My grandmother came to visit me today, and it was the most comforting feeling I’ve had in a long time.
My grandmother passed away when I was in college. Her death was sudden and unexpected. For me, it was profoundly painful and sad. She died well before her time, just as I was getting to know her as an adult.
There is so much I loved about my grandmother. She was a meticulous dresser. Her dining room table was always set with the best china, even if we were eating cold cuts on rolls. I credit her for my love of Marie Calendar salad dressing, bread and butter pickles, and using a vegetable peeler to shave pieces of carrots into a salad. She lovingly made clothes for my Cabbage Patch kids, bedding for my doll house furniture, and barrettes in my favorite colors – pink and mauve.
My grandmother had her quirks. She hated air conditioning. She’d always bring a sweater into the grocery store because she despised getting stuck chatting with someone in the freezer aisle. She also had an unexpected sense of humor. When I’d complain, she’d mimic playing a tiny violin.
In her own way, she believed in the #Woo. She read tea leaves, and she would often have nightmares the night before something bad happened.
And today, she came to visit me while my meditation teacher was guiding us through a loving-kindness meditation.
“Picture someone you know, who you love, and who loves you back, and the love between the two of you is uncomplicated,” my teacher instructed us.
Immediately my grandmother appeared.
“No,” I thought. “I can’t picture Grandma. She’s not here anymore.”
But she was very clearly right there.
As we proceeded with the loving-kindness meditation, my grandmother’s presence grew stronger. She was radiant, dressed in the bright yellow belted dress that she wore to my high school graduation. I could feel warmth emanating from her, with a ray of light glinting off her belt buckle.
Suddenly, I could smell her scent, the one that was always so recognizable when she was around. A mix of perfume and makeup and, well, my Grandma. Then, I could feel the smoothness of her skin, the softness of her cheeks. And I drank in her bright, joyful smile.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. My grandmother knew I needed her and there she was — a reminder that in this vast and wild universe, we are all connected, love knows no bounds, and we have support even from those who we think may have “left” us many years ago.
My husband is an fantastic daydreamer. If daydreaming were a job, he’d be the CEO of Day Dreamers, Inc. He is constantly daydreaming, no matter how grand or big or outlandish the dream is.
These are adventures we’ve enjoyed because of my husband’s unrelenting daydreaming: Chased the northern lights in Norway. Spent our 10th anniversary in the Maldives. Skied from Switzerland into Italy to enjoy a leisurely Italian lunch. Sipped champagne in Champagne. Watched the 2017 total eclipse in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
It’s all because he dreamed of these adventures, believed they could happen, and he made it so.
Daydreaming has never come naturally to me. I grew up with parents who were firmly rooted in reality, and my default mode is always, we can’t. My husband’s default is always, how can we?
This rooted-in-reality mindset can make the #Woo challenging. So many teaches of the #Woo preach the virtues of daydreaming. It raises your vibe! It makes your dreams feel like reality! It helps you stay on the path to achieving your goals!
So, why do I shrug it off? Why do I ignore my 4 pm reminder day in and day out?
Because I tell myself I’m too busy, I’m in the middle of something, or I’ll do it later. Because I have trouble translating my goals into a vivid, uplifting, lifelike daydream. And because I’m worried that at the end of the day I’ll fail and I’ll never reach my dreams.
Then I remember my husband. If it weren’t for him, I would have never seen the power of real daydreaming, or understood how switching my mindset from “we can’t” to “how can we?” absolutely changes everything.
Perhaps he is my reminder from the #Woo that there really is power in daydreaming and that it’s time to get serious and stop swiping left on my daily daydreaming alert.
Like most of you, I am in a daze reflecting on the spread of coronavirus, and how much my life has changed in one short week. I am sheltering in place, having loaded up my fridge, freezer, and pantry with food, and my laundry room with detergent, wipes, and soap.
A week ago, we laughed at sheltering in place. This week we know sheltering in place is a stark reality that could last for months.
Where is the Woo in all of this? For me, it is everywhere.
To start, I’ve been craving down time for years. Four years in fact. The past four years have been difficult ones for my family and me as we’ve faced major illnesses, multiple deaths, and unexpected diagnoses. It’s left me drained, especially when I am continually commuting between the East Coast and the West Coast to tend to family needs.
“When will it stop?” I kept asking the Universe as I was repeatedly pulled away from my daily life.
Now, suddenly, in a way no one could have imagined, it is stopping. For the first time in four years, I have no travel plans, no bags I need to pack, no jet lag to adjust to, no rental cars to book.
I am just here.
The result is that my mind is relaxing, releasing, and opening up. Story ideas are flowing to me in ways they haven’t for years. My concentration is rising. I am more productive than I’ve been in months. My meditations are deepening. I feel newly alive and more connected to the earth.
I also feel so much joy for the earth, and what it means for the planet when we keep our cars in the garage and our airplanes on the ground. Will the earth get the break it so desperately needs? Will our patterns of consumption change after spending perhaps months at home, away from stores? Will we think twice about commuting in the same way once our offices reopen? Will we have more flexibility to work from home?
But I also feel sorrow. So much sadness for those who have abruptly lost their jobs and been told to go home, their services no longer needed. Waiters and waitresses and bartenders and baristas and flight attendants and mechanics and retail workers and drivers.
Just like that. No warning. Overnight.
Millions are losing their jobs as shelters-in-place have shut business after business after business. I feel pain for my town of Napa, which thrives on tourism and welcoming others to our city. We have survived drought and fires and rolling blackouts. Now, our livelihood is being snuffed out by a virus that has not yet made itself known in our town.
And I feel so thankful that the Woo brought Jennifer Pastiloff into my life just 10 days ago. As I read her book, she is teaching me that it is possible to feel two things at once. That I can feel joy and sorrow about this virus. That I can be relieved and worried at what is happening. That this situation is good and bad. Life, Jennifer says, is not either/or.
Instead, I’m understanding that we are complicated beings, with complicated feelings, and the coronavirus is the most complicated event I’ve faced in my lifetime. To confront it, I will need to live in the and instead of the either/or.
See, for the past four years, I’ve tried to minimize my exposure to the news to keep myself sane and my depression in check. What is happening politically in our country is distressing, and what is happening globally to our climate is devastating. Sometimes, it’s too much for my heart to hold.
But over the weekend, I broke this minimal-news pact. Knowing I needed to cast my ballot in my state’s presidential primary, I read one distressing political story after another distressing political story.
One of my coping techniques when I’m faced with overwhelm, as I was over the weekend, is mindfulness and meditation. But Monday morning, my mind was having none of it. Instead of sitting quietly and mindfully breathing in and out, panic over casting my ballot coursed through my body.
While delusion and not true, I felt the fate of the world rested on my vote.
In the way of The Woo, Renkl’s description of the despair she was feeling read as if she was reading my mind:
Paying attention to what is happening in Washington is a form of self-torment so reality altering that it should be regulated as a Schedule IV drug. I pay attention because that’s what responsible people do, but I sometimes wonder how much longer I can continue to follow the national news and not descend into a kind of despair that might as well be called madness. Already there are days when I’m one click away from becoming Lear on the heath, raging into the storm. There are days when it feels like the apocalypse is already here.
“Yes,” I wanted to shout as I read this passage, “So much yes to all of this!”
But Renkl didn’t wallow in despair. She offered the advice that my racing mind and jittery heart needed to hear:
Instead of giving up something for Lent, I’m planning to make a heartfelt offering. In times like these, it makes more sense to seek out daily causes for praise than daily reminders of lack. So here is my resolution: to find as many ordinary miracles as a waterlogged winter can put forth, as many resurrections as an eerily early springtime will allow. Tiny beautiful things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world, and I am going to keep looking every single day until I find one.
As I finished her article, I noticed my heart rate slowing, my panic subsiding. Instead of feeling frozen by overwhelm, I now have an action item that fits perfectly in The Land of Woo. I am dedicating myself to finding and acknowledging the ordinary miracles I experience every day — like the miracle of Renkl’s article landing in my Facebook feed at the exact moment I needed it.
2020 is my year of non-striving: doing less, being more. But I am still very easily pulled into my default striving mode, especially when I get excited about a topic, I read about some successful woman and feel like that’s who I “should” be … or it’s really late at night, and I somehow find myself on the 40daywholehealthchallenge.com webpage and then bam! I’ve suddenly signed myself up for Lissa Rankin’s 40 Day Whole Health Challenge.
Oh, and, by the way, the challenge starts the next day cause it’s an online class, and I didn’t read all the details before I jumped right in. I guess there’s no time like the present! So, here I am! I am six days into the 40 Day Whole Health Challenge!
But signing up for this class didn’t come entirely out of nowhere.
I’m excited, nervous, and curious for this class. I am super happy to be exploring The Woo in a structured environment.
I like having teachers, and steps to follow, and a path laid clear for me – helping me understand how I’ll get from point A to point B.
I like that during the class, Lissa will walk us through her 6 steps of healing.
And since I paid for the course, I know I’ll take it seriously and dedicate time to understanding and exploring the content.
The thing is that, as I explore The Woo, I oscillate between believing 100% that I can cure myself … to believing this is all crazy and I’m being taken for a ride. Is my mind really that powerful? Can I really believe my way to better health? Can my mind heal what western medicine cannot?
I honestly don’t know. But what I like about Dr. Joe and Lissa Rankin is that they come at these questions from a scientific research and medical background. They are using that knowledge to explore how the mind can make the body sick — and how the mind can make the body well.
I have no idea what I’ll get out of this 40-day challenge. Right now, the biggest goal I have is pursuing Step 1 of this 6 step journey: Believing that healing is possible.
I knew when I started #WooWooWednesdays that I was committing myself to writing once a week about how The Woo is showing up in my life. I expected these events to be HUGE and AMAZING and LIFE CHANGING. After all, this is The Woo we’re talking about.
What I’ve realized is that the way The Woo shows up in my life isn’t always going to be huge, incredible, and life changing. It can’t be. That would be insane.
Rather, The Woo is also going to make its presence known in subtle ways throughout the day. This week, The Woo showed up:
In my decision to walk back into my bedroom before heading out the door — and seeing the headset that I needed lying on my nightstand, just waiting to be thrown into my work bag.
In my spur-of-the-moment decision to walk into a store and then immediately seeing a dress that I loved. The dress was my size, in my price range, fit perfectly and was exactly what I’d been looking for to wear to an upcoming event.
During a long drive home. I was expecting rain and windshield wipers, but instead, I was greeted by blue skies peaking out from behind the clouds. I got on the road just as the rain showers ended.
And The Woo showed up today, in a post by a friend on Instagram who shared a quote she heard on a podcast. She’s not sure if this is a quote by Ross Gay or he was quoting someone else, but either way, she said the words stopped her in her tracks.
“It is negligence not to acknowledge the things that delight you.”
And with that, I am acknowledging The Woo — in its big and small ways — because it continues to delight me.
Have you ever read something that makes you see a subject in an entirely new light — and that new light makes total sense?
That’s what happened to me after I read The New York Times article, “Who’s Afraid of Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop?” by Elisa Albert and Jennifer Block. The article’s subhead is, The long history of hating on “woo.”
If you’re interested at all in the #Woo, I’m sure you’ve heard a looooot about The GOOP Lab. While I’m watching it and have many, many thoughts on it (Hello, vagina episode), right now, I’m more interested in what this NYT article has to say about the #Woo.
Here’s a passage from the article (bold emphasis is my own):
Throughout history, women in particular have been mocked, reviled, and murdered for maintaining knowledge and practices that frightened, confused and confounded “the authorities.” (Namely the church, and later, medicine.) Criticism of Goop is founded, at least in part, upon deeply ingrained reserves of fear, loathing, and ignorance about things we cannot see, touch, authenticate, prove, own or quantify. It is emblematic of a cultural insistence that we quash intuitive measures and “other” ways of knowing — the sort handed down via oral tradition, which, for most women throughout history, was the only way of knowing. In other words, it’s classic patriarchal devaluation.
When 19th-century medicine men were organizing and legitimizing their brand-new profession, they claimed the mantle of “science” even though there was no such thing as evidence-based medicine at the time. In order to dominate the market, they slandered all other modalities as “quackery,” including midwifery, which we know achieved safer birth outcomes back then, as itstill doestoday. Pejoratives like “woo” or “pseudoscience” are still often applied to anything that falls outside of the mainstream medical establishment. (Think about this the next time you hear something harmless or odd or common-sensical dismissed as an “old wives’ tale.”)
A lightbulb went off in my head after reading this. Oh, I thought, so this is where disdain of the Woo began. This is why I’ve been so embarrassed/ashamed/closeted about my exploration of The Woo. This is why I’ve barely told anyone about this blog. And this is why society, at large, ridicules The Woo.
The growth of Goop and, more broadly, of the multitrillion-dollar wellness industry is cause for concern. On the surface, it looks full of promise and hope. Dig just a little deeper, beyond the claims of all-natural miracles — the energy healing, the cold therapy, the anti-aging treatments — and what we find is at best, a waste of money and at worst, harmful methods that actually compromise your health.
But then, in an interesting twist, Stamp goes on to explain the significant role the medical establishment has played in fueling the rise of wellness.
For virtually the whole of its existence, medicine has disenfranchised women and, to varying degrees, continues to do so. Even as medicine has modernized with an emphasis on autonomy and resolving bias, it remains, at times, paternalistic and patriarchal.
… Medical care has not accounted for what women need and want. Women are more often dissatisfied with medical care, feeling that it has failed to recognize their autonomy and unique biological and social needs. Women are more likely to have chronic illness and autoimmune diseases, both of which can be challenging to treat from a doctor’s point of view but even more challenging to live with.
I say YES to this. As someone with a chronic condition, I know how challenging my condition is for my doctor to treat and how super challenging it is to live with.
I finally turned to The Woo because, after years of seeing doctors, I didn’t know where else to turn. And If I didn’t find solutions in The Woo — meditation, mindfulness, the law of attraction, visualization, hypnotherapy — I’d be much, much worse off.
That is why I love this paragraph from the NYT article:
It’s condescending to suggest that if we are interested in having agency over our bodies, if we are open to experiencing heightened states of awareness and emotion, if we are amazed by and eager to learn more about the possibilities of touch and intention and energy, and if we’d like to do everything within our power to stay out of doctors’ offices, we are somehow privileged morons who deserve an intellectual (read: patriarchal) beat-down. Openness to intuitive measures that might help us avoid or ameliorate chronic despair and disease does not make us flat-earthers.
YES! So much YES to this! I believe in science. I believe in Western medicine. I still see all my doctors, go to a therapist, take prescription drugs, get yearly physicals, and I intend to continue to do all of those things if I need to.
But exploring ways I can aid in my own healing, improve my mental health, and vastly improve my quality of life doesn’t mean I’m consumed by “magical thinking.” It means that I know science has its limits, and I have the right to search beyond those limits if I’ve hit a brick wall in my healing process.
This weekend I did something very Woo-y. I went to an Abraham-Hicks Law of Attraction workshop! For some, Abraham-Hicks and their teachings can seem really out there. For others, Abraham-Hicks seems totally normal.
It all depends on your view of the Woo.
In short, Esther Hicks channels a collective consciousness known as Abraham, and the teachings of Abraham help us to understand how to use the Law of Attraction to manifest our desires. During workshops, Abraham invites audience members who raise their hands to come to the stage, sit in the “hot seat,” and ask Abraham questions, like — how do I deal with an overprotective Mom? How do I manifest lots of money? How do I heal myself?
While seeing Abraham in person can be very Woo-y, the entire experience surrounding this workshop was Woo-y for me.
To begin with, going to this workshop happened on a whim. At the end of January, I wondered if there would be any Abraham workshops in SF in 2020. So I logged onto the Abraham Hicks website and BOOM! There was going to be a workshop in San Francisco! In eight days! On a Saturday morning when I had NO PLANS!
Even better — tickets were still available.
Even better — rooms were available at the hotel where the workshop was taking place for LESS than the rate Abraham-Hicks had negotiated.
The weekend kept unfolding like that — easily, pleasantly, full of good surprises. The hotel turned out to be really nice, with waterfront access where you could sit peacefully, watching the ducks swim in the calm San Francisco bay while planes took off in the distance from SFO. (I captured this view in the photo above).
On the morning of the conference, I sat there for 15 minutes, taking in this view and centering myself. When I headed inside to drop by the hotel Starbucks, there was NO LINE. It only took 1 minute for my chai latte to come out, complete with my name printed correctly in big, bold, capital letters on the cup!
Then, I had no problem getting a seat with a decent view, and I sat between two very nice women. One was celebrating her birthday and gave herself a ticket to the workshop as a gift. Another had just moved to SF. When she found out there was an Abraham-Hicks workshop close by, she knew she had to attend.
When the workshop got underway, most of the audience’s questions were intriguing and mirrored many of my own.
And then, when it was all over, and all of us streamed outside, it only took 5 minutes for the valet to bring my car around, and I zoomed on home to Napa with no traffic.
It was a weekend of seeing the Woo in action, and I chose to end it by floating for an hour in a sensory deprivation pod to meditate and relax.
I think I fulfilled my Woo for the weekend (and perhaps the rest of the week).
I am no expert in Woo-Woo. In fact, the more I learn, the more overwhelmed I feel.
There’s so much that can be considered Woo — energy work, chakras, crystals, manifesting, mysticism, craniosacral therapy, EMDR, magnet therapy, prayer, traditional Chinese medicine, Rolfing, mediation…..
The list goes on and on, and it varies based on who you talk to and what they believe.
So, why did I start this blog?
The Woo fascinates me: Ever since I was young, I was intrigued by the idea of the mystical, the spiritual, the unexplained — like people who say they’ve had past lives, or experienced spontaneous remissions, or survived near-death experiences. I find these stories fascinating (although sometimes I also find them super freaky and unsettling and I have to stop reading).
The Woo is helping to keep me sane: I have always had problems with depression and managing stress. I’m a bit of a Type A personality, and I hold on to my emotions deeply. I see a therapist regularly and take anti-depressants. But it wasn’t until I started meditating that I could begin to really calm my mind and manage some of my stress.
The Woo gives me a different perspective: As an adult in my 30s, I developed unexplained hearing loss. That triggered an increase in my depression and the never-ending question of why did this happen? Western doctors say the hearing loss is permanent, they don’t know why it occurred, and there is nothing they can do to help me. Reading books and watching videos by Dr. Joe Dispenza or listening to the teachings of Abraham Hicks is giving me a new perspective on my hearing loss and helping to lighten my load and my depression.
The Woo offers insight: Why are we here, on this earth, in these physical bodies? That question has plagued me since I was 11, and I started learning more about life and death. The Woo gives me new ideas and concepts to ponder that are helping me form my own answers to this very unanswerable question.
I want to learn more about the Woo: I am a journalist by background. I love reading, researching, and writing. I’ve realized that over the years, I’ve actually been exploring a lot about the Woo without even realizing it. I’ve tried energy healing, Alexander Technique, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, essential oils, manifesting, meditation, and talk therapy. So why not chronicle my journeys here?
I see this blog as a safe place to question, explore, and experiment with “alternative” treatments and ideas. What I make of these ideas may be totally different than what you do, and what I end up believing may be different than what you believe.
But that is part of the journey into the Woo.
Please note: I want to emphasize that The Land of Woo does not give out medical advice, and I’m not advocating that you give up your Western doctor. You need to do you, and what is right for your body and your health.
If you haven’t heard of Sheri, you have most likely heard of her boss — Oprah Winfrey. Sheri was the executive producer for The Oprah Winfrey Show, and then co-president of the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Yup. In short, she pretty much had *THE* dream job followed by another dream job.
Then she quit.
Why? She was unhealthy and unhappy. She was 100 pounds overweight and single, with no relationship in sight. She was in her 50s and knew something had to give. That something turned out to be her job.
I devoured her book.
Here was someone who had access to all the great thinkers, leaders, and healers of our time, but she still avoided taking the difficult step of putting herself first and making room for her own health and happiness.
“I could recite the tenets of best-life living backward and forward. I could produce the hell out of transformation. I just continued to avoid producing the transformation of my own life.”
– Sheri Salata, The Beautiful No
That’s what I’ve done for years. I’ve defined myself by what I produce at work, how much money I make, the clothes I wear, the house I own. But no matter how many milestones I achieve – Bigger house! Nicer wardrobe! Cooler job! Happy clients! — it hasn’t made my soul happy. I’ve felt lost, unfulfilled, and confused because I was living the life I thought I was “supposed” to be living.
What Sheri did takes courage. Yes, she had the means to walk away from a fabulous, well-paying, prestigious job. So, on some level, it was “easier” for her to walk away. But walking away and leaving your professional identity behind — especially as a middle-aged woman — takes guts.
For me, starting this blog takes guts. I want to explore an aspect of myself — my fascination with The Woo — that is outside the bounds of the person I always thought I would be. It means giving up the life I thought I was supposed to have to live the life I was meant to have.
I hope I’m ready to produce the hell out of my own personal transformation.
