Just Call Me Woo-Adjacent

So I feel like I should explain my woostory (you know, like history but woostory). Woo as in, “woo woo”. As in, “how woo exactly are you?”.

The short answer is that I’m currently more like Woo 2.0 or Woo-Lite. Meaning I have not been super Woo, but Woo-Adjacent. Meaning I didn’t really live in it, but nearby, making sure I had access and a clear view of it, but not exactly ready to move in.

The reason for this is because my relationship with Woo has been a bit like my relationship with EVERYTHING… which is feast or famine. All or nothing. Go big, or go freakin’ home.

It’s not like this anymore and hasn’t been for some time. But it used to be. When I was a kid, my family was religious and we went to church every Sunday (okay some Sundays), and then later when my parents divorced and I was a teenager, I was decidedly ANTI-religious. At which point I was definitely Woo-Averse.

But then, much later, I discovered spirituality. And then I became… UBER-Woo.

Having been spirituality-starved for almost 2 decades at that point, I tapped that vein like a woman in a donut shop who hasn’t had sugar in 20 years. In other words … one bite and ALLLLLL the donuts were toast.

It was good, it was an awakening, it was an essential part of my healing journey, and I don’t regret an instant of it. But the pendulum swung so far over, I got a little TOO Woo for my liking. I was totally out of balance, not that I believe in balance as it’s prescribed, but I needed to definitely ground it back down.

And oh boy, did I ground back down. That year within the span of one year my beloved little fur-baby Kita (my furry best friend and soul mate of 13 years) passed away unexpectedly, and then so did my grandpa, and then so did my grandma, a month after that—both of whom I was very, very close to all my life. That year ROCKED MY WORLD.

And so after that… I got very mad a ‘God’.

So much so, I disowned it entirely. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing, it happened kind of slow. But somewhere inside me, my little-girl-self was crumpled in a corner, screaming at ‘God’ to GET OUT.

After all these years starving for it, I had resurrected innocence and magic, only to have it die again so soon right after that. I was pissed. I was devastated. I wasn’t ready yet. Woo had to go, and keep out.

And yet… it stayed right outside the doorway.

I didn’t ever actually let it out of my sight. It stayed right outside, waiting. That’s why I call it Woo-Adjacent. I made sure I had access… I could visit, but it wasn’t really mine. It wasn’t owned.

As my healing journey continued (#therapy) I let a little more in at a time. A tarot card here or there, a semi-woo meditation or two, a terrified prayer to I-don’t-know-what when I had nowhere else to turn. I was dipping my toes in, a tiny bit at a time.

But I was still a little bitter and cynical. Not out loud, but inside. And the thing is that I know there’s no ‘other’ and that whatever ‘God’ is it is me and all of you, it is the singular substance of all life and death, the unimaginable mystery, the utterly apparent, the right in front of our eyes, and yet not.

I know this, and I’m fine not naming it, understanding it, or needing to. I know that unconditional love is what ‘God’ is… and that’s all I need to know. I don’t mind at all how anyone wants to define it, visualize it, or connect with it.

But the truth I wasn’t really facing was that I couldn’t leave ‘God’ out of the equation in my life, and I was really trying to, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks that that would not be possible. I didn’t have to be Uber-Woo-2000 but I certainly wasn’t gonna be able to be Woo-obsolete. Because the truth is, I totally wasn’t already! It had all crept back in over the years, I just wasn’t really admitting it to myself, or other people.

I can never be woo-less because I love dreaming dreams and making them happen. And I can’t help but notice I’m assisted in miracles at every step of my life. Even the seemingly utter shit ones. The ones that don’t feel like miracles at all, but end up being the biggest ones… I cannot help but see them too, shining through the poo.

So now I guess you could call me Woo-Positive. Meaning I’m all about breaking down former religious and spiritual damage and re-writing that story as LOVE, and redefining the woo my own way.

I realized the other day that creating my dreams is like flying a kite. It comes in 3 parts. There’s you, there’s the kite (your dream), and there’s the wind (god/life/the mystery/the universe, whatever you want to call it).

In other words, I realized that making dreams come true is how I play with ‘God’. How I play with the mystery. How I make the invisible, visible. Just like the kite reveals the wind. And that THAT is my most favorite thing.

Taking my kite out to see if she’ll fly.

Some days she’ll fly high. Some days not. Some days not at all. But when a kite doesn’t fly we don’t throw up our hands and say there’s no such thing as wind. And just because we don’t see wind, doesn’t mean it’s not there. We see instead, how it MOVES THINGS. Just as we do with ‘God’.

If the kite doesn’t fly we don’t say it CAN’T fly, we don’t say the PERSON just can’t fly a kite — that’s ridiculous! We just go-to, or wait for, the wind.

The kite and the flyer are tethered. And you can only experience the delight of this tension, because of that fine gust of wind, and that relationship between earth and sky. When conditions are right… the kite soars.

So all this to say that I’ve made up with the mystery. I’m a bit like Lieutenant Dan after his fight with God out to sea in Forest Gump, and I’m done being a Woo-closet-case now. So I’ll be letting my woo-flag fly a little more (you know… like a kite).

But even though you might see me and Woo out in public, I will still be half-woo, half-practical stuff, cause that’s just how I roll. Both are required but you don’t have to be half in each at all times, you can be sometimes totally in the woo, and sometimes totally in the practical, it’s a dance (not a balance).

So how about you darlin’? Do you identify as Woo? How is your relationship with the mystery? And what role does faith play in your business and dreams?

xo,
Sunni