Living into the Paradox of Summer
In today’s episode of A Wild New Work, I’m sharing my thoughts about the Summer Solstice as a gateway and how we can work with the paradox of this season: that there is tremendous growth ahead, and we’ve begun the descent into the darkest point in the year. How can we feel into the fullness of our aliveness without doing more? How can we hydrate in the midst of heat? Come find your steadiness as we approach this dynamic season.
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Welcome to a Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. 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 coming to you just before the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. This year it's on June 21st, but it's really the days proceeding and following. It's a, a longer time than just one day, but that day is particularly special because it's kind of the exact longest one.
For us, it's kind of the beginning of the season of summer, but in other places and other times, it would've been the height of the summer season, and I think it's a good reminder that none of these seasons are set in stone, and even if they were - stone changes and crumbles. So we really have to go with what's right around us, with what feels true to us here, and now. How is this point in the cycle of the year manifesting? What does it mean for the plants and animals and other beings around me? What does it mean for my body?
What is it wanting to show me or teach me? And we can just sort of feel into that, holding space for the fact that on the other half of the earth, it's the winter solstice, it's the darkest point in the year. So all of it can be true at once. But again, for us here in the Northern Hemisphere, it's the beginning of a new season - and I shouldn't say the whole northern hemisphere - I'll talk specifically for us in the Pacific Northwest in what's now known as the United States. This may feel true for you if you're also in Western Europe, um, but this is a new season.
It's the beginning of the summer season, and today I want to help you step into that season knowing kind of what to look for, some ways to orient, some ways to work with this time so that you can really feel into its largeness, its beauty, so that you can become that even more than you are already.
So before I dive in, I wanna read us our opening invocation and you can just sort of settle into your seat, or if you're walking or moving, kind of see how your body's feeling in time and space.
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 I want to try to make this as cogent as possible today, but I have a lot I want to say about the sun and the summer and I'm hoping it all kind of comes through clearly. But I think I'm sort of feeling the wide, big, light and openness of this time. So intellectually I feel a little like, I'm not sure how to... there's not like one thread I wanna pull through today. But there are a couple.
So the sun never changes, right? Like, our experience is that it has grown from the winter solstice to now, but we know now that the sun actually doesn't change at all.
What changes is our experience of it. The summer solstice is the time each year when the earth is tilted toward the sun, and in the winter it's tilted at the farthest point away. So we have these experiences of the light growing and diminishing, but the source of that light actually never changes. It's kind of like the moon.
The moon itself never changes, but our experience of it does. Our perception of it does. The way that it presents itself to us does, and I've always had, or especially since adulthood or since the climate has warmed here in Oregon where I grew up, I have a complicated relationship with the sun.
On these very hot days that come in the summer or on days when it's hot before it's really supposed to be... We're all in the mix of climate change right now... It feels suffocating. It feels overpowering, it feels uncomfortable. When we had the heat dome - god was that last summer or maybe two summers ago ? - When it was like exceptionally, like Middle Eastern level, hot here, it felt scary. The sun felt scary.
And in preparing for this episode today, I did some research on how the sun in other cultures at other times has been seen as a feminine deity rather than this sort of solar masculine orientation that we have here today in the west. And I'm kind of curious like if that came about at a time when the climate was different, when the sun really was a softer, maybe more feminine sort of bringer of warmth and life, right? Of course, we need the sun's light for life to occur, but I wonder if it had less sort of piercing effects in the past, and so was seen as perhaps more feminine.
But today, when the sun is really strong, I notice that I have a lot of resistance to it. I have, even as we approach the summer solstice, which I am so grateful for and working with in my own ways, I still have this sort of inner resistance because it means that we're crossing the gateway into excessive heat. Into wildfire season, which so sadly has already begun for our friends in the Northeastern part of the US and Canada and all of the tree friends and animal and plant friends that have suffered under that. It's already begun.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, it has been at other times throughout the year, but especially like in late summer. And so I'm feeling like the lead up to that and I feel afraid and worried about it. And so this summer solstice, I'm trying to cross over that threshold with a little bit more clarity and intention and sort of bolstering myself for what might come, what this season might bring, all of the beauty and fullness that it will bring and all of the potential destruction and overheating that it could bring as well.
You know, we have been in the spring. We've been in the season of newness, of rapid growth, that sort of comes out of the winter. This time of shape shifting - things sprouted that, you know, we may not have been sure what they were, and then they make themselves known to us. There's been chaotic weather. There have been babies born and nests built. We've been through Aries, the fire sign, we've been through Taurus, an earth sign, and through Gemini, an air sign, and now all of that peaks on the summer solstice.
And here we are in the fullness of that light... and then the tone shifts.
We cross into the summer. The sun moves into the sign of Cancer and it starts to feel different, and I find that we resist seasonal shifts most often when we feel like we haven't fully lived into the last one or we don't know how to fortify for the next one, like my sort of bracing for the heat of summer. I can do work here right now to kind of rehydrate, fortify myself for what I'm worried about in terms of this season. That could be true if you're crossing into the winter and have feelings about long gray days or the coldness. We can work with these thresholds and sort of find the inner work that wants to be done to help us meet what's occurring externally as well.
Another source of resistance at this time of year is the fact that we're shifting into the dark part of the year. Right after the summer solstice, the days will get shorter and shorter. The light has grown since the winter solstice. We've done it. This is the lightest part of the year. And now it's time for things to change again. And we can have resistance to that if we're sort of overly invested in ways of being or doing that are more akin to the light growing - if we're uncomfortable with the winding down or with the darkness coming.
So, the seasonal shifts are ways that we can, one, just awaken or remember our place as animals and beings on this planet that is hurling through space - that is changing its seasons based on this huge luminary millions of miles away from us. So we can one, just remember that we are a part of all of that.
And two, we can consciously choose how to relate to it, how to show up. And it can be informative to understand what about the seasonal shift is important to you or is evocative to you. Like, do you have the same sort of "ugh" or resistance to the summer coming, or is it something that you wholeheartedly embrace? How did you feel about the start of spring? They can just sort of be mirrors for us, not to make it all about us, but to make it a gateway into becoming more and more a part of this time, of this earth, of this place that we live.
So I encourage you to make time in the next couple of days to be intentional about either wrapping up the work of the spring season... do you need to do a little bit more experimentation? Do you need to plant some new seeds? Do you need to start something fresh or show up to your life and work in a different way? Or are you ready to sort of settle into the summer season and consider how you would like to answer the call of summer in your life this year? Are you ready to step into the fullness and the abundance of this time? And I'll talk about what those might mean in a minute.
So on the shift into summer, the sun moves into the sign of Cancer. Cancer is a cardinal water sign. It's initiating us into the new season. It's our first water sign in a while, since Pisces, since the end of winter. Cancer is ruled by the moon. So on the longest day of the year when the sun is at its most powerful, in comes this sign. The sun moves into a sign ruled by the moon. So the paradox and the tonal shift happens right away. Cancer is Latin for crab. And I talked in depth about the crab in last summer's episode about this shift, and I'll put that link in the show notes. It's episode 70 if you want an in-depth exploration of the crab and the molting process and another take on this time of year. It's one of the most popular episodes of the podcast. If you haven't listened or wanna re-listen, I encourage you to.
You can also learn a little bit about what this early summer period might have for you in terms of where you're undergoing a sort of refresh or transformation, your yearly molt, if you will. You can find out where Cancer lies in your natal chart, in the map of where the stars were when you were born. If you don't have that already, you can just look up how to find your birth chart or your natal chart and put your info in there and you can see, you know, where the sun is moving through - which house the sun is moving through in your life.
So if in your natal chart when you were born, Cancer was in your, let's say, your sixth house of daily life and work and health, then you know that every year on the summer solstice, the sun is moving into that part of your chart and is sort of lighting up that area of your life. So it's a good place to put some extra focus and to work with these themes in that area of your life in particular. And it could be in any of the 12 houses, and they all have their own unique textures and meanings. So if you want to make this personal, that's a good way to do that.
But again, like I said, the tone is shifting now. In Gemini season, right before the summer solstice, we talked a lot about pollination, cross pollination, the birds, the bees, the butterflies, the bats, all helping turn these blossoms, these little flowers into fruit and vegetables, things that can sustain us and feed us. So in order for us to move from Gemini into Cancer and to honor this shift, we need to make choices, right?
We cannot pollinate forever. The thing has to become the thing. Now the apple blossom needs to become the apple. The raspberry blossom needs to become the raspberry. How sad if we stayed blossoms forever and never became fruit that can sustain others. How sad if we never have the opportunity to be consumed by life, to metamorphosize into something else, to feed something else's body and give energy away.
Right? That is a timeless, sacred act that has to happen all throughout life, but especially in the summer season. The crab has to molt if it's going to grow and survive. The snow melt has to come down the mountain into the riverbeds. We are invited to really tune into, tap into, become part of the undercurrents, the over currents of powerful life right now.
You know, I talk about this a lot, but every water sign in the Zodiac has its own different sort of flavor or texture. Just like every fire sign or sign air sign has. For me, Cancer is this full river that is sort of beaming with snow melt, that is hydrating the land even as the sun and heat grows. And we have a chance to sort of mimic that and live into that in our own lives.
Yes, the light will start to diminish. We are invited to hold the fact of darkness on one hand, and we're also invited to hold the fact that there is a lot of growth and fullness and abundance still to occur. So there is paradox. There are both of these things. And also the fire, the wildfires, also take us into darkness, literally as the sky is smoky, but also into the heart of grief. Into this sense of dark helplessness, right? And so both of those things can be true at the same time. We can enjoy the sweetest, most delectable blueberry and be holding our heart with just, like, deep sadness for this other experience that is happening.
So the paradox of summer, I think, is really about letting go even as we're growing. The work has already been done. The seeds have been planted, the things have sprouted, the blossoms have been pollinated and are turning in into berries now, and it's time to make choices again. We can't cross-pollinate forever. Nothing would bloom and blossom and be able to be eaten.
So in this time, the question is really, can we be hosts to greater aliveness without overdoing it? Can we be that wide river, thick with snow melt just coursing through? You know, the river banks don't have to do anything. They hold presence, they hold steady, and they allow the water to flow through. Can we be the peach tree just getting as heavy as we've ever been with all of this ripeness, all of this sweetness?
And so what is the ripeness or the snow melt of this time? The fullness is really in our appreciation for the magic of this life. The fact that something sprouted and grew into something else this spring.
It's the fact that we can transform, we can think differently about ourselves, about our work. We can have new opportunities, new relationships. We can have new ideas, we can learn that all of that was possible and now it can feed us, right? The ripeness is your talent, your gifts that want a larger platform. They want a larger space to grow into this year. They are all of the sweet and hard won lessons that you carry inside of you just from living, from being a human on this planet right now. So all of that is the ripe fruit on your branches. All of that is the snow melt just coursing through the river of you, and you can feel into it any time that you need.
And the summer is an excellent time to make that larger, to sort of surrender to that joy, to that fullness. And again, not that it's gonna feel great all of the time, but it can certainly hydrate us when we're doing, when we're working with it consciously.
Like I said earlier, we're shifting into the darkest part of the year.
Now the light will get less and less every day until late December. So it's a long, gradual process. But it begins now, even in the midst of all of this fullness and growth, and we can really resist the beginning of the descent, the slowing down a lot more when we haven't fully lived into the spring. When we haven't fully lived into the light time, and in our culture, we certainly are obsessed with the light time, right? We're powered by all of this electrical light and we sort of shy, we're very afraid of the dark, literally and metaphorically. So I think we overdo it already on the light and we're sort of ignorant to our own luminaries within, or to our own light.
So it's this sort of yucky juxtaposition between being obsessed with the light and always wanting like the light to be on and for us to have clarity and we need to know what this thing is, et cetera. But also not being very attuned to our own brightness within and sort of living that out in our lives.
Maybe we've been really busy, but we're not meaningfully busy, or we've been dragging our feet on something that we know we want to do. So now the sun starts to sort of acquiesce and get diminished, and we get kind of grumpy like, I haven't had enough time, or I'm not ready yet.
And there's still plenty of time to bloom and experiment. Always. We're constantly adapting. But it could be time to start taking your aliveness really seriously. And that can look a thousand, a million, different ways depending on you and your life and what those words even mean to you. But I do know that the sun within you burns bright and is full when you're making the challenging choices that are in front of you. When you are at your edge of growth, when you're doing what needs doing in your own life with integrity.
And again, that might not feel really fun or great all of the time, but it can lead to a really balanced brightness that is also hydrated and not overdoing it. The summer really is not about doing more. It's about intentional digging in, into the real heart of your transformation right now, wherever it needs to occur in your life, and you probably know what it is. And it doesn't have to be like this major life overhaul. Every season is different, right? Some winters come in and just like totally wreck us and take us to the studs of our lives, to the foundation. Other winters come in and it's just kind of like, I'd like to sleep a little bit more right now, or I'm gonna like let go of this thing. And the summer can be similar, but in a different way.
It might be this tremendous time of growth and abundance for you where you're really out in the world in new big ways, or you're learning like a lot of just wild new things that really reshape your life. It could be that your social life is very, very full right now, and there's just bounty everywhere between you and the people in your life.
It could also come in and just invite you to do like 10% more of the things that you love, to feel 10% more alive. So it doesn't have to be like this mega molt every Cancer season, every summer, but there is something that needs to shift. There's nothing in the natural world right now that isn't cycling through changes as a result of the seasons changing, and you're a part of that.
You don't need to stay the same. You can't stay the same. So what is the thing right in front of you in your life that perhaps you have been resisting, perhaps you haven't wanted to look at, perhaps you really want to do, but don't know how, or the thing that you complain about a lot?
This is a really sweet time to sort of settle into the waters of you. To stop and take a breath. And to trust that if you have been waiting for the right time for something to blossom, to feel courageous enough to do something to allow yourself to change, to enjoy your life more, that it could be now.
And if you have no idea what it could mean to take your aliveness seriously, that's okay. It basically just means to prioritize your desires. Your wellbeing. It means to take seriously the things that you enjoy doing, your talents, the things that come easily to you, and it's not doing that at the expense of others, but alongside them, alongside the entire ecosystem around you that is coming into its own chorus of summer.
So this could look like creating larger channels for your wisdom - so starting a blog or a podcast, a series or a piece of art - something that can give voice to or expression to your own talents and gifts. Coming into the world and really blossoming and becoming fruit that can feed others. It might mean creating a steadier container for your art or your spiritual practice. Maybe the branches of your tree need to be a little sturdier so that you can hold fruit, so that you can be full and others can come along and pick what you've got to share. It might mean that you create more opportunities to share your bounty and receive it from others, whether that's through community and getting involved in ways that feel abundant and full to you. It could mean investing more time with friends or more than human kin that feel sweet and right to you.
It might also mean just creating more room for your own joy and rehydration this time of year, really not mimicking wildfires and imbalance, but really coming into a better balance of not overdoing it, of staying hydrated. A lot of times clients will ask me, you know, what does resting a little bit more, or going more slowly, or really enjoying this cup of tea have to do with figuring out what I'm gonna do for work or how I'm gonna pay my bills?
And the truth of it is a very summer type of wisdom: that we can let more of our strengths and insight and power flow when we are this wide, relaxed river bank. We don't have to pull the snow melt down the mountain. Gravity will do that for us. We don't have to like yank the raspberry out of the thing and sort of try to manufacture this thing growing before it's time. It will do it itself. It knows what to do. You know what to do. Your body knows what to do, your soul knows what to do. You've got guides, you've got helpers. You've got the seasons. You've got all of the plants and animals around you to show you how to meet this time. You don't have to effort more in the ways that you're used to, in the sort of "heat stroke mentality" of Western culture.
You are invited to stop and drink some lemonade and just see what's next. And that doesn't mean that it's always gonna be easy. It doesn't mean that there are any guarantees. Things are wild right now. We don't know what's gonna happen, but I am absolutely certain that life will catch you.
We are so hesitant and cautious about really giving our lives over to anything. And I think that's absolutely steeped in the very real culture that we live in that feels dangerous. It feels hard, and yeah, it just feels very hard inside of civilization, capitalism, western culture, to really devote ourselves wholeheartedly to anything because we have to work. We have to like, go to these jobs and earn money and like, make enough to survive.
And it's hard to carve out a path that honors our desires and our passions and lets us follow them while also being able to meet our material needs. And so we're all making compromises and looking for the ways that we can go through that and make that a reality given the constraints that we're in.
But when I'm bumping up against feeling kind of like numb or dried out, or not fully alive or in touch with my own brightness, I like to remember and consider the people throughout history, our own ancestors and people today who are prepared to lose everything that they know, who are prepared to die, who are prepared to see what catches them, and it may be death, but who are prepared to give it all up for something that really matters to them. Just sit with that for a moment. How many of us have actually faced life or death decisions because of our values or because of our need to survive? A lot of us are just trying to maintain a basic level of comfort, you know, and that's okay, but can we summon some courage from the people, from the more than human world who are having to stand up for or give themselves over completely to what really, really matters. Can we summon some of their courage with the stakes being so low, really, for us?
What would it mean to just move forward into the summer season with greater and greater devotion to your aliveness, to your gifts, to your talents, to what you want for the world, for your desires, the brightness of your care for others and for yourself?
Martin Shaw wrote a rendition of an old story called Tristan and Isolde, and he talks about that story being really about the journey from the winter solstice to the summer solstice and back. And he talks about Isolde as the Sun. And in the story, in his book, he quotes Bronwyn, who is Isolde's helper, and Bronwyn is speaking of Isolde and she says "Her brightness strained at the edges of a human shape."
"Her brightness strained at the edges of a human shape."
And I'm curious if you could be there for a time in this early summer period.
It doesn't mean that the brightness will stay forever. It has to go away. We have to step into the dark part of the year. But what would it mean for this line to be true of you for a time? For your brightness to strain at the edges of your human shape?
And what does brightness offer us? Offer the world? Even as we begin to try less or effort less and really just enjoy what's growing. This will be immensely helpful to all of us as we head into the Fall season. In a few months, it will be much easier to fully let go, to fully let go of growth, if you have really stepped into your aliveness and your brightness - into the beauty and challenge of what the summer holds for you.
If you can do that and sort of take up the invitation of this time, you will step into the fall, ready for the death and darkness that are there, because death and darkness are much scarier when we're not living at our edges, when we're not drinking in the fullness of life and answering the calls that we get.
If we're doing that every day, if we're really appreciating the fullness that is already here and saying yes to the fullness that's inviting us out further into our lives, into our largeness, then the little deaths of sleep every night when the sun sets... the little deaths that we practice every day... then those can become true respites, true places where we can replenish and renew, where we can find balance and live into that balance and hopefully contribute greater balance to this earth, which is on the precipice of another wildfire season.
So if we can become more balanced in ourselves, I have no doubt that that has some ripple effect on the forests, on the landscapes that so desperately need greater hydration and coolness and balance.
So that's what I have for you today. I hope this felt just grounding and enlivening in the ways that you need it, and I'm wishing you such a sweet and lovely summer solstice. I want to remind you if you've been a listener for a long time or if you're new here, I do also write a weekly newsletter, which offers a different way of receiving nature based wisdom. I don't always talk about the same things on the podcast. So, if you're interested, you are so welcome to join that weekly note here.
Take such good care, and I'll see you on the other side.