Yes, You Can
You are the only one who can give birth to the gifts and dreams that live within you. All people have the capacity to birth the new, but it can be a lonely endeavor. In this episode, I share a message I received from the Ocean on the precipice of a great birth in my own life, in the hopes that it gives you the courage you need.
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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'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. Thank you for being here. Welcome back to the show. I'm so glad that you're here today. I hope this episode is immediately useful and supportive of you in this time that we're in with the winter season and the world being. The world that it is right now. Thank you so much to those of you who shared sweet feedback with me about the last episode, the first of the winter season.
I really hope that since then you've been feeling more and more permission to give your dreams and new parts of yourself time in the womb, where what is most true can have the space to grow within you. We're nearing the holiday of in bulk now, which is an old Celtic holiday marking the return of life on the land, the quickening, where we begin to see new glimmers of what will come and grow in the spring and summer.
It means that we're about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and the light continues to grow a little bit each day. So that will guide us in our time here in this episode today. And if you didn't listen to the last episode, that's okay, but I'll just say that this season of the show is a sort of.
Edge or a new experiment in which my thoughts will be commingling with the messages that I have received from water and from the ocean in particular over the last many years. And today I wanna share with you a message that I received from the ocean the week before my daughter was born. I went there about 40 weeks pregnant and afraid of what was about to happen, and the ocean gave me a gift that day and nine years later, I was brought back into that gift during a retreat at the seaside that I took in December. So I hope that you love this episode today and that it emboldens you to give life to the life that you desire right now.
I wanna say a big thank you to everyone inside of Eagle Creek, which is growing and changing this year, and I might share more about that in a future episode. But if this podcast is meaningful to you, if you would like to support this work, support me in doing this work, then I welcome you to learn more about and join Eagle Creek Other resources, things I've written and upcoming classes and events can be found at a wild new work.com.
And I also wanna share that tomorrow, January 28th, I'm planning to make my first of two special pilgrimages to the ocean this winter. And I'm going there to specifically ask for a message to share on this podcast, and I'll share that in the episode. That will let. That will air in late February, so I'll be sharing my learning along the way and my itinerary and travel plans with those in my community who are part of my weekly newsletter.
If you would like to follow along, you can sign up at the link in the show notes or at a wild new work.com. Okay. So with that, let's shift into our opening invocation. Let's declare together our intentions for this time. So if you'd like to, you can take a deep breath or just notice how your body is feeling, maybe supported by the Earth right now.
Feel your feet on the ground or feel the air on your skin. 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 I wanna start by telling you a story from nine years ago, and this is a story about my pregnancy and being on the precipice of giving birth to my first child.
And I just wanna say at the outset that I know these kinds of stories can be so, so tender for anyone who has experienced really anything around. Womb ness or birth or miscarriage or stillbirth or anything that is challenging and birth is such a place of challenge. And so I share this just really tenderly and humbly, and I encourage you to just take really good care of yourself if anything comes up as you listen, and I hope that it's above all of service.
So nine years ago I was super pregnant with my first child. My daughter, we had passed her due date, which is so annoying. Due dates. It's like, it's just, they're just meaningless and I feel like they cause so much stress for people who are pregnant. Beyond them. But anyway, I was really, really pregnant and really, really tired of being pregnant, but I was also afraid of what was to come.
I was afraid of giving birth, afraid of the intensity of it, the pain of what it would mean to become a mother in what the future held. In motherhood, and you're not really supposed to leave town when you're that pregnant, but my midwives could tell how anxious I was. So they encouraged Chris and I to take a day trip somewhere and get some fresh air, and one of them told us about a beach called Short Sand Beach, near Cannon Beach on the coast here in Oregon.
So we decided that we would take a day trip and go. And it was a lovely day, cold and kind of cloudy because it was March, but the coast here is so beautiful in that kind of weather. And we walked the path through old growth forest, and we walked along a stream full of water rushing toward their original home.
And then between some huge coastal conifers, the view opened up and there was the sea. And I remember feeling immediately emotional. Like if you were really struggling and you had finally reached a wise old grandmother's home and you knew you were gonna get the medicine you needed, that's how I felt like this relief, like, I'm here, I can receive help.
And Chris and I walked by the water together for a while, and then I knew that I needed some alone time. So with an absolutely humongous belly protruding from my five foot tall frame, I stood before the ocean and I told her everything on my heart, how uncomfortable I was, how afraid, how frustrated I was that labor hadn't started yet, how inadequate I felt for what I was about to do.
And I told her, I don't think I can do this. And immediately afterward, it was like some great energy from down, deep off the shoreline came up like a tsunami through the waves and resounded in my entire body. Yes, you can. And it wasn't a sweet, super encouraging kind of message. It was not like a cheerleader.
It more felt like Baba Yaga is looking me in the eyes and commanding that I can. That I will, that you have no choice. Like the only way out is through sister. So let's go. Yes you can. And I cried. I surrendered to it, trusting that this ocean knowing could see something inside of me that I couldn't see in myself.
And I let those words and the force behind them settle in my body, and I said, thank you. I said, thank you, thank you, thank you. And it would be 12 more days until Wyatt was born. But that message helped me be patient for her arrival, and it gave me strength when it was time to give birth. And I'm embarrassed to say that I never went back to that beach.
I should have gone to say thank you. I should have taken my daughter and introduced her to the sea, but I didn't. So fast forward nine years and I had this autumn, a very strong call of, I felt a very strong pull to be out with the ocean again. So I was lucky enough to get to go on a little solo retreat in early December.
I booked a place near Cannon Beach again, and I had planned on doing a day, a ritual out at a place called Ecola State Park. But the night before, I found out that there had been a landslide. Previously and the beach I was gonna go to had been closed, so I just pulled up a map and I saw that there was another state park further south down Highway 1 0 1.
So I thought I would just drive toward that place and see where I felt like I should stop. So the next morning I packed up and started driving down Highway 1 0 1 and I passed a beach or two, but they didn't really feel right, so I kept going and it started to get really forested and seemed to be going away from the beach.
So I thought I might have missed. The best series of spots. So I pulled over and I tried to look at my map, but I didn't have any service, so I started to turn the car around, but then I got a glimpse of a brown State Park sign around the corner. So I headed south again and I pulled into a large parking lot and there were like a thousand surfers milling about.
And I thought, this is a weird place to do a ritual, but it really feels right. So I'm gonna park and check it out. And the parking lot and the trail head looked familiar, but I couldn't remember if I had been there before. So I got out of the car with all of my ritual gear in my. Pack feeling pretty out of place among all of these people in wetsuits with their surfboards.
And I headed down the trail toward the beach and beautiful big old growth trees surrounded me. And I kept feeling like this place was familiar. Somehow I walked the quarter mile or so trail, I crossed a bridge. I walked up a hill a little bit. And between some incredible coastal conifers, the view opened up.
Holy shit. I said to myself, this is Short Sand Beach. I hadn't even remembered the name until that moment, but I remembered the place and its power and the gift I had been given there, and I was giddy. I felt overjoyed. I felt so excited to do my ritual there, even among. All of the surfer bros. So I walked down the Sandy Trail to the beach and got my bearings a little bit, and I turned to my right and I saw someone who looked familiar and I realized that it was my friend Lacey, whom I have not ever met in person.
And she was there with her child and we both. Just shared that we had had no intention of ending up at that beach today at that moment, but here we both were, and it felt like such a wild synchronicity, like the land and the ancestors, just making sure that I knew that I was in the right spot that day.
So after Lacey and I caught up a little bit and I got to hang out with her sweet child, I traveled down the beach just still in awe of being there after those nine years. And I told the ocean about my daughter and my son now who was born later, and I found a semi-private spot among the rocks where I could set up to do ritual.
And having been led to that place on that day, I felt very clear that it meant that I was, and still am on the precipice of another birth. Not a child this time, but new life nonetheless. Before I had gone out that morning, I had spent some time getting really clear about what was ready to die in my life.
We were in mineral season, it was autumn, and that death needed to happen so that more resonance and alignment could flow in. So I did a ritual to put those things down and call in the dreams that have been growing inside of me. I thanked the ocean for their message nine years ago. Yes, you can. You will.
You must. I know now, after giving birth to two humans and many, many dreams, projects, offerings, versions of myself, I know that I can, I can give life to desires that want to grow through me. After that ritual at the beach, I felt absolutely clear that I was meant to share this season of the podcast with you, and that I have the strength to give birth to the great dream of land connection that I feel pregnant with if and when the time is right.
Birth is so precarious, nothing is guaranteed in the midst of that threshold. So all I know is that I have carried this dream for a long time and I feel ripe with it. Being on the precipice of birth or rebirth can be so scary, so painful, so uncomfortable. We want what is inside of us to be born, but the cost of it, the process to get there can feel like too much.
It could tear us open. It could even kill us. It will change everything. It will change something at least. But no one can give birth to what is within us, except us. We are absolutely accompanied through that process. Walking beside us are our wise and well ancestors. Our land can, maybe human beloveds, but on a fundamental level, we are alone in this.
And sure I could have requested to go back to the 1960s when women were just tranquilized during labor and they gave birth unknowingly a man just pulling the baby out of them. But that's fucking tragic. Sure, you could share your dream with someone else or give an idea to someone and ask them to give birth to it or sell it away, but that diminishes the gift that you have been given, that's growing inside of you.
What I've learned in the last nine years is that at some point, growing up means accepting what is yours and only yours to do. Calling in all your helpers, asking for encouragement from the sea, but the sea might tell you that you just have to do it. The only way out is through. Yes, you can. So often we want to be coddled and encouraged and for someone to take away the task, for us to give birth for us.
But when I've gone to the land and the sea for help, that is never what I'm offered. There is love and kindness for sure, but no God or ancestor or more than human being has ever told me that I don't have to do the hard work. No one has ever taken away what's mine to do, but they will walk beside me as I have to do it.
And not only that, but at times, like my ocean trip nine years ago, I'm offered something even better, which is a full body thunderous reminder of my own strength. I am the ocean's strength. You are the ocean's strength. We have the ocean strength because we are made of the same essence. The ocean is our original ancestor.
It is where you come from. You are made of the same water and salt as the ocean. Her power lives in you. When you go to the sea, if you feel a resonance, it is because the elements of the sea inside of you are in resonance with the great sea that is home. Recently in my newsletter, I was writing about how I had been feeling nervous about this season of the podcast, nervous about showing up more openly with my work of channeling messages from the land and the sea.
And I wrote about how the gifts that each of us carries gifts of land connection or song, or creating beauty with food, whatever it is, these gifts, and you have many of them. These gifts are not just there to be enjoyed, even though many of us avoid or neglect our gifts because culture teaches us that they're not valuable or it's scary to envision, leaning more fully into who we really are, even though our relationship to our giftedness can be fraught.
When we engage in them, it is a life-giving experience. I've avoided and poo-pooed my gift of hearing the land and the water for years, but what do I see when I ask myself what it is I want most? It's to be in a conversation with the land and the water, and when I engage in that conversation, it is an absolute joy.
So these gifts are joyful, but they are also a responsibility. We have been gifted that which is life giving to us. It is our responsibility to nurture those gifts and share them with the village, not to keep them secret or diminish them or hoard them for ourselves, but to give birth to them over and over and over again, and you are the only one who can give that birth.
You are the one who possesses these gifts. You are the one who carries a unique way of being and connecting with the world. Others may share your gifts or may have similar gifts, but you are the only one with your unique type of presence. You change things in a way that only you can. And that is wonderful and I hope you feel full of pride and joy about that.
And I implore you to offer your gifts to the world as courageously as you can right now, even with the world as it is, even with the news, as it is, even with everything going on, little by little in the ways that you can that are possible for you to see and recognize and value your giftedness and give life to them.
Those of us who are not in daily crisis, who still have a place to live relative safety, who have been given enough support in this lifetime to be able to see our gifts, to feel ourselves as gifted, even though we might question it, we have a responsibility to give birth to those gifts this year. Not perfectly or painlessly.
It does not need to be graceful, but we do need to do it. And to do it even though it might feel so, so lonely, even though we might not be sure we can. One of the saddest things about capitalist culture is that people are, on one hand, forced to carry way too much and be traumatized regularly, but on the other hand are not supported in doing the hard things that will show them how strong they actually are.
This happens all the time in the realm of childbirth where pregnant people are completely unsupported and new parents are not supported. It's so challenging and difficult, and they are also robbed of a birth in which the birthing parent feels completely empowered and like they are drawing down the power of the sea and the gods as they cross a human being from one realm into the next.
So we get burnt out parents who have done tremendously challenging things but have not had the chance to touch into the depths of their true power and be recognized for that. We live in a world and a culture that is traumatizing to our young people. We keep them on screens. They, we leave them a broken world.
We expect them to do school, but we also coddle them and tell them the world is unsafe and we don't give them a true rite of passage in which they get near death and cultivate an inner power that will carry them for the rest of their lives. The true making of an adult isn't the stupid responsibilities that capitalist culture forces us to carry.
The true making of an adult is in the crossing of serious sometimes life or death thresholds in a way that is ritualized and that connects the person to their giftedness, to their power, and to their responsibility as an adult in this village. So for you this winter, as we near spring, as life begins to show itself again, what is it that you are afraid to give life to right now?
What is it you believe you cannot do, and what are you being called to give birth to? Can you revel in the beauty and mystery of that gift? Are you willing to believe just for a second that you can give birth to the dreams you have for yourself, even though it might be painful and bloody and that nothing is guaranteed?
Our obsession with safety and comfort is keeping us far from what wants to be born. We can do all the things to try and ensure that what we're giving life to will thrive, that we will survive its birth, but ultimately, the fates are in charge. And if you are afraid, by all means, call in your helpers. Name the fear.
Call in your more than human kin, your human beloveds, living and dead. But don't forget that this is your work to do. It is your birth to give. If you are ripe with some dream right now, some vision for your life, some piece of art or something, you need to say, it is your responsibility to give birth to it because it came to you.
It is your responsibility to give birth to it in as honest and as courageous a way as you can, and if you don't believe, you can then imagine yourself facing the sea. And a great green, blue, gray energy comes up from the depths and imprints upon every cell in your body, the words. Yes you can.
I hope what I've shared today gives you courage, my friend. I believe in the power of what once to grow through you at this time, and I have zero doubts that it will bring needed medicine into this sick world. In two more weeks, I'm gonna share a message that I was given recently by the ocean. I have one in mind that I received in November of last year, but I'm gonna see how my pilgrimage goes on January 28th tomorrow, and see if that wants to come first.
So this is a fluid emergent process that we're in, and I'll let you know what comes through in a couple of weeks. Thank you again to all the members of Eagle Creek for supporting me and this show financially. I encourage you to contribute if you have the means, and this podcast is meaningful to you. If you can't contribute the $45 a month for Eagle Creek, I still welcome whatever dollars you can send at buy me a coffee.com/megan leatherman.
I also welcome your shares, reviews, and messages about the podcast. I am just. I adore being in this conversation with you. I hope you take such good care and I'll see you on the other side.