What are you embodying this spring?
It’s time to take a breath.
A change in seasons serves as a reminder to pause and reflect on the direction we’re headed in, both personally and professionally.
With the fluctuations in sunlight and temperatures, humans are actually cued to do this through a subconscious, internal shift.
Now is the perfect time to ask yourself: How am I feeling? What do I desire in my life, and how will I exercise autonomy and empowerment in getting there?
If this sounds like a conversation you want to be in on, tune into the latest podcast episode. We’ll be discussing the energy spring brings and how you can embody it. Listen here
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Show Notes:
Hey Risers, welcome to episode 151 of Empathy Rising. I am freezing, so I'm wrapped up in a blanket. So I'm maybe three inches further away from my microphone than I normally sit, so if it sounds a little bit different that's why. It's cold!
I mentioned a couple of episodes that we're heading back to Arizona for the girl's spring break, we're going to ditch them with their grandparents and we're going to go to Vegas, which I'm super duper excited about.
But another thing that we're going to be doing on that trip that I'm super excited about is to check in on our property that we purchased at the end of 2020. We put the offer in December of 2020, and then I guess we technically closed in January of 2021. So we haven't been back to the property in over a year.
My mom swings by and checks on it every once in a while. It's about 15 minutes from her house. It's about 10 minutes out of town. It's two and a quarter acres, which I'm thrilled about. We'll build our forever house there, so if you have heard me talk about, like, my money goals and my financial goals and those things, this is the property where the forever house will be built.
If you kind of head back to a couple of episodes, probably maybe four or five ago (I don't remember the number), but where I talked about my money goals and my revenue goals, and then I broke down the behind-the-scenes of the Side Hustle launch, and I shared the exact amount of revenue that I'm making and how that is contributing to this goal of the forever house.
The guy next to us at that property has 10 acres. We have a really good realtor friend, we're going to try and snag another acre and a half from because my goal is to have a little compound there where we build our forever house and then the girls build on the property. Two and a quarter acres is totally enough to put three houses on, but it's mountainous. If you're familiar with Northern Arizona, it's very mountainous.
We have two and a quarter acres, but not all of it is buildable. If we snag another acre and a half from the guy over there, then that gives us a good chance to put two more houses in buildable spots. That's kind of another projection, but it'll be exciting to see the property in the springtime because the last time we saw it, it was winter.
If you go to my personal Facebook page, not my business page, but my personal profile, and scroll down a little bit, you'll see a video that my mom and my sister posted of the acreage. I mean, it must have been January 2021, but it's covered in snow because it snows in Arizona. That's how we've seen it, so it'll be fun to go back in the springtime. We've got to walk the property. We've had it surveyed, but we're out of town, so we don't have city sewer and water.
We'll have to put in a septic tank and haul our own water. And some of you guys that live in places that don't have droughts are probably very confused right now, but yeah, we'll have to. We have water delivered to us on a regular basis. Normal Arizona thing. I just want to kind of walk it again, feel it again, see them in a different season.
Something else that's going to be really, really cool is we're going to be doing a rededication ceremony. I've reached out to the Yavapai nation, which is the indigenous people whose land was turned into Prescott, Arizona, and we'll be having representatives of the tribe come to the property and perform ceremonies, honoring the land before we begin to build on it, and just do some really, really cool stuff.
If you, (I mean, we all live on indigenous land), but if you're curious about this, you can Google the tribes that were present before your town was turned into the town that it is, and often there are still representatives of the tribe in the area. Sometimes the tribes have changed names or they have become a coalition because so much of it was eradicated, so they joined with other tribes, but you can often find representatives from the indigenous peoples of where you live and just look into that kind of stuff.
You don't have to go so far as rededication or doing ceremonies, but I think it's really important to always know whose land we're occupying and that kind of stuff, so I'm really thrilled about that. It honestly kind of brings tears to my eyes, just thinking about that and it just feels so right to be honoring our property where we will be making our forever home and raising our children, and hopefully, our children come back to live one day, and just honoring it in the way it feels right to us. It's just kind of cool.
We won't be doing the ceremonies when we go home this time, we'll do it when we're there permanently sometime next year. Just to start the process of making connections with the Yavapai nation is just really cool.
Speaking of land and speaking of spring, we're going real spiritual today. We're going real "woo" today. You guys know or may be familiar that I am launching a new lifestyle offer this year and it is called Rooted, and Rooted is about reconnecting with your divine feminine, embodying your divine feminine, helping yourself and your female lineage reconnect with feminine energy through the earth through rewilding, through natural and nature-based rhythms and through rituals. So yes, it's out there and spiritual as it sounds.
If this does not sound like your episode, feel free to click off, feel free to skip this one. I will be back next week with the tasky business stuff. That is what you normally come here for, but if this does have your witchy senses tingling, if this does sound like something that you are into, keep listening, you can also head on over to marissalawton.com/rootsquiz.
Ding ding ding - a new quiz! This is kind of what I do. So marissalawton.com/rootsquiz and this is going to show you which season of the rerouting cycle that you were in, and it will also put you on the interest list for rooted when it becomes available. The waitlist will open for Rooted on November 13th, and the Big Launch will be on December 3rd.
If you're curious how I know those dates already it's because they were astrologically predicted. So yes we are going all the way there, all the way there. So that link again is marissalawton.com/rootsquiz, all one word, and check it out. I'm nervous about this work, but it's time. I'm so excited for it as well.
Today isn't going to be super-duper long. I just wanted to kind of hop in and talk about the fact that in business terms, we are moving into a new quarter, quarter two of the year, "Q2", but for today's show, we're moving into a new season. As women (and this is really geared towards like women who menstruate, however that lands with you), if you identify with that in any way, this is what we're really going to be kind of talking about and, and who kind of Rooted is best for, because we are cyclical and seasonal beings.
From a monthly basis with our monthly cycle, but also as we transitioned from maiden to mother, to Queen to crone, we have transitions and seasons that we go through in our lives, and that is kind of what we're going to be speaking about here in terms of the new season, which is springtime. I am recording this before the Spring Equinox, but you are likely listening to it after the Spring Equinox.
That's really what we're talking about today. Anytime there's a change in season, it's a great reminder for us to pause and to reflect on how things are going. You get the opportunity to almost step out of daily life, take a higher viewpoint, and just say, "this is a natural transition". It's not a self-imposed transition.
It's not a societally imposed transition. This is a natural, earth-based transition. It's happening, whether you're on board or not, it will be spring in whether you're ready for spring or not, so it gives us an opportunity to just reevaluate and take a pause and take a moment to see where we're at, how we're flowing, how we are flowing with these seasonal changes that are going to happen.
They're flowing, they're flowing, and how are we flowing in terms of being in sync with them? There's so much magic that happens when we are in sync with the seasons, and a lot of this has been conditioned out of us. We've been taught to be productive from, well, I'm just thinking, you know, from eight to five, if you're working a traditional working job, but I mean, it's much longer hours than that because there's the home shift as well.
So we're taught to be productive during times when - it's not from sun up to sun down anymore. Which is how our bodies naturally would function. As the sun goes down, our melatonin production goes up biologically, rhythmically. The way that it's "supposed to be" if we can go that far.
This is why we have more energy in the summer and less energy in the winter. It's a natural thing, but we've been conditioned to perform beyond what the natural flow is, just like our food systems have been conditioned to and designed to produce unseasonal food all year long. We are living out of sync and out of season in pretty much every way that we can.
When we come upon these changes of seasons, these solstices and equinoxes, it gives us a moment to say, "Ooh, where am I in terms of how the seasons are actually flowing?" Spring is really a season to check in with our energy levels and how we are "coming back to life".
I know so much of this is like, "Well duh, spring is rebirth and spring is regeneration, and these are things that we know", but when we think about what is the ancient root behind that, why do we know it as those things that we take for granted? If we just peeled back the layers and saw the truth behind them are quite profound. The way that we can think about Spring, is that like Fall, it is a season of balance. This is because Spring and Fall have equinoxes whereas summer and winter have solstices.
Think, just think of the word Equinox, Equinox—equitable, equal. This Equinox is related to these other words with the same root. Equal, the equinox is equal. It connotes balance. From the astronomy standpoint, it's because this is the time when there are equal amounts of hours of lightness and darkness in the winter solstice, which is about dominance, the darkness dominance dominates. There are more darker hours than there are lighter.
In the summer solstice, it's the opposite. It is a dominance of light, but in Spring and Fall, it is about balance. Right now we're in an in-between and that's right where we're supposed to be, so some of us are like, "why is this year dragging and why have I not been able to find my motivation this year?" or "why have I been not able to get stuff together this year?" It's because our year, our Gregorian January calendar, our new year is in the middle of winter, actually in the beginning of winter.
Winter doesn't start until December 21st. So New Year's Day is only like, 12 days into winter, so if you're just now feeling like, "oh, the ball is starting to roll", "oh, I'm starting to find some balance here", that's because that's where you're supposed to be.
In the Spring, some days are bright and sunny and they give us those summertime vibes, and then the next day, we're like, "what the heck? It's freezing again", like how I'm talking about how I'm wrapped up in a blanket.
We're coming off of a week of 75 and sunny. And here it is now raining and barely 60. So that is Fall. Some days are going to be super nice out, we've got the flowers blooming and some days are going to be yucky. Until we reach that dominance of the solstice, where the sunlight is dominating, where the warmth is dominating.
I'm going on a little bit of a tangent here, but this is why I get so angry about stores, like Hobby Lobby, that have the Christmas decorations out in August. This is that conditioning that I'm talking about. There is such a pressure to live out of season, whether it's like the food that's inorganically grown and modified to be ripe on the opposite calendar, part of the calendar when it's actually supposed to be ripe.
That's something that's kind of always there, but there's also this pressure from the holidays or whatever to be always future-casting, always at the next step, the next step, moving forward. What's next? What's next? We're wanting to drink pumpkin things in July and August. Pumpkin spice lattes taste great, but what is this affinity for a later season? To be always on to the next thing?
It's almost like where we are right now isn't good enough. There's such a glorification of summer. Summer barbecues, 4th of July, the pool, those light dominant days, and then there's also another glorification of the holidays.
The beauty of these in-between times, the beauty of the Spring, and the beauty of the Fall, they get overshadowed by these kinds of polls, these dominant polls. It's just fascinating to think about why this is the case, things that we take for granted as just being the way they are. There are really actually roots. There are real reasons that our ancestors knew that our ancestors actively participated in, that defines or describe why these things are happening and more so than that, there's a closeness and intentionality that comes from that.
When you can't take for granted that your food's going to be ripe all year-round and when you can't take for granted that you're gonna be able to go to the grocery store and buy whatever you want, there's intentionality that then goes into your food making.
I'm using food as just an analogy here. Just an example, because this shows up everywhere. This shows up in not just what we eat, but the way we behave and the way we act. When you key into the seasons, when you key into the natural rhythms, life becomes so much more vibrant because you become so much more present, and then you can respond to this presence intentionally.
Today that's what I want to do is stop, and I want to recognize spring. I want to talk about what's actually going on here today in our world, and of course, this is in the Northern hemisphere. If you guys are in the Southern hemisphere, swap out Fall. It's turning into your Fall, but it's the same thing. It's an Equinox season. It's an equal in-between season. Swap out my words, but the feeling is still similar.
It's this time of year that's often overshadowed because it doesn't have that polarity that we're seeking or that we're conditioned to seek. As we're recognizing Spring, I want to sit here and I want to just check in with ourselves and to see what it is we want to embody this season. I want to leave you with a little bit of reflection to think through.
How in this in-between time of equal light and darkness, but also fluctuating moods, fluctuating weather, fluctuating experiences, how are you feeling? And how do you intentionally want to navigate that? How do you want to go through that with you at the driver's seat or at the helm rather than being just kind of pushed around by what's expected of you? I think that's really fascinating to think about.
Now where rebirth comes into this rebirth regeneration is because as the balance of light and darkness is happening, as darkness and nights are getting shorter and days are starting to get longer, they balance out on the Equinox and then they start to move towards the summer solstice. This is naturally seasonally where we see flowers blooming.
Think about this… this is kind of gross, but like the girls found a dead snake the other day, and it was because it came out too early. It had been teased by a couple of warm days and then the weather went back to cold and it wasn't ready. The snake wasn't ready. It's coldblooded obviously. And so it died. And so this is what tends to happen in springtime, it feels like a few steps forward, a few steps back, a few steps forward, a few steps back until we finally turn the corner.
This is the newness. It's the hope of longer days, the hope of brighter days, and so it is now time for things to begin. We shouldn't be arriving at Spring with a fully bloomed rose. We should be arriving - not even, we don't even arrive at Spring. We slow through, we grow. I like that. We grow through Spring because at first it's a green leaf and then it's a bud, and then that bud begins to open, and then it's a bloom and it's actually not a bloom until much closer to summer, much closer to the solstice.
Spring is a process that we don't just arrive at. We don't open our eyes and Springs here, and then all the flowers are out. We notice Spring coming on. It is a rebirth process. The grass is just a little bit greener and then it's just a little bit greener, and now the leaves have some, or the trees have some leaves and now there's a blossom. It happens over a span of weeks and months.
Now, since we mentioned the Equinox a little bit already, I want to just speak about how it was honored in these ancient times, what our ancestors knew, and its significance to us both spiritually and biologically. There are several ways in which the Spring season has been celebrated throughout time and across cultures.
In the Jewish faith, there's Purim—I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. Help me, please comment in the Facebook group on how to pronounce that. I would appreciate it. In India, there's a festival called Holi. Again, help me with pronunciations. In the middle east, in Persian Iranian culture but even spreads a little bit further than that, there is a celebration called Nowruz. In Africa, there is a celebration called Spring Day.
Across cultures and across the world, across timelines, there are recognitions of this day. Ostara, which has Celtic origins and is more part of my lineage is what has been colonized into our current concept of Easter. Now for each of these, they're celebrations of the Equinox, and in each of these cultures (which I thought was fascinating because they're spread throughout the world), it is the transition from darker days to lighter days that these festivals are celebrating. Some of them are celebrated with foods, which is a common way that a lot of cultures celebrate.
The festival in India is a color festival, so people wear white and then they end up with these color bombs to celebrate the arrival, the transition to lighter days, and the transition of colors arriving through plants. And so again, I think it's important to mention that across cultures, they're celebrating this as a transition.
Spring doesn't arrive all in one day, and like I just talked about, it seems like Spring arrives all in one day because we're zombies on autopilot, and we're just plugging through our days, checking things off our calendars, crossing off the to-do's of our lists, and then we look up and we're like, "Oh, wow. I guess I should mow my grass because it's green now, and its grown three inches"
When Spring really begins, it's like we hear the birds chirping that very first day in February or March or whatever, where it's like, the birds are chirping on the first morning where it's actually warm enough. Then we see the bud or two opening. Then we see the green grass. Then there are bees buzzing. Then we're sneezing like crazy from allergies because everything's in bloom, so there's a shadow side to Spring, too.
But my point here is that Spring comes upon us. It is the waking up of the Earth. It's the waking up of Earth's flora and fauna over a season's worth of time, and it's our waking up, too. Because literally, we're mammals. We may have higher consciousness. We may have higher-order thinking, but we are mammals. We are part of the Earth's fauna. We are part of the animals that live on this planet, and so the spring is our waking up, too.
The other thing that I thought was fascinating as I was researching all of these holidays and all of these festivals, again, throughout ancient times to present day and across cultures in different locations of the world is that all of these spring holidays in the middle east and Asia and Africa and Europe, the spring Equinox is New Year's Day.
It's not the Gregorian calendar that has been socially imposed on us that says January 1st is the beginning of the year. The spring Equinox across time and across culture has been New Year's Day, which means New Year's Eve is March 20th and New Year's Day is March 21st. How many of you really, really resonate with that?
I do. I feel like this is New Years. I feel like I'm awake now and I'm alive now and I'm ready to participate now. Freaking January and February, I was not, and I know from talking with a lot of people that that's a very similar feeling and I live in the South-South now, but I'm from the Southwest. I've always lived in lower latitudes.
I have not lived in places like Minnesota or Michigan, where I imagine it's much darker and much colder for much longer. So if you were feeling like January is not the New Year it's because across time until very recently, the last couple of hundred years has it not been the New Year.
We can even throw astrology in here. I don't claim to be an astrologist at all by any means, but we can throw astrology in here because the astrological New Year begins with Aries. And do you know where Aries starts? March 21st, March 22nd. So it corresponds right with this Equinox time.
Pisces, which is the sign that overlaps the end of February, and the beginning of March is the end of the Zodiac. It is the end of the astrological New Year. Cultures, festivals, holidays, and now astrology, all of these ancient rhythms, these innate processes, these innate beliefs that are within us, if we are close enough to the land and present enough to observe them, this is an inner knowing that has been in the human species for millennia.
For millennia, humans have lived close to the earth. They have followed her seasons and cycles. They have risen and rested with nature's patterns. It's only in the past few hundred years that we have chosen or been conditioned to live by an arbitrary calendar, marking arbitrary days and months, and then a fake clock. My self-imposed clock that's marking these hours in these minutes.
It makes me think about all of the larger systems at play. I've talked a lot about the food system, but our work system. How the work system that has us setting alarm clocks for 6:00 AM in December when the sun does come up until 8 or 8:30. Also these work systems or these social systems, these family systems that have us getting home from work at five or six, and then cleaning the house and doing the dishes until eight o'clock at night. When the sun's been down since 5:30 or 6, you know, we're just so out of sync.
Now I don't want to knock modern convenience here. I'm sincerely grateful that we're not dependent on some Fall harvest being good enough and bountiful enough that we're going to die in the winter if we don't have enough food. It's not what I want us to be moving towards. It's not what Rooted is all about and that's not what my philosophy is all about.
Modern convenience is amazing. There are modern sciences, modern healthcare. I'm not trying to knock that, but it does make me think about how healthy are those strawberries when eaten in the middle of January, and how unnatural they must be.
I really think that my work, that my capital W work, that my calling here is to marry both. I'm not trying to get rid of modern convenience. I'm not saying we all need to go live off-grid in the middle of nowhere, even though I am kind of tempted to do that.
But could we be more conscious about the resources that we are consuming? Could we get closer to the earth? Could we put our feet in some soil and feel the nutrients that were missing from this genetically modified food? Could we rewild a bit, could we get closer to the earth? Can we honor that for millennia, our ancestors lived this way and we can take a look at how things are working out right now, and it's not so great. And perhaps it's partly because we have gotten so out of sync.
Now that we've spent some time thinking about Spring, we've talked about the historical significance of it, and we've also talked about its spiritual or its embodied significance, I would like to start thinking about how we plan to embody this, how we can be right here, right now. Not pressing forward through our days without any presence, and I have some journaling questions for you guys to explore.
This is new for me, a new way of working for me, and I hope you guys are enjoying it. You can literally grab a pen and paper and pause me and do this right now, or, if you're driving, if you're on the treadmill, if you're doing whatever, you can think on them, think on them for the next few days as you're going through these first few weeks of Spring.
But this is the energy that I want us to think about right now. This is the energy that the season is bringing, that the animals are going through, that the plants are growing through, and if we were closer to the earth, what we would be going through.
So I want you to think about question number one: What is something that is dying off within me? What is something that is dying off within me? What is this dying-off process making room for? What is this making room for to be born? And is this a first birth or a rebirth?
Is this the first time you're embarking on something? Are you creating, are you birthing into the world? Something brand new or is something rekindling in you? Is something reawakening in you? Is this a Rebirth? So question one, what is dying off? What is this making room for to be born? Is this a first birth or a rebirth?
Question two: what in my life needs balance? What in my life needs balance? How can I acknowledge my shadow and see my light at the same time?
If you've been focusing on shadow a lot lately, we're coming off winter. It's time, kind of, to be reflecting and focusing on shadow. But if you've been too in the shadow, what's the bright side? What's the flip side? Where's the light?
Question three: In what ways have you been hunkering down or hiding in your life? In what ways have you been hunkering down or hiding in your life? Hibernating, coming out of winter. And how can you peek out of your hiding place today?
How can you begin to poke around? Hopefully, not like the snakes that came out too early and ended up dying, but if it's feeling warm enough, if it's feeling like it's time, how can you poke out from your hiding place today? You might not be fully coming out. Remember spring, Spring grows on us, but how could you just peek out?
And then this one's a little bit more literal, but how can you bring Spring into your surroundings? How can I bring a sense of Spring into my surroundings? So this could be as literal as fresh plants and flowers, you might switch out some throw blankets that are in like more muted, wintery colors and bring in some Spring colors.
What can you do to reawaken your space? Because if our environment reawakens, we reawaken. As without, so within. As within, so without. If the season is changing outside, how can you bring some of that inside?
My call to you today is to think about what you're embodying this Spring. Think about how seasonal shifts are a great time for you to take stock of how you're flowing through life, and if your lifestyle is really encapsulating all that you want it to. Are you as present as you want to be? Are you as tuned in as you want to be?
If you're still listening, you haven't turned it off yet, this stuff might be a fit for you. Seasonal living, embodied living. Rekindling the divine feminine through our connection to seasons and cycles because we are cyclical beings. If you want to know more about spirituality, seasonal living, and how it's connected to your feminine power, Rooted might be the right community for you.
Remember, it's coming out later this year. I have created a quiz to help you see what season you are in of the rerooting cycle, as well as to get you on the interest list for Rooted when the doors open to the collective later this year, and you can find that quiz over at marissaLawton.com/rootsquiz.
So it's different than my normal Side Hustle quiz that you guys hear me talking about. This has been a blast for me. You can probably hear my passion and you can probably hear my intensity about the subject, and if it's for you, I would love for you to come along on the ride with me. I'm getting really excited about it.
Again, next week I'll be back with the normal Side Hustle stuff, the normal business building left-brain stuff that you know me for. But it's been a pleasure to be with you today. Alright. Until next week, keep on rising.
