Welcome to S04E09 of A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long Covid Podcast. This episode is part two of my catch-up chat with Megan Wages, my second-ever podcast guest, first wave Covid long hauler, co-owner of Fancy Free Nursery in Tampa, Florida, and the guest of last week's S04E08, Running a Small Business as a Covid Long Hauler with Megan Wages. In this episode, we talk about plants! I've become a plant lady in the last 6 years, and I've noticed that my plants tend to tell me a lot about how I'm feeling. First I noticed that the downstairs ones were fine. The upstairs ones were so sad. Turns out there's a reason for that. In Part 2 of this two-part episode, we get into the actual plant content. Specifically: what should a spoonie with limited energy, unpredictable symptoms, and a complicated relationship with energy actually grow?

The answer is: more than you think. Megan walks through her spoonie-approved plant list, propagation tips, why your Calathea's attitude is not your fault, and the thing fluoride in tap water does to your spider plant. She also answers listener questions live, talks about soils, orchids in wine decanters, and the surprisingly emotional experience of a plant that keeps coming back no matter how badly you've neglected it.

There's also a spider plant baby giveaway. Alysia won. She lives in a basement apartment and this is probably the perfect plant. I wish I had the spoons to get to the post office and send it to her. One day, my love!!! I promise!

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Snake plants and ZZ plants: the spoonie ride-or-dies
• ZZ Raven: the black plant for the goth baddies
• Pothos propagation and the hormone tip nobody talks about
• Why I am a self-described prop lifter
• The "teats" moment (you'll know it when you hear it)
• Ripsalis: if spaghetti became a plant
• Spider plants and the fluoride problem
• Burgundy rubber tree, Tineke, and the fiddle leaf fig blue sky tip
• Orchids in wine decanters: the lab aesthetic
• Alocasia: pretty, finicky, spider mite magnets
• Why Walmart plants are a gamble (the fish department story)
• LECA: the water-to-soil bridge method
• Your plant's health as a mirror for your mental health
• Listener questions answered
• Spider plant baby giveaway 🌱

LISTENER QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

• Tara's 20-year fiddle leaf fig: how to help her thrive
• Monstera propagating in water: when and how to move to soil
• Can you bring an orchid back to life?
• Best plants for a low-light basement apartment

You can find Megan

Fancy Free on Insta

Megan on TikTok

A Friend for the Long Haul

• A Friend for the Long Haul on Insta and TikTok

• Substack: https://f4lh.substack.com/

• The podcast playlist on Spotify

Support this Podcast

I'm a disabled lady doing this whole podcast on my own. If you would like to support the podcast, please subscribe and follow, engage with my posts, comment, and share episodes that resonate with you! Those are the biggest ways you can support me and my work.

If you'd like to get some of my merch, check out my Bonfire shop! All proceeds are funneled back into the podcast for tech or used for community care and mutual aid. I don't keep the proceeds.

I do have an Amazon gift registry that update for the summer each year. We are a blended family of 6 and all of us have disabilities. Some of our kids have complex medical issues as well as intellectual and physical disabilities, and we're increasingly neurodivergent. Summers get emotional, kids get boring, and the parents work from home without a "village" or the luxury of childcare. This summer gift registry keeps us afloat.

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If you'd like to be a guest on the show or suggest a guest, please use this form! https://forms.gle/q9wiV6mQ4G3SMBu99

Thank you for listening to and supporting A Friend for the Long Haul!

Welcome to S04E08 of A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long Covid Podcast! I'd like to share that this will be the first installment of a change to the podcast: shorter episodes! Longer recordings will be chunked into more digestible episodes, for all our spoons.

Six years ago, my friend Megan bit into a raw onion to see if she could taste it. She couldn't, and that's how her long covid story starts. She was my second guest on this podcast, and in this segment, she's back to give us an update on how she's feeling and to talk about what it's like to run a small business with your spouse when you get sick. Megan is the co-owner of Fancy Free Nursery in Tampa, a first wave long hauler, and we discuss:

• Long covid friendships
• Perimenopause
• GLP-1s (anecdotal! talk with your doctor! don't judge other people! don't compare yourself!)
• Running a plant shop and floral nursery during lockdown
• How plants saved the shop
• Business collabs
• Using and running social media when you're your only team
• Branching out into silk florals

You can find Megan

Fancy Free on Insta

Megan on TikTok

A Friend for the Long Haul

• A Friend for the Long Haul on Insta and TikTok

• Substack: https://f4lh.substack.com/

• The podcast playlist on Spotify

Support this Podcast

I'm a disabled lady doing this whole podcast on my own. If you would like to support the podcast, please subscribe and follow, engage with my posts, comment, and share episodes that resonate with you! Those are the biggest ways you can support me and my work.

If you'd like to get some of my merch, check out my Bonfire shop! All proceeds are funneled back into the podcast for tech or used for community care and mutual aid. I don't keep the proceeds.

I do have an Amazon wishlist that I add everything I need or randomly like to and you can 100% track my state of mind, hyperfixations, and fears looking at it.

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If you'd like to be a guest on the show or suggest a guest, please use this form!

Thank you for listening to A Friend for the Long Haul!

Welcome to season 4 episode 7 of A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long Covid Podcast!

What can tarot have to do with rebuilding your sense of self after chronic illness? More than you might think.

I sat down with Megan Hamilton, a professional tarot reader, speaking coach, musician, and host of the Embracing Enchantment podcast, for a conversation about identity loss, the grief of realizing you can't go back to who you were, and why the safety we thought we had was maybe never quite real to begin with.

Megan introduced me to a concept called self-efficacy, which is the idea that keeping the promises you make to yourself, even tiny ones, builds the kind of trust with yourself that actually sticks. We talked about why celebrating a small win is genuinely neurological rewiring, not toxic positivity. And somehow we ended up at a very personal confession about how long I sometimes wait to go to the bathroom.

We also got into tarot as a tool for accessing truth you can't reach through thinking alone, why ritual doesn't have to be elaborate to be meaningful, and what it actually looks like to find magic inside a life that's been turned upside down.

Megan is one of those people who makes you feel immediately at ease and then quietly rearranges how you see things before you've realized it's happened. This one is for anyone who is learning, slowly and imperfectly, to treat themselves like someone worth taking care of.

Find Megan's podcast information at embracingenchantment.com and follow Embracing Enchantment wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to book a reading with Megan, or work with her as a coach, check out https://www.impactwitch.com/

Resources & mentions in this episode:Mundane Magic by Molly Donlan (Megan mentions "pub day" for this new book. We recorded this a few months ago and I've been delayed in releasing new episodes because of my TBI symptoms.) Self-efficacy: concept introduced by psychologist Albert Bandura

Connect with A Friend for the Long Haul:Email: afriendforthelonghaul@gmail.comLong Haul Line: 720-432-9368Substack: f4lh.substack.comMerch: Bonfire shopAmazon storefront

And on Instagram at both https://www.instagram.com/impactwitch and https://www.instagram.com/embracingenchantmentpod This show is just me. One AuDHD, queer, disabled lady with multiple chronic illnesses and one very mildly decent mic. I do everything you just watched with no team, no network, and no budget, which is either impressive or unhinged. Possibly both. If this episode meant something to you, I'd appreciate your kind support by sharing it with someone who would also enjoy it. You can also leave a review wherever you're listening, spoons permitting. It genuinely changes what this little show can do. There's also merch and a chaotic Amazon wishlist that help loads if you want to support that way. Okay. That's it. Low budget, high love, always. I'll see you next time.Connect with Beth:Email: afriendforthelonghaul@gmail.comLong Haul Line: 720-432-9368Substack: f4lh.substack.comMerch: https://www.bonfire.com/store/a-friend-for-the-long-haul/My Amazon WishlistVenmo: @afriend4thelonghaul