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.

On January 5th of 2021, Georgia has the opportunity to flip the US senate blue. And whether or not you’re in Georgia, you can get involved. Here are some organizations that you can donate to and volunteer with, and the links to them all will be show notes. 

One super star on the political scene is Stacey Abrams. I know you’ve heard of her, but let me just tell you about her organization Fair Fight, whose mission it is to advocate for free and fair elections by fighting voter suppression and promoting fair elections in Georgia, as well as around the country. You can donate and find out more about how to get involved over at fairfight.com. 

Now, there’s another organization I want to share with you, which is called The New Georgia Project. They seek to empower the new American majority to vote through advocacy and engagement. You can go to their website at thenewgeorgiaproject.org to donate and get involved. 

And, finally, you need to know about Black Voters Matter. Their goal is to increase power in marginalized, predominately Black communities. Effective voting allows a community to determine its own destiny. Get involved and donate at blackvotersmatterfund.org. Link to all three of these orgs will remain in show notes.

My loves, I got to tell you, over the last week or two I have gotten an amazing amount of questions about the theme of loneliness. I guess nobody should be surprised. Between holiday season and just fucking COVID—on going, on going COVID, there’s a lot going on. And so, this week’s question touches on that theme. And it comes from Very Lonely. 

They say, “Can you give us some tips for dealing with loneliness. I’m in a pretty hard time in my life. I’m dealing with parental death and loss, a transition into a new nursing career, relationship strife, and my closest friend is moving away this month. Especially with COVID and all the collective grief, my grief to intimacy ratio is feeling very skewed. 

Sometimes I try to tell myself that I’m not really alone, I just feel lonely, but I think that’s actually some BS, and that I am actually somewhat isolated. I have friends who show up in crisis and lots of people in my community, but almost no one who is integrated into my life on a daily or weekly basis. 

I know that I have agency and how this has happened and how I can move forward in the long term. Right now, though, I’m painfully aware that building intimacy takes time, and that the struggle to be vulnerable is so real—especially in this time of deep grief and low, low-spoons. 

What if you find yourself in a hard place for a long time, and you don’t have close, trusted friends to hold you in the way you know you need to be held? What if it’s a COVID winter? Thank you for all the guidance you offer on the podcast. I am sending you so much care and love. Sincerely yours, Very Lonely.” And they were born on March 12th, 1989, at 3:29 p.m. in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. 

So there’s a lot of parts to this question. And one major part of this question is the loss of a parent, and it doesn’t read like that’s the thing you really want me to answer or speak to, but I want to just pause and hold space, for that’s a really big deal. At the start of the question, you do mention the transition of career, a dear friend moving away, and relationship issues separate from that dear friend moving away. And I want to just kind of slow down before we get into tools for dealing with loneliness, and I want to speak about transitions. 

Because there is this way we put all this pressure on ourselves to go through something, figure it out, you know, oh, okay, so I’m upset because of this loss, or transitioning careers is difficult, so we identify it, and then we try to rush ourselves through the transition of it. 

COVID itself is a transition, and it’s not like oh, in March of 2020, there was like a transition into COVID. Everyday it’s something new. Everyday we must readjust to this not normal circumstance that we all find ourselves in. And transitions take time, and they take space, and they’re hard. Transitions are hard. This period is collectively really destabilizing. The transitions that we are all going through, and the transitions that you’re going through, are really rough. 

So I want to start off with encouraging you to ask yourself am I holding space for my feelings? So in other words, I am going through this—a series of very difficult transitions, have I adjusted my attitudes, resources, and behavior in efforts to support myself through each of these individual transitions? Have I given myself the grace I need and deserve around not being able to do it well, not knowing what resources are the right resources, flailing for a period of time? This is hard. 

Most of us when we go through transitions, in particular the kinds of changes or losses that we didn’t intentionally choose—that they kind of chose us, we flail, we struggle, we resist. And that’s human, and it’s normal, and it sucks. But it is human, and it is normal. 

And so, I want to just really, again, I want to encourage you to be looking at the specific things in your life—your feelings of loss and grief over your parent, your feelings of loss and grief over your bestie leaving town, the fear and overwhelm of making a career transition, and of course, in particular, in nursing, which I imagine is a very intense transition at this time because of everything that is happening with the pandemic. And then, of course, your sense of feeling lonely because you don’t have established friendships that you wish you had and that you feel you need. So each of these things deserve their own space and attention. 

And I want to give you, just straight out the gate before we get into anything else, the advice of sitting with yourself. Getting ye old dear diary out, or if you’re more of a verbal processor like me, pull out your phone, put it on airplane mode and record into your Voice Memo app or whatever—smart phones all come with some sort of voice recording app these days, and speak or write out what you’re feeling. And then after you review what you’re feeling, try to determine one to three things that you can do for yourself around those feelings. 

With something like the loss of a loved one, whether it’s through death or a friend moving away, you might just need to be in your feelings. The action may be internal. It may be one of rest and reflection, and honestly, that’s a lot of work. That is very difficult. We love to talk about work in the external sense, but it is hard work to stay still with yourself, especially when your feelings are unhappy or sad or grief, frustration, irritability, all—there are so many human emotions that are really hard to sit with. 

So don’t underestimate or undervalue that as work, as things you can do for yourself. Even if it doesn’t look like an action, that doesn’t mean it’s not an action, okay. So that is a strategy for starting to show up for yourself or creating more structure around showing up for yourself in a time where you really need someone. 

This brings me more to kind of what seems like the bulk of your question, which is how the hell does a person deal with loneliness? There’s grief and loneliness, and I think you put it beautifully, which is your grief to intimacy ratio is lacking. I think a lot of us feel that way, right now. I think a lot of us feel that way. 

In 2020, it’s been very hard to make new intimate connections with people offline. Because of COVID we’re not supposed to be fucking around outside in the material world with people as much. And on top of it, everyone is in their flight or fight mechanisms. Everyone is in a rough spot. And some people get really dissociative and really like fun and playful in response to overwhelm, and some people kind of hunker down and get more serious and real. And then for you, of course, you have the additional weight of other major life events. 

There are times in everyone’s life where their grief to intimacy ratio is not good. There are times in everyone’s life where we are lonely. And some people feel that that’s the overarching experience of their lives. Other people experience this mainly or only in situations. It’s not a competition. 

But what is really important for me to really just say firmly and clearly is that every human on the planet since the beginning of time experiences loneliness. We all experience loneliness. It is a part of the human condition because the human condition, from my perspective, spiritually, is essentially a state of duality. It’s a state of separation. My body begins and ends with my material form, and therefore, my lived experience is just about my lived experience in the universe that is my physical frame, my meat suit. And so, my experience of connection to others has to be either IRL, and now that we have technology, it can be through telephones and the internet and all these kinds of things. 

And so, there’s a way that we rely on external conditions to validate and articulate our connections to others. And that’s not just about being in a state of duality. It’s also a part of being a human, which, you know, we’re an animal that rely on each other. We are not always a pack animal because a lot of us our introverted and do not want to hang out with other humans, but we do need each other. We do rely on each other as a species in general, by and large. 

And so, when we are in a state of being bereft, even if you’re surrounded by people that know, love you, care for you, will show up for you, you can still feel deeply lonely. And if you are really, truly lonely, you don’t have people you can reach out to and connect with, this can be worse. And so, there are things to talk about of what we can do, and I’ll get there in a moment. 

But first, I want to pull back and talk about your birth chart for just a moment here. You have a bunch of stuff in Pieces. You’ve got Mercury conjunct the North Node in Pieces in the house of relationships—in the seventh house. You also have Venus there. You’re also a Sun in Pieces person. You have the Sun in the eighth house with the house system that I use. I use Campanus houses. 

So I want to just acknowledge that you are a person who needs a great deal of space to re-charge—that’s just your nature. Pieces is a very porous sign. When you have this much Pieces in your birth chart, you can kind of be like a Loofah sponge and just absorb and absorb and absorb energy, and in a time like this where there’s so much collective grief and pain, I mean, that’s just going to be rough on you. And so, you do need a great deal of space. 

Now, you also need a great deal of connection because having planets in the seventh house, but in particular, having that North Node in the seventh house, pre-disposes you to needing intimacy for your own spiritual wellness. When I look at that, I want to really ground and center you in what is the one part of intimacy that you can control. It’s just how you show up. That’s the only thing you can control. 

I’m going to give you specific actions you can take in a moment. But I want to encourage you to know that this is one of your Soul’s greatest lessons—how to share yourself with others. How to give yourself permission to be uncomfortable with how you share yourself with others. And you said it really perfectly. I mean, you are clearly incredibly self-aware about this issue for yourself. Intimacy takes time. It's hard to be vulnerable. And it’s especially hard to be vulnerable when you peel back the first layer, and you’re raw and bloody. It’s hard, and I don’t want to make it sound like it’s easy. 

However, it’s about starting small and knowing that if it happened quickly, if you built intimacy quickly, if you’re all of a sudden around a lot of people and had access to a great deal of support, I don’t know that you would be able to take it in anyways. That’s not really how your nature works. You get overwhelmed by too much close attention too quickly. That’s just not great for you. 

So you do feel lonely, and also, you are dealing with being alone. And they are connected, but they also exist separate up from each other. The part about being alone takes a different remediation than the part about being lonely. So the part about being alone, I actually have good news for you about because Saturn’s move into Aquarius, which begins mid-December, is an opportunity for you because it will form first a trine to Jupiter then to Mars, and then to the Moon, all very quickly and throughout 2021. And this is stabilizing for you to be building relationships with people based on actual shared interests and shared values. 

While that might not look like closeness or quick and easy intimacy, it does look sustainable. And so, these connections may come through work. They may come through some other things, but if you take actions to reach out to others, to be open when they reach out to you or they respond to you, I see that over this upcoming year you’re going to be building connections that have the potential to last, and that’s beautiful. That’s great news, right. 

But let’s talk about not the physicality of being alone but instead loneliness and what you can do. I’m going to give you a bunch of advice, and not all of it’s going to land—some of it you’re going to be like that’s dumb. I don’t want to do that, or that would be good if only this was tweaked. Great. This is meant to be inspiring thought and inspiring action. It’s about shifting perspective, okay. 

So one place to start with the psychic and emotional burden of loneliness is with gratitude. So that’s not so that you can stop feeling shitty. It’s so that you are adding more to the pile. This might look like, for you, doing a three-item list, or you could do a nine-item list. I like to keep it in variables of three, personally. Let’s say you’re going to do a three-item list. Once a day, ideally at the same time of the day, every day, you’re going to sit down, and you’re going to write three items that you are grateful for. And they can be super deep. They can be super surfacy. Hopefully, you’re going to keep it flexible—really try to think of new things that you can feel gratitude for. And do this for six weeks if you can. 

This isn’t going to necessarily do anything to your feelings of loneliness directly. What they’re going to do is help to build spiritual and emotional resiliency, so that the other things you do to support yourself, they are easier to integrate and receive. Because here’s the thing, being receptive is hard—especially when we’re doing a lot of things to distract ourselves from how we feel because the way we feel is bad and because we’re frightened of what comes next and the uncertainty of the world and yadda, yadda. So that’s a great place to start. 

Now, the next thing I’m going to recommend is create routine and structure in your life. Now, I know, hearing it from me may not be that shocking, but creating routine and structure in your life can help to really reaffirm how you are there for you. So that might look like setting the intention that you get dressed by a certain hour every day, setting the intention that you are going to reach out to one person per day. Not just to check in on them because that North Node in Pieces and all those planets in Pieces in the seventh house may do this thing where you reach out to people, and you’re like “How are you? I’m just checking in on you.” When what you really mean is, “Hi. Do you care how I am? I need you to check in on me.”

So there’s a different way of doing it. It’s reaching out to people in a way that is authentic and saying, “Hey, if you ever want to have a real time check in, let’s do that.” I encourage you to once a day make an effort to connect. 

Recently, I’ve been on apps—I’m not going to name brands or whatever—I’ve been on apps that are, I think, forth coming; we’re going to see a lot more of these that are talking apps. So there’s no pictures. It’s not Zoom. It’s not about just written posts, but it’s about verbally talking to people. And that has been really great for me in coping with all this isolation with COVID. Maybe there’s a Slack. Maybe there’s an app that you have access to. Finding some other way of engaging with people than how you’ve been doing it—because it’s not quite working, eh? 

And that brings me to social media. When we’re in a state of loneliness, anxiety, or depression is when it’s the most important to be conscientious about how we engage with social media. It’s so fucking important. If you are scrolling for connection, but you’re just scrolling unconsciously, or you find that you’re following people or brands that make you feel like you’re comparing yourself to others, they make you feel less than, they make you feel bad—yeah, you’re not engaging with social media in a wise way. 

It’s the end of 2020. It’s a great time to do an audit of your social media feeds. Unfollow people. If you don’t want to unfollow people because it’s political—mute, honey. You can mute anyone. Mute a bitch. And it’s not about anger, and it’s not about criticism. It’s about the curation of what you’re ingesting. It is wise to ingest visual, audio, and written content that actually uplifts you, especially when you’re struggling to stay afloat. If you are scrolling to connect, then take pains to connect—DM, comment, engage. If you are scrolling to disconnect, just make sure it’s not destructive. It’s neutral or constructive, that’s the goal here. 

This is all about aligning with your priorities, which is most likely to require from you and from most of us, actually, re-aligning our priorities given the world we’re living in. Because within your question you said, “What if it’s a COVID winter?” Honey. Honey, it is going to be a COVID winter. I mean, it is a COVID winter. I don’t expect—because I read the news, and also because I’m an astrologer, I don’t expect COVID’s going to magically go away in 2021. I don’t see how that’s going to happen, vaccine or no vaccine. It seems highly unlikely. 

So that might feel really overwhelming, and of course, I don’t know—miracles happen, but that might feel really overwhelming to hear. But on a pragmatics level, if that’s the case, if we’ve got 12 more months of winter, then what do we do, right? How can you adjust the way you relate to others, the way you make yourself vulnerable, the way you self-care? How can you adjust those things to be a little bit more flexible, to be different than it used to be?

This isn’t forever, but we must be really clear that this is now, and if you’re listening to me say this, and you’re like, “But it’s my Saturn Return,” “But it’s my this,” “But it’s my that,” well, this is the reality we’re living in right now. It is. And I’m not trying to say suck it up and deal with it, but I am saying being in denial of the reality that we share, being in denial of what materially is, it hinders our ability to emotionally, spiritually, and mentally cope. 

Which thereby means, even if you’re going through the motions and doing things on a physical level that are, quote, good self-care, if there’s not the emotion, if there’s not the psychic presence with it, there’s more struggle. It doesn’t work. And you’re like why? I’m doing all the right things. Why isn’t it working? It’s because holistic healing requires your whole self. Which is why it’s hard, and which is why it’s not quick. So doesn’t mean it’s not working just because it's slow and difficult. 

Okay, now back to some pragmatic advice. Let’s get spiritual as a response to loneliness. For me, personally, when I experience loneliness, I turn to the Tarot because my experience of working with the Tarot is—it’s like the cards give me a material way of connecting with my guides. I perceive the Tarot as a way of talking to my guidance. And so, it makes me feel really connected to something that I can’t see with my eyes, I can’t hear with my ears. Maybe that would work for you too. 

This is a great time for continuing education, for learning new things because so many of our external distractions are gone. If you’re experiencing aloneness, then you may have more physical time. And if we set the intention to use our physical time to learn a new spiritual technique, read books, practice meditating, going outside—even if you live in a really cold place, going outside for five minutes, finding ways of physically being outside that are life affirming, even if they’re brief, is a great idea. 

There are tons of physical fitness people, people who are dance teachers and all kinds of stuff like that who are doing online courses. A lot of times they’re cheaper online than in person. Everyone’s trying to pivot and make a living. But also, it’s a great way to be connected to others. You start to build small little communities out of specific interests, and that can be really life affirming. And it’s not a quick fix, but it’s a movement towards connection. Connection to the self, connection to spirit, and connection to other humans. 

If there’s like—you mention that you’re transitioning into being a nurse, but you may have always wanted to draw and never really had the space for it in your life—again, see if there’s a drawing class that you could take or something online, something where you are connecting with others on a part of yourself that you actually would like to know better. These things can all support you in dealing with aloneness and loneliness—both. 

Now, finally, I want to just name this thing that maybe is super obvious or maybe not. I don’t know. But do you have an animal friend? Do you have a pet? Maybe you don’t for a reason. Maybe you do. I don’t know. But animals are people too, you know. And if you’ve kind of been struggling around feeling alone and loneliness, having someone to care for, to wake up for, and to be there for can be very life-affirming. If you’re concerned about commitment, you can always foster an older animal. There’s lots of ways of considering this. 

Now, I’m not recommending that people run out and get pets out of loneliness because that’s not actually necessarily very fair to the animal, and you want to make sure that you can maintain the responsibility and be there for your furry or scaly friend or whatever it is. But it is worth considering. Because as an animal communicator, I really have the conviction that animals are people, and they have thoughts and feelings and needs and preferences and judgments—yeah, they’re judging you. And so, it’s nice to build relationships with people of all species, if you got the kind of living situation that supports it, if all things considered work out in that direction. So hopefully some of these bits of advice have kind of pointed you towards specific things that you can do for yourself and ways that you can kind of let other people in. 

There’s one more thing that I didn’t mention that’s happening for you astrologically, and that’s a once in a lifetime transit called Neptune conjunction to the Sun. You have the Sun at 22 degrees of Pieces. And this transit creates a spiritual crisis that most people experience as an existential crisis. It makes you feel rudderless—just confused and overwhelmed. This is an important time for fortifying your system. So this is a bad time for cleansing and giving yourself less. It’s a great time for fortifying. 

This is a really powerful time for investigating and investing in your spirituality. Not per se magic or manipulation of any kind, but instead investigating your Soul and your sense of connection to all that is living. Unfortunately, this transit can also come along with the sense of being utterly disconnected from others, and you’re going to be in this until February of 2023. 

In this time, acts of service and investigation into spirituality are going to be transportive. Your capacity for empathy and compassion is expanding in a way that is kind of a once in a lifetime thing. Make sure that your acts of service, make sure that your capacity for empathy and compassion and patience is extended to yourself as well as to others, that it’s extended to people close to you as well as people in your community or people at the hospital, wherever you work. 

Loneliness is difficult. Feeling alone is difficult, but it is not a punishment or a sentence. It is, on some level, an invitation to choose yourself, to strive to belong to yourself, to be kind to yourself, and to care for yourself. And when we do those things and we center those things alongside trying to, quote, fix our loneliness, then we’re really approaching the spiritual crisis of loneliness in a way that will have greater impact overall on our spiritual health in the long term. 

We are going through transformational times, and whenever you are engaged in your own evolution, inevitably, you need a little help. And that is why I’m really happy to share with you Better Help. They’re committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches, and it’s easy and free to change counselors if you don’t like the person you’re matched with. This service is available for people worldwide. 

It’s just really valuable to be able to talk to someone about whatever it is you’re going through, whether it’s queer issues or depression or just anxiety from all the shit going on in the world—Better Help is there for you. In fact, so many people have been using Better Help that they are recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states of the US. 

I want you to start living a happier life today. As a listener of Ghost of a Podcast, you will get 10 percent off of your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/ghost. Join over one million people taking charge of their mental health. Again, that’s betterhelp, H-E-L-P .com/ghost.

Do you ever lie awake at night obsessing about the moment when everything went wrong? Maybe you wish you could reach out to the brother you stopped talking to 40 years ago, or maybe you want to ask your high school sweetheart why did you dump me? On the podcast Heavyweight, Jonathan Goldstein helps guests journey back to the past to answer the questions that still haunt them in the hope of setting things right. That’s Heavyweight from Gimlet. Follow and listen for free on Spotify.

Okay, let’s talk about energy for a moment because we are still in a number of crises globally, but certainly here in the US, we’re in a number of crises. The death toll is just steadily rising. The infection rate is steadily rising of COVID-19. It is just devastating. It is terrifying if you’re paying attention, and it is devastating. And if you are an energetically sensitive person, if you are a person who cares about others, or if you’re a person who doesn’t especially care about others but have the mixed blessing of being energetically permeable, if you’re out in the world working at grocery store, working at a hospital, working around people IRL, then it is truly, truly an exhausting time. It’s a drain. It’s been going on for so long, and it’s just getting worse. 

And I want to acknowledge that that’s not the only thing happening. We had this big presidential election, but the sitting president hasn’t really conceded. We still have the Electoral College to deal with, which just so happens to be overlapping with a Solar Eclipse on December 14th—I’ll talk more about that on a Hot Take sometime soon, don’t you worry. It’s heavy. 

The human heart is a part worth protecting, worth honoring, worth centering, and so much of what of we’re dealing with is exhausting emotionally. It’s exhausting spiritually and mentally. And so, I want to just hold space. I want to encourage you to pull your attention into your body, right now—and actually, I don’t mean your meat suit; I mean your energy body—all your feelings, all the mess of it, to really kind of take a moment to come in, to get present. 

I don’t know about you, when I listen to podcasts, I’m usually multitasking—I’m doing a bunch of things. But maybe this is actually a moment to pause and just be here for a damn moment and notice whatever here is. This is a time that really is exhausting. It’s energetically exhausting. 

Hospitalization rates in the US in regards to COVID are at an all time high, and we’re almost a year into the pandemic. And we haven’t seen the presentation of cases from people who were with others during the Thanksgiving holiday, which there will be an increase from that. I think we can reasonably expect that. And all of this comes with a weight, a psychic toll. 

And this isn’t a news podcast. I don’t want to add to the noise of fear. I don’t want to add to the noise of everything’s going to be okay because, you know what? Honestly, I’m a Capricorn; I’m not an optimist. But I will say that if you’re feeling even a fraction of what I’ve been feeling, you’re not alone. You’re not overreacting. Shit is bananas. And when humans deal with emotions that are so difficult, and when we’re dealing with an ongoing onslaught of uncertainty, instability, and fear, it slows everything down. It slows down your coping. It slows down your cognition. It slows down your body. These kinds of feelings can have a physiological impact on your body, which impacts everything, right. 

So what I will say to you—I’m also saying it to myself—cut yourself some slack. Now, I don’t mean cut yourself some slack; you’re allowed to act like an asshole to people. You’re allowed to be disrespectful to people, cause harm to yourself through self-destructive behaviors. I’m not saying any of that, to be clear. What I’m saying is things are not normal. There’s a lot to be concerned about, and if you feel it, however it ends up feeling inside of you, wherever it lands, it’s okay. I mean, it’s not great. It’s not great, but it’s absolutely okay. 

I think a lot of us have exhaustion and fatigue post-election, but there’s still so much more work to be done, right. I think a lot of us are looking down the barrel of winter and being like, “Oh, Jeez. What are we supposed to do with this?” It’s a lot. It’s a lot. And you need to remember that you are not alone. You are not alone. And that millions of people—millions and millions and millions of people are going through something similar to you. And so, I say this not to make you less special but to remind you about the interconnectedness of all of us, of all living things. 

If I can get real fucking woo with you, I got to say all living things have energy. And in the realm of energy, we are interconnected. We are absolutely interconnected, and our lines of separation are not as distinct as they are on a material plane. I’m no quantum physicist; I’m just a damn weirdo psychic medium living my life, but I got to say the world of energy is a real world. It is the world we all live in and we all participate in. And whether or not you’re doing it intentionally, doesn’t mean you’re not doing it. 

It’s kind of like when you go to a website, and they’re collecting cookies and data on you. You might not know that they’re doing it. You might not know what they’re doing with that information, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening just because you don’t know about it. You know what I mean? 

All to say, my dears and loves, all to say, it is hard inside right now, and we need empathy, compassion, and constructive engagement now more than ever, really. So strive as much as you can to treat others as you yourself want to be treated and to treat yourself as you want others to treat you. Honestly, a lot of times I feel like words aren’t enough—they’re just not enough, so strive to be present. And strive to be present for yourself, for others, and if you notice that you’re dealing with people who aren’t able to be present with you, know that it’s probably not about you and that doesn’t mean you need to fuck around with it. You can always—you can always bounce. You can always get a call on the other line or an email that you have to deal with, okay? Okay. Take care of yourself. Okay. 

Now, my friends, to your horoscope. So we are looking at the dates of December 6th through the 12th of 2020. And there’s only three transits for me to tell you about happening over the course of a couple of days. Now, before we get into the specifics of those transits, I want to name that there’s going to be a Solar Eclipse on December 14th. It will be exact at 8:17 a.m., Pacific Time, and I’ll talk about it in next week’s horoscope. 

However, ’tis Eclipse time. Are you feeling so many feels you just don’t know what to do? Emotions, emotions, emotions. Does life feel like it’s happening at an intensified tempo? Yeah, that makes sense. It’s a damn Eclipse on its way for us. So again, all the stuff I’m talking about this week around being patient, about maintaining your wellness with intention, it’s informed by the damn Eclipse. It is, obvi. It is. So want to throw that into the mix. 

That brings us to the first exact transit of the week. You will be feeling it for a day leading up. It’s called Sun square to Neptune. Sun square to Neptune is exact on the 9th, and it is a little bit of a doozy, if I may speak directly to you about things. So this particular transit kicks up uncertainty and anxiety. Neptune is very spiritual. Neptune is all about what is hard to contain, put your finger on, hard to put to words to, the sense of not belonging—that is related to Neptune. The feeling of dysmorphia is related to Neptune as well. 

When the Sun forms a square to the planet Neptune, we tend to feel exhausted—just totally exhausted. It is really a time where we are meant to tend to our insides, to listen to what’s happening inside of you. If you’re dealing with loneliness, if you’re dealing with insecurity, this transit is a little bit of a punch in the tummy because it’s really rough on the self-esteem, and it’s rough on feelings of anxiety. So this can be a bit of a difficult minute. 

So what I want to encourage you to do is first of all just know it’s coming, okay. And if you know its peak is on the 9th, but you’ll be feeling it on the 8th, the 9th, and the 10th, if you know it’s coming, you can put things in place to support yourself. You can be like oh, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. That’s just astrology. I’m not going to take this too personally. I’m not going to be worried that it’s going to last for damn ever. I’m going to orient my actions and attitudes based on this information around my feelings. So in other words, what you can do here is prepare and engage with intention. 

If you’re feeling anxious, it’s an opportunity to gain more awareness about how your anxiety functions and what you unconsciously or consciously do in response to your anxiety. This is not a great time for making serious decisions. It’s not a great time for signing contracts. It’s not like the worse thing in the world, but it’s not great either. So if you can avoid those things, do, and if you can’t, just make sure to read the fine print. Be really clear about what it is that you’re agreeing to—that kind of stuff. 

Now in the context of relationships, this transit can be somewhat upsetting because it can make you feel needy. But at the same time, everyone around you is feeling needy too. And so, we all respond to energy in our own unique way, and you want to make sure that you are not necessarily taking it personally when people can’t show up in the way you want them to. And also, you are taking in the data—not personalizing it, but taking in. 

It’s important that we are able to accept the people in our lives for who they are. And if we can’t accept them for who they are, if we just feel like we need to change them in order to really be with them, then that’s about us. That’s a problem you have with you. And this transit can really trigger that kind of stuff. 

In the context of COVID-19, Sun square to Neptune is not great, TBH. Neptune is related to our autoimmune system. It makes us porous, as I mentioned earlier in the episode, and so, I think it’s really important if you’re going to be in anyway outside of your pod, whether you have to work or if you’re just like going grocery shopping or if you’re socializing with people in some way, be really, really careful. There are major surges happening right now in the US, so be very careful with COVID-19—don’t take unnecessary risks to expose yourself or to expose others. Seriously. Seriously. 

Now, the other thing I’ll say is that this transit can kind of trigger or accentuate empathy fatigue. If you find yourself really just feeling overwhelmed by other people’s emotions or by the collective, it’s important that you have boundaries. Strive to establish and maintain boundaries this week, all week, and certainly on and around this date. 

Being energetically sensitive is a gift, so they say, and it’s also a bit of a burden. Unless of course, you’re walking through an amusement park where everybody is happy, and everything is wonderful, it can be a bit of a burden. And so it’s important to recognize if you are energetically sensitive, if you are taxed or at your limit, that it’s on you to prioritize cultivating and maintaining boundaries. It’s really important. And this week it’s a great time to focus on that, okay. 

Now, on the 10th, we have two exact transits, a Venus sextile to Pluto and a Sun Trine to Mars. So these transits will impact on the 9th as well, and the Venus sextile to Pluto will impact on the 8th as well. So these are a lovely couple of transits, and they’ll kind of like take us all through the week—the rest of the week, so that’s really nice. 

These transits are great for relationships—thank you. Thank you, Universe. Sometimes it’s nice to give you good news about the transits. So I’ll start with the Sun trine to Mars transit. It's our second Sun transit of the week. Sun trine to Mars is activating. The Sun is your will, and Mars is your ego. A trine is a harmonious flow of energy. When we look at a Sun trine to mars, we have the capacity to harness your will in a way that is not hiding from your power or hiding from your light, but instead moving and mobilizing from that place. It’s wonderful. 

This is a great time for fortifying yourself. If you need to start a new activity, this is a great transit for doing it. If you’re dating, if you’re in a new relationship or you’re dating, this is great for putting yourself out there because it gives you a boost of confidence. 

Now unfortunately, the fact that it overlaps with the Sun square to Neptune doesn’t do anybody any favors because Sun square to Neptune is hard on the self-esteem, and then Sun trine to Mars strengthens the self-esteem. So my guess is that we’re going to get the best boost from it on the 11th, even though, technically, the peak of this transit is on the 10th. 

Now, the Venus sextile to Pluto is also exact on this date. And this is another one that’s really good for sex. It’s really good for flirting. It’s really good for connection. It’s also really good for spending money, stupidly. Trying to buy yourself a little happy? Yes, you may want to. Maybe you shouldn’t. Use some common sense. 

This is a transit that can represent a time where you just have really lovely social interactions, be they IRL or online. The potential here is to have your values reflected in the way you engage with others, the way that you spend your money, and the way that you show up in the world, and that that itself is transformative for you and whoever it is that you’re engaging with. That’s the highest potential of this transit. And on a more base level, you may just have a good hair day. You may just feel hella cute and like you’re ready to put yourself out there a little bit, and that’s fabulous too. 

And that’s pretty much it, see, for the week. And that is a good thing, my friends, because it’s about to get pretty big next week. So, again, we have the Eclipse forth coming. And I just want to just really encourage you to know that you are feeling it already. There’s nothing you need to know, and there’s nothing you need to do. It’s nothing like that. It's just about acknowledging that there’s a lot of energy activated all around us and within us. And that requires greater intention around how we engage. 

Now, before I sign off, I want to tell you about something that maybe you’re not going—maybe this is too last minute—nobody knows. You’ll know. On Sunday the 6th December, so the day this podcast comes out, at 2 p.m., Pacific, I am doing a Live over on Patreon about the Nodes. If you’re in the market for learning more about the North and South Node, join me there. Just join at the Kitten’s level on Patreon. And if you can’t make it for any reason, but you still want to get it, you can just become a Patron over at Patreon, and it will be saved to my wall there. Do they call it a wall? I feel like they call it a wall. Why a wall? Anyways, I digress. 

My loves, I thank you once again for joining me here on Ghost of a Podcast, where you can always sit at my table—like, seriously, always.