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, welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. This week I have a question that I have gotten in many forms, from many people recently. And it’s short and sweet, and goes like this, “How do you work through imposter syndrome? Hi, Jessica. I wanted to hear if you have any advice around imposter syndrome, especially in the professional lens, but even when sharing on social media. I was born December 11th, 1993 at 1:38 p.m. in Newhall, California.”

So let me tell you, I have gotten a lot of questions in recent months from people dealing with imposter syndrome. And what’s been really interesting is that I’ve noticed that a lot of you are born in the early 1990s—like around 1993, specifically, but in the early 1990s. And I want to acknowledge, as an astrologer, a couple of things. 

The first is imposter syndrome is something that a—it’s a psychological thing. I am, of course, an astrologer. I am not a shrink. I am not an expert in psychology of humans, or if I am, it’s from an astrological viewpoint as opposed to a diagnostic one. And so, I want to really kind of unpack what imposter syndrome is and isn’t, but I want to do that with a caveat of I am not a damn therapist, and I’m not your therapist. Okay, so there’s that to say. 

But there’s something else. What happens to all humans every time we go through a Saturn Return, and the first of which is around 29 years old, is about two years leading up to the Saturn Return, you start to feel like you’re running out of time—you start to feel this mounting pressure of what am I doing with my life? What have I done with my life? What am I ever going to be? That was the voice I made was like me falling off a cliff because that’s how you feel when you approach your Saturn Return, like everything is kind of falling apart, and you need to figure it out stat. 

The Saturn Return are marks of massive maturization, and so for about two years leading up to the Saturn Return we start to become self-aware and self-critical about what we have and have not achieved. And it’s difficult for all generations. What I noticed is that your generation—because you, my dear friend, Imposter Syndrome, you are in the buildup phase; you’re in the two years leading up to your Saturn Return. What I’m noticing is that your generation is really identifying with imposter syndrome. And some of that is cultural; it’s like you have access to that language, you have access to that lens, and so maybe you’re framing it in that way. Whereas somebody in the 1960s also felt that way but didn’t have that lens or that language. Maybe that’s it. 

But also, what is happening now is we are all living so much online. Social media means that every single one of us has a bull horn, and we are saying this is who I am. This is what I’ve achieved. This is what I haven’t achieved. Some of us are really good at looking like we’re doing great all the damn time, whether or not we are. Some of us aren’t. All of us are comparing ourselves to others. It’s inevitable when there’s this much noise, there’s this much curation of identity, it’s really hard to not do that. And, I don’t know about you, but if you’re having a shitty day and someone points a camera at you, you’re likely to smile, right. It’s just like a reflex; you smile for the camera. That’s an expression. 

And so, it’s important for me to name, before we get into anything about imposter syndrome, that the ways things look, that the way people look is not how they are. And when you’re struggling with imposter syndrome, any kind of comparison of yourself to someone else or yourself to who you think you should be at this age or at this time, it’s really important to remember to refer back to your internal conditions and your lived experience and to not be looking sideways—not look around you at what everyone else is doing. Everyone’s on their own journey. It’s important to be informed by others but not defined. 

So imposter syndrome—let me just do a quick, brief breakdown of what I understand imposter syndrome to be. Imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern, so it’s not just a feeling you have in a moment. It’s a pattern of thinking and feeling where you kind of like consistently, ritualistically doubt your accomplishments, doubt your talents, and your skills. And when you do achieve things or get any kind of accolades for what you’ve achieved or for your talents, there’s this belief associated with imposter syndrome that it was luck. It was just like—it didn’t even count. You know what I mean? It didn’t really happen like that. Those are really important benchmarks of imposter syndrome. 

Another really important benchmark of imposter syndrome—and this is a really important one, IMO—is a fear of being exposed as a fraud. A fear that someone will figure out that you really are just phoning it in, that you really don’t know what the hell you’re doing, that you don’t deserve to be here, and they will expose you. There’s a lot to say about all parts of this. 

The first part is—and I say this with all the love in my heart—sometimes you just don’t know things. Sometimes one is self-aware enough to know that you don’t know certain things. And I want to just hold space for it is okay to be at any age looking at what you want to achieve professionally and recognizing that there are people in the room or out there who know more than you, who’ve had more lived experience than you, who maybe be able to do something quicker or whatever it is, and to be self-aware that that is true. 

It is okay to recognize where you’re not. It’s okay to recognize that you might be the person on your team in marketing—I don’t know, I just made that up—you might be the best person in your marketing team that comes up with the best ideas and all that kind of stuff, but you may be the worst at promoting them in meetings. You may not actually have that skill yet. And it’s important, in my view as a counselor, an astrology counselor, to really hold space for these different skills and these different struggles. Because if you don’t pick the pieces apart enough, then you can say, “Oh, you know, I’m in marketing, and I’m not progressing the way I want because I’m bad at it.” When the reality is maybe you’re actually the best at it, but you’re not good at self-promotion or asserting yourself in group dynamic. 

If that’s the case, then it’s important to cultivate that skill and give yourself permission to become more balanced in how you show up at work, as an example. But in order to do this, we’ve got to get at the really important and difficult part of imposter syndrome, which is this fear of being exposed as a fraud. 

So I am of the mind that when we look at our fear of failure, and we develop a healthy relationship to failure, it stops controlling us. So a lot of what imposter syndrome is is such a deep fear of failure because of an underlying belief that you are a failure. And that if you do fail evidentially in a situation, or if somebody else thinks of you as having failed, or being a failure, not good enough, that that individual situation or that individual person is proof. They have conclusive proof, and therefore, it’s true. And so, the drive to make sure that no one else sees you as a failure is really about kind of trying to put a really inappropriate Band-Aid on a wound, which is a fear of failure. 

I think it’s really very Saturnian because Saturn does govern humility and failure and fear. So that said, if you are coping with imposter syndrome, I want to give you the homework of looking at your relationship to failure and to see if you could be willing to explore your feelings and thoughts around what failure means. 

In my view, failure is only really truly a bad thing if you don’t learn. And listen, I don’t like failing. I want to be right about everything all the Goddamn time. I want everyone to like me—so do you. That’s just human, right. But when we allow our fear of failure to drive us, we can no longer be humble. That’s when it’s actually a form of hubris to think that you’re a constant failure. Too much ego, not enough ego—they’re the same thing: a mismanaged ego. It creates harm to others or harm to the self. And when you’re really busy actively harming others, you’re for sure harming yourself. And if you’re really busy actively harming yourself, you’re inevitably going to harm others because you’re too busy focused on the self. 

This is not a blame or a pointing of fingers, or it’s not intended to be. What it is is perspective. It’s recognizing that the only way to truly fail is to not try. The only way to truly fail is to not grow. So if you do get evidence that you posted something to social media, and everyone thought it was stupid, or you tried for a job, and people were just like you’re not even qualified for this; what are you doing here? These individual experiences and other people’s thoughts or feelings about you do not define you. How you respond to your lived experiences, that’s what defines you. And that’s really difficult. It’s really, really difficult. 

It’s healthy to develop humility. And humility is not guilt, and it’s not fear. It’s not failure. It’s not proving of the self. Humility is the self-awareness that you can grow and be more, and also, that you have a right to be where you’re at right here. Humility. That’s not a definition. That’s not a strong definition, but we’re going to work with that. 

When we talk about something like entitlement, which when you’re talking about especially like jobs or like showing up on social media, people who have entitlement or who have a lot of confidence, or they come across as they have a lot of confidence tend to thrive in capitalism and in the world that we live in across the board, so it’s not exclusive to capitalism, but certainly, within capitalism. That doesn’t make it healthy. It doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t make it healthy or better. 

So I want to, again, just kind of like bring it back to if you want to cope with imposter syndrome, you’re best case scenario doesn’t mean never feeling like you’re not good enough. We all have a story. We all have a story about who’s better than us and why. It’s important to be self-aware about those things, so that you don’t believe the stories you’re telling yourself to substantiate your feelings that simply need humility. 

So as an example, you may be showing up at work and recognizing that you’re working with some people who have way better communication skills than you, or you may recognize that they have worked on similar projects in the past, and they actually did a really great job. And therefore, you are self-aware that they bring something to the table that you don’t. 

Now, imposter syndrome is going to incline you to start comparing yourself to them and coming up with all these kind of justifications of why you are therefore lacking or not good enough or should disappear. But what I want to encourage you to do, the next time some kind of situation like this occurs, is instead to say, “Okay, that’s them, and that’s what they bring to the table. Am I willing to bring whatever it is that I have—my ideas, my time, my willingness to get shit done, whatever it is—to the table, and if I find that some of my ideas are bad, or if I communicate things poorly, or whatever it is, then I’m going to learn from this and grow.” Can you, instead of comparing yourself to them, say, “Okay, that’s what they bring, and I’m going to stop thinking about that now, and I’m going to think about what I need to bring.” 

And if you recognize that maybe, you know, everyone on your team has more experience than you, then do you need to do a little extra research for your own mental health? Is that going to actually help you? Are you willing to learn and sometimes take a back seat so that you can actually integrate what you are learning? 

The key is to not shit on yourself in advance of someone else shitting on you because you’re so scared of people shitting on you. The world is going to be what the world is. You’re not going to be perfect at anything, ever. There’s always going to be people who are better than you, quicker than you, smarter than you, younger than you, whatever than you—always, if that’s what you’re looking for. The key is only to be strong enough to choose to be yourself and to be humble enough to recognize when your pridefulness starts to demand that you are something else, somewhere else, or that you have proof of your value. 

Now, all that said, my dear, let’s talk about your damn birth chart. You have a stellium in Sagittarius. North Node conjunct, Mercury conjunct, Venus conjunct, and then Mars conjunct the Sun all in Sagittarius. You also have a Moon/Pluto conjunction in Scorpio. You have an Aries Rising. All of these things in very different ways communicate something similar: you are impatient. Oh, man, are you impatient. You’ve got great vision—amazing vision, but not a whole lot of patience. 

And so, because you have that Moon/Pluto conjunction, which I’ve talked about in different episodes more in depth than I will right now, but because you have that Moon/Pluto conjunction, you feel things really intensely and compulsively. And because Saturn forms a square to that Moon/Pluto conjunction, you have a tendency to lose track of yourself with criticism and a drive to prove yourself and to prove yourself in public, like in the eyes of others. 

Which is why your particular question wasn’t just about professional imposter syndrome but also on social media. Because that Saturn that is squaring your Moon/Pluto is in the eleventh house, so you want to be seen by your community and group of friends in a particular way, and it really hurts your feelings and makes you very self-critical when you think people think less of you or little of you in public. 

Now, on top of that, you have a Neptune conjunction to the Midheaven. It’s Uranus and Neptune are both conjoined, and so you have a very complicated relationship to proving yourself. It’s that you actually really don’t care, and then you super, very much, very much care. They’re both true. A meaningful part of your imposter syndrome, from my view as an astrologer, is about wanting multiple things at once. 

Part of you doesn’t actually care if you prove yourself in public at all. It’s immaterial to you; you earnestly don’t care. And then the other half of you cares very much compulsively and like it’s life or death. They’re both true at the same time. And because they are both true at the same time, what you’re doing is what most people do, which is attaching to the most driving and strong emotion instead of the healthiest and most helpful emotion. It’s very human, and it’s a big part of your Saturn Return. 

As you develop into the person you really want to be, you have choices to make, and that’s what happens in the couple of years leading up to any of your Saturn Returns, whether it’s the first one, the second, or the third. 

So here’s the thing, this year in 2021 and in 2022, you are going to be going through a Neptune square to Mars. And what that’s going to do is it’s going to challenge your ego. The key is not to figure out what you’re good at or to prove yourself. The key here is to recognize the value of validation and external achievement, to recognize the truth, which is you are not what you do. Your value is not just what you produce. Your value is inherent to your being. And what you do is only one small piece of that and, arguably, a transient piece of that. Develop a healthier and more loving relationship to your ego over the next two years and know that that means having healthier boundaries with yourself in relationship to how you feel, what you think, and what you do.

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.

The Black Fairy Godmother Foundation founded by Simone Gordon is a Non-Profit Organization created to help Black and Brown marginalized families. This foundation uses the power of networking and social media to connect families in need with people who can help. Visit theblackfairygodmother.info to get more information. 

Through their initiatives you can adopt a family by sharing a fundraiser or wish list throughout your community and signal boosting on social media. You can also join the Birthday Fundraiser where you use your birthday celebration to make a difference by choosing a fundraiser to promote among your friends and family. Contact the Black Fairy Godmother to receive a fundraiser assignment, learn more information, and support their work.

So how’s everybody feeling? I mean, the Saturn/Uranus square that was exact for the first time this year last week was, I would say, a bit of a doozy. And if you have been feeling all kinds of fucked up or any kinds of fucked up, I do encourage you to listen to the midweek episode that I dropped—episode number 188. It’s all about not just the Saturn square to Uranus and a greater unpacking of what we can expect or what we should expect from that transit, but also kind of a check in with the big picture of what is happening and astrology in general. 

You know, this week, there’s a bunch of stuff to talk about, including, but not limited to a Full Moon. But it’s really important that I kind of affirm right now that this thing that I’ve named before, which is that week after week I talk about each individual transit, and I objectively talk about it—like this thing is happening, and it’s exact on this day or at this time. But the truth is everything is interconnected, and we are constantly in cycle and in process with ourselves, with the world, with our lives, etc. 

And so, the incredible tension that the Saturn/Uranus square provoked, both psychologically inside of you and me and everybody else, but also systemically—so to literal systems, governments, infrastructure, to companies, to concepts—there’s a massive shift in energy, and we have not seen the full consequences of it quite yet. But on a felt experience, there is this tension, this sense of apprehension, a restlessness. You may experience it as an urgency or even as a depressiveness. These are two very common responses to the energy that we’re feeling right now. 

Being willing and able to sit with the kind of strife and struggle and painful thoughts and feelings that you may be experiencing is hard to choose, but it’s a really healthy approach. Because, as I have said before, what is difficult or painful is not necessarily bad. And what is easy is not necessarily good, right. And what I want to really just kind of bring your attention gently back to is the things that you’re struggling with in yourself at this time, these are the things that want your attention, that need your attention, and not your driving, blaming, judging attention, but your care. 

This is the time to take responsibility for how you take care of yourself and how you participate in your larger community or communities. Do your best. That’s it. That’s all. Do your best. You can’t do a whole lot more. You can do a whole lot less, and I encourage you not to. 

So this week, we’re going to look at the week of February 21st through the 27th. We’re almost at the end of February. Welcome. Mercury Retrograde is over. It’s done. Welcome and good night. We will be experiencing the Retroshade, in other words, the Mercury shadow through March 13th. 

You don’t need to over think it, but know that as Mercury retraces its steps, we are simply going to be continuing to engage with some of that Retrograde energy, even though it is not the hard and fast Retrograde rules that we want to apply to the Retroshade. Something that’s really well starred in the Retroshade through March 13th is looking back over what you’ve been doing in the Retrograde, especially in regards to work—anything that you’re writing down, communicating, agreeing to. This is a great time to clarify things as much as you can to the best of your ability. 

Now, on the 24th, we have a Mars trine to Pluto. So you’ll be feeling this transit throughout the week, but it is exact on the 24th. Mars trine to Pluto is actually a really lovely transit, which has some pitfalls that are worth avoiding. So trines are a 120 degree angle, and when we experience a trine it is always a benefic and easy flow of energy. We like that, don’t we? 

Mars and Pluto are two of the most violent planets in the zodiac, so when they form tense aspects to each other we have more struggle and strife and defensiveness and reactiveness. When they form a trine, the potential here is to have healing—to have some sort of reconciliation. Now, I’m going to start with what could go wrong, and then focus on what is most likely to go right. 

So on the negative, if you have been feeling really resentful and defensive and entitled to whatever it is you’re feeling, you might just go all the way and act out and say something really fucked up, do something really punitive or act out in some way, or someone else might because the energy is flowing easily. 

So here’s the thing about astrology, whenever you’re looking at a transit, an aspect in your birth chart, something in, let’s say, a relationship chart, when you see an ease or flow of energy, that sounds on the surface like a fantastisch [sp] kind of thing, and it can be for sure. But when that energy is maladjusted, when that energy is not embodied, then it’s not great to have a flow of energy, you see. So it’s important to be present for the nuance, is what I’m getting at here. And because of the context of 2020/2021, how much intense and violent energy has really been increasingly coming to the surface, a Mars trine to Pluto could be a little problematic. That’s the downside. 

Now, the positive of this transit is wonderful. So Mars trine to Pluto is a time where we can make things happen. You can mobilize on a project and really start to gain steam. Mars trine to Pluto is good for getting things done, finding something out that really was like a problem that needed to be discovered so that you could work on it. Mars is work, and Pluto is that part of ferreting things out. 

Mars trine to Pluto can be a time where you have amazing sex with a partner or yourself. This can be a time where you really experience passion and presence, and it’s delicious. There can be a kind of flow of energy that supports you in tackling something that you’ve been really intimidated around. Pluto governs shame, and when we have a planet trine to Pluto, we have the potential for us to engage consciously, conscientiously, and kindly with that energy. 

So Mars is anger, power, sex, and body stuff. So there’s a lot of really powerful potential for consciously engaging with and moving forward and through some shit. And that is delightful. The key is to not overdo it. And when I say to not overdo it, what I mean is just because you can doesn’t mean you should. So don’t forget the embodiment piece; the key with Mars is embodiment. 

So do your best—and this is going to be the theme of the week, just watch—do your best to keep on checking back in with your body. This little vehicle, this little meat suit vehicle that you are the steward of, trapped in, however you want to think of it, in this lifetime. It’s important to resource your meat suit this week, okay, and in particular around this transit and the Full Moon. Again, we’ll get there. 

Now, on the 25th, we have another lovely transit. The Sun is forming a sextile to Uranus. Again, this transit, in a very different way, is good for innovation, for like coming to some sort of solution or conclusion, some sort of insight that bolsters your identity, that reinforces something in or of yourself that is central to you—the Sun. 

And so, the fact that these two transits are happening so closely to each other, they’re reinforcing each other—this is a fortifying set of transits. When the energy is fortifying and strengthening, the potential is, hopefully pretty obviously, there for you to treat yourself right, to come to a greater sense of comfort and healing if you’ve been struggling, to mobilize and move something forward in your life if you’ve been—you know, if you’ve got something on the stove that you’re trying to cook up, this is good. This is good for that. 

If you have instead been engaged in a campaign of self-destruction, these transits are not your fucking friend, unless you make a conscious decision to change course. So if you’ve been struggling with some sort of self-destructive behavior or thought pattern or whatever it is, this can be a time where you can really resource the energy you need to make a different choice. 

So I want to share that with you because it’s hard to know what the energy is. I don’t know, this is why I fucking love astrology because it tells us what the energy is, so we can use the damn energy. So, yeah, this is a great time for conscientiously engaging with self-destructive behaviors and making different choices. And there is no downside to it. These are just really lovely transits. 

All energy is just energy, so a hard transit or a hard aspect in the birth chart or a relationship chart, whatever it is, can be lovely or terrible, and an easy transit or an easy aspect in a birth chart or a relationship chart or whatever it is can go the opposite way. What I’m trying to get at here is energy is energy. How we use the energy is essential. That’s where we have agency. So giddy up on this lovely trine and sextile, this nice flow of energy as much as you can. 

And then that brings us, my loves and dears, to the 27th. The 27th of this week we have a Full Moon. Now, as you know, Full Moons occur when the Sun and Moon are exactly opposite to each other, and, generally speaking, we have one Full Moon per sign every damn year. And this year’s Full Moon in Virgo is occurring when the Sun and Moon are both at 8 degrees and 57 minutes. We round that up to a 9-degree Virgo Moon, 9-degree Pieces Sun. They’re exactly opposite each other at 12:17 a.m., Pacific Time on February 27th. So you can cast that chart for wherever you are physically located, if you’re in the market of casting charts. 

Here’s the thing, the tension between Virgo and Pieces is the tension between the inner most personal, like, psychically, psychologically sensitive world and the material world, the physical world that is evidential and requires so much maintenance. You know, Virgo is very physical and material, and Pieces is very ethereal and hard to pin down in its energies. This is the tension between Pieces, a water sign, and Virgo, an earth sign. 

So when a Full Moon in Virgo occurs, it is healthy and wise to consider how you are caring for your body and how you are caring for your spirit. And this is hard to do because we’re generally doing one or the other. Not enough of us, enough of the time are doing both together, and that’s really what we’re meant to do. 

Now, because of the Saturn square to Uranus that, again, was just a few days ago exact, it’s, of course—these two planets are very close to each other in this chart—we are likely to be feeling all kinds of twisted up. This Full Moon is an opportunity to let go. When Full Moons occur it’s always a time for releasing. So if you’re like charging your crystals in the Full Moon, you don’t want to charge them up on a Full Moon; you want to clear them in a Full Moon. 

And at this time, the best use of this Full Moon energy, in my view, is looking at your habits, whether they’re your personal habits and how you talk to yourself and how you spiritually selfcare, or your habits around what you eat, how you treat your physical body, how you engage with your computer, your phone, or whatever—like really material habits, and release your attachment to what doesn’t serve you. Release your attachment to what isn’t working, what isn’t healthy and right for you. Be willing to release these things so that you can make new habits. 

A Full Moon is not a great time for making new habits. A Full Moon is a great time for letting go of what isn’t working. And what the past couple of weeks has shown all of us is what isn’t working in our coping mechanisms. The psychological tension that the Saturn/Uranus square provoked and provokes is really a test of your relationship to reality, to a sense of obligation and innovation. How much freedom do you have in your life? Do you have too much? Is it not actually serving you? Do you not have enough? Is that not serving you? These are questions to ask. 

You don’t have to make hard and fast decisions. In fact, this isn’t a great time for making hard and fast decisions. This is a great time for getting really present with what is so you can identify what isn’t working. And when you identify what isn’t working, you have taken the first step—identifying it. And the second step is releasing attachment to it and your identity with it. And then the next step can be starting to let it go. 

It is healthy and wise and humane to allow room for gestation. It is healthy, wise, and humane to allow room for process, for feelings. And Full Moons happen every month, and they’re always a moment where we’re meant to check in with how we feel and check in with how we are digesting how we feel, and that’s a huge piece of our life. It’s every fucking month. And so, take the time this month, this week, to see how feelings are sitting in your body, to check in with how you’re holding yourself around how you feel emotionally and physically, and to cultivate greater awareness, not so that you rush to do something, but so that you can recognize what needs tending to in yourself, so that you can next let it go. 

Now, I’ve one more thing to say about this Full Moon chart, which I think is really important. Venus is very close to the Sun, so it’s a wide conjunction. But it is worth naming that when the Sun and Venus meet, there is this issue that emerges around diplomacy, around I want to be liked, I want to say this is a digestible way for others. It’s a centering of how you present and curate yourself over how you feel about yourself and within yourself. 

And so, I want to urge you to pay attention this week to the ways in which you may ritualistically, because we’re talking about a Virgo Moon, abandon yourself in efforts to make others comfortable, in efforts to make others think you are thinking, doing, feeling, looking in a particular way. 

The curation of self, it’s not inherently bad or good; it is what it is. But when it comes at your own expense, at your own psychic and emotional expense, then it’s objectively not so good. And this is a meaningful time for really acknowledging the ways in which you may be focusing more on how things look to others than how they feel within you. 

When we do this, it tends to create a cascade of consequences that are not always good—usually, aka not so good, my friends, not so good. So if it’s something you’re doing in the short term because of a specific thing, and it’s a conscious decision, fabulous—all good. And if it’s a pattern that’s playing out in your life, if it is meaningfully connected to abandonment of self or placing the way things look over the way they actually are, then this Full Moon is a great moment to bring that awareness that I’m talking about to the fore, so that you can start to shift the energy around it. 

But really, we cannot change what we don’t first accept. And when we rush to change something we haven’t first accepted, we have a problem. We have a meaningful problem. Because that becomes punishment and cruelty. It’s condemnation: this is bad. Instead, what I want to urge you to do is cultivate so much gentle and generous self-awareness that you can pair it with acceptance—this is where I am. This is where things are. This is where I’ve come from. This is what I’m doing right now. When you can do that, then you can start to collaborate with your survival mechanisms, collaborate with your habits, your situation, whatever it is, and start to create something new. 

But, you see, this acceptance that I’m referring to, this acceptance, it stands in the place of attachment. So let me explain. When we are attached to this story that we have of like, “Nobody likes me, yadda, yadda, yadda,” or, “I’m 30 years old, and for 30 years my whole life had been like x.” When we are attached to these stories, what happens is we are pointed away from the self. We are not centered in acceptance. This is how I feel right now. Whether it’s true or not, whether it’s like a spin on a story or not, this is how I feel right now, and this is how I felt for a long time. 

From the state of acceptance, I want to also accept what isn’t serving me in my attitudes, my actions, my orientation, you know, like how I am pointing myself in response to these things. What can I change in myself? What can I shift? Because Full Moons do want us to change, that’s the very fucking nature of the Moon; it’s always shifting, shifting, moving, moving. I mean, all the damn planets are always moving, but the Moon is so inspiring in that we can see its changes; we can see its phases. And as we see its phases, we too can see that all of our growth, all of our evolution, as we digest content, you know, lived experience, thoughts, feelings, whatever, it sparks a new phase. And that’s a fucking gorgeous thing. It is a gorgeous, messy, complicated, annoying but gorgeous thing. 

And so, as much as possible, accept yourself so that if there’s something that needs to change or be shifted, that you can do that from a place of self-love, from this moment, and not out of a drive to fix or punish or hide yourself. 

My loves, these are some intense times. I mean, who are we kidding? These are some intense times. And I hope that you are taking really good care of yourself through them. And if you have extra energy or resources to share, that you’re helping someone else out, someone maybe you know, somebody maybe you don’t know—maybe a community, maybe a person. But action can often be the antidote to anxiety. Connection is the antidote to loneliness. So whether you’re connecting to spirit or you’re connecting to people—individuals or communities—I urge you to look at the actions or inaction that maybe contributing to how you feel and to, again, accept so that you can then transform whatever needs to. 

This Virgo energy, this Virgo Full Moon is really—you know, Virgo’s key word is discernment. So much of what I’m talking about is ultimately discernment. When we can discern what is right for us, when we can discern what we are and aren’t doing, it makes it easier to access and activate from agency, and that shit is real helpful. 

I thank you this week and every damn fucking week for tuning into Ghost of a Podcast—my love letter to you and me. If you like the show, if you get value from the show, and you want to tell the world about it, please write me a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Also, if you haven’t already joined me over on Patreon, please do. Is it cute and fun? Yeah, maybe it is. 

Also, keep on showing up, doing the work. Know that you are connected; you are not alone and that you are loved. Bye.