What the World Needs is More Woo-Woo

Well, actually, the world needs so much right now. And if I could I’d simply hold the world and begin to stitch it back together. Maybe being woo-woo is one way to begin this massive healing that is needed.

Right now there is no normal anymore. Our reality seems like a sci-fi movie, and the news seems as if we’re stuck in a Saturday Night Live skit…it’s so bizarre-they must be making this shit up, right? 

No.

Systems are crumbing and to me it seems the shadows of the world are simply more visible and transparent. This shit was here before, we just weren’t so aware of it. 

At least I wasn’t, and I can’t go back to sleep now. In fact, I feel an overwhelming amount of anxiety and sadness these days. So I’m having to find different ways of coping. 

Strange times call for creativity, or as Alice Walker said, “Hard times require furious dancing.”

I’ve been doing both-getting creative and dancing furiously.  

Recently I was listening to the radio while driving my car, which I hardly use these days. Basically I drive to the store or my office to get the mail every few weeks. I love listening to the radio, and I’ll fully enjoy it because that may go away someday, I mean, who ever thought we’d be losing the post office?!

Back to the radio…I delight in the randomness of hearing my favorite songs combined with hearing new ones. I heard a favorite by Seal called “Crazy.” So I’ve been singing this and dancing wildly and it feels really good. Try it. 

I love these lyrics: “You’re never gonna survive unless you get a little crazy.” 

And he’s right…especially now.

So, I had to look up the context for the lyrics. Here’s what I found on Wikipedia: he wrote it in 1990 inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. I also heard somewhere that he wrote it in regards to his bi-racial relationship. 

He said this about the song: “I felt the cycle had reached its apex. I felt the world changing and I felt profound things happening.”

Yes, profound things are certainly happening…the dismantling, the crumbing and the reckoning. 

So with this song as my theme song, I kept coming back to this message again and again…what the world needs now is woo-woo. More specifically the world needs you to be more woo-woo. 

But what do I mean by woo-woo and just what does woo-woo refer to?

Woo-woo came out of the 80’s new age movement and from the Skeptic’s Dictionary I found this definition: “concerned with emotions, mysticism, or spiritualism; other than rational or scientific; mysterious; new agey.”

And I love this description: “Sometimes woo-woo is used by skeptics as a synonym for pseudoscience, true-believer, or quackery. But mostly the term is used for its emotive content and is an emotive synonym for such terms as nonsense, irrational, nutter, nut, or crazy.”

Yes-crazy, nonsense, nut, nutter and my favorite-quackery! That about sums up life right now, who else is with me on that one?

To me woo-woo means off, freaky, crazy, out-of-the-box, unique, and different. 

And what I really mean is this-find something that makes you feel more alive and do more of that. 

My friend Victor Warring is a Somatic Sexuality & Relationship Educator, Erotic Permaculturist, and an Anti-Oppression Community Educator. Check his work here:

https://www.facebook.com/victor.warring

He recently suggested that we do an erotic grief ritual… and at first I thought, oh that’s too edgy. And then he went on to explain what he meant by “erotic.” It isn’t just about the act of sex, although there are many of us who are grieving sex and intimacy due to isolation/quarantine. (That’s an entire blog or two).

More specifically what he means by the erotic is life force, life energy, creativity. 

So I have erotic grief. What about you?

How can we find a way back into our life force?

Remember-hard times call for furious dancing. And that may mean that we have to be joy detectives; we must seek eros. 

And the grief we feel and the times we’re in, with all these limitations and constrictions…well, for me it means that I have to get more creative and find other ways than what I’m used to to feel alive. 

I come alive lately through the woo-woo. 

So, where do you feel connected to eros, to your life force and creativity?

I’m doing some out of the norm things—I’m playing around with taxidermy with the bird carcasses left at my door step left by my new cat Slinky. 

I’m salting the wings to preserve them. I am salting the wings. (Somehow that feels like a perfect metaphor, with salt = cleansing/healing, and wings = movement/flight). 

I’m dancing and working out to music with blood restriction training straps. 

 

I continue to hug trees and pray everyday to the elements and my ancestors.

I’m making up songs and putting them live on social media. I never considered myself a singer/songwriter ever.

A friend of mine is re-learning how to roller skate. And it inspires me to find my roller blades.

I continue to host grief rituals at the end of the month. In fact, doing grief ritual is one way to come back into your life force. Next one is August 29th at noon Mountain time. Donations are $10-35 and all proceeds go back to my grief mentor’s village in Africa. Reserve your place here: 
 https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJArf-yupjksGNNAOayuU8cJhNcb0kW2Xacf

And Victor and I are planning an erotic grief ritual on October 24, 2020. 

So what are you doing to connect to your own life force? Something a bit woo-woo?

Please share what you’re doing to make it through this time, I’d love to hear from you.

 Beth Erlander aka The Grief Freak. 

These are intense times, we need to have more compassion and kindness to ourselves, each other, and the planet.  I hope you are well. And remember to grieve well, so we can be well.

Thanks for being here.