The Enormity of the Spring Season
Hello, my friend! On episode 87 of my podcast, A Wild New Work, I’m sharing some of what’s been going on with my little family and how I’m weaving it together with the tremendous wisdom and beauty of this mid Spring period.
You can listen at the link below, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream. There’s also a written transcript below the audio file!
Welcome to a Wild New Work, a podcast about how to take wise, soul-centered action in your work life, all based on the wisdom of nature. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, coach, writer, and amateur ecologist living in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today. Hi, friend, and welcome. I'm so glad that you're here.
I'm coming to you on Beltane - I'm recording this like right before I put it out into the world for reasons which I'll explain later, but it is a special day in the Wheel of the year. It's an old, old holiday called Beltane, which is a fire festival, a time when people in my lineage and the Celtic lineage would've celebrated the absolute vibrance of life right now. The color, the blooming, the sex happening all around the creation of life, the long days, all of the light. And so that will carry us as a thread through today's episode. The sun is in the sign of Taurus, which is a fixed earth sign, so we are also feeling into the stability that's required for a fire to be sustained.
You have to have a surface for the fire to be on, there has to be enough oxygen, there has to be fuel, there has to be some stability of the elements in order for that fire to be sustained, and Taurus can show us where in our life that's real, where it's too rigid, and too, solidified - where we need more movement and the transformation of fire and heat and color.
It is also a time when we learn or remember how things actually grow. How a seed becomes a sapling, how the leaves stretch out, how photosynthesis works, how things bloom, how birds build their nests, how little babies are born. And so there's, it's just like an... an amazing amount of wisdom at our fingertips right now, and I feel inundated by that every day. Every day I step out for a walk and things are different and things are changing and growing and it takes some slowness and grace to be with that and to recognize that and not rush through it. And so today I wanna share some of these themes and how you can weave them into your life right now, but also some life updates.
I shared on Instagram that my little family and I have been really through the ringer the last two weeks. My son Kylan has been very sick, and it's taught me a lot. And when I settled in and have tried to sort of make meaning from it () as humans do), I realized that it's important for me to pull some wisdom out of this, and not only tend to myself and to Kylan and get us back on track, but to also recognize some of the deeper undercurrents that are here. And so I imagine I'll be processing that for a while, but I can already feel some teaching for myself coming out of that experience. So I wanna share that and support you in really orienting to this just tremendous time of year in the cycle of things.
I think these will be helpful thoughts regardless of when you're listening. I do want to say, first before we dive in and remind you that I'm offering a summer solstice retreat on June 21st here in an old growth forest outside of Portland, Oregon. We will be exploring, meaning making, celebrating the summer, the cross from spring into summer.
It's the longest day of the year, and we will become summer in our lives that day. We will talk about and work with how to experience more mastery in your life and in your work, more fullness, more generosity, and really help you cross from spring into summer and integrate what has been working through you this spring, which might be a lot. And it could be, you know, many years of work that hasn't quite been integrated yet, so we will be doing that together. Registration is open for about another month, and I would love to have you if my work resonates, if you'd like to gather in person and just experience a really liminal rich day on this special occasion of the summer solstice.
If you feel like you're doing deeper or bigger or a longer term transition in your working life, then I just wanna remind you that I do offer one-on-one support for people and have a couple of spaces now, uh, well probably one space right now. So that's something we could explore, too. And all of that information is up on my website. And I'll also put the link in the show notes for you. So before we settle in, why don't we read our opening invocation and you can just take a big deep breath. Notice your body in time and space right now, whatever you're doing.
May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Cowlitz and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
So, like I said, we are here in the mid-spring period. It's the height of the spring season. We just crossed over Beltane. The sun is in the sign of Taurus. That corresponds to the Hierophant archetype in the tarot, um, which I won't talk about a lot today.
Of course, with our friends in the Southern hemisphere, they're crossing into the autumn season, um, the holiday of Samhain, which comes to us in the Northern Hemisphere on October 31st, aka Halloween. And so both of these gateways have just happened on this planet in the, in the north and southern hemispheres.
And you might think about where you were in the last Samhain when you crossed from the, you know, early fall into the deep fall over Halloween. What was your life like then? What was work like then? What were you thinking about? How are you changing, and what's different now?
Six months later, Beltane is this time when we celebrate the power of new and establishing life. Samhain is a time when we honor death and the cycles that have to happen in life, the cycles of, you know, waning and dying and transforming and composting, and life is both of these things. And many witches and spiritual people believe that the veil between our world and the spiritual world is very thin at both of these points - that we can access our beloved dead very easily in Samhain in that late October time and we can also access the fairies, the spirits beyond at this time, this Beltane on May 1st. And so, I would encourage you, no matter when you're listening, to just recognize the sort of rhythm of these cycles. The Samhain, Beltane, Samhain, Beltane cycle of Life and Death, and there's so much of course in between, but these two gateways are often really significant reminders of the vastness of this life that we inhabit.
And for us here in the spring of 2023, I think it's especially up right now because we're also in the middle of these two eclipses. We had a solar eclipse in Aries, um, I can't remember the exact date, but the, maybe the last week, second to last week of April. And then we have a lunar eclipse, full Moon in Scorpio on Friday, May 5th.
Whatever you hold or believe about astrology or how the natural world or the spiritual worlds work, I think we could make an argument that there's a lot happening right now. Even if it's just that you're recognizing the fullness of Spring and the color and the growth and the pollinators that are out.
But if you're inclined toward, a more mystical orientation, then I just wanna make some space for you to hold that there's a lot swirling around right now, and that you can find your center and steady your breath and really feel into that and pull in what you need and be in conversation with what is making sense to you right now.
Like I alluded to earlier, this has also been a very tumultuous and, in many ways, a beautiful time for my family and I. So you might know already my son Kylan is three and two weeks ago, he came home from preschool pretty sick. His teacher called me. He woke up from nap saying he was sick, he had a fever and was pretty lethargic. So we picked him up early, brought him home, and almost immediately he started vomiting. And he was vomiting for probably 10 hours off and on. No one slept except my daughter, Wyette, his older sister. And then he started having diarrhea and having blood in his diarrhea.
And, sorry if this is TMI, but I'm just like so used to the amount of bodily functions and fluids I've been engrossed in this two weeks - it's more than I ever expected. So I hope it doesn't gross you out to talk about, but this is what it is. This is what happened. Um, and so he was just very sick, like uncomfortable, fever off and on, having blood in his poop, which is just terrifying. So we took him to urgent care. They thought it was like a, just a GI bug that would clear, gave us some ideas of what to do. We went home, still like really sick. The blood is increasing. We saw his primary care person the next day. She had some ideas about what it was that it might be, like a bowel, uh, not obstruction, but like this specific thing that's like not a virus, but is like a more of a structural thing. So we agreed we'd keep an eye on it and sort of be in touch about next steps. The next day, Friday - I think the solar eclipse happened that Thursday - friday, the blood's increasing, nothing's getting better. Everyone is exhausted. I've been like subsumed, I have no identity outside of Kylan and what is happening in his tiny body. And I just had enough. I called the doctor, talked to the people at urgent care, and everyone agreed we needed to take him into the ER.
So took him into the ER, they got him on an IV. He's still having diarrhea, so they took a stool sample. I think we were in there for like four hours talking to various people, trying to just get the IV in and see what happened when he got more fluids. And eventually, we agreed with the doctors that he needed to be admitted and monitored because they didn't know what it was and he was dehydrated.
So, you know, we have never been admitted to the hospital, and I know that this is relatively mild compared to many other things that happen to children across the world. And, this was like the most traumatic thing that had happened in our little family. And so I'm just holding space for both of those things to be true.
So Chris was home with Wyette, and I stayed with Kylan, and we spent the night in the hospital. It was not fun! I'm grateful of course, for the care that we received, but, um, trying to sleep in a hospital bed with a three-year-old who's in pain, with an IV, tossing and turning all night wasn't great, and he ended up ripping out his IV, so we had to do another one at 3:00 AM which was horrible. If you've ever had to restrain your beloved child and see them in pain, then my heart just goes out to you, because there's not really anything like it. And so the next day, you know, he's still getting an iv, getting all these fluids, and he started to feel better.
Chris and Wyette came to the hospital, which was a huge relief. I brushed my teeth and changed clothes, finally we got his stool sample results. And it turns out that he had a bacteria called Shigella, which is related to e coli, so it comes from poop and somehow no one knows how no one at Kylan's preschool or in our family got sick with it.
He got this tiny bacteria in his body and it just wreaked havoc on his little system, and so I thought we were gonna leave the next day because we knew what it was. They started antibiotics. He had had, you know, almost a day of, fluids, but he just, he was still pooping blood. And everyone agreed it would be safer to just do another night of antibiotics, get him off the next morning and see how he did with fluids.
So we ended up spending two nights at the hospital, about two and a half days. Finally, he was eating and drinking normally again, and everyone felt comfortable bringing him home. We left with a specific antibiotic that Shigella responds to and, um, Yeah, since we've been home, the recovery has not been as fast or linear as I would like, of course. But it's happening, and we're keeping a close eye on it. He can't go back to school until he's had two negative stool samples, of course, because they help with toileting and we don't wanna spread anything. So, you know, the grind of like another week of everyone being home together - 'cause my daughter Wyette had to stay home too until we knew that she was negative - is just exhausting. I mean, we've done it so many times in Covid, it's sort of normal too. But, um, it has been a really hard couple of weeks and as of this moment, we don't have those two negative stool samples. So I think Kylan will be home for another week, but Wyette's back at school, which is great and gives us a semblance of normalcy.
But this was just like next level for my nervous system. I held it together the entire time we were there, and then as soon as I walked out of the hospital, I just started sobbing and cried a lot for the next two days. Just needing to process that and like really allow myself to feel how hard that was.
And I think Kylan is integrating and, uh, you know, is more equipped maybe to process that trauma. We're talking about it and he seems okay now.
But it, it felt meaningful I think because it happened right around the eclipse and because it was so weird and bizarre. I mean, Shigella is very contagious, and it's just so odd that he was the only one who got it. His Sun and Moon signs are in Aries, and just because of the type of person I am, I'm always sort of looking for the meaning or the story or the pattern or the teachings that are weaving in. And you know, maybe if nothing else, this experience was just a way for me to see other families who are just, you know, they're like living in the hospital. I mean, there are kids' rooms that are like very lived in, you know, and ours, we only stayed for two nights. There are people in tears or with swollen eyes walking through that hospital, and they do their best. There's these gardens that we were out in. We would go on little walks - the nurse would disconnect Kylan from his IV and we would take them around in a little wagon and that was a lifeline. There were snails on this upper terrace outside, and Kylan loves snails and those snails really carried us for a while!
But I don't know, it just made me realize that there's this whole other part of our society right now... there are many parents and families in that place, in that children's hospital, who are managing probably the scariest thing they've ever been through, who are potentially facing significant medical debt as a result, who are trying to balance work and earning an income, alongside this thing that is so visceral and primal and real, which is life and survival and the health of our children and our loved ones. I know this isn't limited to children, of course we have parents and other beloveds who are going through these things.
So in this time, you know, I couldn't really sync up or click into like the beauty and joy of spring as much. I certainly wasn't feeling that - I was knee deep in bloody diarrhea and doctor's visits and hadn't showered and you know, couldn't. I certainly didn't keep up with like my meditation or walks outside, but the spring was this lifeline and this buoy, even when things felt really dark, you know, those little snails - we saw baby snails - the daffodils on that terrace, the hellebores that were still blooming in the hospital garden.
I could pull on those as little anchors when I needed them. And so that Was like a tremendous, "bring me to the ground" kind of moment. And then last week we were also supposed to go to down to Veneta to visit my sisters for their 30th birthday. And one of my other sisters was flying in from out of state and it was meant to be this like really fun, special weekend.
And Kylan of course still wasn't cleared. He was doing better, but he wasn't like a hundred percent and we didn't wanna spread anything. So we knew that the kids couldn't go. So Chris stayed home with them and I decided that I would drive down there on that Friday, about a week and a half after Kylan got sick and I would go. I would just meet them for dinner and then drive home, which was about two and a half hours.
And I don't know if it was the intensity of the preceding time or if it really is this kind of mystical eclipse portal, mind warp, time warp kind of thing, but the contrast of that experience, like in my body, was kind of crazy. So just driving down, it was this very bright, sunny, hot day. I'm driving these back roads from Portland down to Eugene on these back roads, through these little towns to this vineyard that I used to go to a lot with my family. I grew up mostly in Eugene, which is like a normal, regular town. But then when I was 12, we moved out to the country on to these 20 acres in this little town called Creswell.
That was a very formative place for me, just wandering the back woods. We lived on this place called Bear Mountain, and it was a wild place. It was forested, we did have a field that we would mow, but it was wild. And we would often drive those back roads to this special vineyard called King Estate. And so that's where I drove down and I met my siblings and two of my brothers-in-law and we had this amazing dinner together. And of course part of me felt guilty leaving Chris and the kids. But um, you know, I really needed that break and it was a special occasion and I didn't wanna miss it. And after dinner, I left and got in my car and the sun was setting, and I decided I would drive on the back road from the vineyard to Creswell.
I didn't come down that way, but I thought on the way home I would go that way and I would drive by our old house and... something happened. Again, I don't know if it was just that I had had such a hard week and my body was like, so ready for some joy and peace, but it felt very different than like normal life.
I've been down in that area a lot. I haven't driven by the house in many years or on that particular back road, but it was dusk, it was warm. I had the windows down. I'm driving on this back road. No one is around. It's very quiet. And these dark trees, it's very wooded and forested, and these dark pine and fur trees were just like reverberating life . I don't, it's hard to put into words. And I wasn't drunk, of course, I had to drive home, so I didn't have very much wine. I'm not on any substances. But it, it really just felt, it felt like I was 16 again. I felt completely free and expansive in my body, in my being. I felt like I had this connection to these woods that I hadn't even ever felt before.
They felt familiar, but in a new way. It just was kind of electric. There's this unique smell to cut country grass. It's not like a cut lawn. People had mowed their, long grass in their fields and there's a very special smell to that when it's been a warm day. And that was, you know, wafting through, and the forest was just like pulsating with aliveness. And I really felt in that moment that I actually was kind of converging with the brightness and the life of spring, of this time, of this very like mystical gateway that comes to us in late April, early May, here in the Northern Hemisphere.
So these contrasting experiences were just so wild and potent that I'm really just paying attention to them. And I think what I'm realizing today and through that is that, you know, life is Samhain and death and the autumn and that transition and endings and the fear of our children being sick or dying, and loss. That experience of loss and grief, that is also happening here in the spring. Of course, baby birds are falling out of their nests and dying. Nests are being ransacked and eggs eaten. Baby, you know, deer are, you know, being hunted. So of course there's loss and deaths at this time. But the spring and the life and the electricity of color right now is also life.
You know, I think for me, I sort of lean more toward, toward a kind of melancholy way of seeing the world. And sometimes I get trapped in this loop that says that real life, like hardcore, like the grit of it, is really just pain and suffering and death and the fall and the autumn, you know, and winter.
But life is also beauty and joy and pleasure and procreation and flight and everything that we're seeing around us in this mid-spring time. And I'm kind of interested in what it means to strike a different balance with that right now. You know, are you someone who maybe has a hard time being with the darkness and the rain and the long, hard days and the grief that comes up in life? Are you someone who sort of wants to escape that or maybe hold onto the beauty and joy and brightness of life even when it's not really what's right in front of you, or are you someone maybe more like me, who's on the end of believing that what's real is just the suffering and the pain, and are you interested in finding a different balance right now?
What would it mean for you to turn up the volume on the joy and pleasure that you're taking in right now? The beauty, the amount of beauty that you take in and this is kind of hard to talk about because it's sort of overplayed. I mean, in a great way. A lot of people are talking about pleasure and joy and beauty and, um, enjoying your life and you know, all of these things, and that's wonderful.
And you know, we have to find like the language and the ways in that fit for us. My therapist talks about that all the time. So for you, like, what is it for you to sync up with the mid-spring right now? What is it for you to actually become the energy of a blooming tulip or a bee drinking nectar, or a butterfly flitting around trying to find the most beautiful luscious plant to land on?
What is that for you? What are the words that fit for you? What does that feel like in your body? And one of the things that inevitably will come up is that, It will pull us away from work and obligation and responsibilities, and that is okay. That is a good thing. There is nothing wrong with you if you would rather be out on a walk or laying in a garden instead of on your computer or at an office or going in to, you know, to the grocery store to work.
There is nothing unnatural about that. That is completely natural. Of course you're meant to be outside right now, taking all of this in. It's in every part of your DNA. Of course you're meant to be dancing around a Maypole with colorful ribbons, listening to music and dancing in a meadow of wild flowers.
Of course you're meant to be enjoying this incredible time. And can you meet a new edge where you're doing that more than working? Or can you at least divest more of your energy away from work or the things that feel like maybe drudgery or obligation or make you feel trapped? And can you find a new level or a new way into greater life and joy?
That's sort of our mandate right now. Sometimes at this time of year, if I'm feeling like kind of, um, down or overburdened or like things are really serious, I try to remember how many beings around me are having sex right now, and it just like takes me out. It's like, oh yeah, that's life. That's real. That's what this is all about. Not, you know, whatever I have in front of me that seems super important, but really isn't.
And I think one of the other things that is hard about this, in addition to kind of knowing that it pulls us away from capitalist demands or over culture demands, is also that we're not all tapped into true streams of joy.
I think this is one of the things that the, the Taurus and the Hierophant archetypes can help us with. You know, joy in Western culture and capitalism is, is sort of just consumption. It's just "here, here, just like, buy this thing or pay for this thing, and that's joy." And those work sometimes, but if you've ever been part of something that was like really wholesome and pure and sustainable and sweet and beautiful and like good for the Earth and you and people around you, you know that it has a much different texture . The joy of working in your garden or sitting in front of a field of wild flowers or going for a hike or just embracing like the color of this time, or making sun tea at home, or creating an altar in your home to honor where you are and where you wanna be, those things have a much different vibe than just like, Taking yourself, you know, shopping and out to lunch. Not that that can't be sweet, but we're sort of tricked into thinking that there are these certain avenues to joy and the mid-Spring comes along and is like, "oh, you wanna know what joy is?" Here is all of the color and the scent, and the light and the warmth and the activity to reorient us to what is actually joyful.
Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a place where every person had their needs met? Where animals were treated well, where the plants were respected, where the air was clean, where the spirits of the place were honored, where people had rites of passage to help them grow and grieve and evolve, where mothers were actually supported after giving birth, where elders were actually supported as they crossed into death?
That's joy. It's not these fucking strip malls or new cars or whatever, you know, we think it might be. And so I think all of us can be tapping into more of that true, deep rooted earth joy right now, and that that will inevitably change and transform work and capitalism and culture, and the more of us that can do that, again - in a way that isn't just pure individualistic consumption or hedonism - the better . Sometimes it's inconvenient, right? Like, it's inconvenient to be in community. It's not efficient to, you know, experience the joy of bringing someone a meal or bringing, you know, activities like so many people did for me and my family in these last couple of weeks. I know that people went out of their way and were inconvenienced to support us and yet that felt so joyful to receive and I hope it felt joyful for them to give. And so that's what I'm carrying with me through this experience is just, one, that kind of crazy mystical experience driving my car . It was so simple, just driving in my little car on these back roads at dusk through my childhood woods. And whatever opened up there, I think is gonna have meaning to go forward in the future. But it can be so simple and pure just like that. And also, really trying to connect into true joy, stable, earth-based joy and that's not frivolous or naive to believe in. That's the real stuff.
So life is death. It's messy, it's hard. There's grief and it is also this beauty and joy and pleasure, and you meeting your edge with that and seeing how far you can go in terms of sweet, holistic, community-based, loving joy. And I encourage you to play with that and see what it has to say about the work that you do and how it changes the work that you do, because that is inevitable.
So that's what I wanted to share with you today, my friends. I really hope that you are pulling on the spring in whatever ways you can or need to right now. Thank you for listening and giving me the space to share where we have been and how I'm making sense of it. I hope that you appreciated this episode and got something from it.
Again, if you want to bring this work into three dimensions, I wanna remind you of the summer retreat on the solstice on June 21st, and let you know that I'm happy to walk with you as a guide through my one-on-one program, too.
I hope you take such good care in this mid-spring period, and I will see you on the other side!