Embracing the Woo-Woo

My slowww spiritual awakening and the struggle to own it.

“I saw them. Two people walking down the street, dressed like the Native Americans at the Plimoth Plantation, but older”, the words were barely out of my mouth before my parents interjected and told me I was confused. There was no logical reason their single digit daughter saw two Native people from the windows of her clubhouse and so life carried on. 

“What do you want for your birthday?”, my mom asked. Turning 13 meant I’d be a teenager with a whole new landscape to navigate. Did I want new clothes? How about something new for my bedroom? “I want to go to a psychic”, I responded. She obliged and I headed into my teens with some divine guidance. 

Freshman lockup. A rite of passage for every new student at the Catholic High School I’d be attending. A few hours into the retreat I sat in a chair placed on the shiny gym floor. “You can gently close your eyes now and just listen to my voice”, the retreat leader said. As the meditation continued I felt something shift inside but ignored it because high school and college were waiting. 

“I’m thinking about going back to Church or something. But I don’t think Church is the right fit. There’s just something pulling at me.” I sporadically told my therapist and my journal. But promptly pushed it away and snuggled back up with my anxious mid-20s mind. 

When I entered my 30’s my suspicions were confirmed— organized religion wasn’t the answer, but I finally listened to the nudges. First came the sage. Followed by guided meditations. Eventually, the space under the window in my spare bedroom found itself home to a small altar. 

As my mom’s health rapidly declined my first deck of tarot cards made their way into my hands. The depth of connection, intimacy, and support that I found in dialoguing with those cards, my journal, and spirit came rapidly and just in the knick of time for my world to be turned upside down. 

I mourned my dad while simultaneously keeping my mom alive through a feeding tube. However, for each sob of agony and page of my journal that questioned if I could survive,  there were two more calmly and unflinchingly assuring me that I had everything I needed. Then I found Mary. 

I’m not sure how I made it through a liberal arts education, living in Massachusetts, and teaching on Cape Cod without hearing of Mary Oliver until I was 31. Or maybe I did, but I didn’t need her then. With my newly purchased copy of Devotions in hand, I’d call “family meetings”, consisting of myself, 3 dogs, and my bedridden mother. I’d do dramatic readings of her poems–partly to make my mom laugh and mostly because her poems were my scripture. Scared to die, and wrestling with her own beliefs, my mom eventually asked for her own copy of Devotions. After she died I found it in her bed—my dad’s prayer card tucked next to White Night.

Today, I write to Mary (Oliver). I talk to my spirit guides. I know the power of energy. I question. I grapple. I’m a skeptic. I’m a believer. I’m intuitive. I’m human. 

Blame it on Catholicism or my own insecurities, but there’s a huge part of me that wants to live a dual existence. One where spiritual Maggie comes out to play behind closed doors safe from the judgment of the rest of the world. 

The story that I’m telling myself is that people will look at me and think, “oh all that heavy shit she went through must’ve really fucked with her if she is resorting to that woo-woo shit”—that they will think that part of me has gone off the rails. 

But because this is as much a part of me as the freckles that cover my body, I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist, especially when I’m being pulled to incorporate it into all that I do including my own work. 

So here I am professing my love for the things that stretch beyond our understanding and DIYing my own spiritual path. If that means people think I’m crazy then so be it. My clear quartz and I will send some love your way. 

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