When Did Being Human Become Woo? | Science, Soul & Skill

“Coming home to ourselves asks us to take responsibility for what we bring into the lives of others. Their dignity cannot depend on our comfort.” —Mary Coughlin

Someone recently described my work as “woo-woo” and wondered how I had managed to make it so relevant.

I felt a little insulted although I don’t think that was her intention. There was curiosity in her observation and I even sensed appreciation. But the word stayed with me.

What, exactly, were we calling woo?

The invitation to notice ourselves? To consider what we bring into a room beyond our knowledge and credentials? To recognize that how we meet another person matters? That our presence can offer welcome, communicate disregard, or leave someone unsure whether there is room for them?

I began wondering how much of our humanity we place in that category simply because we have never learned how to inhabit it comfortably.

Tenderness. Wonder. Grief. Intuition. The longing to belong. The experience of feeling deeply connected to someone whose life looks nothing like our own.

These are familiar human experiences. Yet speaking about them openly can feel like crossing an invisible boundary, especially in places where expertise is prized and vulnerability carries a cost.

We can discuss the body in extraordinary detail while struggling to make room for the person living within it.

That deserves our attention.

What we learn to leave behind

Many of us grow up within hierarchies that tell us who knows, who decides, whose voice matters, and what earns approval. Those lessons travel through our families, schools, religious communities, and workplaces. We learn to read the room. We learn when to speak and when to remain quiet. We learn which parts of ourselves are welcome.

Some of those lessons help us live together. Others teach us to disappear in plain sight.

Perhaps we learn that being good means being agreeable. That competence requires certainty. That needing help is embarrassing. That anger is unacceptable, grief should be brief, and rest must be earned.

We become skilled at managing how we are perceived. We may have far less practice recognizing what we actually feel, need, believe, or hope. I wonder how often we call something uncomfortable because it brings us close to a part of ourselves we have learned to keep at a distance.

And how often we call it woo because that is easier than staying with the discomfort.

BUFFER, turned inward

In my work, BUFFER names six relational capacities: Belonging, Understanding, Frameworks, Forgiveness, Equanimity, and Respect. I often explore them in relation to how we care for others.

Lately, I have been considering what happens when we turn those capacities inward.

Belonging. Can I belong to myself when I am disappointed in who I have been? When I have nothing impressive to offer? What parts of me still wait outside the door, hoping to become acceptable enough to enter?

Understanding. Can I become curious about my own experience before issuing a verdict? What might I discover if I asked, “What is happening within me?” and gave myself time to hear the answer?

Frameworks. What shapes how I interpret my experience? Which beliefs and expectations have I inherited, and which have I consciously chosen? When I measure myself against them, do they help me understand my humanity or do they make parts of it harder to welcome?

Forgiveness. Can I face the harm I have caused and remain present enough to take responsibility? Can I make repair without turning my mistakes into a permanent sentence against my worth?

Equanimity. Can I remain present with what arises within me, including what is uncomfortable or unresolved? Can I make room for a feeling without letting it determine my next action? When I lose my steadiness, can I return with patience?

Respect. Can I honor my own dignity in the way I speak to myself, attend to my needs, and acknowledge my limits? Where have I learned to override myself to preserve approval and what would respecting myself ask of me now?

These questions ask something of us. They invite honesty, and sometimes a difficult honesty. They also invite us to stop treating ourselves as a problem to be managed. There is a person here, too.

The humanity we bring into the room

I often speak about becoming the best version of myself so that, when I meet you, I can recognize something of myself in you. Knowing my own dignity helps me attend to yours. Becoming familiar with my own vulnerability helps me approach yours with greater tenderness.

That recognition must leave room for difference. Your story is yours. There will be things I cannot understand simply by looking within myself. I still have to listen. I still have to believe that your experience matters when it challenges mine.

But inward attention can help me notice what stands between us.

My need to be right. My discomfort with uncertainty. The assumptions I mistake for knowledge. The urgency that makes your questions feel like interruptions.

Recently, watching footage of a protester being assaulted, I found myself asking what happens between encountering another person’s dissent and deciding that their body is ours to punish. And what happens within a community when people applaud?

I cannot know another person’s inner experience. But I wonder what becomes possible when we have so little familiarity with our own discomfort that we locate the problem entirely in someone else.

If I cannot acknowledge my uncertainty, how do I meet your questions? If my belonging depends on loyalty, how do I respond when you challenge the group to which I belong? What have I learned about whose humanity I am expected to honor and whose I am permitted to disregard?

These questions also turn me toward the conditions around us: what our communities reward, what our leaders model, and what we learn to accept in exchange for belonging.

Whatever another person awakens in me, I remain responsible for how I meet them. Their dignity cannot depend on my comfort.

This is where coming home to ourselves becomes consequential. It asks us to recognize when our discomfort is becoming a demand that someone else be silenced, diminished, or controlled—and to choose how we respond.

We do not have to arrive as perfected people (it's total myth). We can practice noticing when we become defensive, pause to understand what is happening within us, and choose a response that honors both our own humanity and the person before us.

Science, soul, and skill

I want room for all three.

Science offers ways to investigate our experience, test our assumptions, and deepen our understanding. Soul is the language I use for meaning, sacredness, and the felt experience of connection. Skill helps us live what we say we value.

Each asks for discernment. We can examine evidence carefully and remain open to wonder. We can honor a spiritual understanding without claiming that science has proven it. We can speak beautifully about care and still ask whether our actions offer it.

Jean Watson’s work gives me language for attending to the human being within the caring encounter. Philosophers, mystics, spiritual teachers, and people whose wisdom has never appeared in a publication also invite us to consider how we are living and what we recognize as sacred.

For me, that includes a growing sense of our connection with All That Is.

I want to sit with that knowing. I want to ask what it requires of me when another person is inconvenient, when a stranger is suffering, when the earth is treated as expendable, when care demands something more than just a warm feeling.

The depth of an insight becomes visible in how we live with it.

Making room to return

There are conditions that keep us separated from ourselves: relentless demands, rigid roles, unequal power, and environments where honesty threatens our belonging. An inward practice cannot carry the whole responsibility for changing those conditions.

Relational stewardship asks us to attend to both. How do I meet myself? What kind of space am I helping create for you?

Can we build classrooms, workplaces, communities, and places of care where people can ask questions without humiliation? Where needing support does not diminish dignity? Where authority can listen, mistakes can be repaired, and belonging does not require self-erasure?

Perhaps that is where the contemplation leads: into the ordinary decisions through which we make humanity welcome or keep it at a distance.

I am still sitting with that word, woo.

It has brought me to a question I want to carry more deliberately: How much of ourselves have we learned to leave behind—and what would it take to welcome one another home?

Hugs and hope, Mary