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We All Feel the Cycles

I have talked about cycles before, but recently I’ve been realizing how much they affect our lives.

I learned about the seasonal energies in my coach training, and I’ve been learning more deeply about the cycles in Human Design. We all feel these cycles. Some of us notice them more than others.

Women are very familiar with the monthly cycle, sometimes it aligns with the energy of the moon and sometimes it doesn’t. We know what it feels like to have high energy for a few days and then other days not wanting to be around anyone and our tolerance is very low.

We’re told not to talk about the weather because that’s small talk. But especially at this time of year in the Midwest, the weather really affects us.

On Sunday this past week, it was 65 degrees at 9am and by 5pm it was snowing and 35 degrees. The weather affects us whether we want to admit it or not. And the background energies of the cosmos do too.

Even the most skeptical people who don’t believe in the planets having any effect on us do in some way celebrate the turning of a cycle every year on their birthday. And we can’t help but notice that our energy feels different in spring than it does in winter, summer, and fall.

Spring, Glorious Spring

Spring, at least in Kansas, seems to be on its way. It feels like it’s been here for a few weeks now until we had a snowstorm. Spring is the time when we officially have longer days than nights, and green starts to pop up.

Sweet crocuses and daffodils start to emerge – or if you’re like us, everything happened about three weeks early. We are ready to start shedding our heavy coats and sweaters. We may even feel an urge to go frolicking through the fields, or at least dream of frolicking through the fields.

We are ready for spring. We are ready to go. But sorry to burst your bubble. Slow down, doggie. We’re not ready to burst out just yet.

We may be ready, but the energy of spring is a lot slower.

You Can’t Hang a Bird Feeder on a Young Stem

A full grown oak tree does not burst out of an acorn right away. It has to grow some roots and then push through the soil.

What we don’t see are the roots that have grown into the soil before the seedling starts to emerge. The seedlings come up small and delicate. You cannot hang a bird feeder on that first stem with those tiny little baby leaves. The plant needs time to grow both up and down into the soil.

I recently started seeds in my basement, and the first few days it looked like nothing was happening. I was watering. I was tending to them. But I knew there was a stirring and growth happening beneath the surface. Then after about four days, the first little tiny plant started to emerge — teeny tiny bits of green coming through that dark soil.

I did a little dance of joy because they were so cute. These tiny little green leaves had worked so hard to emerge through the soil. But I know these plants need to be nurtured before they can go into the garden and face the squirrels, the chipmunks, and our rowdy dog.

We are all like these seeds in spring. We are ready to burst, and yet growing slowly and being patient are essential whenever we’re starting something new.

As Ayana Madrone 🪻 from Root & Ritual on Substack writes,

“We are so conditioned by modern culture to worship the bloom that we deeply resent the waiting. We think if we are not taking massive, explosive action, we are failing or falling behind.”

The Daffodils That Bloomed Too Soon

Because if we burst out too fast because it’s warm and sunny, we will end up like the daffodils in my garden this year. They came up early and bloomed, and then we had a March snowstorm and a hard freeze for a few days and it killed them. They are sadly lying in my garden, wilted and dead.

We all go through these cycles in our lives, and while we may want to rush through one to get to the next, we need to go all the way through.

Those daffodils had been fooled by the warm weather and the warmer late winter we had. How often are we like those daffodils?

We think if I can just get through this rough period faster, then I can get to the really good stuff. We all do it. And at times it makes the current season feel even longer.

My 12-year-old can’t wait to get to middle school and move upstairs to the bigger bedroom that’s currently my office. I made this promise to her years before I had my business, so I’m stuck.

When we’re teenagers, we want to be adults. As women in midlife, we want to move past the uncomfortable symptoms of perimenopause. But just like the caterpillar in the chrysalis, we can’t rush things. Each phase and season of our lives gives us wisdom and insight to help inform the next phase.

I am just as guilty of wanting to move through the uncomfortable phases quickly. Let’s just get to the fun stuff, right? I want to get through the growing pains of my business to get to the steady part. But just like the seeds in my basement, things need time. The growth needs to be steady.

The Wood Element + What Spring Is Asking of Us

In Traditional Chinese Medicine’s Five Elements Theory, the season of spring is represented by wood. The element of each season tells us a lot about how that season wants us to move.

Spring is about planning. We like to think we do all of our planning for the year in January, but winter is for rooting, stillness, and rest to prepare us for the growth of spring. When we really need to plan is just before we embark on something new. Spring is also the season of visioning, courage, rising, and launching. Our planning helps us get closer to our vision.

But often we make a quick plan and are ready to launch before we’ve done all the groundwork that sets us up for success. We want action before we have fully laid out our plan.

How often have we laid out a plan, said okay let’s go, met a snag and had to go back to square one? It’s completely natural. But if we had taken a little more time to plan things out, maybe we would have only needed to go back to square three instead of square one.

And that’s where wood’s defining quality of flexibility comes in. When it meets an obstacle, it doesn’t stop growing. Nope. It grows around that obstacle.

The message for us is to be flexible and bring our plans to fruition. It’s also about holding ourselves to the plan because it’s easy to get distracted by the next shiny object that takes us away from our original plans.

When we meet obstacles, we have two options: to get angry and stop, or to reassess and come back to our vision. Notice the challenges and where the opportunities are to be flexible, to see a different path that may actually be a better one.

These snags can be opportunities for real growth and for us to see where our original plan needed more thought.

Sometimes we’re the creator of our own obstacles with our inner critic and the stories we tell ourselves about how we can’t do something, maybe from past experiences or fear. We don’t often see that obstacles can sometimes be a gift to learn, grow, and gain strength within ourselves. As they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Roots, Water, and Balance

Spring isn’t all about growth because it also needs balance. A plant can’t grow taller without also digging into the earth for grounding.

In the Five Elements Theory, the elements support each other.

Wood sits between the water of winter and the fire of summer. Water nourishes wood and helps it grow, and wood feeds the fire.

Just as winter’s stillness and rest prepared us for spring’s growth, we may still need to draw on some of that quieter water energy to keep ourselves grounded as we emerge and grow into our springtime selves.

Meeting resistance can also be an invitation to slow down, reassess, and tap into some of the practices that carried us through winter.

As we’re planning and visioning, we’re also creating structures for ourselves. Deciding what’s important to us. We may start setting new boundaries around our time and resources.

As a parent, spring is when everything comes alive  alive, there’s lots of activities at school, and Girl Scouts and sports. Spring sports are starting and we need to prioritize what we are doing and what we are committing to. I’ve learned the hard way that sleepovers cannot happen the night before a Saturday softball practice.

We also need to keep the calendar up to date to know who is going where. By setting some structure and planning the week, our lives flow a whole lot more smoothly and our family’s schedule is not living up in my head or on my phone – it’s on the wall and everyone can see it.

The Energies Around the Spring Equinox

Also happening around the spring equinox is the ending of the eclipse season. I don’t know about you, but it’s been a real doozy. I am so looking forward to some less intense energy until we have our next eclipse season in mid and late August.

Though I’m not sure how much crazier it can feel than the last six weeks, shifting from the year of the snake to the year of the horse.

I think a lot of people in February were like, it’s the year of the horse, and they were ready to burst out of the gates after the Lunar New Year — and they were met with some reminders to slow down.

The year of the horse is a marathon, not a sprint. We’re in it for the long haul.

There’s a meme I saw on Instagram recently that was so perfect — the horses come out of the gates ready to go, one horse knocks the jockey off and runs in front of all the others. (Watch it here - link goes to Instagram) Reminder: it’s not all smooth on this journey.

The element related to this year’s horse is fire. And we need to keep ourselves resourced because fire can burn us out.

But fire needs fuel, it gets its fuel and energy from wood and air to keep it going. And what controls fire is water.

So when you are feeling like you are bursting out of the gates and running full speed, remember you might need some water to keep things from getting out of control.

The Planets and Their Energies

Mercury is also coming out of retrograde, the first of three times it will retrograde in 2026. I’ve started to see Mercury retrogrades as a reason to personally notice what I’m saying and be more intentional, not just talking to fill the space.

Because if I’m talking to fill the space or just talking to talk, it’s a lot more likely that my words won’t land the way I hoped — which is the classic Mercury retrograde problem with miscommunication.

And if all of this talk of emerging slowly and being intentional about new beginnings feels particularly timely right now, there’s a reason for that.

All of this is happening beautifully with Jupiter in the background. In Human Design, there are 64 gates that are part of the wheel. Like in the zodiac there are 12 signs, Human Design, which is based on the Chinese I-Ching, divides the year into 64 gates.

Just as the planets move into a sign in the zodiac, they also move into gates. Each zodiac sign contains about five and a half gates, and each of the planets including the Sun and the Earth move in and out of these gates as they move through the cosmos.

On March 16th, Jupiter moved into the gate of beginnings for the second time this year, and we’re in this energy until mid-May. If you know Human Design, this is Gate 53.

Jupiter is the planet of expansion, amplification, wisdom, and collective growth. Wherever Jupiter transits, it magnifies the lesson of that gate. So when Jupiter moves into Gate 53, it expands the frequency of new beginnings. This can feel like pressure to start something new — new cycles, new momentum, new growth arcs.

The low frequency of this transit can look like starting too many things at once, jumping into commitments before you’re emotionally ready, or that restless hungry-for-something-new feeling with no clear direction. The shadow side of this gate is called immaturity, but not immaturity in terms of age. This is about initiating before something has roots. What’s really interesting is that Gate 53 sits in the root center. And we were just talking about roots growing down to ground us before we grow up.

The high frequency is where it gets really powerful. Jupiter expands conscious new beginnings, sustainable growth cycles, and long-term vision. It’s not random starting — it’s aligned initiation.

This transit is asking us:
What cycle are you truly ready to begin?
Where are you being called into sustainable expansion?
What wants to grow, not just launch?

Emerging Slowly and Intentionally

So as we move into this new season of spring, I want to invite you to emerge slowly and intentionally. Maybe plan what your spring will look like, keeping in mind the vision you have for your life and this season.

What is one thing to move you closer to that vision – not a long laundry list of things you need to do, which will probably create more obstacles and leave you feeling like you are hanging that heavy bird feeder on a young stem.

And just like a plant that sends energy in too many directions with leggy branches, the same is true for the plans we make. Are there areas of your plans that need some pruning?

Yes, I’ve planted the seeds in my basement. But I don’t plan my garden layout until I know how many seedlings are going to survive so the plants will be strong enough to go in the garden. Those seeds and plants need nurturing before they can face our rowdy dog. I have a vision of what I want our garden to be this summer. And when something comes up – or our dog decides to bury a dead squirrel in the garden – I’ll make adjustments and be flexible, like the wood element.

What Step Will You Take?

Where are you feeling ready to burst out of the gates and are instead feeling a little resistance, needing more time to plan and nurture the seeds you’ve planted?

It helps to look back before we look forward. Think back over the last few springs –2025 and 2024.

What will you do differently this spring?

Do you need to build some structure into your schedule, or do you need more flexibility and white space?

Finding clarity on where we’ve been helps us get clear on where we want to go.

What is your vision for this year? Maybe you created one in December or January. What is one thing you can do this spring to move you one step closer to it?

You don’t need to know how to completely fulfill that vision.

You just need to be willing to do one thing – one step.

I have a vision for my business and I have no idea how to get there. But I do know I can do one thing – reach out to other podcasts, pitch myself for an article or summit – anything that brings me one step closer to reaching more people. Helping women feel less like their life is running them. Helping them get clear on what they want next and to feel more in control of their time and energy. To help them get out of the patterns that feel like they are running their lives.

Midlife Has a Way of Bringing Things to the Surface

Because midlife has a way of always bringing these things to the surface. We have to make some of our biggest decisions in midlife about our jobs, relationships, and life.

The job that no longer feels fulfilling. The relationships that feel one-sided. The constant habit of keeping everyone else happy while quietly losing yourself.

When we’ve read all the books, listened to all the podcasts, and collected all the insights, we think we know what we should do – but it feels so hard to actually do it.

Human Design offers something different. It’s not a personality test or a self-help framework that gives you good information and leaves you feeling empty. It’s a map of how you’re actually wired, how you use your energy, how you make decisions, and where your patterns have developed.

If you’ve been feeling like this is the season something needs to change, you’re probably right. That feeling is your body speaking before your mind catches up.

Join Me for the Midlife + Human Design Workshop

If this resonated with you, I’d love to have you join me on Substack for a free workshop. I’ll be hosting periodic workshops, some free and most for paid subscribers. I’ve made the yearly subscription rate really affordable, so if you’re not sure you’re ready for one-on-one coaching, this is a great option to work with me and get to know my work.

I’m hosting a workshop on March 26th called Midlife + Human Design. We’ll explore how your unique design can help you navigate the biggest decisions of your midlife — with less second-guessing and more trust in yourself. If you can’t make it live, no worries. The workshop lives on Substack and is available to you anytime.

Life Patterns Review

I’m also always offering the Life Patterns Review — a one-on-one session where we look at patterns you’ve developed through all the areas of your life. The ones you’ve developed to keep the peace and because you’ve been running on autopilot. Over-giving. Saying yes when you really mean no. Trying to be the version of you that makes everyone else comfortable and who you think you should be.

Life Patterns Review

In a Life Patterns Review, we look at all of it together. The roles you’ve picked up. The patterns you’ve repeated so often you’ve stopped noticing them. And we start to untangle what’s actually yours from what you’ve inherited or picked up along the way.