All Water is a Womb
In this season of the show, the life-giving force of Water and the Ocean will be our teachers. Today we start with an essential truth: that all Water is a womb. Womb-time is necessary for any new beginning–biological, vocational, or spiritual– and in this episode we talk about how to gestate the dreams we carry for the year ahead.
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Resources mentioned:
*Flowing with Fear Class on Jan. 22nd: https://awildnewwork.com/events/2026/flowing-with-fear
*Meant for More Small Group: https://awildnewwork.com/guidance
*Sign up for my email newsletter here: https://awildnewwork.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=18d7c429e40852ccec908bfdb&id=feab73805d
Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism 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.
Well, hi friend. It's so lovely to be back here with you. I hope that you're feeling. I don't know, supported or not too haggard this January as we step into another cycle, another season. The winter break for me was really nutritive at times. The solstice was especially potent this year and helpful, and I'm just constantly humbled by how working with the natural cycles with even just a little bit of intention can really take us into like a new place.
Like I just feel so complete with Autumn and like, oh wow. I. I really am in a different place now in a way that feels healthy and hopeful. And so I hope that if you didn't get that time or that threshold that you wanted in the autumn with the winter solstice, that you will give it to yourself in some other way and mark the shift of the seasons so that you can just support yourself changing and moving with the these great cycles that we're part of.
So here we are after the winter solstice and the light is beginning to grow again. The days will get longer and longer, but it's a slow process. There is a lot more winter to come. Here in Portland where I live, it's been a little bit. Odd. There hasn't been a true cold snap yet. No real freeze. I saw Adalia blooming on my walk yesterday, so it's just feeling a little weird and funky and I'm really hoping that the cold comes before the plants start to really grow again.
So the seasons themselves are changing. There's no winter that is the same, but especially in the midst of climate shifts, um, it can feel hard to track or know what to count on or, you know, I'm not sure what this winter is going to bring, but thankfully the shifting light is still fairly constant there.
Will be more and more light as we grow until the summer solstice in June and now is a time where there's still a lot of darkness and hopefully a lot of what winter needs to bring to this planet, which is cold and quiet and rain and you know, whatever the landscape where you are needs. The landscape there knows how to winter, and I hope it gets that this season.
In the five elements system that I study, winter is the season of water. And so this season of the show, over the next five episodes, my guest is going to be the ocean. In November, I began feeling this really strong call to be in a conversation with the Great Pacific Sea here, not too far from where I live, and it's just become clear that there are messages that want to be shared from that incredible ancient primordial realm that we call the sea, and I'm really excited to share those with you today.
I'm gonna talk about how that sort of works. Like what it means to share messages from the ocean, what that actually looks like in practice. And I'm gonna share an initial message that I got about water. Um, not from the ocean directly, but as a really important lesson that I received that's gonna sort of set us up for the rest of the season of the show.
So I hope today's podcast just takes you right down into the incredible. Support that's available to you at this point in the landscape and with water coming to the fore in this season. Before we move into our opening and vocation, I wanna share a couple of quick announcements. The first is that I'm teaching a public class on January 22nd called Flowing with Fear.
There are times when fear is a cautionary signal that should be heated. Absolutely. Your body knows how to signal, how to use fear as a signal that you should listen to. Other times, fear is a sign to actually swim deeper, further into the heart of what. Scares us the most, and the winter is a pivotal time to work with fear before we move into the growing season of spring.
Because by moving with that fear, we can understand what is most alive for us and most needing to grow at this time. So I hope you'll join me for that, if that sparks anything for you. For those of you courting a more significant shift in your vocational life meant for more, begins on February 4th. This is a small group process in which you can become so differently and adequately resourced that new life and new modes of your service in the world can grow through you, not through force or cajoling or strategizing, but.
Through your being and your gifts. And again, that begins February 4th, and there are two more spots available right now. Information about these two events and other resources, books that I've written and more are all at a wild new work.com, and I'll put links in the show notes as well. Okay. With that, let's shift into our opening invocation, a space where we can sort of come into presence and to sort of set the stage for our conversation today.
So I invite you to find some stillness in your being. Maybe you take a deep breath or let out a sigh or place your hand on your heart. 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 nations among many others who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on. May this episode be one small stitch in the great reweaving of right relationship that so many indigenous teachers are calling us into.
Okay, so this season, like I said, the ocean is our guest and I will be sharing messages that I have received from water and from the ocean. In particular, like I said before, winter is the season of water. It's when water's wisdom and way of being is so present in us and in the landscape around us, and Water - every element, not just water - but every element is a stage that we must go through in the development of our beingness, in the development of every life form and. What I'm gonna be sharing this season is honestly a little bit of an edge for me. I don't know how it will be received, maybe it won't seem that different from what I've done in the past, but for me, I really had to work through some fear around this in mineral season through the autumn, because I knew that.
Certain beliefs I had about myself and sort of mental constructs or definitions that I hold needed to be shed and composted so that this season of the show, this endeavor could come to life. And I think without making it too much about me, I think a lot of it is just fear around. Appearing weird and not just weird, but like silly or ridiculous, and this isn't just in my own head.
This is a result of thousands of years of propaganda and patriarchy and primacy of certain ways of knowing, and the denigration of other ways of knowing. So I had to really sit with that and see what needed to be let go of so that I could become someone who could make a pilgrimage to the ocean, receive a message which I've done personally for many years, but then share that message direct directly as a channel with you and let go of fear I have about what that might.
Mean about what you think of me or what, how I'm perceived by, I don't know the crowd of people in my head who are judgmental and you know, making this more challenging than it needs to be. So I. I just share that in case it helps you think about what you have had to let go of this autumn in this last mineral season so that you could become who you need to be now in this winter.
And it's so often right on the other side of what is scary. I had to come back into what is most true for me at this time, which is to be a part of an ancient conversation. That I long to be a part of, I must be a part of if my life is going to feel meaningful and we so often denigrate or are afraid of that which is going to give us the most life, the very thing that I long for, which is to be.
Part of a conversation with great ancient beings like the ocean is also what feels most scary or what I avoid. And I think that's a very normal experience and I've heard it from many of you that I have worked with. I hope to be worthy of this calling today and through the rest of our season of the show this winter season, I'm going to be sharing.
Three channeled messages that I have received so far and then two are going to be discovered later this winter, and I would like you listening to be a part of that. So I will be making two more journeys to the ocean this winter and I will be asking members of my newsletter community. To hold space for me on those days so that I can be supported in going and receiving and channeling what is most needed for the community to hear at this time.
And I also plan to take your prayers for the spring. With me on my final pilgrimage to the ocean to share those prayers and those desires with the, the great being of the sea and give them an extra oomph of support on your behalf. So I'm excited for what's ahead. I'm a little nervous. What if I go, you know, and I don't receive anything, but I'm willing to take that risk and I wanna see what is ready to come through, and I hope today is.
Beautiful beginning to this journey. If you would like to know when I'll be making those pilgrimages and be a part of that support network and share your prayers with me so that I can take them on my last journey to the ocean this winter. Um, you can sign up to my email newsletter if you're not already.
You can do that at the link in the show notes or on the homepage at a wild new work.com. So there are many ways of knowing something or being in a conversation or receiving information, and some of those ways of knowing are really valued in this culture. Like. You know, learning from teachers or systems of education or rational thinking or reading and writing, those are highly valued in Western culture and there are many other ways of knowing that are equally powerful and.
Connect us to what's true, but that are not valued in this culture. And it is so essential to know and honor how you, in your being, hear wisdom from the world around you, how you are in conversation. With the web of life that you're part of, there are so many diverse ways that that could look for some people.
It's, you know, the wisdom that comes through a really meaningful, heartfelt conversation with someone else. Some people receive a lot through their dreams or through the creation of art or through dance, um, through feelings they receive in their bodies. We are all capable. Of hearing and receiving from the web of life, from the land, from the ancestors, from whatever source of wisdom you're tapped into.
And it's so natural to do that. We don't. Necessarily have to try, but most of us have had to remember there our own avenues of hearing and knowing and to reclaim them as valuable and valid. So that's part of the process that I am in right now. And I wanna share a little bit about how I have heard water's wisdom.
In the past and how I hear it now, and I hope that it helps you to think about ways to honor your own ways of knowing. So the way I think about it right now is that there are sort of two voices that are speaking when I'm in a landscape with the intention to hear and to be in conversation with the beings in that place.
In this case, with the ocean herself, the first voice. Is my own thinking, my own thoughts about what a landscape or a body of water is showing me at this, at that time. So that could be like I'm, you know, at the beach and it's a king tide. It's like when the waters are really high and rough and I might be there and feel this understanding that there are certain skills and tools required.
When we find ourselves in especially stormy seas like that, I might look at the water and observe and I feel this knowing I have these thoughts about, you know, perhaps I should study how seals cope in the storms. Or I might see a seal and wonder how they're managing in these tides right now, and I might come back and meditate on that or.
Chew on it a little bit and teach or write about it eventually. So those are my thoughts. It's like my own very familiar inner voice, but there's a huge caveat with that, which is that I am an outgrowth of the earth and the five elements themselves. I am the descendant of my wise and well ancestors who are.
Who live in me, who guide me. So it's a voice I'm familiar with. It feels like my own thoughts, but. I am also the earth thinking. I am also the ancestors' thinking and speaking. So it's mine, but not truly only mine. I hope that makes sense. But the second voice that comes to the fore is the water. Itself or the land or a guide or my own soul, whatever I am connecting to at that time, it is that being that is directly speaking and I hear it and feel it as a different voice.
It's old. It's very deep in my body. And it's very concise. My own mental chatter is very chatty and you know, likes to wander and say a lot and get in these long, extensive stories about how something is one way and didn't that happen one time, and on and on and on. And this older voice, which I have come to know as the land itself speaking, is much more succinct.
And it's quiet. I hear one sentence, maybe two. I feel the words in my body. It's hard to explain. I don't hear them literally like someone was speaking. I sort of feel them being imprinted. In my chest maybe is the best way I can describe it. And the ocean especially has a unique effect on me. And lately when I've gone and received messages and asked to be in conversation with that body of water, I'm feeling a lot more nausea.
I feel something coming like up and out through my mouth. My mouth often wants to open, and so depending on who or what I'm connecting to, it's like the channel or the way of receiving can change. And again, it's not like I'm in a conversation with a human where there's a lot of back and forth. It's just one, often one or two single.
Nuggets or kernels of wisdom, and I was talking to my friend Sarah about this recently and she really affirmed that experience. She described it as this kind of single. Ball of yarn of truth that you receive. And it may not seem like much at first, but then you begin to unravel it and it's actually extraordinary.
And so that has been my experience as well. And that's how I know someone else is speaking to me or through me, because it's a different kind of voice. It's not my own day-to-day kind of mental chatter. So today I wanna share the first message that I wanna offer up through this season of the show, which is that all water is a womb.
And this is a message I received two days after my birthday this year, right around the autumn equinox, and I regularly go into a trance meditation. That's part of my spiritual practice. I go to a place inside of me where I can. Rest and practice certain skills or set intentions. And most importantly, it's a place where I can receive guidance from spiritual helpers and my wise and well ancestors.
So on that day, two days after my birthday, I did my usual thing. I went on a journey and I met with one of my guides. She took me to a lake and it was nighttime and she just said. This very simple sentence, all water is a womb, and she laid me down on a large piece of wood and had me float. On this womb, on this moonlit lake, and it was so peaceful in a way that I know I will not be able to describe in words, but I feel it in my being.
And that message, all water is a womb, has not left me. It was a single kernel again, that has held so much. And I wanna talk about it today. Like I said before, I've learned that the five elements can be thought of as stages in a process. And this is something I initially learned from a book by John Kirkwood about the five elements.
So water is a stage in a process of life, death, and rebirth. Water is the womb stage. Wombs are necessary steps in the generation of any form of new life. It doesn't have to mean a human uterus. It could be an egg, a seed casing, an altar that you create for a dream that you have, and a body of water itself.
A womb is a place in which something very new. And fragile and not fragile, like invalid or unimportant, but precarious. Something at the edge of life and death can grow, can have a chance to come into life because it's held in safety and protection. This is necessary in the lifecycle of. Any living being, any project, any dream that you have, even though the length of time spent in that womb can be different.
The context, the type of womb can be different. Womb time itself is always an essential part of any life giving process, and so often we shed and we let go and we experience the death of mineral season of autumn, and then we expect the new thing to be sprouting. As soon as we do that, oh, all of the leaves have hit the ground.
Doesn't that mean that something new is ready to grow? Now, I made the space, but no. There's winter, there is time in the womb that is needed, that is necessary, and water is the womb, and water is literally essential to the womb in a human womb. The amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus is a source of nourishment is.
It absorbs shock and movement. It provides temperature control and regulation inside a seed. The presence of water can indicate that it is safe now to crack open and to begin exploring the surrounding soil. With the dreams that we gestate inside of ourselves each winter, water can show us how to hold that dream softly without demands letting it float like it needs to and wants to with plenty of space.
So a womb is soft, it's flexible, it's malleable. You can float inside of it, but it is clearly defined. The womb offers a space of nurturance for that which is growing. But what is growing, what is inside that womb also knows how to grow on its own. Because it's nature. It is the nature element. So the water itself is not growing, but the water is there to give life to that which wants to live at this time.
All water is a womb. Where did life originate on this planet? No one knows for sure, but two leading theories are that life originated in deep sea hydrothermal vents and or in volcanic hot springs. So our origins are in water. Water is the womb. Water is the beginning of life. All water, the water coming out of your tap, the water in the ocean, the wetlands, you walk by all of it.
There are wombs everywhere. There are places all around you. Anywhere you can find water where something new can gestate and grow. And this is the work of winter to learn how to hold something like a womb. Like water does to go to the water and ask for help. Being reborn yourself to find the wombs where you can float, and then to become someone who knows how to give life to what wants to live inside of you at this time, and what wants to be born and grow in the coming spring and summer.
So do you know how to come into the womb? Do you know how. To be with this stage of the journey, do you have a place inside of you where anything is possible? A place free of judgment, where what is there, can be there without asking for permission and can be nurtured regardless of what it is or will become?
Do you have a place inside of you where you can float not knowing? But just feeling and being in presence. This could literally be your uterus if you have one, but not necessarily. Remember all water is a womb and all bodies are largely made up of water. So in a way, your entire being can be a womb, a container for possibility.
It's really adult stuff to give yourself permission to be inside of a womb stage, to be held and holding something but not rooted, not asking it to root in, but allowing it to float and not know to be in touch with just the initial vibration of that dream of that new seedling. And nurturing it without demanding that it show itself to you, demanding that it bloom.
That's really challenging, but a necessary part, again, of any growth cycle. So in terms of your desires for yourself this year, you know, do you have a place inside your being where those desires can gestate under the cover of darkness where the water muffles the sound? Where those desires, those dreams are unbothered by questions or demands about when they'll be ready to be born.
We all need womb time. Every winter we need it, but we also need it all throughout the year on a regular basis as we move through our own journeys of life, death, and rebirth. This December, I took myself on a solo retreat at the Ocean where I wanted to engage more deeply in this conversation. And if you haven't been to the Oregon coast before, it's a really incredible place.
It's not like sandy tropical beaches or anything, but it has its own really incredible harsh kind of beauty. And the winter is my favorite time to be at the coast. I was there for three days. And I experienced three completely different kinds of ocean kinds of weather. Deep dense fog the first day, bright sun and warmth the second day, and then a harsh, rainy, stormy time on the third day.
And I got to just be at the beach and do ritual and ask the ocean to reveal more of its mysteries to me. And I asked especially about this message that I received from this guide that all water is a womb. And I felt in response this understanding that different forms of water offer different kinds of wombs, different facets.
Or methods of gestation. There are ice cave wounds, snow wounds, pond wounds, raindrop wounds. All water is a womb, and the ocean is the great original form. When I was there, I felt the ocean say that she is a life-giving womb, the original womb. But it's not a womb where you are hydrated. You cannot drink the ocean's water and be nourished in that way.
But the transformation that the ocean offers is unique and profound and essential. Again, it is the original womb. It is the place where we go way, way back into only that which is true. At this storming sea, I felt this knowing that the ocean is where we remember what is most true, what is original, what is ancient and lasting, all water seeks to return to the ocean, to its original home where it is remineralized, where it becomes a part of the great original truth Again.
All that the water has picked up on its journeys, through the clouds, the mountains, the streams, the rivers. It brings all of that back to the ocean, to the whole, so that that water can be reborn before their next journey again. So in the womb of the ocean, when we're working with these concepts or these energies, we are engaging with something in its most nascent form.
We are engaging with the initial outline. We are engaging with the energy of potential and only what is most true about that. Not a whole story about what this will become or how it might be hard or all of the reasons. This isn't time for this to be born. No, no, no. We are in touch with the original energy of it, and our only job is to make a womb for it.
When I am at the Pacific Ocean in the winter as it rises and foams and storms, I feel that call to come home to only what is essential, to only what is true, and to stay there in that womb, in that truth for long enough that new life can grow from that place. Where it's growing from that truth, from that ancientness, not from all of the flurry of where I've been and what's been fun and what other people want me to do, but down and in to what is true now.
What has been with me since before I was born, what is true and ancient enough inside of me that it is worthy of being in the presence of those great frothing tides. So all water is a womb. You can go to any body of water right now, even your bath or your shower, and be held inside of a womb where potential can be nurtured.
You don't have to know exactly what it is or what it will become. It can just be something you long for, something that has been with you since before you were born, something that is old that you desire. That has made itself known to you for some reason. At this time, that is a little seed that you're being asked to engage with if you can this winter.
I encourage you to go to the sea, to go to the ocean and make a commitment to speak only the words that are most true to you right now. If you're in a wintry landscape, I encourage you to let the presence of snow or ice help you to turn inward to your own blue, black waters inside of you and speak to yourself only what is true, just a sentence, a word.
I encourage you to go to the waters and ask for a message that you need to hear. That is true. If you have dreams or plans for your life this year, give them time in a womb. Put them in a bowl of water, make an altar, or envision a place inside of you where they can float and grow without any demands.
Personally, I'm gestating a huge dream this winter. A seed of a dream that I have no idea how to bring into reality. There's no way I could give birth to this dream myself, but it's here. The longing is here, and it deserves a womb. It has a right to that womb time. And I believe in the womb and its power.
So as much as I want to jump into spring and nature and work on this dream and plan it out, and here's all the ways that it could come to life, no, I understand and have learned in hard ways in the past that this dream deserves its time in mystery. And I will know if and when it's time in the womb is over and it's ready to be born.
When the waters break and nature, the next part of the cycle is ready to begin. And you know how to do that too. You started in a womb. All life began in the womb. You don't have to have a womb in your own body. Your whole body, the waters of your body are the womb. And the waters around you in the landscape are the womb.
So this is innate to you because you are a being of water and all water is a womb. So that's what wanted to come through today. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I hope it gives you permission to be in womb time in some way, even if it's secret and inside of you. Even if it's short-lived or doesn't seem extensive enough, and I encourage you to spend extra time with water right now and to feel yourself held in some kind of womb.
In two weeks, I'll be back with you to share a message I received the week before my daughter was born nine years ago when I was more pregnant than I'd ever been or ever wanted to be terrified of giving birth for the first time. The ocean gave me a profound gift that day, and I wanna share that with you before we move into the messages that I've gotten and will get in more present time.
If you know that part of this winter needs to be some deeper work to together, I encourage you to join me for flowing with fear on January 22nd, or for a much deeper journey. I encourage you to check out Meant for More, which begins on February 4th. Thank you so much to the members of Eagle Creek for supporting me and this show financially.
If this podcast is meaningful to you and you have the means, I invite you to become a part of that community. You can learn more at a wild new work.com/eagle-creek. If you can't contribute $45 a month through Eagle Creek, I still welcome your dollars. Whatever you can send at buy me a coffee.com/megan leatherman.
And if you can't contribute financially, but you still want to see this podcast grow and see these messages from the ocean spread far and wide, I welcome your shares, your reviews on Apple Podcasts and your just kind messages about how this show is supporting you. Thank you so much for being here. I am really excited to collaborate more with you and with the ocean in this season of the show.
I hope you take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.