People don’t want to read your ‘woo woo’ fluff.

a moment of clarity for a Friday afternoon

Earlier this year I felt called out about something I’d written on my website and it hurt. 

Although the particular email obviously didn’t mention me specifically, it was written by a couple of ‘coaches/experts’ I’d been working with. It became apparent quite quickly that they were not my people and I was not going to get out of the program what I had hoped but I endured the live sessions and did the exercises because I’d paid for them.

A week after we’d been reviewing the copy on a page on my website page as we crafted our new pitch for a course, they sent out their regular email and talked about how wellness providers needed to speak in language that wasn’t woo - then proceeded to quote almost verbatim a line off said web page. 

Apart from feeling wildly unprofessional and a breach of confidence, I was wildly cross. This particular sentence came right from the heart and although I know it might not be a great line of sales copy I never meant it to be. I wanted to put across the essence of what I was offering to people who might want to work with me. Not a <fill in the blanks> piece of sales copy. It was about showing who I was and how passionately I felt about making space and taking care of ourselves - on all levels. 

Earlier this afternoon, I eventually got around to listening to

Beth Kempton

Book Incubator lesson and she talks about how un-woo woo she was before she started writing books and how a particular experience altered that - it’s a great story so I invite you to look at Beth’s wonderful Substack to find our more - highly recommended especially if you want to turn a dream of writing a book into a reality. 

Yes, it is absolutely the need for validation when I say hearing this story (and not for the first time as I have read her book The Way of the Fearless Writer which it is in) made me feel seen. 

No matter how many times I tell myself that I am on Substack to write as I am, and not write sales copy or jump through endless marketing loops - this is a long game and my slow progress brings this conviction into question on occasion. 

BUT, I am writing, talking and teaching about the joys of meditation. Delving deeply within ourselves to flush out what is blocking and holding us back from living as ourselves, free from all the conditioning and programming of the past and society’s expectations of us. I spend hours every week in mediation practice, on mentoring calls, in somatic workshops, deeply embodying my feelings and emotions. 

Doing my darnedest to get out of my head and my overthinking brain so I can make sense, stop fighting and resisting what I feel, accept and allow it all to be there in order to move forward. 

AND I bloody love it! 

• I don’t care that some of my friends think I’ve lost the plot (well I think they think that so it may be completely untrue and fabricated in my people pleasing and needing to fit in brain) 

• I don’t care if I only build a small (but hopefully committed) community in Substack if it means we get to share and develop together and be better human beings for ourselves and our loved ones. 

• I don’t care if those coaches think I’m woo woo!

(I’m still triggered by this so I clearly haven’t quite let go if it yet but this essay is really helping me)

My woo-woo, hippy-shit meditation, journaling and yoga practice keeps me sane. It keeps me able to cope with finding myself and my family in the middle of life-altering challenging situations.  Where politicians are making changes that impact the ability of my daughter to be who she is. It keeps me able to show up for her and the trans community as a fierce ally without blowing myself up and giving up - and believe me some days this is hard. 

So my approach now is do your thing. Whatever it takes for you to show up as the best you. 

Writing is most likely the thing that ties so many of us together on this platform - the healing power of sharing our words for ourselves and then others. The collective experience of feeling seen and heard lessening the load or magnifying the joy. 

So right now I celebrate all the woo-woo-ness of rituals, candle lighting, oracle cards, dancing in the woods, cold showers or wild dipping. 

The oracle card I pulled before writing this was the ‘Thunder Drum’.

At its instruction I beat my chest in a two beat rhythm like a beating heart about a dozen times then I wrote. I may not even edit too much

I want the rawness of this to be felt. Not a carefully manicured piece of prose - I spent all week on that and I am over the moon with it but it is not what this is. 

So happy Friday to you all. 

Be you.

Be woo-woo.

Be terrifying, passionate, foolish.

Find joy in the silly. 

And love love love 

whatever, however you want to live and show up. 

I really hope Substack is the place where I can really be myself :) 

Thank you for reading

Jacqui x