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.

Welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. I got a question this week from How Do I Face My Face? And she says: "I think my face is ugly. I've tried makeup, but honestly, I don't want to wear makeup. It feels constricting and not for me. I hate being berated with a choir of 'Love yourself. You're beautiful,' from well-meaning friends or Dove commercials. It feels forced and inauthentic. Not everyone meets society's standards of beauty. I hate pictures of myself, and I've considered going under the knife, but it's expensive and I'm scared of the risks. I've had difficulty finding people who I find attractive to commit to me, although because I have what's considered a 'hot bod' and I think I'm a relatively cool person, they seem to be fine with no-strings-attached situations but not partnership. And I can't help but feel that my face has a lot to do with it. Being considered an unattractive woman in a patriarchy is already blasphemous as it is, but deep down, I want to be deeply admired and adored and loved. How do I deal with, radically accept, and face my face and reality? Please do not mention my birth info. Love your show, and thank you for your work."

So, Face My Face, this is a really powerful question, and there are so many components to it, my dear. There are so many components to it. The first one is you think your face is ugly, and that is something that you think. It's an emotion that you feel. And maybe you're right. Maybe you're ugly. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're ugly to five people, gorgeous to five people, and totally fine to five people. I don't know. A lot of people who I'm told to think have gorgeous bodies or gorgeous faces, I don't think are gorgeous. A lot of people I'm told are unattractive I personally am really into.

There is a way that you have a feeling and a thought about your face, and you are making assessments for other people, people you already know, people you haven't yet met. You're deciding what they're going to feel about your face. And that's a decision you're making. It's not the truth. Maybe you're not wrong, but it's not the truth. You don't actually have any evidence to back that up. Being a woman in the world, in particular in your 20s, who hasn't had people—and you didn't mention whether you date women or men, but I'm going to make the assumption here that you date dudes. Having relationships with men where men don't want to commit or get serious is not evidence of anything about your face, your body, or your personality. You want to talk about the patriarchy? Just evidence of, you know, men.

Lots of people—gay, straight, other—are in long-term relationships in their 20s. Lots of people aren't. And the way that you can tell who's who is not who has a cute face. It's not who has a hot bod. It's not who's nice. It's lots of other things. It's all the things. It's a weird fucking cocktail of things. But it is not your face. So the amount of emphasis that you have placed on the way that your face looks, according to you, is really what I would characterize as emotional, first and foremost. And I think that this is an important thing for me to say because there's a way that you're holding it as kind of factual, and it's not.

Now, I'm going to get into the astrology of why you feel this way in a minute, and there's a lot to say about why you feel this way astrologically. But I need to say ugly is not bad. Ugly is not unlovable. Ugly people are not bad people, and truth be told, pretty people are not good people. No, they're not. And so whatever value judgments you are placing on ugliness and prettiness are handed to you by society, a.k.a. millions or billions of people, even. But it's not the truth. There's lots of things that societies across time and cultures have upheld that are not true, and this is one of them.

Having a pretty face doesn't mean you're happy. Having a pretty face doesn't mean you're adored. Having a pretty face doesn't mean you're loved. It doesn't mean any of that. All it means is that you have a pretty face. That's literally all it means. And you know what? I want a pretty face. I'm not mad at you for wanting a pretty face. Everybody wants a pretty face. But, you know, I was just sitting—I'm going to do a little personal share here. I was sitting the other day with my partner, and he said to me what he thought his worst characteristic was, and it was the part of his face that I love the most.

So am I right it's his best feature, or is he right it's the ugliest part of his face? It doesn't matter. He's right that he thinks it's ugly. I'm right that I think it's hot. Beauty is subjective. Now, you could easily make the argument that beauty is not subjective, that there is a symmetry that we are sold because apparently people really like it. But honestly, if we were bombarded with the same volume of images of the complete opposite of the current beauty standards for women and we were told the opposite was the most beautiful thing you could be, it wouldn't take very long for us to agree. It just wouldn't, because by and large, beauty standards are standards, and standards are somewhat arbitrary. You know what I'm saying?

I personally have a boner for scars. Other people don't like scars. I've had scars on my body and been like, "Ew, gross scar." But I see a scar on someone else; I'm like, "Hello. What's your name?" Whether or not you are in a successful relationship, whether or not you have love in your life, has nothing to do with whether or not you are conventionally pretty in the face, whether or not you have a conventionally hot bod.

In your birth chart, you have a lot of planets in the first house. You've got a North Node Uranus/Neptune conjunction in Capricorn. What this indicates is that your sense of self, your conception of yourself, is really different than how other people see you. Now, that doesn't mean you're prettier than people think you are or you're uglier than people think you are. It just means it's different.

Again, take this pretty/ugly out of your damn head. Take it out of your head. With Uranus in the first house, there may be something about you that is striking or unique or different either in your body or in your face. The way that Neptune in the first house functions is essentially that people project onto you. They see a little bit of what they want to see. And this often coincides with people thinking that you're adorable and harmless and chill.

Now, what contradicts that is that you also have a Saturn/Moon conjunction in the first house. Now, the Saturn/Moon conjunction in the first house can make you look—and I should pull back and say the reason why I'm focusing on this is because the planets that we have in the first house, if we have planets in the first house, show up on our face. They show up right on the surface of how we look. And the Saturn/Moon conjunction generally isn't very soft-looking. It tends to give us pronounced bone structure, or it tends to give us kind of a sharpness to our features, not exactly a soft thing. So you've got a couple planets in Capricorn, which is not the softest look in town, and then you've got Saturn in the first house, which again, not the softest look in town.

Now, this is mitigated by the fact that you have Neptune in there, so people probably see you really different than you see you. You probably photograph really different than what you see in the mirror. Uranus in the first house does not always coincide with a very symmetrical face. Now, any of these things you might think are ugly. Any of these things you might think are gorgeous. It's a value judgment that you're placing upon your damn face, your sweet little face, which is attached to your body, and your body which is a part, an extension, of your soul. Don't be so judgy.

But okay. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. So, in your birth chart, you have a Saturn/Moon conjunction that is opposite Chiron, and all three of those planets form a T-square to the planet Venus, which is the highest planet in your birth chart. And so, when you say that you want to be perceived as beautiful, you want to be adored and loved, yeah, you really, really mean it. It is really driving for you.

Venus, unfortunately, when it's the focal planet of a T-square, can make us feel like the only way to get our needs met and the only way to be of value is through the surface of things, the beauty that we do or don't have, how easy we are to get along with, how accommodating or compromising we are for others. This can also be expressed around how much money you have and are willing to share with others.

Here's the annoying thing. You've got to accept your face. Now, like you said, you could get a surgery. You could put on makeup. You can do all kinds of things, but it's not going to change how you feel, not long term, because all of our faces change over the course of time. Your nose will change shape over the course of your adult life. Your body will change shape over the course of your adult life. Faces and bodies change. When we are overly identified with the way we look, what happens is we are in a state of upset. We're often in a state of turmoil because we don't stay the same, and beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. And the prettiest girl will compare herself to the girl she thinks is prettier than her.

It doesn't matter is what I'm trying to say. You refer to having a hot bod, and you kind of say it like, "Yeah, people hook up with me because I have a good body." You don't really care. It doesn't really mean anything to you. Honestly, that's because it doesn't really matter. It doesn't get you happiness. It doesn't get you love, just like the face wouldn't. Do you see what I'm saying?

So here's my advice to you, my dear. I want you to start looking on whatever social media platform you spend time on. Ideally, it will be a visual one because my homework for you is visual. I want you to start following women who look like you. I want you to start following women who look like you and to look for the beauty in them. I also want you to start following women who are not conventionally beautiful in the face, and I want you to start looking for what is beautiful in them because the truth of the matter is I'm not going to tell you that you're pretty. First of all, I can't see you. I don't know what you look like. But second of all, not everybody's pretty, and that's okay.

I'm with you. I don't like being placated. I don't like being told that my hair looks good when it in fact looks like shit. I'm with you. But the reality is if you're not going to be conventionally beautiful, be interesting. Be interesting, my dear. And I look at your chart, and I think you're fucking fascinating. You're weird, you're complicated, and you're very serious about yourself. Cultivate what's interesting about you. You don't have to be conventionally beautiful. You don't have to be conventional at all.

What is truly and authentically beautiful in faces and bodies and in style is embodiment, self-acceptance. Now, listen. I'm not going to convince anyone who's booking models of that. No, I'm not. But for regular human people walking around town trying to get loved, trying to learn how to love themselves, that's the fucking magic. At the end of the day, you have to decide that you're willing to accept yourself even if other people don't think you're pretty, even if you look at some pictures of yourself or look in the mirror sometimes and don't think you're pretty, because if you're not pretty, that doesn't mean you're not loved. It doesn't mean anything other than maybe you're not pretty. That's it. That's all. That's all it means.

The key here is self-acceptance. And when you ask me how, how do you accept yourself, it's just practice. It's just being like, "Yep, here it is." When your brain and your feelings start to fall off a cliff with value judgments about whatever part of your face you're obsessing on, pull back. Redirect your thinking because it actually really doesn't matter. Now, listen. A lot of people listening might be like, "That's not true. It fucking matters." Sure. Yeah. It matters as much as you say it does. It matters as much as you place value on it.

But we are not here to be preserved, pretty 26-year-olds forever. That's not what life is. That's not what bodies are. We are here to learn how to love ourselves, to place value on things proportionate to the value that they hold to us. Is the way you look actually the most important thing to you? Is it worth torturing yourself? Is it worth losing all this energy? I suppose it takes some bravery to embrace being interesting over being conventionally pretty as a girl. But you are very brave. You are incredibly brave.

You just haven't given yourself permission to be brave in public. You haven't given yourself permission to be loved and liked and desired and adored for who you actually are instead of the way you look. But trust me. That absolutely can happen. Having amazing sex, having a happy life, having love and successful partnerships—it isn't about your body, and it isn't about your face. It's about who you are. It's about how you are with yourself and how you are with others. It's your values, it's your actions, it's your intentions, and it's your heart that is the embodiment of your value, not the way you look.

Friends, while we're safely home quarantining, parents trapped in immigrant detention centers have been given a choice by ICE: indefinite separation from their children or prolonged detention alongside them during a pandemic. We saw this happen two years ago during the family separation crisis. We cannot go back to that. Not now. Not ever. This administration cannot use COVID as an excuse to separate children from their mothers and fathers. That's why we are demanding DHS, or the Department of Homeland Security, release each and every one of these families to safety together and now. Don't look away. Stand with families and stand with RAICES.  Help get the word out. Join the Families For Families campaign on social media. That’s #families4families campaign on social media. Visit raices.org/families4families for more information. Find the link in show notes.

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My sweet loves, let's talk some astrology. This week, we're looking at May 24th through the 30th of 2020, and honestly, there's not a lot going on astrologically. I'm really happy to tell you that. You know why? Because you don't want to hear that there's something happening all the livelong day, do you? When there is nothing pressing is a beautiful moment to really check in with yourself.

I want to give you the homework this week to look at where you have accomplished something, and try to really be with it. Try to actually take it in. Maybe pat yourself on the back. Maybe it's time to find some roses and smell them, which may be hard to do if you're wearing a mask, which you should be. But it's a metaphor, but also a nice thing to do. I want to really encourage you to spend some time really appreciating yourself, your community, whatever it is that makes sense, because we're only a couple months into this global pandemic, and it's hard.

I get lots of emails from you guys being like, "Actually, it's not hard for me at all. It's actually super easy and chill and lovely." And that's cool. That's great. If you're one of those people, I want to encourage you to challenge yourself to be of service, to offer something to someone who actually wants or needs it. And part of giving a gift is making sure that the recipient of that gift wants to receive it from you. So if you are a gift giver, if you're somebody who's just thriving right now, I want to encourage you to listen as much as I'm encouraging you to reach out and share some of your joyfulness, your resources, your whatever.

This is just a great time—if you got something to give, give it. And if you have been striving really hard, working hard, having a hard time, a bad time, or just a busy time and a lot of time, take time to appreciate it. Take time to appreciate how far you've come, whatever you've gotten done, and I will remind you that small progress adds up over time. You don't need to know what's coming next. It doesn't need to be leaps and bounds. You certainly don't need to be comparing yourself to other people or to where you wish you were or where you thought you'd be right now.

So just be really present with where you're at. And whatever you got through today, you know what? It's wonderful. If you are going to be stuck in this fucking life, it's wonderful to be able to value and appreciate where you're at, what you've got, and how far you've come, even if it's not where you want it to be. Find ways of being grateful and aligned with the abundance you are cultivating or you have.

So, spiel aside, let's get into the astrology. On the 24th, we have an exact Mars sextile to Uranus. Now, Mars sextile to Uranus is a really energizing transit. Mars is assertion, ambition, and energy. It's where we fornicate and where we fight from. And Uranus is freedom and autonomy. When these two planets join forces in a harmonious way, what we have is the potential for growth and expansion. We have the potential for coming up with new solutions, trying new things, coming at things from a new angle. This is a really energizing and a lovely transit, IMO. So you're going to get to enjoy that for a couple of days. You'll feel it leading up to the 24th—it's exact on the 24th—and then for a few days after.

This particular transit is a really good one to get back into some form of physical activity. So I encourage you, if you enjoy exercising but you haven't been centering it, to get back on the pony and just giddy-up on there. If you hate exercise, if you're anything like me, maybe you'll do it anyways. Maybe you'll just have a dance party in your house. Dance party for one? Yes, thank you, I shall. Something like that. Find ways of engaging with your body that are life-affirming and energizing. Wherever your body's at, whatever your interest and skill level is, start from there. Shake it out. See what happens.

One more thing I'll say about this particular transit is that if you have been trying to mobilize on a project, this energy is really supportive for doing exactly that. You can move projects along, innovate projects, any of that kind of good stuff. You want to think in terms of forward momentum, in particular in innovative ways.

Okay. Okay. Then, for the rest of the week, the 25th, '6th, '7th, we've got, really, honestly, just Lunar transits, transits from the Moon to other planets. Now, you'll notice that I almost never talk about those, and the reason why is because they last an hour, a couple hours. They're real quick. They're your moods. And in terms of me reporting on Moon transits, I mean, we would be here all day, see, all day. You don't have time for that. But if you're really interested in astrology, in particular using astrology as a tool for self-care and self-betterment, studying the movement of the Moon and the transits that the Moon is making to your birth chart as well as the transits that the Moon is making to the planets in the sky, that's a really accessible way of learning about astrology.

Now, a lot of you may be thinking, "But wait, Jessica. How do I do that?" Well, if you're looking for transits from the Moon to planets in the sky, there are calendars you can buy that have that kind of thing drawn out for you. If you're looking for transits from the Moon to planets in your birth chart, you can either (a) learn astrology and figure it out yourself—and I say that because I hope you do because it is F-U-N—also hard, but also fun and useful. But also, you can get astrology programs or astrologers to do that kind of math for you so that you can start to track that stuff.

Now, on the 28th, the planet Mercury moves into Cancer. I don't want to freak you out, but on June 17th, it goes Retrograde in the sign of Cancer. So this movement of Mercury into Cancer, I mean, it's not the sharpest of all the transits from Mercury to Cancer. It can be a time where we get really caught up in sentimentality. The thing that I've mentioned on the podcast before is that the crab that signifies Cancer, it often—it comes at things sideways, right?

So there's a way that when Mercury, the planet of communication, of listening, and of speaking—when it transits through the sign of Cancer, it can kind of come at things sideways and not always terribly directly, or it can get real attached to certain ideas and, of course, in particular, ideas that spark feeling. And so you want to make sure that you are being clean and clear in how you communicate and really listening to what people are saying.

This transit will last quite a while because whenever a planet retrogrades through a zodiac sign, that means that its tenancy in that sign is elongated because it's not just moving forward step 1, step 2, step 3; it then comes backwards, and then whenever the Retrograde is over, it comes forward again. So it just spends more time in a sign.

So you really want to pay attention to what shifts you notice right here on the 28th and at the start of June, and know that we're very quickly into the transit of Mercury going to be in the Retroshade. We're going to be in the Retrograde Shade period. It's not the Retrograde, but it's not free and clear either.

Now, that's it. That was it. Isn't that quick? It's quicker than I wanted it to be. You know I like to just hang out with you and talk to you, but sometimes the planets—they're just like, "Hey, Jessica. Tap out. Take a break. Stop talking about astrology so goddamn much." But you know I won't do that, right? You know I can't do that. So I'm going to tell you a couple more things.

The first one is, hey, I'm doing lots of live events. I just am. If you missed me on the weekend of the 22nd speaking at NORWAC, don't worry about it. I'm going to have those talks uploaded to my website before too long. You can purchase them from me there. I'm also going to be doing an event that I'm really excited about, which is am AMA. I love doing these AMAs because I get to just answer your questions and speak directly to what you want me to speak to. That's on May 30th, and all proceeds from that event go to National Bail Out and the Sovereign Bodies Institute. I encourage you to learn more about those organizations, and if you don't want to come to the AMA, just give them money anyways.

Also, on June 1st, I'm doing an event I'm really excited about. It's called Plants and Planets with Rachel of Fat and the Moon, and we're going to be discussing plant allies in relationship to astrological movements. In particular, I'm going to be focusing on the planet Saturn and its move through Aquarius, and Rachel is going to talk about the three plants that have our back through this process. I'm very excited. It's going to be very alchemical. Hopefully you will meet me there. Link will be on my website shortly.

If you want to get the jump on the month ahead, become a patron on Patreon because on June 1st, I will be dropping a month-ahead horoscope where I detail all of the major transits of June. And there's some stuff coming up. "Are we entering into Eclipse season?" you may be wondering. Yes. Yes, we are entering into Eclipse season. "Will it be chill?" you may be asking yourself. No. Eclipses are never chill.

Thank you for joining me for another week of Ghost of a Podcast. Send me questions about yourself, about astrology, psychic stuff, whatever, at ghostofapodcast.com. And you know what? Every damn day—every damn day—you have a chance to choose your best path. Every damn day, you have the chance to choose centering the things you value. You have the chance to make small or large changes that over the course of time add up to you being a person that you like, respect, enjoy, and love. And maybe you're already there. Hey. Good on you. And maybe you really struggle. Either way, every day offers an opportunity to accept yourself where you are, challenge yourself to greater embodiment of your positive potential, and when you can't do that, to be kind to yourself in your struggle.

That's just life. It's not always easy. But since you're here, you might as well make the best of it. Talk to you next week, Ghost babies.