Okay. Welcome to the Grow Like a Mother podcast. Today is so special. I have my business mentor, Mellissa Seaman, here with me, and we’re going to be talking about her creation, which is the wheel of Wisdom. And this is something that we’ll get into as we go, but it’s been super helpful for me, not only in my business but in my personal life.

I learned to slow down and really work with the energies that are like here for us, right? Yeah. So Mellissa, as I mentioned, is my business coach, my business mentor. That is how we know each other. She has been doing all things support for me for the last six months or so, but I’d love for you to introduce yourself to the listeners, Mellissa, and just give them a sense of who you are and what you do.

Totally. I’m so happy to be here with you. Wow, this is cool and yeah, I mean, we’re moms and my kids are now grown, so I’ve got a 23 year old and a 25 year old. And I just want to tell you who are listening. They do grow. It gets a little easier. Yeah. I just got to say, because I was running my business the whole time I was raising my kids and like, woof, it’s a thing.

So yeah, I was actually it’s my daughter that got me into this mess. My daughter, when I gave birth to Clarise in the year 2000. Hey, I was a business lawyer. I was a devout Catholic. I had a big house near the beach in San Diego. Like I was living my dream of the time. And then when I birthed Clarise, which is my second child and my second natural birth, she blew me open like I was so psychic after giving birth to her.

And I was shocked because I didn’t believe that stuff was real previously. Like, I didn’t think it was real. And then suddenly I was one of those people. So I was like, crap, man, I can I can see spirit guides, I can witness energies. I’m like, tracking differently with nature. I’m having dreams of indigenous ceremonies like what?

That actual. And fortunately, I had my lawyer brain still, so I could also make sense of it. So I started to, like, organize my spirit guides, send them to different work. And I really because I hadn’t read about we women spirit new age stuff much I, I just made up my own systems. And so as a business owner, because I was already in business for myself as a lawyer.

But then when this happened, I had to change because I couldn’t just read contracts anymore. Like my world was so much bigger. And so I, I began doing long distance clearings, healings, clearing houses and properties and doing all this woo work and was amazed to find out that, yes, I could pay my mortgage with my work, you know, and and over the years have developed really an expertise in supporting creative women of wisdom and intuition to bridge the worlds and to both live in harmony with the natural cycles, that of manifestation of how we manifest stuff and to do business in a way that is also in alignment with intuition and actually to make a

lot of money with our intuition. So those are kind of all my areas of expertise and I really like to geek out and in, in where spiritual and the business of life connect. And I think that’s one of the things that draws me to you so much, is that you break it down in a way that I can understand as like a systems person, right?

And when I first came to you, I was like, a little bit woo and had some, like, interest and was really drawn to, to you and your work and that all other spiritual element. But having learned from you both within the Wisdom Collective, which is sort of like the mystery school, right? Yeah. And then also through the business academy, there is the two worlds really are so interconnected and you weave them so beautifully and it just all lands in my brain so clearly.

So thank you. Makes me so happy. Yeah. Like, it’s just it’s so helpful to have a guide who has been through the seasons many times, right? You and all of the experts that you bring in to teach in these communities and share with us. Everyone is is seasoned. Everyone has seen it, done it, been there, figured it out for themselves, made sense of it in a way that was personal to them and is sharing from that place.

And it’s a lot more personal than learning through a book or right? I don’t know. It just it just feels so, so personal, which is really that’s what I like to like living transmission from actual masters, not people who, like, declare themselves gurus or or do studied something in a book and are now trying to teach it, but rather like, you know, Maria’s my indigenous mama, like she grew up on the reservation and White Mountains, Arizona.

You know, she, her grandfather was the holy one and passed that down to her. And she was given the stories and the ceremonies to hold like it’s real deal. She lived it, lives it every day. And yeah, and I’m I dig on like you like I dig on mentors who are real and who are who are living what they teach and who can pass it out for us so that we can live it, you know, instead of just thinking it in our heads, like really get all the benefits of it in real life.

Yeah. And I see that every single week after we have our calls. And I do and I integrate and I do my homework and all of the things is that I can see the results right away and I can really once you point them out, I can I can start to understand and feel the energies that are at play and work with that.

Because I know that, you know, that I’ve struggled with going too quickly. Yeah, I’m really trying to rush things, right? I’m so eager and and knowing that there is a reason to the season has been really helpful. So and even for moms who aren’t in business, the information of this wheel of wisdom and I’m going to pull it out for those who are watching on YouTube, but I would love for you to walk us through the general flow of it.

Yeah, it’s like it’s just so it’s so helpful to have the framework, you know? Yes. Yeah, I really I wish I had had this wheel when I first popped open. Intuitively, right. Just before when I was just being a mom and noticing how energy moves differently in different times of the year and noticing how like, you know, there’s certain things that we all kind of know.

We all kind of know that in the winter we get a little sleepy and a little chubby. Like it’s just duh, you know? Yeah, but, but we try to fight against it like we, we that’s the time we have to do all of our holiday stuff and it all has to be perfect. And, you know, here in this, this wheel of wisdom that yeah, if you’re, if you’re watching on YouTube, you can see it on the screen.

And if you’re listening, you know, you go to the show notes and we’ll have a link so you can open up a file because it is a visual. Like you’ll probably want to pause and go open up the visual while we talk about it. But I also do my best to describe what this is. So this is a circular calendar.

The origin of this wheel of Wisdom is really from what I learned with Maria, my Apache mama maria, who will spell it in show notes somewhere, You know who I’m talking about because it’s crazy spelling, absolutely insane. But she she showed me this way that that we live in cycles. We live in cycles. And as women in particular, man are bodies live in cycles with the moon, with our own wombs, like with our moods, with our eating, with the cycles of life.

Like everything is cycles. And we know that those cycles are having their way with us. We don’t have a clue what we are. We’re not taught a map in normal school about the cycles that are affecting us every dang day. And Maria was like, I don’t know how y’all do without your second calendars because this stuff is affecting every single person.

We’re all made of water, so we’re all affected by the moon, for example, like and so this wheel of wisdom is a calendar. That’s one way to look at it. It’s also a map of our life initiations, because life is constantly putting us back through these sort of life passage challenges over and over again in a certain flip and order and Maria is people and family have known this for generations and eons, like thousands of years they’ve and many other calendars like the Mayan calendar is a circular calendar.

Most Indigenous calendars are a circular calendar that goes along with the natural cycles. my God. so look at that internal ring there. That internal ring. There’s this. There’s a ring inside of an outer ring if you’re not looking at this. And that inside ring represents the underworld. It represents the other world. And that’s where we go in the winter.

We’re not even on the same flippin ring when in the winter, it’s. It’s. It correlates to the time between death and your next lifetime. Like winter is a time of no time. Winter is a time for. What does it say there, Bridge? So in October, for example, when the veils are thin and we’re all celebrating All Hallows Eve and, you know, Halloween and all this stuff, there’s a reason for that.

It’s because that’s the time when we’re bridging from the physical world that has been really obvious. And the trees with all their leaves and stuff all summer and into fall into the time of death in winter when everything goes dormant. And so the archetype for October that we work with is the bridge. It’s the part of us that knows how to bridge the worlds, that knows how to go into dream time, that knows how to like, linger between our sleepy time and our waking time.

Like I remember as a mom, that was such a precious moment before, right as I’m waking up because the kids aren’t even awake yet and like, everything so quiet and there’s so much clarity. And that’s kind of that time, that bridging time. And then in November we move into what I call the archetype of the shadow dancer.

Think about it. You get to November every year and you start to go, my God, the holidays are coming, and you drop into the darkness. Yeah, you start to drop into the dark time and you’re like, I can’t believe I’m going to be hosting and pretending happy, happy because I feel myself sliding into the darkness. And that’s true.

And so it’s a great time in November to clear out your old thoughts, to do some healing work, to do self-care. And that’s what we call shadow dancing. We’re dancing with our shadows. We’re dancing with the old mark. And then in December, we move into the hermit archetype. I could probably just start my sentence there, and you all know exactly what I mean.

Like, it is so new. My mind, it blew my mind, right? I mean, doesn’t it make sense? All the bears know about it. They all go into the earth, they go into caves. All the critters are like going dormant for the for winter, for that deep winter and for the the longest night of the year. Hello. Like, that’s time to just go into your cave and be silent.

Now, it’s kind of awkward because that’s when Christmas happens and Hanukkah and all this fancy stuff and all the consumerist, flashy, flashy hoo ha and we do not feel like it. And yet and that’s actually natural. So it’s a real art to allow yourself the moments to slow down because that hermit phase and I witnessed you really getting this this year Joe Which was Yeah, but you’re like, what?

Like going into that deep it’s your nap of the year. As moms we know about naps, how critical the nap is for the rest of the day. If the map is missed, the rest of the day is going to be hell. And frankly, if you miss December, the rest of your year is going to be tough. Yeah. So going deep and committing in December and napping and going silent is super important.

Super important. Just pop your head out, hold a holiday party, but then go straight back down. And then there’s January. This is where the light starts to grow in the sky again, but it’s still the dead of flippin winter. And so we’re still in that center ring, We’re still in the underworld, and the archetype is the architect. Now, architect is not the one who builds the house, but it’s the reason why we all kind of feel like setting intentions for the new Year in January.

We shouldn’t really be rushing into doing all the intention in January, but we should be thinking about it, dreaming it, wondering, and and making our vision boards and stuff like that. That’s a little more dreamy, but starting to set intentions. That’s what architects do. They design the structure that’s to come. They don’t run out with a hammer and start building.

Now that’s the inner circle. And I started there on purpose because those months and those energies are the ones that we blast right past every year. And it’s the reason why we’re so exhausted and it’s the reason why most of us mamas, by the time we get to our mid-forties and perimenopause and the hormonal shifts that start coming, and those hormonal shifts for many of us start coming as early as 35, by the way, now.

So our adrenals are shot and we feel like ass. And we, we we just really have a hard time in midlife if we don’t honor this in terminal time. Yeah. So take a breath in case you want to have some know. My gosh, have some water, have some tea. That is so much information. And I remember the first time I was witness to this, it blew my mind completely.

And then we started going through it together and practicing different things that could help us really feel into each energy and and embody each archetype. And it feels so freeing to have this structure, which is such kind of an oxymoron to say, Right, But I feel so much more free and supported when I have this understanding of like, okay, for these 30 days I get to plan, right?

Like I don’t need to rush. And that was really healing for me last month because I’m somebody who is very ambitious and like, like to plan and to go. And my boss always used to say she had to tell me, whoa, instead of go, you know? So it was never a problem motivating me. She had to pull me back.

Yeah. And so understanding that January, I don’t need to rush. I can plan. Right? Right. With everything. Yeah. Yeah. And it really it really sets us up for success. When we step out of that inner circle and into the outer circle where stuff gets done. Yeah. So it’s not like nothing’s getting done in that inner circle. There’s a lot happening.

It’s mostly internal and. And there’s ways still to get stuff done and to show up for the things and to make money in your business. There’s ways but they’re, they’re chill ways. And then and then we step to the outer ring. And if you are looking at the at the image, you go to the bottom where it says adventurer.

And it also says, number one, February conception, because that aligns with the life initiation of conception, which if you think about it, conception is basically our spirit, your spirit or your kids spirit saying, I’m in, I’m leaping, I’m going to do this lifetime. I’ve chosen these two crazy parents and I am taking the adventure and the gift of that archetype of the adventurer in that time.

And February is enthusiasm. So we relate that back with what’s happening, you know, and we’re recording this right now. It’s mid-February and we can look around and we can see, the bulbs are starting to sprout. There’s there’s enthusiasm under the ground. There’s the spring tide that’s starting to rise. And it’s the same in us. The spring tide is starting to rise.

Okay. We’ll actually have some energy to do a thing. Like what are some things getting started? And we we lean into the adventure archetype, that adventure part of ourselves to get started on a new journey. And that’s totally in alignment with where we’re at. Yeah. And then we move into the creature, which is in March as spring really gets going.

And what happens in March, it’s like your whole body thaws and starts to percolate and come back to life. And this is all time for embodied wisdom, what I call embodied genius, where we’re really feeling our bodies and relating with our bodies and making things physical. That’s what the spring is about. And it really starts actually even in the winter with the architect on this little map is green and so is the adventure piece, and so is the creature piece, because they’re all part of embodied genius.

They build our ability to be present in this body, to be to draw wisdom from nature and from this body. And so as we move into March with the architect of the creature, the gift is embodiment. The related life passage is earth, the whole world birth sinew in March with the spring. So recognizing that this is not just about nature, this is about the natural movement of every one of us connected to nature.

But frankly, you’ve had some rebirth experiences. Everybody here who had a tough journey with like COVID or has been laid up with an injury before that really scared them, had to come into the body into a new way. It’s like forces you to and it’s like a rebirth when you enter the body anew. So yeah, it happens when you’re born, but it also happens every time you feel like, Holy crap, I’m reborn into this temple, learning how to use it all over again.

Like when you have a baby like that, for example, especially blows your channel open and you’re like, okay, this is a new way to be on the planet. So then you just look at the next, you know, look at the next three pieces here that are in like a rust color. And those are creative genius. So those are the sovereign in April, which is like your ability to choose, which is related to the life passage when you were a little kid and they and your parents finally let you start making some choices because you wouldn’t like.

Yeah, there are some things that a kid can choose for themselves versus just indoctrinating you into roles. That heavy handed form can really like have a kid miss this one. And then there’s the Fool archetype, which is that playful, magical child thing that we love with our kids. They’re imagining action, their silliness, their playfulness. And when our kids are given the chance and we as kids are given the chance to to embrace that and are encouraged in our imagination, here’s a life passage that was celebrated, but it’s for some of us who were told, that’s just your imagination.

Just don’t laugh so loud, or you stop, you know, you stop having fun. There’s whatever, you know, just shut down that we missed that. And so those things come back around for us all through life. Those life passages, those initiations come back around might be when you’re 37, might be when you’re 69, but you’re going to get challenged to come into your fool and not take life too seriously again and again and again.

Here we are at the top of summer, like high summer at the top of this wheel, June. That’s summer solstice. Happens in June, when the longest day of the year is upon us. And that correlates to the puberty initiation. When we learn to become co-creators, when we learn to wield our power as creators, as sexual beings, as creators of new life.

So as you’re looking at these, recognize like, these archetypes, the adventurer, the creature, the sovereign, the fool, the co-creator, these are all parts of myself, these are all parts of my whole. So this wheel is based on medicine wheel concept. And if you’ve ever worked with a medicine wheel, it’s very similar like this is this is a medicine wheel.

You have pieces of the pie, basically, and the pie is whole with all the pieces. And you use it as a map to recognize like, I’m really missing the fool or I’m really missing the sovereign. And then you know, where to go to work on it. Like you understand the energy that you want to tap to work on it.

And so the goal here is always wholeness. It’s always completion and wholeness of your own unique self. So this isn’t about some dogma or religion or overlay. You can use this regardless of the religion that you enjoy. Like these are just parts of human nature, parts of human experience. And what I’ve noticed is when people align with these natural archetypes and energies, and this is obviously from the northern hemisphere, when I align the months to it, you have to avoid going over for the southern hemisphere.

But when we align to the seasonal energies of these months, everything goes easier. It’s just at a very intrinsic core level. There’s more ease, there’s more ease. So, so far, we’ve journeyed through the underworld, the time between lifetimes. We’ve journeyed through childhood, up to puberty. And now we’re into the adulthood, life passages. And these these months that move more into the autumn in the northern hemisphere here.

So after puberty, the next big life initiation that we experience is really when we reach adulthood, full adulthood. And maybe that’s like age 21. And what’s supposed to happen is your community is supposed to look at you and and reflect to what your gifts are, what you are uniquely gifted at, to really acknowledge, you know what, you’re all grown up.

We see you, you’re unique. We appreciate you. Here’s how you’re unique. Now, I don’t know about you, but for me, I graduated from Stanford when I was 21 and felt like I was just falling into a big dark hole of nothingness because I had no idea what was next. I wasn’t really sure what my unique purpose or gifts.

I mean, I knew I was smart, but whatever. Like I had a diploma in my hand. So most of us missed out on that piece. And that’s why I created this all gift quiz, quite honestly, is because my sole gift quiz starts that journey of discovering what your unique soul gift is. But we all need that, and it keeps coming back around until we really get it.

So that’s aligned with the month of July. It’s aligned with the archetype of the specialist where we step into knowing like, this is my intrinsic expertise. This is how I’m intrinsically a specialist and the gift of it is purpose, really feeling at purpose, which is so important for all of us to feel like we have a purpose. Yeah.

Then we move into August that relates to the Saturn return. Like if you do astrology at all, there’s a thing that called Saturn. It’s called Saturn Return. And like when you’re 30, 32 years old, it really is when you kind of go, that’s what I’m here for. And so there’s often there should be ceremony at that about that time where you know how you’re special from the last one and you’ve been trying out different things in your twenties, you’ve been trying out different things that suit your gifts.

But what about the time you turn 30? Ideally, your community looks at you and goes, We know what you’re for. We know the job. We know what you to do in this in this community. Would you please take this role? Wouldn’t that be nice? Like, wouldn’t that be nice? And it’s three if your community was just like, my gosh, Joe, we see how brilliant you are with creating systems and communication and and empowerment.

And here’s your role. Here you go. We designed it just for you, and we really want to pay you. We want to reward you. We want to acknowledge you. Just step on into your role. You’d be like big Sky’s so much. Thanks. I really appreciate that. And so that’s another initiation. And for many of us who’ve had the experiences of having jobs that don’t quite fit and don’t quite fit and don’t quite fit, we don’t really like our work or we don’t like our job and we’re not really sure what our service is supposed to be.

And then we finally find the thing that is like our contribution or right fit contribution. And the gift of that is service. The gift is service because when we are doing our right service in the world, we feel amazing. Like that’s when we really light up and that’s like full adulthood and that’s associated here with this month of August.

Because think about it, the the months of July and August, they’re warm up here in the northern hemisphere. That’s when we’re doing most of our work. You know, we’re planting or gardening, we’re harvesting. And and then we come in to September, which is really the later harvest, and that is the sage time. And it correlates with the elder hood ceremony where you’re recognized just for not just for what you’ve been doing as an adult in your service and your purpose, but for what you’ve now earned in terms of wisdom.

And you’re set in the seat of wisdom. And that’s a lot of the women that I work with are in that time of life. That’s the time of life I’m in where you’re really not supposed to be running around doing quite so much. Where you sit in the seat of wisdom and you are a guide and a mentor and and that’s the life initiation that shows you when it’s time to slow down, where it’s time to slow down.

So it doesn’t just happen when you turn 52 or whatever. It happens all through your life where you’re like, okay, I’ve been working too hard, I’ve been doing too much. I need to actually leverage my gifts and relax into my wisdom and ask, what are the right priorities? What’s most meaningful for me? Where can I like, slow down and do what means the most?

And so that’s the sage archetype and it’s the gift of wisdom, and that’s the one right before death that sends us into the bridge and off we go again. So this is this is the wheel, this is a calendar, but it’s also a map of how our energies move from one part of us to another part of us, to another part of us, to another part of us as we develop ourselves as human beings.

Thank you for creating this first one. I mean, it’s been, I know a long time in the making for you that you sat with this and you wanted to make sure that it was correct and it honored what Maria had taught you. And this isn’t just something that. Melissa Yeah, like you didn’t just like, pop it in Canada one day, right?

No, not exactly. No. And it is so it’s it’s proven year after year, month after month. Like everyone who experiences this can attest to the validity of the facts on this map. Right? Totally. And one thing that I really love is that you’re always telling us how things don’t have to be so hard, you know, like, we can do it easier.

Yeah, whatever it is. And this is the way that we do it easier. This is the way that we get through our seasons of life, our days, our challenges. By using this tool, you know? And yeah, it’s just so valuable. I’m so glad you dig it because this is the core map for the Wisdom Collective, right? Where every Tuesday we meet and we talk about tools that we can use and clearings that we need in this particular month and activations we can use to step into these archetypes and tips and tricks and and the funny stories like we got to have the funny stories and and from teachers like my master teachers, because part of

this is like, yeah, I can just, you know, teach you a lot of stuff. I got some pretty cool stuff to say, but I’ve also got some pretty amazing mentors and to shine the light on my mentors is this has been such a delight and to have a common map, you know that Maria and I talk about this all the time because this, you know, the the tell stand we are is like 24 stones.

And it’s pretty complicated. And there’s one for each new movement form. It is it did takes years to really learn that sucker And she’s like well look at that She’s like you’ve you’ve essentially said it and this is a map we can use. She’s like, it’s the same map. It’s still works because nature is nature. Human nature is human nature.

That’s why all the maps line up is because they’re all true. So this one just happens to be simple enough that we modern folk can jibe with it and track it even on a Gregorian calendar, which of course doesn’t make any sense. Gregorian calendar. But because it doesn’t align with the moons like every other calendar on the planet Earth has whatever we can.

We can dance with it. It’s still can work. So pretty psyched. I mean, even the business school follows this calendar because everything goes easier if we follow this calendar. And I, I’ve always wanted to create a school or a community that’s not dogmatic, that doesn’t take the place of religion, that doesn’t impose rules or rights and wrongs, because people are good people and they know what’s right and wrong and I love this map because it gives us like a common a common place to meet where lots of different teachers from different cultures and different backgrounds can still share this anchor so that as students and collaborators, we have something that’s clean and open and accessible

enough to help us share the journey. And that’s, like, that’s what I’ve been waiting for for myself. Yeah. And now to get to share that is just like, profound and, and to see how well it works for everyone I share it with is like I told you, this wasn’t just my imaginary world. Look at that. When you work for us, it feels natural for all of us.

It does, Absolutely. And the communities that you have created are so inclusive and supportive, and I just can’t sit idly enough of them. I know that, you know, for the sake of time on the podcast, I will put everything in the show notes if you are listening. And this is how I found Melissa was on podcast in actual fact, right?

Yeah, it was on Christmas podcast. And so that’s why I love to bring on people that I really believe in and I want them to have the opportunity to be presented to you, the listeners, so that if you’re like, Ding, this feels amazing, I want to learn more. You can reach out and take the quiz. You can reach out and see what the collectives are like, you know?

And so I want to make sure all of that information is there for the listeners. But before we wrap up, is there any last pieces of wisdom or thoughts that really want to come through today? I think even as I’m showing you a new map, I just want you to feel inside yourself. The maps already here like it belongs to you.

I’m just putting words and colors on it, but this thing is already happening inside of you, and there’s nothing that you need to do or change to make it so, you know, this is just a gift so that you can track it and and sort of optimize it. And you’re you’re doing good already. You’re breathing, you’re taking breaths in and breaths out every day.

And you may even be raising children, which is like the biggest frickin deal ever. So give yourself a pat on the back and know that you are gifted, know that you are guided, know that you are already moving through these cycles and know that there’s support for you if you want help to do so. And yes, start with the sole gift quiz.

Go take the small gift quiz. It’s like in 2 minutes you’ll know your deepest gift and it’ll just help acknowledge and validate you for how amazing you are right now. Perfectly so. Thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.