Welcome to the Unfolding Podcast, a space where we explore what it looks like to really trust yourself, say no without guilt, and live your life like it actually belongs to you. I am Erica Voell. I'm a Decision Mentor and Inner-Trust Guide, and I help women and midlife trust how they're uniquely designed to make decisions, reclaim their authority, and understand their unique strengths. Using human design as a lens, we clear the noise of conditioning and patterns so that their no feels powerful and their yes feels true, and they can move forward without self-doubt, guilt, and pressure to prove anything. On this show, we have honest conversations about self-trust, boundaries, energy, identity, especially for women in midlife who are done living by the shoulds and second guessing themselves. If you've taken every personality test, followed the recommended path, and still can't shake that feeling that you've been spending your whole life trying to fit in when what you really wanted was to belong, you are in the right place. You'll hear stories, insights, and tools rooted in human design, coaching, and real life. Not to tell you what to do, like another self-help book, but to help you really hear yourself. So you can stop overthinking and start making decisions that feel grounded, clear, and true. 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. And we all feel these cycles. Some of them notice. The more than others. Women are very familiar with the monthly cycle. 'cause 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 to not wanna be around anybody. And having a really low tolerance. When we tend to notice these cycles the most is when we're changing the seasons. But we're told not to talk about the weather because that's small talk. But especially at this time of year in the Midwest in the US. The weather really affects us. On Sunday, this past week, it was 65 degrees at 9:00 AM and by 5:00 PM it was snowing and it was 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 and don't believe in astrology, do in some way celebrate the turning of the cycle every year on their birthday. And we can't help but notice that the energy right now in spring, at least for some of us, is a little bit different than it is in winter or even in summer and in fall. And spring, glorious 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 for spring. We may even have 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, doggy. We're not ready to burst out yet. We may be ready, but the energy of spring is a lot slower. A full grown oak tree does not burst out of an acorn right away. It has to grow some roots and then to push through the soil. What we don't see are the roots that have grown into the soil before the seedling starts to emerge. That happens with all plants. The seedlings come up small and delicate. And 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 that there was a stirring and a growth happening beneath the surface. And then after about four days, the first little tiny plant started to emerge, like teeny tiny bits of green coming through that dark soil. I did a little dance of joy being clapping because they were so cute. They were these tiny little green leaves. They have worked so hard to emerge through the soil, but I know that these plants need to be nurtured before they can go into the garden and face the squirrels and 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 for the things to come are essential whenever we're starting something new. As Ayana Madrone on Root and 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." End quote. 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 they bloomed, and then we had a March snowstorm and a really hard freeze for a few days and it killed them. They are so sad 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 it 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, then I can get to the really good stuff. We all do it. I do it, and at times it makes the current season feel longer. My 12-year-old can't wait to get to middle school and to move upstairs to the bigger bedroom that's actually currently my office. I made this promise to her years before I had my business, and so I'm stuck. Ah, yeah. When we are teenagers, we want to be adults, and 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 each 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. I mean, let's just get to the good stuff, the fun stuff, right? I wanna 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. 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 in stillness and rest to prepare us for the growth of spring, when we really need to plan is 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 of 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 and we're like, okay, I'm ready. Let's get started, and then we've met a snag and we had to go back to square one. I mean, it's completely natural. But if we had taken a little bit more time to plan things out, maybe we would've 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 for spring is to be flexible and to bring our plans to fruition. It's about holding ourselves to the plan because it's easy for us to get distracted by the next shiny object that takes us away from our original plans. I've noticed that if I am very rigid and structured about my plans, then I feel really unsettled when there's an obstacle. I can either choose to get angry and stop, or I can reassess and come back to my vision. Notice the challenges and where are the opportunities to be flexible and to see where a different path is actually maybe a different one or a better one, or maybe that obstacle is an invitation. 'Cause these snags can be opportunities for real growth and for us to see where our original plan was not laid out well. Sometimes we're the creator of our own obstacles with our inner critic telling us all the stories that we tell ourselves about how we can't do something. Maybe from past experiences or even fear. We don't even see these obstacles sometimes. That can be that gift to grow and learn and to gain strength within ourself. 'Cause as they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Spring is not 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 really support each other. Wood sits between the water. That's the element of winter and the fire of summer. Water nourishes wood and it helps it grow and wood feeds the fire. And just as winter's stillness and rest helps prepare 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 self. Meeting resistance to our plans and taking action can actually be an invitation for us to slow down, to reassess and to 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 our resources, and as a parent, I can tell you spring seems to be when everything comes alive, there's lots of activities at school, and Girl Scouts and sports. And spring sports are starting, and we need to prioritize what we are doing and what we are committing to. 'cause I have learned the hard way that I can commit to a sleepover with my kid, but that's not a good thing when I know that we have a Saturday softball practice. We also need to keep our calendar up to date to know who is going where because by setting some structure and planning for 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 a wall and everyone can see it. And also happening around the spring. Equinox is the ending of the eclipse season. We just went through. It's the ending of those energies of that eclipse season. And 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. Although honestly, I don't know how much crazier it can feel than the last six weeks have felt from 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 outta the gates after the lunar New year and they were met with some reminders to slow the heck down. 'cause the year of the horse is a marathon and not a sprint, and we have to be in it for the long haul. There's a meme I saw recently on Instagram that just was like so perfect. It's like the horses come out of the gates, they are ready to go, and one horse knocks the jockey off and then like runs in front of the other horses and it's like, oh, okay. 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 seriously, fire can burn us out. So that's why I say it's a marathon and not a sprint. But fire needs fuel and where does fire get 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 just bursting out of the gates and you are running and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, great. Oh yeah. I need some water to calm me down and not be out of control. I know there are other energies we're also experiencing in the cosmos right now. It feels like craziness. Honestly. I think a lot of us are ready for a little bit more steadiness. Mercury is coming out of retrograde for the first of the three times that it will retrograde in 2026. I have started to see Mercury retrogrades as a reason for me to personally notice what I'm saying and be a lot more intentional behind what I'm saying, not just 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 will not land in the same way that I'd hoped, which is really classic Mercury retrograde, problem with miscommunication. That's what we always hear about. And all of this talk of emerging slowly and being intentional about new beginnings feels particularly timely right now, and there's a reason for that. All of this is happening beautifully with Jupiter in the background. In human design. I've talked about this before. There are 64 gates that are part of the the wheel. Like in the zodiac, there are 12 signs. Well, in the human design, which is based on the Chinese i-Ching, it divides the year up into 64 gates. And just as the planets move into a sign in the zodiac, they also move into the gates. So. The planets and the earth move in and out of these gates as they move around the cosmos. And on March 16th, Jupiter moved into the gate of beginnings for the second time this year, and we're in this energy for the next two months until mid-May. And if you know human design, this is Gate 53. Jupiter is the planet of expansion, amplification, wisdom, and collective growth. And whenever Jupiter moves, it magnifies the lesson of that gate. So when Jupiter moves into Gate 53, it's expanding the frequency of new beginnings. And this can feel like pressure for us to start something new. New cycles, new momentum, new growth arcs. There are two frequencies that happen with each gate. The low frequency for this one is that it can look like we're starting too many things all at once. Jumping into commitments before we're emotionally ready. Or that we're restless for something new, hungry for that new, new feeling that has no clear direction. This shadow side of this, or the low frequency side of it is called immaturity, but we're not talking about immaturity in the terms of age. This is about initiating before something has roots that have grown. What's really interesting is that the 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 of this gate is where it gets really, really powerful. Jupiter expands that consciousness of new beginnings, that sustainable growth cycles and our long-term vision. It's not a random starting, it's aligned initiation. This transit is asking us what cycle are we ready to begin, and where are we being called into sustainable expansion? What wants to grow? Not necessarily what just wants to launch. So as we move into this new energy of spring, I want to invite you to merge slowly and intentionally. Maybe plan what your spring will look like. Keeping in mind the vision that you have for your life and the season, what is one thing to move you closer to that vision that you have? Not this long laundry list of things that you need to do like spring cleaning, which is probably going to create more obstacles and leave you feeling like you are hanging that heavy bird feeder on that tiny young stem. Yes, I have planted the seeds in my basement. Those young sweet plants. But I do not plan my garden layout until I know how many seedlings are gonna survive so that the plants will then be strong enough to be in the garden to deal with our rowdy dog that likes to get in there. Those seeds and those plants, they need nurturing before they can go in the garden. I have a vision of what I want our garden to be this summer, and when something comes up and our dog decides to bury a dead squirrel in the garden. I'm gonna make adjustments and I'm gonna be more flexible, like the wood element. So I want to ask you, where are you feeling ready to burst out of the gates and are instead feeling like a little resistance and maybe need some more time to plan and to nurture those seeds that you've planted? And also just like a plant sends that energy in many directions with sometimes those leggy branches. The same is true for our plans that we make. Are there areas of your plans that need some pruning? It can be helpful to look back before we look forward and think back over the last few springs in 2025 and 2024, what will you do differently this spring? And do you need to build some structure into your schedule, or do you need to have more flexibility and white space in your schedule? Finding that clarity on where we've been can help us be clear on where we want to go. So what, go back to your vision for this year. You might've created one in December and January, and what's one thing you can do this spring to move you closer to that vision? You don't need to know how to completely fulfill that vision. As Joseph Campbell says, "if you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path, your own path you make with every step you take, it's why it's your path." If you know what you're doing for the rest of the year, then maybe that's not the right path for you. You just need to be doing one thing, one step, which is going to guide you to the next thing. I mean, I have a vision for my business, but I have no idea how to get there. But I do know I can do one thing I can reach out to other podcasts. Or I can pitch myself for an article or a summit, anything that brings me one step closer to reaching more people and 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 their energy to help them get out of the patterns that feel like they're running their lives. Because honestly, 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 and relationships and life. And on some days we're like, I'm not having it. Our job might feel less fulfilling than ever than it did the day a few days before or a few months before. Our relationships can start to feel a little bit one-sided. There's this constant habit of keeping everyone else happy while quietly losing ourselves. When we've read all the books and 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, especially on some days. Human design offers something different. It's not a personality test or a self-help framework that gives you good information and then leaves you feeling like empty and you're like, I don't know what to do. It's a map of how you're actually wired and 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 that something needs to change, you're probably right. That feeling is your body speaking before your mind catches up. So if all of this has resonated with you, I would love to have you join me on Substack for a free workshop. I'll be hosting periodic workshops on substack, and some of 'em going to be free, but most are gonna be 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 for you to work with me and get to know my work. One of my absolute favorite things is hosting workshops and sharing the power of human design with others. I'm hosting a workshop on March 26th on Substack called Midlife and Human Design. In this workshop, we're gonna explore how your unique design can help you navigate the biggest decisions in your midlife with less second guessing and more trust in yourself. And if you can't make it live, no worries. The workshop actually lives on Substack. And it's available to you any time. And I'm always offering the Life Patterns Review. This is a free 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. Overgiving and saying yes when you really wanna say no. Trying to be the version of you that makes everyone else comfortable and who you think you should be. In that Life Patterns Review, we look at it, all of it together, the roles you've picked up, the patterns you've repeated so often that you actually have stopped noticing them, and we start to untangle what's actually yours and what you've inherited and picked up along the way. Thank you for joining me for this episode. If it resonated with you, I'd be so grateful if you would click the plus sign to subscribe and share it with a friend. I'll see you next time. Be well.