Seeding New Possibilities
Learning how to recognize new growth in your life and make the right type of room for it is an advanced practice.
In this in-between time before the Spring Equinox, we explore how to notice and honor the seeds that are alive within us, how to create an environment in which they can grow, and why some of them may not activate in this growing cycle.
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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, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm your host today. Hi friend, welcome, thank you so much for being here. I'm coming to you in late ish February. And on a walk yesterday, I noticed for the first time some yellow crocus that was blooming, and I saw hellebores, the flowers. I saw, those are also known as linten rose, you might recognize it by that name.
I saw Daphne blooming, and it smelled so good. And it just felt like I was literally like drinking in the nectar that the bees are going to be collecting from these flowers. I felt like it was really important not to skip over them or like kinda just keep walking or rush by. It felt really important to like take what I was given and really appreciate these early blooms and I hope that if you are in a landscape where you're noticing any little buds or even early flowers, um, that you will not skip over them or rush by them but that you will really give yourself the nectar of paying attention to them.
And recognizing their strength, the fact that they are blooming first at a risky time, it could still snow here at least where I am. And that you can sort of also admire their like hardiness that they can bloom with such limited sunlight, limited warmth, but they're out there first and you know, full, on full display and feeding the bees and it's a really beautiful thing.
So if you're in a landscape where that's not the case right now, Fear not, I think it will come, but if you are in a place where you're noticing any early signs of the spring season, I hope you will really delight in them more than you might normally do. This past weekend the sun shifted into the sign of Pisces.
This is the last sign of the zodiac. So we're at the end of a 12 sign cycle. And so we're about to start a new zodiacal year and Pisces is a mutable water sign, so it moves. It's taking us from one season to the next. It's a bridge. It's a transition period. I like to think of it as the ocean. It feels very Vast and deep and really uncontainable, like you're not gonna wrangle in a, you know, Pisces kind of vibe.
In the tarot it corresponds to the moon card, so in some of the original moon cards in earlier decks, you'll see a dog and a wolf, and we have talked about this before, that there's this French saying that you're in the hour between a dog and a wolf, that dusk and dawn are these times where The lines between domesticity and wildness, or safety and danger, or spirit and material get really blurry.
It's the time where the moon sort of rains, and mysteries abound. So if we think of the moon kind of being the theme between now and the spring equinox when the sun will move into the sign of Aries, you might consider like how this is a mysterious time for you, that you may not know what is Wanting to grow in your life or how to relate to it.
You might be surprised by the opportunities or things that are coming up. You might be asked to change your thinking and perception about where you are. It's a, um, I don't wanna use liminal 'cause it's such an overworked word, but it's an in-Between time we're at the ending and a beginning of something and we're on that cusp in the edia year, as well as with the seasons.
We're shifting from winter into spring, and endings and beginnings are so close right now as we get close to that spring equinox in late March. And the theme for today, of course, is seeds, which also contain endings and beginnings. A seed is both the oldest part of a plant, because it's what remains from its last form, its last bloom, and it's also the newest part of a plant, because it holds the potential for the next cycle of growth.
So one seed is both an ending and a beginning. And In line with our theme of sort of vast connection this winter season of the podcast, I just want to remind us that everything comes from seeds. Tiny cells can turn into a human or an animal. Tiny packages of DNA hold the potential of something, these little seeds that are made up of DNA.
Seeds are one of those mythic images that really live in our subconscious, that have been embedded in us for millennia, because just like the seed, holds so much literal potential because it can become something else. It also, the image of a seed holds so much potential in terms of like our psyche and our understanding and it's an amazing symbol to work with if you are hungry for new life or to really feel into like the potency of an opportunity or a time in your life.
And so I just encourage you to really trust what the image of a seed is. evokes in you, and if it feels powerful or enlivening, or it might even feel kind of scary or intimidating, hopefully our conversation today is going to support you in really working with that imagery and how it shows up in your own life in a good way.
So today we're going to explore what seeds are, literally and metaphorically, what they don't have, what they need. And how we can really be led by the intelligence of the seeds within our own hearts and spirits. Seeds have experienced a lot of harm in our culture. Um, many of them are genetically modified with, uh, sort of scientific tools that go way faster than like ancient practices of, um, hybridization or like, you know, grafting things together.
Like, of course, humans for many. Thousands of years have manipulated plants to, you know, get them to grow in different ways or create new fruits. But that takes a long time to happen, usually, for a whole plant to shift. And, of course, in our culture, because we're an industrialized culture, based in capitalism.
Seeds get changed very rapidly now and in pursuit of industrial farming, to serve industrial farming. GMO seeds are generally hardier, quote unquote, in terms of like resisting pests or weather or, you know, they're like these mega seeds, kind of in these monstrous forms, like they're big and, you know, unkillable.
Uh, but they also don't retain the sort of heart, true heartiness of like a wild plant that has to adapt and that has to send nutrients into the right places in order to survive. Um, and so you might think of the fact that we consume so many genetically modified foods. You might wonder, or just consider, how that could impact a body, our bodies or our spirits, versus eating primarily wild foods that that perhaps are a little more resilient, that are in their truest forms, that have retained their nutrients, um, the real nutrients we need, and that those haven't been bred out of them in favor of better color, or less spottiness, or whatever.
So, seeds are also totally pummeled and worked with pretty unskillfully, just in our own lives. If you think of seeds as like, ideas, or desires, or new beginnings in our own lives. Oftentimes, we don't know how to work with them or how to hold space for them, or we are in such a crisis mode that we really can't recognize them.
And generally, we, we work with them pretty unskillfully because we just haven't learned differently. We haven't really learned how to work with a subtle type of energy or idea, this subtle newness, this like very fragile. Um, life that is emerging. So I hope today feels really nourishing and gives you some very practical ways to work with the seeds that I think are embedded in you, that you were born with, the desires that came with you into this lifetime, but also just the new ideas and desires that might be circling, circulating for you in this early spring, just new things you want in your life or that want to come through you.
Because I think it's a two way street. I think ideas and seeds are there to support us, the sort of larger self that wants to grow, and they can be opportunities that we plant for ourselves. But at other times, seeds are their own thing. They're an idea that may not feel like it really came from us, but that has some kind of force behind it that wants to be expressed in this world.
And we're the soil that it's landed in. So. It's complicated. But I'm gonna try to keep it simple and for it to feel really encouraging and enlivening to you today. I just want to say that for the last like 10 minutes, this big brown papa squirrel that is like one of our neighbors, he and his partner have been running around all over making a nest, I believe in our neighbor's yard, and 10 minutes.
So, I think he is here with us. You can imagine this really fat, cute little squirrel. Maybe I'll try to take a picture later if he's still around. Uh, anyway, I want to share a couple of announcements before we dive into today's material. The first is that Eating Capitalism starts this Friday, the 23rd.
This is a workshop series on the origins of capitalism and how we can metabolize them, eat them, and turn them into new energy for our lives. We will be moving through the material in a book by Silvia Federici that's called Caliban and the Witch. It's an amazing book. You don't have to have read the book to participate.
Every session will give sort of a high level overview of the key aspects of the chapter that we're moving through, and then we'll, we'll work with it through, uh, some ritual, some visualization, reflection, and of course discussion at the end. So we'll be meeting over the weekend, February 25th, over five 90 minute sessions, and I just want to give you a little run through of what we'll be covering so you can get a sense of whether this could be a good use of your time or not.
The workshop series is really designed for people who either feel like they have run into a wall or like where they're sort of at a limit in terms of optimizing their work or searching for a vocation. If they're feeling like they're really, there's this real stuckness and they need to remember and understand.
What capitalism is, how it evolved, and what it cost us in order to open up a lot more energy to shift and adapt and move into something new. It's also going to be really good for people who are working for themselves, who are trying to build something that is inherently anti capitalist, and who want a little bit more information about how capitalism emerged so that they can see what some of the antidotes to it are.
So session one, we're going to be introducing the work and creating a container for it and clarifying why this material is so relevant right now here in 2024. We're going to, in session two, talk about life before capitalism, the feudal system, and And what we don't want to pull forward from that, but also what we do want to pull forward from it.
A lot of people think that, you know, the middle ages and the time before capitalism was totally horrid and dark and abysmal. And Silvia Federici makes a good case for why that isn't the whole story and how capitalism was a response to people who were trying to evolve the feudal system into something better.
On Saturday in Session 3, we'll be talking about rebel bodies and rebel communities and Federici's work on how in order for capitalism to take root, whole communities had to be separated from one another, destroyed, the body had to become a machine. And so we'll talk about how we can really expand the care that we put into ourselves and others.
Session 4, we're going to be going through the European witch hunts as well as the start of Cologne. colonization and the Atlantic slave trade that's covered in the book. We will be honoring those who were silenced and put to death at the advent of capitalism and also discerning for ourselves how we would like to untangle maybe some of the silencing that we do.
for ourselves now, as people who have been enculturated in capitalism. And then in the final session on Sunday, we'll be weaving a new post capitalist vision together that can really reshape our day to day choices about work and money and life. So, it's going to be a really rich weekend. The cost is 50.
There are discount codes if that's not feasible for you right now. Sessions will be recorded if you can't make all of them live, and if you have any questions let me know, but I would love to have you if this resonates. My other quick announcement is just to let you know that this is our second to last episode for the winter season of the show.
We're doing a little shorter season, uh, for this time. I'm starting to send invitations out for guests for the spring season, so I'm planning on launching that in April and doing a longer run of that season when there's a little more energy and vitality, and I'm really excited about some topic ideas that are floating around for that season.
All right, with all of that said, I'm going to read us our opening invocation and take us into the heart of today's episode. So wherever you are, you might want to just notice your body and time and space. If there's anything that your body would like right now, maybe you could give it to yourself. 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 Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
Okay, so let's start by talking about what seeds are. Seeds, the ones that we can hold in our hands that create plant life, but also seeds in terms of like cells that are the beginning of maybe bacterial or animal life, they're packages of DNA. They're these tiny Containers of potential. Again, like I said earlier, they are the oldest and the newest part of the plant.
They were created by the plant that came before and are also the beginning of the plant that is not yet here. Seeds In terms of plant seeds, can lay dormant for years sometimes. Sometimes they can be in the soil, and we think the soil is completely fallow, nothing is growing, but then there's a, a big rain or something and the temperature shifts and You know, you could think of like a desert that sort of blooms and comes alive when we didn't think anything was planted in that soil.
Some seeds can fly, like a dandelion seed sort of propelled on this little feathery, you know, wing. Many of the seeds are surrounded by a fruiting body. So the cherry seed is at the center of the cherry. The avocado pit is surrounded by its green flesh. The tomato seeds are at the center of that juicy red fruit.
So plant seeds come in many different shapes and sizes, but all of them are these seeds of potential, these little tiny containers and packages of potential. For us, if we think of seeds as sort of symbol or a metaphor that we can work with, they are little glimmers of longing. They are almost Imperceptible.
Some of them are so tiny, you can barely pick up on them if you're not paying attention. These little ideas. Sometimes we recognize them in envy at what someone else has, that underneath that envy is actually a seed of longing or desire. We might Notice how someone else is in the world and realize that we, like, ooh, I want a piece of that, like something about that is resonating with a seed that's in me.
It can feel like inspiration. It can also be just what we deeply know, our instincts. What is in our DNA, which of course is connection and care and the knowing about how to survive and be in this world in a good way. A lot of us have forgotten that or been taught out of that, but it still lives in us.
Those seeds, that potential is absolutely still here. Seeds when I'm talking about seeds for us are these just little droplets of potential that land in our awareness. We feel them actually in our gut or in our heart. They're not just intellectual ideas, although of course they can sort of float in and out in that way.
So it might be like a vision of yourself practicing a particular craft, or an idea for a blog post, or a way that you'd like to feel in your life, or something that you really enjoyed doing as a young person that has fallen away for a long time that might want to start blooming again. Like I alluded to earlier, working with seed energy is kind of an advanced practice.
That's not to say that you can't do it and start doing it now, and you have done it in the past. You've brought to life things in your life that were at one point not here or not able to be seen that started as these little pockets of potential and grew inside you, whether that was your identity, a creative project, a desire that is now here in the world, a relationship that you really wanted that came into being.
So you have done seed work your entire life. But where I notice people get I get tripped up a lot and I see this all the time in my work with people who are exploring new ways of working in the world or earning an income. Most people will immediately dismiss a seed as unrealistic or silly or fragile or meaningless.
We don't have a ton of cultural appreciation for seedlings, tiny seeds, because we're a culture that values what we can see and touch and manipulate and what's going to feed us and what's sturdy and if I can't see it, you know, it's not real. And Doing seed work, really trusting the ideas that we get, our intuition about something, the desires that we have, the sort of new thing that might be stirring, that would like our attention.
To do that takes a lot of patience and a lot of Letting go of judgments and ideas about how things are, how you are, who you are in the world, what's available to you, what's possible for you. If the world is, if you have lived for a long time believing that the world is an unsafe place, which is so understandable, if you were, if it truly was an unsafe place for you as a young person or a child, then there's no shame in Bringing that sort of mental framework into your adulthood with you, but I find a lot of people are very committed to this idea that, you know, their work lives can't really change after a certain point.
If they've done a thing for this long, it's too late to make a change. People who might have, might sense into a new idea for themselves or a new identity that they'd like to take on and just immediately dismiss it as unrealistic. And, you know, they don't have time to wait for that to emerge. So, again, I'm not trying to, We can't pass any judgment here.
There are times when we really can't entertain a seed, an idea that comes. But so many of us are hungry for new growth, and it's so natural, especially in this early spring time, to want to participate in the new blooming that we're going to start seeing more and more around us, that I hope you will open a little bit of space for the seeds that are in you right now that are coming through your life right now that are in your soil and not immediately dismissing them but actually embracing them and honoring them and noticing them.
The other place I see people get tripped up a lot is that we'll be working together and maybe someone's like let go of a lot in their working life. They left a job or left a project or they're detaching from this identity as a certain type of professional and then with a little bit of space, a new idea comes, a new seed shows itself to them, and There can be this response that's sort of like a devouring energy or a lot of pressure where we get the idea and then we want it to turn into its full potential thing right now.
You know, we want to make the website, we want to announce to everyone that this is what we're doing, and again, that is also so understandable, and I have absolutely done that and will continue to do that. It takes a lot of patience to trust a the seed and let it sort of show itself to you. Because as I'll talk about in a couple minutes, seeds don't want to be rushed.
You know, you could plant a seed right now in your backyard or in a pot and you could tell it to hurry up all day, 24 hours a day, and it will not change a thing. The seed is on its own timeline. It has certain needs and it, it actually does know best when to emerge and when to bloom and us wanting it to be different.
really doesn't change much. If anything, it harms the process. So those are some things that are, I think, common reactions to seeds in our own lives and areas where we really cause more suffering or really limit the possibilities for ourselves. And so I want to talk now about kind of how you can work with these seeds in a way that might be a little bit more enjoyable and fruitful for you, but first we have to remember what seeds are not.
Seeds are not self sufficient organisms. Like, you can't just put a seed on your kitchen counter and expect it to become what it needs to become. They need inputs. They need resources. They need space, and again, not pressure. They need support in order to become what they have the potential to become. So just because we get a hit of inspiration or we feel this like seed of longing or this new idea comes in, that doesn't mean the thing will grow now.
It has to be nurtured.
That after we nurture it and give it space and time it could be that in this growing cycle it will become a thing. Some seeds can bloom very quickly and their germination period is very short. It's like you put it in the ground and you know 14 days later, 28 days later you have a thing that you can see and that's amazing.
Other plants have very long germination periods. Like we put some garlic in the ground in October, and I'm pretty sure We're looking at like July for the bulbs to be able to harvest the bulbs. So some plants have Every seed has its own cycle and lifetime and what it's gonna, how long it's gonna take. So, sometimes it's just a timing issue.
But also we need to remember that not all seeds are meant to grow into their full form, ever. That's why plants make so many seeds. That's why Sea turtles have so many eggs and hatch, lay so many eggs. That's why, you know, people are born with an abundance of eggs and sperm and the material they need to make new life because not every seed is meant to grow into the fullness of itself.
And that can bring up a lot of grief, of course. And it's a A reality of life that can be hard to face, and we have to understand, I think, where we are on a certain continuum of relating to that. I think some people have a hard time accepting that not all wishes come true, not all seeds come to life, not all ideas are meant to.
and turn into anything else. Not all relationships are meant to last our entire lives. There are some people who need some tempering in that area, and to accept the fact that there's death, and that not everything that is planted grows. But, A lot of people are really comfortable in that place, and actually, I would say, at least in my line of work, most people need to go a little further the other direction and accept that Actually, wishes can come true and seeds can become real things.
I see it in this work all the time that someone comes in and believes that there's no other options for them. They have to stay in this job they're in because it's all they've got. It's what they've done for 20 years. It's what they're good at or, or whatever the case may be. And actually they need some support accepting the fact that.
The see, the tiny glimmer of an idea that keeps haunting them for years, or that they come back to, or that lived in them as an adolescent. They need to believe that that thing can actually grow and feed them and become a new life. and a new work and a new identity. So, you just need to understand where you land on the continuum and it can change based on your circumstances and what's available to you.
But a lot of people need to remember and trust in seeds and seed energy and how the life cycle happens. most of us are really comfortable with the like, Oh, death comes, you know, like it's summer and I'm in this period of mastery and then, you know, I have to let it go and nothing will return. Many of us need to become like kids again and trust that if I plant the seed.
It could turn into something if I give it water, and I give it my loving, you know, words and attention, and I cheer it on. It could grow into something. So that's all I'll say about that for now. I do want to talk a little bit about what seeds need, because again, I think it's inevitable that seeds live inside of you.
There are seeds all around us, everywhere we look right now. The plants that we are observing on our walks, or in our backyards, or in wild spaces, are all moving through this seed cycle in some timeline or shape or another. Not all plants use seeds necessarily, or relied mostly on seeds, like the strawberry plant.
The strawberry fruit contains seeds, but the strawberry plant itself mostly proliferates through its runners, its little clones that it sends out that root in. So not all plants are like fully on this seed vibe, but we can use it and drink it in as a really helpful metaphor, and I do believe that you came into this lifetime with desires and ideas that are meant to grow in you and come into fruition in this life.
That might speak directly to the work that you do, like the seeds that you came into this life with might want to be expressed and grow in your working life. It could also be that they want to grow in your family relationships, in the way that you make a home, in the way that you feed yourself. Uh, so it, I don't have any like, preconceptions about what those are or how, where they want to live into your life and come into fruition and grow, but I do believe that you came into this lifetime with some things that want to be realized in your human life now, in your body, in this form, in the material constraints that we're working with.
So Big reminder that everything grows in its own time, or it won't grow and we don't know why, and there is space for all of that. There's space for all of this to exist, and it's mysterious. Again, we're in a mysterious time. Sometimes we don't understand why certain seeds don't take or don't grow, or they don't do anything this year, but they do something next year.
And we don't have to super analyze or nitpick or, or break it all down. We can just As much as we can, sort of be with the mystery of it. So, what do seeds need right now? First, they need healthy soil. Healthy soil takes years and years to develop. This is something that industrial farming has decimated.
It's just totally allowed the top layers of healthy soil to erode, wash into, like here in the United States, wash into the Gulf of Mexico. And Unfortunately for us, good soil takes a long time for, you know, the natural materials to compost on top of it, for the mycorrhizal networks to really form. It needs time for these little critters and bugs to sort of aerate the soil from the inside out.
So sometimes we get an idea. And we have this like little seed of inspiration and we plant the seed in the soil of us. We're like, okay I'm noticing that and I'm paying attention and we expect it to grow that same season but actually our soil needs some amending first and that can be really frustrating again because we like things to happen fast generally many of us.
That's not true for everyone, but a lot of times We have to exercise our patient's muscles here. So, if it's the case that we get the sense that our soil needs some tending to, and this is kind of what the winter season affords us, is the space to go slower, to compost our experiences and let things disintegrate and decompose inside of us so that new material can be used.
We can take the space again to not do anything, to really let the body recalibrate and readjust and let the nervous system soothe itself and get still again. We can very literally tend to the body. I think in the winter it's an excellent time to notice, you know, what we eat, how we're doing with water.
Maybe we don't want to be out exercising a lot, but what's like some gentle movement, or can we walk more? Do we want to pay attention at all to like our pesticide consumption or the GMOs that we might be consuming? We kind of can do what is available to us knowing that I know not everything is available to everyone because of poverty and class and sort of limits of our lives, but the winter is a time of really amending the soil of us.
And that can be very much about, like, the body and the foundation of our bones and our digestive systems and, like, how are we able to receive the seeds and can we do that in a way that's not hurried or panicked, but can be sort of Grounded. And again, it's not like you're not doing that already. You're not doing it well enough.
It's just if you want to, you can do that. You can just focus on the soil of you. You also can say fuck off and you don't have to do it. So it's just available to you right now if you want to. I think another way that we can amend our soil that's a little more active is by letting things grow and put nutrients back into the soil.
I am not a good gardener, like sometimes people think because I love nature or talk about it a lot. I like know anything about gardening. That's very much not the case. And, but I do know that some people in the fall or the winter plant cover crops over their soil to keep the soil healthy and those cover crops like rye, I'm trying to think of other ones.
I can't remember, but these cover crops are these little plants that will grow and cover the soil and they put nutrients back into the soil while you're not using it to sort of grow food or flowers. And we can work with this cover crop idea as well by Kind of just being free with what we're growing in our lives and letting it nourish us.
So that could be just allowing ourselves to have creative projects that are fun and don't have to lead anywhere and we're just like active in the creativity. It could be just getting a job just to get some cash flowing again, if that feels helpful and nutritious to you. It could be, Kind of activating or increasing your activity in terms of like caring for others and being out in the community more as a little time to sort of cover crop yourself.
And cyclical living helps with soil rejuvenation a ton. Because if you understand that you're entering You know, when we literally enter into the fall, then you can give yourself a little bit of spaciousness. Maybe you turn down the level of activity, and then when we enter the literal winter, you might be paying closer attention to the soil of you and what your body needs at the darkest point in the year.
You might want to increase activity in a couple ways and feed yourself. You know, while the days are still short and dark, give yourself the energy that you need with some of that cover crop idea. And then ideally in the spring, you are healthy enough to give life to some new ideas. And it does feel like the time.
And it feels like you're not having to like haul in a truckload of compost and try to like quickly amend your soil, but it's like already kind of fertile and you can just. You do have the energy to do a new class, or teach a new thing, or say yes to some opportunity, or, you know, whatever you want to do, whatever those seeds are and what shape they want to take.
I've been noticing a lot lately, something about the last month has just been Full on, jam packed, of course what's happening in the world in Gaza right now is also taking up a lot of mental space and heart space, and I've been noticing that my sort of chronic Rushing, like, just living in a sort of a rushed way is really toxic.
It's one of the things that depletes my soil the fastest, faster than I can like build it back up. So I'm trying to play with this idea of for the remainder of the winter until the spring equinox, trying to be really intentional about. and limiting the rushing that I do in my days, and slowing things down, and not booking things back to back.
And I can tell already it's only been a a week or so, I can tell that it's already letting my little seedlings, my little ideas for this year, they're not, I mean, they're not sprouting or growing yet, but I can tell that there's more space for them. That that limiting of the rushing is allowing them to have a little more room to grow and sort of show themselves to me.
So I encourage you to consider the sort of soil of your life right now. Do you have the time and space that you would like? Most of us don't, and that's not our fault. It's not, it's very rarely an individual failing. It's more that we live in this. It's a crazy society that has really backwards values, but are we doing as much as we want to right now to sort of nurture the soil of us and the fertility available in our lives?
The second thing that seeds need that I'll talk about today is water. The first stage in a seed's germination process is called imbibition. like to imbibe. The seed is in the ground, and it responds to temperature shifts. It notices the shifts in temperature. It notices the changes in the light. And then, when it seems like the conditions are right, it fills itself up with water.
It imbibes the water in the soil around it, and that activates enzymes that will trigger its growth. growth. I came across an article by someone named L. W. Woodstock in the Journal of Seed Technology, and this was from like 40 years ago, but I loved this quote. The author wrote, Although necessary, imbibition is a period of peril.
The imbibition period offers opportunity as well as hazard. Because the intake of water is sort of a, there's kind of a no going back. feeling to it. Once a seed decides, like, this is the time, it can take in the water too rapidly, which can lead to what's called imbibitional injury to the seed coating.
Like, it can injure the enzymes in the coating of the seed. If the seed takes up a bunch of water and then there's a freeze and the soil freezes, you know, the seed will be frozen and it could die or be injured or, you know, not have the resources that it needs when things warm up again and it can actually open.
So, there are other risks as well, but We have to be sort of discerning here with our seeds, and we have to understand that there are risks. Again, not everything we wish for will come to fruition. We may not always get the timing right. We may think like, hey, it's warm. It's sunny. I've got enough water in the soil.
You know, the days are getting longer. I'm gonna launch this thing now. I'm gonna tell everyone I'm doing this. And, you know, through no fault of our own sometimes, it's just not the right time, and that's life. There may be a larger picture that we can't see yet. And so we do our best to create a healthy environment and trust the timing and the signals that we're getting around us, but nothing is for certain.
And luckily for us, it's not like a one chance kind of thing. Like, yes, the seed that I'm talking about may not make it. It could injure itself through imbibing the water too quickly. But most plants create an overabundance of seeds, so that the plant can still proliferate, maybe just not every seed will make it.
So we can do that, too, and I'll talk about that in a minute, how to sort of proliferate our seeds and plant a lot of things, so that we're not putting so much pressure on this world. one idea, or one opportunity, or one relationship. But when we feel like the time is right to take a new idea or identity seriously, a good first step, just like a plant's first step in the germination process, is to hydrate it.
To bring in the water, to hydrate it with our good feelings, with our emotional fluidity and trust, letting all the things flow through, not holding on to those emotions. for too long or judging them, but just letting the tears flow, the laughter flow, the anger, the confusion, the impatience, all of it can come through.
By really trusting the seed, we give it a lot of water and what it needs. Also like by being really fluid in our ideas about how the seed might look, you might have stumbled upon some seeds in a rose hip somewhere, and you can plant those seeds, but sometimes the rose that grows is not exactly an exact replica of the parent plant that you got the seeds from, or you may not know what, what the parent plant looked like.
So we have to be open here that sometimes, you know, the seed is just the potential. It's like the core essence of the thing, but the way it's gonna look It depends a lot on the conditions, the time of year, all of these factors around it. So we have to be really free and not, again, not really rigid in our thinking about how the idea wants to come to life.
It also doesn't want this, the seed or this idea, doesn't want a bunch of like solid gunk dumped onto it. It doesn't want a big. You know, it wants to be at the right level in the soil. If you bring in, like, you know, six inches or a foot of new soil on top of that seed, it probably won't have the space. It can't grow that far up, right?
So you want to be conscious of, like, not dumping a bunch of pressure and timelines and earth. kind of heaviness onto it. It also doesn't want like a flame lit underneath it. It wants water. It wants to drink in your ease and your trust of it. This is way easier said than done. I know most of us ride that.
risk, fear, train for a long time. We do not trust the seed to do its thing. We do not trust it to show us what it wants to become. We don't trust ourselves to recognize it or listen to it. It is a, again, a skillful dance that we're talking about here. But that's why it's so helpful to start really small.
Seeds are so small. They may not be fragile, like they can be pretty hardy, but they can easily be lost, like they're tiny. If they sort of fall into the grass, you might not find them again. So we need to take one very careful, gentle step at a time. We might write the idea down. We might write the desire down.
We might imagine it being planted inside of us. We might just say hello to it. We might give it 30 seconds of space in our mind. We might give it a little symbol on an altar and put that up. We might look into one way that this seed could come to life, one possibility. We just want to take tiny, hydrated steps, and the quality of them, again, is almost More important than the size or the fact of the steps.
How you relate to this seed is so much more important than what you quote unquote, like do with it or the steps that you take. And again, this takes a lot of trust in yourself and in the idea, trusting that if it's. It's meant for you, meant for this season. It will show you what it wants to be. It will have a momentum and a life of its own if it's in a healthy soil and given the sort of water of your trust.
The final thing that I want to talk about today in terms of what seeds need is space. We've talked about this a lot already. Seeds need space. space away from our grasping, our demanding, our worry. They don't need our expectations. They don't need toxins like being rushed all the time. You can really, really want a seedling to grow, but it's going to do it at its own pace, on its own timing.
And that's lovely. And that can be a real relief for those of us who might feel a lot of pressure to make a thing happen. We can sort of relax a little bit here and let Let the cycle take form as it wants to, and as it has done for millennia. And again, I just want to say that it, these seeds really need space from our limitations.
These seeds need permission to be here. They need permission to change you, especially about identity stuff, and a lot of it is identity stuff. The seeds that we feel, the sort of glimmers of longing about, you know, a trip we want to take, or a way we want to live, or a kind of work we want to do, or the type of person that we want to be.
All of those have impacts on our identity, because If we want to step into something new, something else has to go. And shedding the seed pod, the sort of container that has held us so that the sprout can emerge and go into the soil and start resourcing itself, that is regular work that we're all doing throughout the year, and that comes up again in the spring.
Cycles of letting go show up all throughout the seasonal flow, and this is just another one that the spring brings. You know, in the fall, the leaves are falling and changing, the plants die. In the winter, a lot of animals go into hibernation. In the spring, the shell that has protected the seed has to break open and be grown out of.
The baby animals that will be born have to leave the womb. The chicks have to leave the eggs if they want to be born. Even in the summer, the flower has to become the fruit. Right? If it stays a flower forever, it won't make fruit and won't It contains seeds for the next cycle of growth. So, sometimes I get really bored with all of the like, letting go and death, rebirth talk.
I recognize that it's a foundational aspect of life, that everything, with every birth, there's a death. With every death, there's a birth. But sometimes it becomes so like, in the mind, that it loses its meaning for me. So I like to keep this really simple and like, on the ground. It could be that if one seed wants to grow in your life right now, it just means that something else that you give your energy to might need to take a back seat.
It could be that in order for you to grow the seed of a writing practice, or a morning practice, or if you're, you feel ready to grow a sense of, I could just more time in your creative space that it may mean that the shell, the seed pod that you need to grow out of is another layer of imposter syndrome.
So in order for the thing to grow, something else has to be, has to fall away. It could be that in order for you to believe in an idea, you're going to need to let go of your doubt for a moment. You're going to need to let that doubt crack open. Just for a little bit at least. So, we can keep this super simple.
Some letting go is really big, like in the fall, it's everywhere. It's super in our face. Leaves are literally falling on us and showing us what it means to shed. Sometimes people can be in these like years long identity shifts. But a lot of them are just these little day to day It's about, it's just like hygiene, like every day or every other day or semi regularly, you bathe or shower and you scrub off the outer layer of skin and dirt so it can fall away and you can be renewed.
And so, These are just little things to keep in mind and to remember that the things that want to grow in you in this cycle at least are gonna just necessitate some kind of letting go and rebalancing. That's just a core element of growth. I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about proliferating seeds before we wrap up.
So you are full of seeds. Again, you came into this lifetime with desires, ideas, karmic history, I don't know how you feel about reincarnation, but you may have had past experiences that you're bringing in to this life. You came here for a reason, I believe. Understanding the state of the world and with certain gifts or medicine to bring to support healing and the sort of evolution of our world.
You might feel too full of seeds sometimes. Maybe you're someone who's constantly full of ideas, and you're not sure what what to do with them, and it feels like too much, and none of them are taking root and growing into anything, and We might talk about that a little later in the spring because of course that's an element of this, but for now I just want to remind you that you are full of ideas and glimmers and longings and that if you are moving very quickly in your life or in a place of real demand or crisis or just trying to get through day to day, it may be really hard to recognize that, those seeds, but it doesn't mean that they're not there.
And you can, when you feel ready, cast all of those seeds out into the healthy soil and see what takes. You don't have to hold them all so close. Not every idea is super precious. We actually don't really want to be very precious about our ideas. We want to treat them kindly, of course, and put them in healthy soil and give them the water that they need.
But again, we, we understand that not every idea is going to take root, not every idea. There's not like one defining thing that is like a live or die for you. You have lots of options. Like plants, you have many seeds. You don't have to hold them all so close. So ways that you can plant many of them and give yourself.
a lot of opportunity or fruit this coming growing cycle is one just by noticing them, paying attention, slowing down enough that you can recognize how you would like, what you would like to experience this year. And usually those things that come from real deep inside of you, your gut, your heart, those things are generally going to benefit the people and the beings and the land around you.
Most of us have really pure, actually all of us have very pure desires. You're not a being who is intent on harming yourself and others and this planet. That's something that has sort of become like a cultural disease that many of us are afflicted with. But at your core, who you are, I do believe that your desires are generally life giving and beneficial, so you can notice them and trust them and honor them in some way.
You might just make a note in your journal each morning of things that you just desire, things that you think about doing, ideas that come through, questions that you have. Treating these little seeds as companions throughout your day right now. You might even want to say them out loud with a safe person, or to, you know, a land, or a pet, or a tree, you can state them and give them life and honor them through your words.
Another good way to proliferate your seeds and plant a lot of them right now is to name your needs and ask for support. Beth Pickens is an artist consultant and I heard her talking on a podcast once about how asking for support for your art or for your work every week or even every day asking for the support that you need is like planting seeds.
And those seeds, some of them again won't do anything right now and some will turn into something. You can also keep this very literal and plant actual seeds right now as a meditation, as a symbol of you casting a lot of hope and desire into the universe and seeing what happens. If you wanted to slow it down or make it even smaller you could Give particular seeds your intentions and plant them and bless them and see what happens.
It's really about being free with them. You know, they kind of, the seeds will proliferate on their own once you sort of stop ignoring them or pressuring them. Because again, this is natural. This is natural intelligence that we evolved with, that we're connected to, and that we can And so we can be free with our ideas, our desires, our longings.
And for some of us, the skill that we need is in trusting those and growing them. And for others, again, the skill is more in refining them and deciding where to put our resources and what to grow and turn those seeds, or not turn them into anything, but allow them to grow. Um, so, but right now, we're talking primarily about just how to honor the very subtle newness and potential that is showing up in our lives right now.
If we do this, if we sort of give these seeds our attention and plant them, then we might Receive an abundance in the late spring and summer. We might have food to eat. We might have nourishment in our lives. We might have more collaboration or income or opportunities or joy or understanding. We might have greater intimacy.
We might, I don't know, there's no promises, but I would like to try to sync up with the growing cycle and let it show me what new life can come through. Oftentimes, the seeds that come in when I trust them become things that are a lot more interesting than what I could just think up with my intellect.
So, working with the seeds, sort of, Mythology or symbology, working with seed energy, really stitches us into how life is and I personally want more of that. I want to be stitched in. I want to be resilient. I want to be part of this place, this landscape, paying attention and learning and really staying at my edge of growth and I want that for you too, if it's something that's on your heart.
So. That's what I have for you today, my friend. Thank you for being with me. I hope that the seeds teach you something this time. I hope you give a little bit of your attention and resources to them and just see what they want to show you. If you want to go deeper together in this vein of work, you can check out my upcoming workshop, Eating Capitalism.
We start this Friday, the 23rd, planting those seeds of new understanding and Understanding the radical root of where this system comes from and how we wanna engage with it. Thank you so much to those of you who support the show financially via my page on buy me a coffee.com. If you enjoy the show and are are in a place where you could chip in once or monthly, that means so much to me.
You can do that at the link in the show notes or at buy me a coffee.com/megan leatherman. I'll be back with you next week for our final episode of the winter season. I hope you take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.