our thinking into polarity thinking: us versus them, science versus spirituality, and other false dichotomies.
Science and spirituality don’t need to be conflated but both need to be valued. Like the human organism needs both the left and right hemispheres of the brain to function.
Just as the feminine values—of life, nurturing, and connection to nature—need to rise again for us to survive as a species and a planet.
I hope my biology even deeper down than the flames houses a memory of that peaceful, equalitarian time. Of its possibility.
The real-life friend in my burning-at-the-stake dream is also my most unspiritual friend. She has poked fun of my spirituality and in turn, I have downplayed it or made fun of myself.
After this dream, I felt less mad at her and at myself for it. Instead, I wondered if she has disowned a spiritual part of herself, and is cynical of mine, because in her DNA she too has a memory of us burning together.
I started wondering this of many women. Especially women who tear down women in the spiritual or wellness space. (But who wouldn’t, I imagine, eviscerate someone for having Jewish or Muslim beliefs.)
Now together again in this lifetime, my friend’s path and mine have diverged. Mine has led me away from secular feminism and into the embrace of the divine feminine.
I value my intuition and inner vision as much as my intellect. Both/and.
I’ve also stopped apologizing for being woo. And no longer use the word.
