Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I’m your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I’m an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I’m going to give you your weekly horoscope and no bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

My loves, if I’m being honest, I hesitated on whether or not to record this episode. And I had the intention to make it short and sweet. But I record this midday on November 3rd, the day that Mercury goes Station Direct, the day that the US election is happening. 

As an astrologer, I have every expectation that this process of determining who wins or having a collective agreement about who wins the presidency—it will be messy. It will be drawn out. It will be protracted. Eh, that’s what’s going to happen. Now, as an astrologer, I don’t know. Based on what’s happened historically under these conditions, I can infer that that is what’s going to happen. And maybe it will, maybe it won’t. 

In the meantime, the question is how do you sit with uncertainty? How do you sit with fear? How do you sit with the restlessness that is inevitable in this time where millions of people are unsure of what comes next? Millions of people are furious at the other side. The energetics of this are hellacious; they’re really bad, right. This feels bad. And many, many people when they feel bad rush to scapegoat, rush to blame, rush to attack. Many people when they feel bad put their head in the sand and rush to make everything okay and turn it into a positive. 

This is something I touched on in my most recent episode about fear and faith, but I want to say that there’s lots of levels, right. There’s the level of what can you learn about yourself in this moment. Do you catastrophize? Do you make things worse on yourself in the seat of the unknown? Do you show up and seek as many data points and facts as you can find? Do you engage with others in a way that is constructive and creative, that is generative? Or do you fear monger, distract? Are you picking dramas with people that you care about? Are you obsessing on things that actually don’t super matter to you but it’s like a satisfying place to put your stressful energy? Pay attention. Don’t judge yourself but pay attention. Get to know yourself in this way. 

Because if the astrology of the upcoming many months, maybe even years, is correct, then you’re going to need to know this about yourself. It’s something you’re going to have the chance to work on. Regardless of who wins, millions of people are going to be very upset. Regardless of who wins, we have a crisis in the United States—we have a global crisis that is not going to be magically healed or fixed. No matter who wins, no matter when we find out who wins, we still have a lot of work to do socially, politically. We have a lot of work to do on ourselves. 

Creating equity in our lives and in the world is hard. It’s hard to take in a diversity of perspectives and opinions and to not lose yourself in the details of it. It’s hard to heal. It’s hard to grow. It’s hard to realize where you’re wrong. It’s hard to fail. But none of it is bad. None of it should be avoided. It’s all an opportunity to learn. 

And through December 17th of 2020, Saturn remains in Capricorn. Through November 13th, Mars remains Retrograde in Aries. We’re still gearing up to the Pluto Return. We still have the great conjunction coming. And on the 12th of November, Jupiter will conjoin Pluto again. There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot going on astrologically. I mean, I’m just giving you a couple of highlights; I’m not unpacking it. 

A lot of you asked me to unpack more about what comes next in the future, but honestly, how’s that going to serve you? How’s that going to serve any of us? The present moment requires your attendance, your presence, your care. The future is going to come. The future is going to come. All you can do is show up in the present—astrology or not, election or not—to the best of your ability. So the most important thing that I want to point you towards today and in the coming weeks is to notice your emotions, to be present with your emotions, and to pay attention to the ways in which you deflect, the ways in which you defer, the ways you cope, you the ways you heal, and the ways you self-sabotage or sabotage others—just notice it. Because it’s an opportunity for you to become more whole and more aware; and therefore, from that place, engage in healthier ways. 

I’m not a love and light girl, as you know if you’ve been listening to this podcast for any amount of time. I think there is evil in the world. I think there are broken people who may or may not be evil but who do terrible, hateful things. I know that there’s always a percentage of populations that will support a strong man or authoritarian. I know that most people don’t have a lot of emotional intelligence. And, so, when they feel bad, they rush to find a reason why, and that reason why is usually something or someone different from them, someone making them feel a certain kind of way. You’re responsible for how you cope with your emotions. That’s your job. That’s your only job right now. Well, it’s not your only job right now, but it’s a really foundational piece of your job. So let’s talk about that a little bit more.

This month ICE announced that they would be carrying out nationwide mass raids. Last week they arrested 128 people in San Francisco alone. Advocates are worried that this is just the beginning, and thousands of families might be separated from each other over the coming days and weeks. Last year ICE executed the largest raid in US history on the first day of school, leaving hundreds of kids stranded. We have to be ready for more raids. Donate to Families Belong Together to help re-unite families and protect kids from ICE’s cruelty. Go to familiesbelongtogether.org to donate now.

As you shop for masks in this new normal that we’re all living in, consider others who rely on lip reading and facial expression for communication. Look into getting a clear mask, sometimes called a smile mask. Just look them up and consider buying them when you buy masks for yourself and your family.

Learn about colonialism—past, present, and ongoing. Educate yourself about whose land you’re living on, and, if you can, make a monetary donation or pay a land tax to that tribe. Visit Our Native Land at native-land.ca. The link is in show notes.

So when it comes to emotional presence, let me walk you through this a little bit, okay. Take a moment—pause the podcast if you need to—but take a moment to pull up a feeling or get present with a feeling that is really intense and upsetting. Maybe you feel it as a fire in your belly. Maybe you feel it as anxiety or a little bit of low-key nauseousness in your chest. Maybe your throat feels it. There’s a lot of ways that our physical bodies hold anxiety, fear, agitation, etc. Take a moment and feel it, notice where it is in your body. 

Okay. Now you can feel it in your body, pay attention to the impulse that you have with your energy to leave it, to get away from that feeling. Do you notice that? I sure as hell do with myself. Pay attention to the parts of you that want to get away from the feeling and how that functions—where and how you can feel that in your body. And, again, you can pause this recording if that helps. 

And then, do not chase the thoughts; you can have all the thoughts you want, just don’t substantiate them by focusing on them or following them or investigating them. Stay in the part of your body that feels really upset and really intentionally breathe into it. Kind of like you would if you were having gas in a public environment, and you didn’t want to fart all over the world. Breathe into your resistance to your feelings and keep on breathing into your resistance to the feelings. And then do it again. 

This is a practice that will not make your feelings go away, but it will mean that you don’t abandon yourself in your feels. It will mean that you start to cultivate a different relationship and capacity to your own emotions, and therefore, you end up having more options, you have more choices around how you respond, how you take care of yourself, how you cope and show up. So that’s one practice to pursue. Let me share another.

The next thing I want to say is actually really simple. It’s so simple that I’ve repeated it many times on Ghost of a Podcast, and I’ll repeat it many more. Everything you feel is valid. Everything you feel is valid. Your feelings are valid. They are not too much. They are not not enough. Your feelings are your feelings. And you can keep them as private as you want; you can make them as public as you need to, but your feelings are totally valid. And what so many of us do, as evidenced by my first bit of advice, is we abandon our feelings; we judge them. We say they are too much, or they are bad, and we invalidate them. And I want to just really affirm for you that however you’re feeling in this really kind of overwhelming and frightening time is okay. Even if you’re feeling super bananas, if you’re just feeling overwhelmed and chaotic and all over the place—that’s absolutely okay. 

But what is important is instead of judging your emotions or looking for an explanation for your emotions, make the decision that you’re going to give yourself a specific amount of time to feel all kinds of feelings, all your feelings. You’re not going to figure anything out. You’re not going to do anything constructive. You’re not going to be healthy. You’re not going to do anything destructive. You’re just going to be in your feelings. You want it to be a minute—it’s 60 seconds. If you want it to be four hours, great—go for four hours. Do whatever you need to do and set a calming, inspiring alarm in your phone. And at that time, you will know that you’re going to get constructive. 

So first indulge emotionalism. And at that point, one rule: no doomscrolling. It’s not the time to read the news. It’s not the time to be looking for answers or consuming. This is not a time for consuming; it’s a time for receiving your own emotions. It’s being present. After that period has passed, do some breathing, and then ask yourself what am I feeling? You start with that. What am I feeling? Sad, mad, bad, glad. Try not to use psychological terms and instead use emotional terms. If you’re not sure which is which, Google it. I’m a big fan of making it as simple as possible. So if you can, keep it simple. 

And then, once you’ve identified what you’re feeling, you can ask yourself is there an obstacle here? Is there a material problem, or am I in an emotional cycle? Both are equally valid, but they take slightly different approaches. If there is an obstacle or an emotion, I encourage you to sit with what can I learn from this? What lesson am I being offered in this moment? Then ask yourself how can I approach it? What actions can I pursue or what actions can I quit pursuing as a form of healthy coping? This can be a journaling moment. This can just be a moment to sit with yourself and ask these questions. My hope for you is that you find ways of showing up and staying present through your upset and difficult to bear emotions—that’s it. 

You don’t need to understand everything. You don’t need to know what comes next. What you do need is to make sure that you’re not creating harm to yourself or others through your anxiety. And if you do find that you’ve created harm to yourself or others, as soon as you become aware of it, see if you can pause, recalibrate, and make a change. If you need to make an amends, you make an amends. If you need to say something or do something, go for it. And if you simply need to make an internal shift, that’s good too. 

This is a time where we all need to change. And in order for real change to occur, it has to go through all the damn levels—mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. All of those levels are involved in sustained and true change. These are tumultuous times—let it change you. Let your feelings about it change you. But strive to make those changes be improvements. Strive to make those changes be an expansion or a greater embracing of the self and others. 

We have been and we are moving steadily into a period that will be require great effort—great effort to promote the kind of peace that exists when there is justice or to fight injustice or, most likely, some damn combination of the two. So don’t abandon yourself in the process. Don’t berate yourself for having a hard time. If your relationships are struggling or you’re feeling a sense of a lack of meaning in your work, if you’re exhausted all the damn time, these are very normal, human responses to extreme stress. 

If you’ve ever lived in earthquake country—of course, I’m in the Bay Area in California, so I do live in earthquake country—when there’s a big quake and then there’s aftershock, it’s hard to know how much more after shock there’s going to be—what is that aftershock going to do. Is it going to be a bigger quake next, or is it just a couple little tremors? Nobody knows. Nobody can know. That’s kind of where we are. We’re in the state of shock and after shock and after shock, and we don’t know if things are about to get worse or better. 

And, so, because the ground beneath us does not feel stable and reliable, we must turn to our coping skills. And if you do that, you make it easier for the people around you to do that. You make it easier for yourself to know who you can engage with, what you can engage with in a healthy way, and to start to determine and hold boundaries. 

Now, my loves, all I can think—literally, all I can think these days is may the odds be ever in our favor. And I will leave you with that.