The Ocean Speaks Power

In this episode, I share a journey I took to the Ocean in November 2025. On that day, I experienced a meeting with a powerful animal, made a surprising oath, and received a lesson from the Sea about power. May this episode bring you into a deeper sense of the power that you carry and that flows through our world.

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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 am 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 and welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm delighted to spend this time with you. It has been raining heavily here in my little greenhouse office, but it's starting to slow down now and. Yeah, it's just such an honor to be here with you in this winter morning. I hope that this series on the ocean and the ocean's wisdom has been life giving to you.

It's been a real ride. And there's one more episode left after today, and if you're listening on Tuesday, February 24th, I will actually be out at the ocean asking for the final message for this. Series the final message for this community, and I'm really curious what's going to come through for that one and feel it.

That experience kind of ripening already as it nears as I'm recording this one. So today I'm going to be sharing an experience I had this past Autumn when the energy for this series was just starting to make itself known to me, and I'm going to share what I heard from the ocean that day, which was the beginning of this journey that we have now been on.

And what I heard was about power. Today, I wanna unpack it because I think it's an important teaching about what power is, where it comes from, and why our experiences of power inside of capitalism are not the full story. It's not the full scope of true power. We need to be in the way of other experiences of power, life-giving power, not just the force that we feel empire ripping us with.

So that is what we will do today. Just that, just a little, just a little convo. Um, and I'm excited to share it with you. Before we dive in, I wanna let you know that if reconnecting with the power of your ancient ones is calling to you, I'll be teaching a class called Weaving with the ancestors starting in April.

We will. Go week by week, weaving together a new understanding of who you are, the gifts that you carry, where you come from, and weave together a new experience of what is possible in your life through connection to your own wise and well nces. And we begin April 7th. There is flexible pricing available.

We will gather over eight weeks and I would love to have you and you can learn more at a wild new work.com/ancestors. Everything else, including other resources, journals I've written upcoming classes, all of that can be found at awildnewwork.com. And with that, why don't we step into our opening invocation.

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 and their ancient gods, 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, I wanna begin by telling you about my trip to the ocean in November, and I had been feeling this very powerful draw. To go to the ocean, like I just had to go. I was compelled and I knew that something was kind of brewing around water and communicating with water for the winter season of my work and this podcast, and I wanted to go inquire about that and also just connect with the sea.

And so I could only make it work for a day trip, but I cleared the calendar and I knew that I needed to go in a ritualized way. Ritual is a way that you can step into a conversation with the land and the sea. That's otherwise for me, not as easily accessible if I just wander in and. You know, say, what's up?

It's like we've planned a meeting versus just keeping it really casual. So I decided that this would be a ritual, and I left before dawn. I drove in the dark for a long time. I finally got to Cannon Beach around 8:00 AM and I pull into the little town and who do I see first? But a big, beautiful bull elk.

He was drinking water off the side of the road. As I'm turning in and there is this incredible resident elk herd in Cannon Beach, and this was part of that family. I saw the bull elk and then a little further down the road there were cows and calves and it was really. Really sweet and special, and there was no one else on the road at that time.

So I stopped and got some pictures and just told them how beautiful they were and it felt really sweet. I was like, okay, this morning is off to a magical starch. Good sign. I began driving into Ecola State Park where I was gonna be that day, and there was no one on the road. And I was driving through the woods and thinking of that elk, and then thinking of my experience with the stag, with the bucks and.

These animals have become very meaningful to me in the last few years, and I was thinking of the stag and my experiences with them, and I come up a little hill and straight ahead of me between two trees is him a large buck staring right at me. He wore a big rack of antlers like this crown, and I just stopped the car and we stared at each other and I told him how beautiful he was, how grateful I was to see him for his presence in the forest that day.

Just. An outpouring of love and presence together, and I did not grab my phone this time because it felt just way too sacred, and I knew that this was more than a sweet encounter because of what I'll talk about in a little bit in terms of when I see the stag, it truly felt like an affirmation that what was about to.

Occur that day was really important, and we just sat in presence together for what felt like a few minutes, but was probably shorter, and then he slowly turned and left. And he could have been an elk, but he looked smaller and he didn't have the same build, and it seemed like he was alone. He wasn't part of that resident herd.

So either way, you know, whether he was a stag or an elk, it felt very special. But my initial hit was that this is the stag who was very, very special to me. After he left, I drove on and there was no one at the beach at that time. It was overcast. Cold drizzly, and it was pretty bumbly and frustrating trying to get to a spot at the beach that day.

It was just way clunkier than usual. I, you know, missed a step and stepped into a ton of water and got my shoes and socks soaked. Right at the very beginning. I was dropping stuff. I, the way I wanted to go was impeded. I had to find another way around. It was just crunchy. But finally I made it to a. Spot and I set up for my ritual.

And if you haven't done ritual with the land before, it can be very simple. You just decide that it's a ritual. You can introduce yourself to the land and state why you're there, make offerings that day. I brought. Fresh spring water, water, loves to meet water. And uh, I brought smoke and my love and words.

And then I sat after making offerings and I listened. And it can be a ritual as simple as that. And as I sort of got oriented and grounded and sat there, I knew and felt this kind of heaviness to the day, the day before. A few hours south of where I was, a young male humpback whale had been euthanized after being beached for a number of days and being unable to get back to the sea.

And two weeks before that, an emaciated 2-year-old humpback whale had washed a shore dead. And a few days before that, even a dead whale had washed ashore in Florence. So. When I went to the sea that day, I only knew of the humpback that had just been euthanized, but the grief was palpable. They're these incredible, incredible children of the sea suffering, and my little ritual felt.

I don't know, just kind of awkward or meager like I needed to just go gently and honor the morning that I felt from the ocean and the land that day. I felt it in my own heart. So I sang a song for the whale and expressed my sorrow and just spoke about that to the ocean for a while, and then I was silent.

And before I even knew what I was saying, my mouth, I just felt this oath kind of coming out. I felt words that like sort of had to be spoken, and I found myself speaking this three part prayer. I said, I am a servant of the sea. I will allow my life to be changed by her. I will listen. And I was like, well, that's wow.

Am I ready for that? Kind of a promise. But I tried it again. I let it come through my mouth. I said, I am a servant of the sea. I will allow my life to be changed by her. I will listen. It felt completely right, like yes, I believe in all those words, and also it felt like more than I was ready to sign up for that day.

But I have prayed this prayer every day since November 18th, and indeed, my life is changing because of the sea, because of these conversations. So after that prayer just sort of came through, I sat and watched and listened. And I asked if there was something that the ocean wanted me to know that day, and I felt nausea way down deep in my belly.

The nausea traveling up into my mouth. I felt the urge to open my mouth, and then I felt these words again, kind of come imprinted into my being. The ocean speaks power. The ocean speaks power. I just sat with this for a while and I knew I wasn't gonna understand or unpack it that day. These things take time to understand, to even know what is meant by that.

And I'll be honest, I was very, very grateful for that and, and did sit with it for a while. But also in my humanness I was kind of like, well also, you know, do you have any insights into what I'm supposed to do for the podcast in the winter? You know, like I was hoping to get some clear directions about what to do for the show, what should I focus on in work?

But those did not come, and they often don't. In my experience, the land and the sea do not speak in plans. They speak in power. They speak with big, heavy ropes of truth that land in our laps, in our beings, that we get to unbraided or use to pull in something big in our lives. Such a gift and thank the gods that I received that wisdom that day instead of some, you know, five point plan for the podcast.

I have to remember, I have to remind my. Self, how the earth communicates to welcome the gift of those incredible statements and to put my desire for a plan for, you know, clear direction aside. I know that that will come, but when we go to the land in a ritual way, that is not, in my experience, that is not what is offered and that's actually a huge blessing.

So eventually I closed the ritual. I asked for some water from the sea and felt a yes. So I collected it to take home and put on my altar. I spoke all my gratitude and I went home feeling really full. I knew that this was the beginning of something and now we are in that something together. Here it is.

We're inside of this experiment of sharing the ocean's messages with you. On this podcast through this channel. So I wanna talk about this message. The ocean speaks power. But before we do, I also wanna unpack a little something that's just kind of nestled in the story of that day. So there is a source of power nestled into this story that I wanna pull out and highlight for a moment, which is the appearance of stag and possible ways to understand yourself as intimately connected to the wild earth.

I relate to the stag as a wild twin, which is a concept that I learned about first from a book by Martin Shaw called Courting the Wild Twin. And in that book he tells two stories, one of which is the Lindworm, and in the Lindworm story that he tells there is a kingdom. And, uh, the king and queen there have not been able to have children, but through some other worldly magic.

The queen becomes pregnant, and she gives birth one night, and the midwife is there attending her, and a human baby is born, and then a little worm is born and the midwife is horrified and doesn't know what to do. So she grabs the worm and she throws it out the window into the dark. So the little prince grows and is in the kingdom and it's, there's peacefulness and joy, but eventually he becomes ready to be married and he goes out in search of a wife and he encounters in the forest a huge black snake, and this snake is crying out.

Older brothers marry first. And so then there becomes this journey of understanding. They go to the midwife like, what is this? What happened? And she ex explains that, yes, on the night of his birth there was also a worm born and I threw it out the window. And so there has to be this. Healing now this reintegration so that the two brothers can be at peace so that the kingdom can be at peace.

So through really beautiful means, eventually the older brother is married to a maiden who practices magic to bring him back into his human form, bring him back into the community, and true peace is found among all. And Martin Shaw talks about this worm this. Little snake that got thrown out as a part of us that is cast out at birth, that is cast out from this civilized culture, and he calls it our wild twin.

And this idea really spoke to me many years ago when I first read that book and was doing work to reclaim a sense of right relationship to myself and to the land. I really resonated with this idea that there had been a part of me that had been cast out in order to survive in this culture, and I wanted to welcome it back to be whole again.

And a couple of years after that, I did my wilderness vigil, which I've talked about before, fasting in the woods and in the work for that ahead of time. In the preparation for that and the actual experience of it, stag was very present and I felt and felt that I was shown. That the stag is the personification of my wild twin and that I am his, that when I see a buck or a stag in the wild, it is a moment of wholeness.

My soul and the soul of the stag are in. A relationship of some kind, and that doesn't mean that you know all dear people are about me or that I'm the only one with this kind of relationship, or that I carry the regal nature of the stag. But when I see him in the wild, like I did that day in November before I got to the sea, I know that something important is happening.

And in the ancestral work that I've done since that vigil, deer and elk have absolutely come up as kin of my peoples from long ago. And this is common around the world. Deer as teachers, as sources of food and clothing and safety as guardians of the forest. Or keepers of the other worlds and the way the places where our world and the other world meet.

And so that was another place of real resonance, finding out that my peoples had important relationships with these beings. And then more recently I've come across a concept in Nordic folklore, which is fylgur. This helped me to understand this in a different light, and it's the concept of Fylgja - that when we are born, a guardian spirit called a fylgja, and in our language, you would spell it F-Y-L-G-J-A, that when we are born, a guardian spirit called a fylgja comes.

And it was often described as a young woman or an animal, and in cases where it was an animal, it was thought for that animal to represent the character of that person in some way, that that is their sort of animal resonance or counterpart. And there could be fylgja for individuals, but also for families specific guides, for a whole group of people.

And very interestingly, the Icelandic word fylgja could also mean placenta. The source of nourishment that we have access to in the womb, and that is born after us, that is usually nowadays cast into the garbage or possibly given back to the land. So in that way, it echoes the story of the land worm. When we are born, us humans are brought into this world and the afterbirth comes, which was a part of us in the womb, and it is sent out to.

Put away, cast out. And in Nordic folklore, it perhaps became our fylgja, a guardian spirit that was born with us and that nourishes us as we grow into this form. And this echoes many other cosmologies and folklore from around the world. There are many, many examples of special relationships with animals or guardian spirits.

And I don't know if the stag is my fylgja - usually. It's said that you don't see them until you're about to die, and I'm still here. So I do know that no matter what, we have a special relationship and I'm very grateful for that. And the stag is something that I track in my own land practice and ritual work.

I think there's real power from knowing ourselves as people who have a wild twin, as people who must engage with and be in relationship with ourselves outside the context of civilized culture, in touch with something much older. When I am too long indoors, or I'm at the computer for weeks on end, when I haven't engaged with the land and the ways that I need, I feel my wild twin getting very agitated.

It's like he's in my backyard and I see him huffing and puffing, and he's, he's unwell, he's, he's not at peace. Calm will only come when I am out there in his world with him listening to the land. And I believe that you have a wild twin, and you may not call it that. You may not feel called to the wilderness, but there is certainly a part of you that cannot be satiated by what dominant culture offers you.

There's absolutely a part of each of us that is cast out that is misunderstood inside of human culture. A part of us that needs to come back into wholeness needs to be welcomed back, corded back in ritualized ways, and your people, whoever they were, those who lived in the old ways, they had profound relationships to the animal world, to the plant world.

Profound relationships with fungi kin, and the echoes of those relationships still live in you today. They just might be hard to hear at first, but they are already here and they can be a source of real power. So let's keep talking about power. And maybe it'd be helpful to start with a definition of power.

The Oxford definition of power is the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events, essentially to effect change of some kind. Power runs all throughout this world. There is the power of your own body to breathe in and send oxygen throughout your bloodstream.

You have the power to step on the ground and make a mark. You have the power to speak words that affect someone or a situation in a particular way. Power is constantly flowing into and through us. It is consequential energy. And power can be life giving. It can be destructive. The fact of it is neutral, but how we channel it and what we channel it for, carries a moral burden.

And we know this. And when we think of power, we might turn first to the powers that we feel. So present and oppressed by, at this time, the power of capitalism to force us to work for a wage or depend on others for a wage that's a lot of power to be able to compel billions of people around the globe to spend their time and energy at someone else's bidding in order to earn a piece of paper or a coin that they can then use to purchase what it is that they need to survive.

Composting capitalism. We look at the origins of capitalism in Western Europe and then how it spread around the globe through colonization. And when we look at how capitalism began in Europe, we see that it took immense. Outflows of power and violence to coerce the peoples of Europe into wage labor, and to force women into the role of caregivers so that a male earner could go to work.

That is not the natural way of things, and we feel the strength of that power even today still. Maybe we won't go to the gallows for refusing to work, but we may end up on the streets. Starving or be put in prison for not paying our debtors and forced to work for pennies. So we feel the power of capitalism daily.

We feel the way that it shapes our lives and limits our choices. How it forces us to do things and make impossible choices. We feel the power of empire of powers committing genocide and Gaza that we have not been able to stop. Of powers mining and cutting down sacred trees so that empire and capitalism can grow.

We drive down the street and we hear the power coming from a jet above, or we see the bulldozer using power to shape the earth, or we feel the power of the car that we're driving in. The power of this culture, this empire that we live in, is felt all day, every day, and maybe you need to take a deep breath.

But the power of empire, the power of the machine is not the only kind of power on this earth, and it is not the oldest kind of power, nor is it the most sustainable. It is not inevitable, and it is not permanent. The ocean speaks power. Not enough of us are having regular, powerful experiences in the presence of other kinds of power, the power of the land, of the sea, the ancestors of the gods.

So of course, the power of empire and capitalism feel impenetrable. They feel omnipresent. They have to feel that way so that we don't turn toward other ancient sources of power. Part of what happened in the breakdown between humans and the land that occurred in the midst of Christianization and capitalism is that we were divorced from a felt experience of where true power comes from.

And this happened not just in Europe, but all around the globe as capitalism and Christianization grew, so rather than your ancestors going to a powerful place in the forest and praying to the God or the goddess of that place, they were forced to cut down all those trees for timber. Or instead of performing ceremony at the sea or the river before going out to fish for the food that they needed, perhaps they were forced into wage labor to catch the fish to sell on the market.

To sell it to some anonymous buyer. There was not time for ceremony or for thanking the waters for their gifts. People have been put into this machine, into this way of living and being with the land, and it made life so fast and so pressurized that there was not time to feel the land's power to be awash in it, to remember it, to channel it for the good of our communities.

We feel this cognitive dissonance still today, this dissonance of loving the land, but being forced to abuse the land and abuse her creatures, and that is so much to bear. Here we are around 500 years after the emergence of capitalism, and our primary experiences of power are often still the power of capitalism and empire and industry.

But that does not need to be the whole of our experience. There is a chance, there is an invitation to each of us to be rooted in bigger powers now. To be fortified in new ways to invoke the help of those powers on behalf of all so that empire and capitalism will crumble so that people can be free to be in right relationship with the land again, so that we can feel ourselves as related as in exchange in a beautiful web of powerful reciprocity.

We need more direct felt experiences with the power of the earth, our bodies in the presence of the ocean or the thunderstorm, or a great tree to experience little miracles regularly like watching a little baby bird hatch or witnessing a herd of wild horses running. And without touching into those experiences regularly, we forget the power of the earth.

We don't feel it. We don't know it. We forget the power that remains in us as creatures of the earth. I. The truth is all of the power that we feel inside of capitalism comes from the earth in the first place, but it has been abused. The minerals used as iron or steel in our buildings or as precious minerals in our phones.

The oil extracted from the earth and used to power fighter jets or bulldozers. Even the people who force us to work or who terrorize our communities, they are the earth's creatures too. And we have to remember that capitalism is nothing without the land and the land's Power capitalism cannot exist without human labor.

Human power. And we may not all be able to stop working, but we can certainly remember, we can remember where real power comes from, and we can cultivate those relationships, which I do believe is what will contribute to the demise of this system. When we draw upon the power of the land through land connection practices, or simply exposing ourselves to the awe of a sunrise or a storm, or a beautiful creature, we are drawing on a great power that is needed now, and not just the power of the land and the earth, but the power of your ancestors.

Whose bodies became the land, and you're also drawing on the powers of their gods, the great land spirits that they believed in and worked with. So the ocean speaks power, as I have sat with this line for the last two or three months. The way I'm understanding it today is that if we want to hear the ocean, we have to be able to hear her power.

With all of our senses to see the power that she carries, to hear it, to feel it against our skin, to bear witness to it with our bodies. Power is the ocean's language, and I see that in what we have done through this series. What she has shown us, the ocean as the original womb was where we began. The ocean as the original power that can create life, that can gestate life.

The ocean commanding that we actually do have the power to give birth to that life and the ocean and the gods both asking that we invoke their power in the face of empire right now. Those are all topics we have covered in this series. So far, power has been the theme all along, the power of water, of winter, of the sea, the power to gestate, to surrender to thresholds, to raise your voice and invoke powers that you may not know yourself, but that your people once knew.

If the ocean speaks power, then she hears the language of power as well. When we go to talk with the sea and the powers there, it is most helpful if we will conjure the power within us and speak in that tongue, which is the mother tongue of all beings. The power of water that lives in you, the power of your ancestors, the power of your spirit, your heart to not speak meekly, but to let power course through you, through your body, and speak to the ocean as a conduit of that power.

This winter and beyond, you can cultivate levels of power in your being that have perhaps been unavailable to you until now, and it can be as easy as becoming aware of other sources of power and spending time with them. Spending time awash inside of them. The power of the wild that lives in you, your wild twin, the power of your kinship to nature beings.

The power of your ancestors that has been passed down to you, the wise old ones that sit around the fire and can guide you, the shapeshifters, the dreamers of your lineage, the warriors of your lineage, the power of the elements in your body, your body, not just as a singular weaving of bone and flesh, but as mineral nature, fire, water, and earth.

Your body as mountain tree sun. Ocean and the soil that life is rooted in you are that you can cultivate the power of the gods that your ancestors knew, the gods that may show themselves to you in this lifetime, in your dreams, great energies of the earth that are hard for us to understand, but that can still be felt and invoked for the good of all.

Are you having enough experiences inside of these kinds of power? Are you having enough experience in those veins of power as you interface with the power of capitalism of empire or dominant culture? For most people, it's way out of balance. We are working in the grind. We're going to work day in, day out.

We're in traffic. We're feeling the noise of the city or the town we live in. We feel the constriction of financial stress or worry about the future. Is the experience of that kind of power, getting balanced out with embodied experiences of life-giving power. Power that is from the earth directly that is channeled for the highest good of you and all not for profit or control.

I wonder how our lives would change, how our world would change if more of us were regularly, consistently awash in the power of the land of the sea, and the power that we carry as part of our heritage. I wonder what would change if we were regularly in awe of the power of life to grow and to make beauty of the power of love that draws us out of the power of the sea as we sit by the beach and witness the ocean's power.

Each of us needs so much more of this than we're probably getting, and I pray that you feel it more and more this winter and beyond for yourself, but also for the good of all of us that you can become a stronger conduit of power. The power to grow as you are meant to grow at this time, and the energy to do that does not come from nowhere.

It does not come from this machine culture. You cannot become the true power that you are running on extraction or hopelessness or ambition or a sense of isolation. If that's been your experience, if you're still in that trying to grow and trying to be powerful in your life without being plugged into ancient sources of power, then I ask that you go to the land in a ritualized way and you put yourself in the way of power there.

Ask to be shown. The power of the land. If you can't go to the land, you could light a candle in your home and ask to be shown the power of your wise and well ancestors, or the power of their gods. Ask them to show you their power and see what happens. Look for it. Look for the power that's bigger and older than this machine culture.

Look for the power that is bigger and older than the government, than the military, than the stock market. That power is absolutely there. It's running through our world. It's running through your body right now, and it can make a larger home within you. The ocean speaks power. That is the language of the sea, and I believe it's the language of the land.

I experienced the ocean's power from a young age When I was four, I was walking with my mom on the beach in Florence, Oregon when a sneaker wave came up and it took me out and my mom said that all of a sudden I just went horizontal in the water and this superhuman strength came over her so that she didn't let go of my hand.

And I remember being underneath the water and just, and. A childlike way, just kind of peacefully aware of my core filling up with salt water and my mom was eventually able to pull me out onto the sand or the sea spit me out, and my child self was just like, whoa. That was weird. I'm full of salt water, you know?

Not troubled really, but just like, oh, I have a picture size amount of salt water in my belly right now. And since then I have always felt this sort of dual sense of connection and longing for the sea, but also fear of the sea. And that's what awe is. I think it's that wonder with an edge to it, it's uncomfortable, but real power often is where when we're in the midst of it, it takes us to the edges of safety sometimes.

And I'm very grateful that I didn't drown that day. But I'm also grateful to have had that experience of the seas power early on, which I have carried with me, and it has been such an honor to speak about that power with you today. And I hope that you are able to remember and put yourself inside of experiences of the land's, power of the seas, power of the power of your ancestors and their gods.

So that more and more power can be used, not in domination and control of this place, this beautiful earth and our communities, but in creating more freedom and beauty for them and for us. I hope this episode has been a blessing to you. I hope you find yourself in the way of life-giving power today and all days that you remember with your whole body, other experiences and sources of power that are ancient and that can create balance in this earth again.

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to members of Eagle Creek for supporting me and this show in your care, but also financially. If this podcast has been meaningful to you, I welcome your contributions, your membership inside of Eagle Creek. If you can't contribute $45 a month through that. Avenue.

I still welcome your dollars at buy me a coffee.com/megan leatherman. If you'd like to become a member of Eagle Creek, you can do that at a wild new work.com/eagle Creek. I also welcome and I'm so grateful for your sharing of this episode with your community for reviews on Apple Podcasts and your messages about how this.

Resonates with you. I'm so grateful to be in this work with you. I have no idea how this podcast season is going to end with our final episode in two weeks. It will probably be about power since it has been thus far, but I am going with an open mind today to the ocean to inquire and I will bring back what I hear.

And I thank you again for being on this journey with me. Take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.

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