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.

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For this week's episode, I had the total pleasure of giving a reading to writer and tarot reader Rashunda Tramble. I hope you enjoy.

Rashunda: I would like to talk about or ask if there is anything in my chart that would help me deal with this overall life guilt that I have for everything. And what I mean by that is, for example, if you went to buy me a bunch of flowers or something like that and you gave me the flowers, I would have a hard time accepting the flowers. I wouldn't even think about, "Oh, Jessica gave me flowers." I would say, "Oh my God. She went to get the flowers. She took time out to go buy them. She paid for them with her own money."

It's like my default setting is guilt. And what really made my guilt switch just flip like mad was my mom passed in 2018, and she passed the day after my birthday. And a lot of folks were saying—and I don't know if it's true or not, but a lot of folks were saying, "You know, she hung on because of you." And it was like a love-type thing for her to do that. And, of course, with me and my guilt gene or whatever it is, I took it so hard because I was thinking, "Mom hung on because of me." If this is true, then it just made me feel so—it was like I wrapped myself in guilt, even if on her end it was an act of love, the fact that she went through this pain, went through this suffering—she had breast cancer that had metastasized to her brain. And she hung on for like two or three more weeks before she passed just to make it to my birthday. And that just—it crushed me.

I guess my question is, what is it in my chart that has me hanging on to guilt? I hang everything on this guilt hook, and it is hard for me to accept the kindness of people because of guilt.

Jessica: So there's two ways I want to approach this. One is astrological, looking at, okay, so why are you tortured by guilt, or why do you torture yourself with guilt—whichever we want to look at it as. And then, if this feels right for you to do, we can check in with your mom.

Rashunda: Okay. Let's see. I mean, I'll just warn you Mom is the type—she'd say, "Look, leave me alone. I don't have time for you all."

Jessica: Yeah. That's fair. That's fair.

Rashunda: Okay.

Jessica: I look at your chart—of course, I heard your question—and the first thing I looked for is Saturn because Saturn governs guilt. It's responsibility and guilt. And I'm going to unpack the Saturn principle for you in a moment, but before I do, I'm going to sneak-attack you by asking you what may seem unrelated, but I promise it's related.

Rashunda: Okay.

Jessica: Do you get angry out loud to people when they piss you off?

Rashunda: Oh, why did you ask me that?

Jessica: Because I know what I'm doing.

Rashunda: Okay. It takes a lot for me to show it. I do get angry, but I swallow it.

Jessica: Yep.

Rashunda: And I hold it, I hold it, I hold it in. I try to brush it off, but I keep it in, and it takes a lot for me to blow up. It doesn't mean that I'm not angry; it's just that it takes a lot for me to show it.

Jessica: To show it. Yep. So we're going to start with that, actually, because—

Rashunda: Uh-oh. Okay.

Jessica: Yeah. Sorry. When I look at your chart, Saturn is the obvious culprit for guilt, always, always. And we'll talk about the Saturn stuff, but it's not enough to have the level of guilt at the compulsion rate that you experience it, and the way you've described guilt is visceral. It sounds like it consumes you on a body level. It's mental, it's emotional, but it also sounds kind of physical. I get this sense, although you didn't say it, that something in you recoils when you feel guilt. Is that correct?

Rashunda: Yes. Yeah. I go in. Something goes—yeah. Yeah. I do.

Jessica: It's that recoiling. And that is where I look for Mars, and it's where I look for sixth-house planets. So, in Campanus houses, you've got a Mars/Chiron conjunction in the sixth house, right in the middle of the sixth house. And it's opposed by Uranus. And so what this means is a lot of things. One is you're very irritable. People bug you all the damn time.

Rashunda: Yes.

Jessica: Very, very irritable. And I want to just say I have no value judgment on that. When we have Uranus oppositions, squares, or conjunctions to our personal planets, we're irritable, especially when it's Mars because Mars is anger, and Uranus is your nervous system. So it's just like, "Oh, why'd they do that? Oh, that's annoying." It's just an annoying aspect.

You also have a Sun/Venus conjunction, so your identity is, "I'm easygoing. I'm okay with things. I'm not high maintenance. Everything's fine." But that Mars in Aries conjunct Chiron opposite Uranus is like, "Except for when I want to murder you." However—

Rashunda: (laughter) Well, yeah. Okay.

Jessica: And this is the thing. You don't act on it. And so this makes me want to ask about your dad. Were you raised with your father around?

Rashunda: Yes, both my parents. Yeah.

Jessica: And was he raised in a violent household?

Rashunda: I am not sure. I don't know that much about the household my dad was raised in. I do know that his mom died early in childbirth, and so he was sent to live with his grandmother.

Jessica: I see. Okay.

Rashunda: But I don't know that much.

Jessica: Okay. And your mother was not, eh?

Rashunda: She was—I don't know that much about my folks' childhoods.

Jessica: Interesting. Okay.

Rashunda: That's the thing. Yeah. I don't know—not that much, no. No.

Jessica: Interesting. So, when I look at your birth chart, it is possible it's your mom. I'm  not sure which parent I'm describing. My instinct, it's your dad, but it could be either parent. And when you tell me your father's mother passed in childbirth and that he had to leave the family and be raised by a grandparent, that kind of matches this energy of you were raised by someone who believed this early, even if they didn't cognitively believe, that if they were too much, they would be abandoned.

And so they learned to repress anger and to sublimate anger. It got sublimated into the body, and that may have expressed itself through health issues; it may have expressed itself through being really dissociated or shut down. Was that your dad?

Rashunda: My dad—yeah. He had issues—I mean, I'm not going to put his business out or whatever.

Jessica: Sure.

Rashunda: But we have a lot in common because he held in a lot of anger, but then when he would pop off, he would pop off. I have more in common with my dad than my mom in terms of that, I believe.

Jessica: Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, that part of you comes from your dad, and then the part of you that desires for everything to be fine and for you to be totally pleasant and for everything to be okay, your mom. But it's all you at this stage, right? And to free yourself of the grips of guilt—because, listen, is there a reason to feel guilty about everything? Sure. I'm never going to argue that. Sure. You want to feel guilty about flowers? There's a lot of great reasons to feel guilty about flowers. I'm with you.

There is the part of it where it's like, "Oh, I feel bad for workers' conditions or environmental impact," or, "I can feel empathy and appreciation for my friend going out of their way." Those things, okay. I'm cool with that. But what you're talking about is a compulsion that comes from inside your body that is inhibiting your ability to receive, and it's also breaking your heart around stuff with your mom.

But the thing about it inhibiting your ability to receive, from my perspective astrologically, this is about anger because if you were allowed—and you're the only one who can give you permission for this. But if you were allowed to be angry—and I mean in small things, not just big things. Big things, too, but in small things. If you were allowed to have that experience in your body and to express it, then it would be released instead of built up.

And from my perspective, when anger and rage get sublimated over time, what happens is we feel demoralized, depressive, exhausted, guilty. This demoralization is really the foundation emotion, and it can express itself in lots of different ways. This piece is so hard to deal with. It's so hard to deal with. It's kind of like we'll talk about guilt proper, but this is the piece that if you do all the best workshops on how to deal with guilt, if you don't also deal with anger, I fear for you that you're not going to make much progress because your body is in a state of, "If it's too intense, we push it down. If it's too much, we push it down."

That creates this problem for you, and this problem is, whether it's too intense good or too intense bad, it's just like it overloads your system and it shuts it down. Does this make sense?

Rashunda: It makes so much sense. It does. I mean, especially one thing that you made me think about is when I divorced my first husband—there was a lot of stuff going on when we were divorcing, but I remember one friend—she actually screamed at me, and she said, "Why aren't you angry about what this guy is—why aren't you angry?" And I remember just sitting there and saying, "You know what? I don't even know how to get angry." And she screamed for me. She said, "I'm going to be angry for you," because I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. And when you talk about that, I remember my friend just staring at me and like, "What is wrong with you?"

Jessica: Yeah, in disbelief. So I'm going to give you ideas about what you can do to access your anger. But I want to say that for you, if you start to access your irritation and your anger, kind of like they're connected, I imagine that you'll feel tired, guilty, exhausted, demoralized, sad, and all of those emotions are emotions that you are more comfortable feeling than anger and irritation. And so I would encourage you to see if you can be present with those emotions instead of moving away from them, fixing them, or kind of collapsing into them, because that'll be more effective.

So here's the bits of homework I would give you to work on this. One, do you remember—I don't know if this was in your community at the time, but in the 1990s, primal scream therapy was all the rage in San Francisco where I lived.

Rashunda: Yes. Yes.

Jessica: Okay. Did you ever do it?

Rashunda: No.

Jessica: No. I mean, I would imagine not. Okay.

Rashunda: Why would I? No. No.

Jessica: No. Of course not. If you're not getting angry at your ex-husband, you're not screaming into a pillow. But that's a bit of homework. I would say—

Rashunda: Oh my gosh.

Jessica: —for 30 seconds, scream as aggressively and crazily as you can into a pillow.

Rashunda: Oh my gosh. You sound like my husband.

Jessica: I like your husband, then.

Rashunda: He has said the exact same thing. He has suggested that I go to a forest and scream.

Jessica: Yeah. Sure. If you want to go to a forest, great. There's a lot of reasons why being in nature would be good for you. However, I'm less excited about encouraging you to have to get in the car to go to a place, and then someone could show up. You like a controlled environment is what it looks like.

Rashunda: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And so, if you want to do the forest, do the forest. But there's always a pillow in a room.

Rashunda: Okay.

Jessica: And that's a little more controlled. And then if you don't feel safe in your body, if you just feel like taking a nap, there you are. You're in bed. You're home. You're safe. Another thing—now, I don't know if they have these where you are. Have you ever heard of a smash room or a break room?

Rashunda: I think I know what you're talking about.

Jessica: Okay. So I'm going to break it down, though.

Rashunda: Okay. Yeah.

Jessica: So, because Uranus is involved—Uranus likes to break shit. So, again, if we were hearkening back to the '90s, I would tell you to get a television. It's much harder to get a TV these days that's satisfying to break. I would tell you to get—and I am telling you to do this, some version of this. Cover yourself in protective gear, glasses—cover your hair. Cover your face. You know what I mean? Wear clothes without pockets. And then break things.

If you have a basement or a garage, throw porcelain against the wall. Be safe. You could hurt yourself this way, so don't do anything dangerous. If you had a baseball bat and a TV, I'd be really happy for you, but an old-school TV, not a flat-screen TV. That's not satisfying to break. I would encourage you to break things through the force of your body. Uranus opposition to Mars loves it.

Rashunda: Wow. Wow. Okay.

Jessica: I know these are not things that you will be enthusiastic about.

Rashunda: It is so not me.

Jessica: Yes. Correct. Correct.

Rashunda: Okay. All right.

Jessica: If it was super you, it wouldn't be good homework to unlock the thing that you're repressing, though. Right? This is the annoying part. Another thing that could work—and I am giving them to you in order of priority. Another thing that could work is learning some form of combat, so taking a karate class, a boxing class, something like that. If you're going to do boxing, I would say kickboxing is a good direction for you. Do you have hyperextension in your hips?

Rashunda: No. Actually, my hips are really tight.

Jessica: They're tight. Okay. Astrologically, that Uranus/Mars opposition can either create a hyperextension there or a real tightness there. Again, you have literally clamped down on this part of your chart, and so it's not shocking to me that your hips are tight. Don't do kickboxing if your hips are tight. I wouldn't start that way. But the point is I want to encourage you to make some fucking noise and kick some ass and to do it in ways that hurts no one and nothing. I mean, technically, it would hurt plates or TVs, but they're fine to hurt, right?

The thing that this natal aspect articulates is that you have a fear of if you let your agitation, if you let your anger up inside of your body, it'll overtake you.

Rashunda: And the reason for that is, again, just to—I don't want to put everybody's business in the street, but I did not see people dealing with anger in a good way or a suitable way as I was growing up, particular situations in the home or whatever. And, to be transparent, even in therapy, my therapist talked about it: "You don't get angry because you haven't seen—you need examples of healthy, holy anger."

Jessica: Yeah. So if I was to give you another piece of homework for seeking examples of healthy, holy anger, I would encourage you to learn from animals, wild animals, instead of from humans because—and I'm a cat person, so bear with me as I get catty. There is a way that cats—whether they're lions or domesticated cats, they will fight. They will roll and destroy a thing or a person or whatever it is, and then they're done. And then they'll be chill with that thing or person. I don't know if you've ever had a cat. Animals are good at this.

Rashunda: Yeah, we have a cat.

Jessica: Okay. Good. So you've seen this.

Rashunda: I've seen it. Yeah.

Jessica: One minute they're snuggling you, and the next minute they're mad.

Rashunda: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: What happens to so many of us humans is we have adrenaline coursing through our systems, and we are furious or agitated or we're terrified. And we internalize, internalize, internalize. We never use our bodies as a vehicle for releasing it like animals do. They shake it off. Literally, they shake it off. They do something with their bodies to release that adrenaline. We let that stuff accumulate in our systems without release.

And so I think that the way your chart is wired, you're actually really good at taking lessons in inspiration from multiple sources. It doesn't always have to be like, "Read a book on anger or boundaries." You can do this just by watching animals and be like, "Okay. I can actually get how this would feel," because the stuff with anger for you, it's not analytic. You understand. You get it. It's not a cerebral problem.

It's actually in your body. And, again, this is why I think animals modeling healthy anger could be really just something that unlocks things for you because you can talk about anger till you're blue in the face; it's really about the body for you. It's about practicing being in that feeling and cultivating trust with yourself that you can do it in a healthy way or in a nondestructive way.

One other thing I'll say about this is I would encourage you to seek models of behavior that are human around irritability. And do you have friends that are irritable?

Rashunda: They're irritable or they irritate me?

Jessica: No, no, no. I know everybody irritates you sometimes because I'm looking at your chart.

Rashunda: Okay.

Jessica: And I respect that. But I mean are your friends irritable? Are they people who they themselves are irritable?

Rashunda: Not too many.

Jessica: Okay. So I'm going to give you the homework to watch TV or movies that have characters where women are irritable and they're not bad guys, and they're not mean, and they're not shitty; they're just people who happen to get irritated—so you can see modeled behavior around different ways of being with your irritability, because I'm not encouraging you to all of a sudden run around town and not have a Venus/Sun conjunction. In other words, I'm not encouraging you to start snapping at everyone.

But it's about having more choices, having the capacity to experience more of these emotions, but also, it will have the sideways benefit of helping you to not feel as guilty because I think some of that guilt is actually anger and frustration that's leaking into unexpected places. Does that make sense?

Rashunda: I see what you mean. Yeah. It's like a weird type of mission creep, I guess you could say.

Jessica: Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's it. The problem with anger is that it is an emotion that requires embodied experience and expression. And many people don't have the capacity or the willingness to experience it, and so it gets sublimated in these really weird ways. And, honestly, guilt is not an unusual one. The fact that it's guilt for you is made more intense by the fact that—now let's talk about Saturn. You've got Saturn opposite Jupiter, and both of those planets form a T-square to the Moon.

So, "Guilty, and I'm sure if I figure it out, I will be able to fix it." That's Jupiter and Saturn for you, just smooshing your Moon, which is a torture approach of, "I feel guilty, but I should be able to fix this. I should be able to figure it out." And the thing that's so difficult about this is you have Saturn in the seventh house. So one of the ways that you function in your intimate relationships—so whether it's a friendship, a coworker, a partner—is by being responsible. You show up, you show up, you show up, you show up. When things go sideways, there's that Saturnian thing of, "It's my fault. It's my responsibility. How do I handle it?"

Rashunda: Oh gosh. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. But on top of it, because you have Saturn opposite Jupiter, Jupiter in the first house that you have, that placement is like, "I can fix anything." It's not hubris. It's this resiliency. It's this optimism, like, "I should be able to do this. Let me think on it. Let me figure it out." The pros and cons of this—there's so many wonderful things about this, but the con is you can receive this gift—let's say flowers, right? And you might know on some level, "Okay. This is a gift, and I'm supposed to receive gifts in the spirit in which they were intended."

But there is this part of you that's like, "But am I worthy of this gift? Does it make sense that I got this gift? Where do I place these mixed feelings?" And when you try to stuff them somewhere, you've got this overfilled cup from this Mars/Uranus opposition, and so it goes to an uncomfortable emotion really quickly. And it doesn't look like it's 100 percent of the time, but it looks like it's always there. Is that the case, or is it 100 percent of the time?

Rashunda: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's always there. It's like an underground river or something. That's what it is.

Jessica: Yeah. That makes perfect sense to me. And if you try to fix this through your mind—and, to be fair, you're triple air. You've got Sun and Moon in Aquarius. You've got a Libra Rising. So you want to figure things out mentally. That makes sense to you, like, "If I figure it out, I can work on it. If I can work on it, then I can take responsibility for it, and I won't have to feel this way anymore." But it's that logic that keeps you in this problem a little bit because this is not a logical complex within you. It's an emotional one, and it's a body-based one. What happens with a Saturn/Moon square is we have a predisposition to guilt. What happens with a Saturn in the seventh house? Predisposition to guilt.

The good side of this aspect and these placements is that it inclines you to be good at monogamy. It inclines you to be good at long-term relationships. If somebody comes to you and is like, "You hurt my feelings," you're just like, "Let me talk to you about it. Let me take responsibility. How can I learn?" It gives you the willingness to do the work in relationships.

Because of Saturn but also because of Jupiter's involvement, you don't have a switch-off valve when it's not your moment to take responsibility. Jupiter's like, "More, more, more, more, more." And Saturn is just like, "More guilt, more responsibility? Okay." And so the trick here, or the tool, is Lunar, not Mercurial. So it's the feelings and not the mind because it's a T-square to the Moon.

What this looks like is you need space and time alone to sit with feelings and practice for sitting with feelings. Do you have a practice like that, of just really sitting with your emotions?

Rashunda: Not really with my emotions. I mean, of course, I journal all the time. I write everything out, but it's very analytical in my journal. I will say that. But in terms of sitting with my emotions to whatever, no. I'll journal them out and just kind of think on through.

Jessica: Yeah. I mean, sure. That makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, a T-square to the Moon requires doing emotional work. It's my least favorite of all the work because it's so hard, and it becomes more demanding with time. So what I would recommend is—do you meditate?

Rashunda: I do sometimes. I do a walking meditation. It is hard for me to sit and meditate. But when I'm walking, I'll do in-breath, out-breath. I'll do it that way.

Jessica: Okay.

Rashunda: But I have to have some type of movement.

Jessica: Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. So I'm going to recommend that you set an alarm on your phone, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, whatever you can tolerate. If you set an alarm for 30 seconds and you can only do 15 seconds, start at 15 seconds. Doesn't matter. But what I want to encourage you to do is sit someplace really comfortable with feet on floor, or sit on the floor or ground. And notice what you feel emotionally, and notice where it is in your body, and breathe into it and stay with it. And that's the whole thing.

If you made this a practice—do it once a day, once every other day—what I would encourage you to do is expand your ability to do it in terms of time. And this will change you. It will be really uncomfortable. What the point of this is is to have the habit built up, and that's it. It's just to have the habit built up. Having all that air in you, what it inclines you to do is to feel something and then go straight to your mind.

Rashunda: I'm very Spock-ish.

Jessica: Spock-ish. I like that as an adjective. Also, I respect that you also have Mercury in Capricorn, which I think of as a Spock-ish aspect. I hadn't called it that before, but I'm going to stick with it. Also, three planets in Aquarius. This makes sense. The analytical part of your nature is strong and healthy, and we don't want to mess with it. There's nothing wrong with it. It's about adding tools to your tool kit so when you need them, you don't have to start from scratch to use them.

And that kind of brings us into talking about what happened with your mum. And you were close with her, right?

Rashunda: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Having that Sun/Venus conjunction—and it's not just a Sun/Venus conjunction. It's a Sun/Venus conjunction, and it has a beautiful trine to the Ascendant. You were a wanted child. You were a beloved and wanted child. So, whether or not that means your relationship with your parents were always easy, that's a different story. But you were a wanted and beloved child, and that's just—I don't know. I always think that's so nice to see in a chart.

But seeing someone you love get sick and suffer and not being able to help, really, it is an incredibly healthy and normal thing to be angry about that, like really healthy and normal—really, really normal. Most people become very depressed in that situation that you were in but also very angry. Anger is a part of bereavement. It's a part of grief. Again, this is part of how and why I started with anger for you when thinking about guilt and talking about guilt, because it's not fair. Cancer isn't fair. It's just not fair. The greatest injustice in what you've described to me is not that she waited for someone that she loves for two weeks, if that's what she did, but it's that she had to go through cancer. That's the injustice.

Rashunda: There was so much other stuff going on in terms of family relationships, dynamics, and whatever as my mom was passing that I was compartmentalizing every—like, "Okay, I gotta deal with this, gotta deal with this, gotta deal with this, and I have to deal with Mom."

Jessica: Yeah.

Rashunda: And so it's only now that we're talking about it that I can even think about being angry about Mom having cancer. I never even—

Jessica: Right.

Rashunda: —because I think, being analytical, it's like, "Okay. Here we go. You do this or that." I never gave myself permission to just ask why; why is that happening?

Jessica: Yeah. I think if you were to bring to your therapist, or to whatever self-care tools you have, a willingness to explore your anger around her getting sick and her suffering and the conditions of the end of her life and maybe what was happening in the family at the time when everybody should have been focused on her—if you let yourself get mad about that, I think your guilt will dissipate because I think some of your guilt is—it's you feeling overwhelming, terrible emotions that you're comfortable with feeling.

And everyone's different. The way I'm wired, I'd rather be angry than sad. We feel the feelings we're more comfortable with when we're overloaded and don't know what to do. It's not like you want to feel guilty. You don't want to feel guilty, but the animal part of your brain is it's better to feel bad about something than to feel mad about something.

Rashunda: Yes. That sounds absolutely correct because if I'm mad, then watch out. And I'd rather not be mad. The other part of the guilt is not being able to protect my mom. As she was passing and with everything that was going on, I wanted to have this protective bubble around her to shield her from all the family foolishness and fuckery that was going on. And I feel like I failed miserably at that. Who knows? Maybe she didn't realize what was going on; maybe she did. That makes me angry as I think about it, which is why I push it down, because I'm like, "No. I'm going to Spock my way through this."

Jessica: Yeah. So here's the problem with that. Spock was fictional, and you are very real.

Rashunda: I understand.

Jessica: It's very annoying. I know it's very annoying.

Rashunda: Yeah. I know. I know.

Jessica: This is the thing. And we're going to check in with your mum in a minute if you'd like.

Rashunda: Okay. Yeah.

Jessica: But this is the thing. This is the very thing because there is this part of you that says, "If I allow myself to experience my rage, I will burn something to the ground." You're scared you'll lose control and you'll destroy things without consideration. And you're a planner. You're very considerate. So that feels threatening for you. And this is why I give you the homework I've given you around controlled and safe—I mean, they're not going to feel especially safe, but they are technically safe things that don't harm other people, that don't involve other people.

I feel like I should say this even though you probably technically know this: your job as a daughter, your job as someone who loves your mom or anyone, is not to control the world around them. That's not your job. It's not even your right. What you can do is show up to the best of your ability, accepting that you will fuck up because you're a person. And that's kind of all we can do for the people we care about. I think you cognitively very much know that. You're a literalist. You're an analytic person. It's just, emotionally, it is easier for you to bear guilt than rage and confusion and guilt because I don't think the guilt's going to magically poof out of existence.

So, again, there is a part of you that's doing a very good job of protecting yourself from emotions you're scared of feeling. You're managing overwhelm. But when I look at your chart, what I can say is that you're safe. It looks like your life is very safe. Is that correct?

Rashunda: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. So you're in a very good time to deal with this. And you are currently going through a Pluto trine to Pluto. This is a beautiful transit. It's a two-year period. It's just begun. It is a time for doing deep investigative healing work on and with yourself. This is the moment. This is the moment, and it is not the moment for cognitive cerebral exploration. That's not your problem. This part of you, your mind, your ability to make sense of things and to process things and to take responsibility, is strong enough. It does not need to be a better bodybuilder.

It's this emotional and visceral part that needs integration to catch up with the rest of you. And when you achieve that, you will be a very different you. When I say very different, I just mean you'll have more peace and you'll put up with a little less shit. Sometimes people won't like that, and that won't be a—I mean, it won't feel great, but it won't be a problem because if you're going to have enemies, that's fine. Just don't be an enemy to yourself. And that's the problem with guilt, is it's kind of like you're fighting yourself.

Now, all of this said, are you okay with me checking in with your mum?

Rashunda: Yeah. Sure, if she's okay with it.

Jessica: Well, she'll only come through if she's okay with it. Okay. Hold on for just a second. There's a couple things happening here. One is your mom is far away, which is really good for her and a little not as good for us in this exact moment. My experience as a medium is, in death, as we evolve and become more whole, we resonate with our personalities a lot less. And for somebody like me, a medium, it's a lot harder to connect because she's less recognizable as a person, and she's more as a spirit.

Rashunda: The thing about my mom is that she was very much ready to go. Also, she even pegged when she would pass. She said, "I'm dying on a Monday," and she died on a Monday. So she was very much—

Jessica: She was ready.

Rashunda: She was ready.

Jessica: That makes sense because there is this way that—I mean, there's parts of her still here for me to check in with, but it's at a distance. Also, she's a little suspicious, I'm feeling—

Rashunda: Yeah.

Jessica: —which I respect. Yeah. So I'm getting, kind of, bullet points. And I don't know if that's how she communicated or if that's because she's far away. But I'll say one more thing before I give them to you, which is this: if you're trying to feel her energy, I would imagine you don't really feel anything because she's so far away. Her being far away—

Rashunda: No.

Jessica: —is what you want. Oh, sorry.

Rashunda: I feel my dad more than my mom in terms of energy. But I will say this. I feel my dad more, but in terms of my spiritual practice or whatever I do, or even readings or whatever, I feel my mom in some way. It's split.

Jessica: That makes perfect sense, maybe because your mom is in a truly energetic state, like she's not just in her personness anymore. She's more than that, which is the greatest possible thing. It is the greatest possible thing. It's best-case scenario. So your mom is going to be available when you're in your own state of wholeness and when you're tapping in, whereas—I mean, you have a lot of dead people around you, but your dad is one who's not like that exactly yet.

Rashunda: Yeah.

Jessica: And that's not good or bad. It's just really great that your mom is as she is. So, first and foremost, if there was an injury from your mom—which there really wasn't, but we can get into that in a moment—it's so outside of her, I mean, she just doesn't resonate with anything of it. To her, her death was—it's really interesting. I've talked to a lot of people who've died of cancer, and a lot of people are like, "It was hell"—just tell me how terrible it was. Your mom is showing me it was—did you say two weeks or three weeks in the bed at the end?

Rashunda: It was about two and a half, three weeks in the bed. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. That's what I'm seeing. It was two, three weeks, and she is showing me that it was really hard, but it was just her journey out of this life. She really sees it as a baptismal, actually. She sees it as this was like this cleansing thing, and it was her body—she's showing it to me as kind of like her body clenching up on itself.

Rashunda: Yes.

Jessica: And that is just how she's—it's almost like she sees it as her spirit shot—I'm getting an image of Chutes and Ladders—shot down through her physical body and out. And she was out. And she doesn't actually show me any attachment. She's showing me that she was aware of the foolishness. Did you call it foolishness? You used an F-word. Was that it?

Rashunda: Yes. Foolishness.

Jessica: Okay.

Rashunda: Foolishness. Yes.

Jessica: Yeah. She was aware of it—not all of it. She's more aware of it now. But she was more aware—like at the end, she was aware of a lot less. She was aware of it, but it wasn't her concern anymore.

Rashunda: Okay.

Jessica: That wasn't her concern. She knew her job at that time was to die and to die in the best way she could. That was her—hold on. Did your mom know you felt guilty?

Rashunda: Did she know during that time, or did she—

Jessica: No. Just as a person, did she know that you had this issue?

Rashunda: Oh God. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Okay.

Rashunda: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Jessica: Because what she is showing me of those last weeks is that you didn't make it about yourself at all. You didn't show up being like, "Oh my God. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." She's not showing me that. She's showing me that you showed up. You were physically there, eh?

Rashunda: Yes.

Jessica: Yeah.

Rashunda: I flew—yes, very much so.

Jessica: You were there. You showed her how much you cared about her through your actions, but also, you lamented and mourned the end of her life with her.

Rashunda: One thing I did say to her was—this was maybe the day before she passed. It was very funny. I said, "You know, Mom, I think one of the reasons—now I realize one of the reasons why we clashed quite a bit was we're just alike." And she kind of—I saw her smile a little bit. And I think we had our own way of going through things. Also, as she was passing, I drew artwork. I asked her—I said, "Hey, whatever it is you're seeing, I'll draw it." And so I just drew some images or whatever, just geometrical-type things that just came to me, and I actually sat by her bedside. And that was sort of my way of working through that and trying to communicate.

Jessica: That's really beautiful. I don't want this to sound cold, because it's not coming from a coldness at all. What she's saying is your guilt has nothing to do with her, and it's all about you.

Rashunda: That sounds like her.

Jessica: Okay. Okay.

Rashunda: I know that's her. She's the type, "I'm not taking that on. That's not me. That's you."

Jessica: That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's how I heard it. Yeah.

Rashunda: That sounds like her.

Jessica: So she doesn't take it very seriously. She's just like, "This has nothing to do with me, so you can go figure this out." And to me, given everything you've told me, this is the best-case scenario, for her to be like, "I don't even know why you would feel guilty, because it's not about me." So for whatever that's worth.

Rashunda: It's worth a lot. Yes.

Jessica: Good. Okay. Good. Honestly, if she was mad, if she was hurt, she wouldn't be anymore because of where she's at. But she wasn't mad, and she wasn't hurt. She was pissed off about a lot of things. Your mom did not have a problem with anger is what I'm seeing.

Rashunda: Absolutely not.

Jessica: No. No.

Rashunda: She showed it. Yes.

Jessica: She was pissed. She was pissed about a lot of things and a lot of people, but she doesn't care about most of it now. She said most of it. I think she enjoys being a little irritated. I think she enjoys being angry a little bit. It's just part of how she socializes and how she connects to people.

Rashunda: Yes. Yes.

Jessica: And so there are some people she still finds very annoying. Now, hold on for just one moment here. Yeah. Yeah. Your mom's fun.

Rashunda: Yes.

Jessica: She's fun. She's just ridiculous sometimes.

Rashunda: Great sense of humor.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Rashunda: Ridiculous, great sense of humor. Yes.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. She's fun.

Rashunda: Sometimes she was very inappropriate in public, but that's okay. We loved her anyway.

Jessica: Yeah. Yes. There's no way your mother wouldn't be inappropriate in public sometimes.

Rashunda: Yeah. I mean—

Jessica: She's just like—you know, she says what's on her mind. And she loves you so fiercely, so deeply. She always has, even when you bugged her, which you did. She did not have a problem with irritability. She loves you so much. It's like the intensity of her love for you is so strong. And you know that, right? Do you know this?

Rashunda: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Okay.

Rashunda: It took a while for me to realize it.

Jessica: Okay. Yeah. It's weird. It's like I want to say she's not always that warm, but also, she's incredibly warm. She's like the sun. It's very confusing. She's all the things.

Rashunda: It's very confusing.

Jessica: Yeah.

Rashunda: That's how she—yeah. That resonates. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. There's nothing that you could have done or that you will do that will in any way shake her love for you—in any way. She can be critical, and she can be mad, and she can have all these messy thoughts and feelings. And still it does not interrupt her love, the power of her love. If you're going to do those little 30-second integrations, like just sitting with your feelings, practice sitting with that, feeling your mom's love, just allowing yourself to feel it and to feel if guilt comes to meet it or doubt comes to meet it, and just feel the guilt and the doubt, whatever it is, because—now, this is me speaking, not your mom. But our responsibility—I'm speaking to your Saturn. Our responsibility as the recipient of gifts from others—whether that gift is like, "Hey, I really loved what you said there. Thanks so much," or a bunch of flowers, our responsibility is to receive that gift.

And so practicing being emotionally present enough in our own skin to receive the compliments, the gift, whatever it is, from someone else is actually a kindness to the gift giver. It's completing the transaction. If you give someone a gift, you want them to enjoy that gift. You want it to make them feel good. And if for any reason the gift you give someone makes them feel bad or guilty, then you feel bad. So it's about knowing that goes all the directions, it goes all the ways, and knowing that your mother's force of love when she was on this Earth and even still, from way far away from this Earth, it's power. It's like this powerful source of energy, and it's life-affirming.

You are not benefitting from it as much as you could be. And it doesn't diminish her. You're not harming her, but you are harming and diminishing something that is available to you of yourself. Your mother would not say any of this, and there's ways I'm saying it that I think she finds annoying, but she doesn't disagree at all. She said this in a very different way to you over the course of your life. I think she would say something closer to, "You make things too hard on yourself," or, "You make things harder than they need to be." She just would say it much more succinctly.

Rashunda: I complicate things. Yeah.

Jessica: Yes. Sure. Yes. You complicate things, but you do it for a really good reason. And that's why I don't want to focus on you complicating things. I want to focus on you changing your sense of responsibility to receiving gifts, to taking it in. And if you want to have guilt in addition, cool. I'm not going to stop you, from one guilty person to another. But I will say also practicing receiving—so it's not getting rid of any of your parts; it's about adding in more parts.

As I look at this, I'm like, "Oh yeah. Of course." When you're working, you can really feel her presence. You can work with her energy because you have no guilt because there's a utility for someone else.

Rashunda: Right.

Jessica: But she's there for you any way you want her to be there for you. She could be a resource for you, and it wouldn't be asking her to work or labor. It would be receiving the gift that she's already put in place for you. By the time someone hands you the flowers, they've already done the labor. They've already made the choices, a lot of choices: "I'm going to do it," then doing it, then not only having bought you flowers but actually schlepping them over to your house.

It's about receiving what's already been done, the choices that others have made. She's saying that it might work for you when you go to bed to take a moment to receive her love, to just actually receive it. You're not taking it from her. You're not asking her to do anything. She has surrounded you, and the only way I can describe what I see is it's like the light of the sun. Her energy, it's this bright golden/yellow/orange light, and it's all around you. It's always there. Just practice receiving. If you're bad at it, that's fine. And if you don't want to do it, that's fine. This is not what you should do. It's more about she already bought the flowers; you might as well just take a sniff. Put them in a vase. Enjoy them.

It's weird. The longer I talk with your mom, the more jubilant and funny she is. She's just funny. I feel like she can kind of make a joke of anything.

Rashunda: That's just how she—yeah. That's just her. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. She's great. And she's ecstatic. Her energy is so good, so strong, and it's not about time. I've talked to people who've died many, many years ago, and they're not at this state yet. But, man, your mom is great. I don't know if she liked to gossip, but she likes to people. She likes to people a lot.

Rashunda: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And so she's just kind of like, "Oh, wait. I can play with this. This is fun." So, if you wanted to talk to her, you don't need to ask her advice. Her worldview and her take on things was not compatible with yours all the time.

Rashunda: No.

Jessica: Yeah. It's more about receiving her love. And I know I'm not really talking about guilt here because it's completely not relevant to her. She doesn't want to entertain it at all, which is really cool.

Rashunda: It sounds like her. If I mentioned it, it would never—she's more like, "Girl, please move on."

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what she's doing.

Rashunda: Yeah.

Jessica: That's exactly it. She's just like, "This is—we don't need to talk about this, so let's just talk about something else." She doesn't understand all the things that you are into and all of the choices you have made, but she's really like—she loves what you've done with your life. I mean, were she here, would she criticize it? Yes. Yes, she would. She would have words for all of your choices. But she is so interested in you. She finds you to be so interesting. She feels like you're totally yourself in such a really wonderful way. She doesn't feel like she was always totally herself. You take risks that she just never would've even thought to take.

Rashunda: She called me her daredevil.

Jessica: That makes sense. She's just like, "You're bonkers." She just doesn't understand it, and she loves it. She loves it. She's so proud of you. And she really did want you, but she would have been a better dad. You know what I mean? Like she—not the most classically maternal person in the world.

Rashunda: Mm-mm.

Jessica: She's really interested in your choices. What she's saying is she hasn't known anyone as unique as you, and she knew a lot of characters. So, from her, this is a compliment. I feel like the way she says it sounds like it's not a compliment, but it's absolutely like she literally beams with pride as she communicates this to me. I can see why she'd be confusing to you at times. The way she expresses things is—it just is what it is.

Rashunda: Yeah. It is what it is, but it was confusing. Yeah. I will say that.

Jessica: It is confusing. Yeah. Yeah. But because I'm seeing her energetically, the way she frames and expresses things, the energy behind them, they're really different. They're really different.

Rashunda: Yeah.

Jessica: Again, so you're going out of your way to protect other people from your hard edges because you know what it's like to be like, "Ow. Ow. Ow. I'm constantly being smooshed by other people's edges." And I think you've overdone it. You've overcorrected, and now you're just hard-edging yourself. Did you have another question you wanted to ask?

Rashunda: My mom's side of the family really made a big deal about looks, about your appearance. And I didn't look like them. Mom would even say, "I never thought I'd have a baby as ugly as you," but she would say it like—she even said things like, "You were really funny-looking growing up, and I was worried about how you were going to look." But it wasn't like she was trying to put me down, but I was like, "What was that?" because she harped on looks so much. I even told her one time she raised my sister to be attractive and she raised me to be smart because she knew I wasn't going to get the opportunities, for example, since we're in this society. That's why it was very hard for me to grasp how she felt about me.

Jessica: Okay. So the first thing I can tell you is that her reaction is like, "I don't want to talk about that. You're overthinking that." So, much like she said your guilt has nothing to do with her—it's all yours—this really has almost nothing to do with you. This is all about her. She did not feel like she had a lot of options in her life. If she could have lived a life like your life, would she have chosen to? Not exactly like your life, no. She wouldn't even let me smooth that sentence in. But she would have lived a life like yours where she was unfettered and free and could just figure out who she was in her time.

She felt that she had to leave all of her autonomy behind in order to be a mom and a wife. And that still happens to women, but certainly in the '70s, it happened. For her, letting go of her independent, autonomous, individualistic weird streak—not wild, but weird streak is how it shows up—that's what she had to do to be a mom and a wife. I don't think she regrets having children in any way at all. Also, she really was a very independent person. Very.

Rashunda: Very much so. Yeah.

Jessica: Very, very, very. And it's very hard to be a very independent person/mom. It is hard because of the pressures placed on that role for a variety of reasons. Now, her belief—this is—yes. She showed me this at the very beginning. Her belief was that to be married and have kids and to do well with men, you needed to be a certain kind of pretty. And it wasn't just about the way you looked. You had to be accommodating and easy. This is your whole thing that you got from your mother about being a successful woman means being chill, basically, like not getting your feathers ruffled.

I would certainly disagree with that as a high-maintenance woman. But that is how she felt. She wasn't just talking about your looks. She was talking about your willfulness, which is—again, we're back to you repressing your anger. You were a very willful, self-aware child. You were like, "No, I don't want this. Yes, I do like that. I know that that's not true. I know that that's wrong." And to her, that was not pretty. So this wasn't just about looks for her. This was about what kind of girl you were.

As I look at this, I'm like, "Oh. This further taught you this lesson of repressing your autonomy, repressing your willfulness, just really submerging all that stuff inside of you." Hold on. She does not like my analysis because now she thinks I'm overthinking it. Your mom is very charming. Also, it's not really how she feels on a deep level. On a deep level, she's like, "You're fine. You're great. You're beautiful. Everything's fine." And so that's where she's choosing to resonate. And I want to just share with you that this—it's not a dishonesty, but it's not an authenticity, either, what your mother does. Right?

Rashunda: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And there's a way that when we talk about your guilt stuff, this is just—you do the identical thing in your own version because it's not authenticity to not be able to receive a gift, to lose energy and time in guilt about things that you technically know you shouldn't feel guilty about.

Rashunda: Right.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.

Rashunda: Technically, yeah.

Jessica: Cognitively. Just not emotionally.

Rashunda: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: The reason why it's not enough to just get it in your brain is because it's an emotional problem you have with yourself that is complex—and similarly, your mother's way of being so cavalier about things that truly matter but she has confidence aren't going to break anyone.

Rashunda: Before she died, on her deathbed when she was still talking, she said, "When I go, I don't want any screaming or hollering or crying or anything. None of that. No crying. No hooping and hollering. Just move on." She said that. And I'm like, "Now? You're going to talk about that now?" And those are her words. Yes.

Jessica: I understand why someone would want that, but grief is ugly and violent. Death is ugly and violent. And it is appropriate to gnash your teeth and pull your hair in grief. Whether it happens immediately after a death or six years after a death, it happens. It has to happen. We can tear ourselves apart, or we can break TVs. We can cry. We can do a million different things, but we have to do something because when you lose someone you truly, deeply love, it's like a part of your body is ripped off of your body. It's really a deep, terrible thing. And I don't feel it's fair to ask people to not mourn in whatever messy way they do. But she didn't do it because she was trying to be controlling. She did it because this is her shit. There are certain kind of intense emotions that she didn't want to have to deal with or be responsible for.

And she wants me to just tell you that she loves you. She loves you now, and she loved you then. And when you had your biggest fights, she loved you then. She's never stopped loving you. She's never faltered in her love for you. I know that this is not the first time I'm saying it in this conversation, but she really wants me to say it. She doesn't want there to be any wiggle room here for you. No wiggle room. You don't have to feel that way. You don't have to have always known it. It doesn't change what's true for her. She's very, very staunch about this, and she needs you to hear it.

And I can even feel as I'm saying this I don't sound very nurturing. I don't sound very supportive. But it's like the kindest, most loving thing. But as I'm connecting with her, I'm expressing it in a way that doesn't sound very gentle and kind because she almost feels angry that she has to say it. It's just her personality. It's not about you. It's just her personality. Your mom—I mean, she respects you, but she reveres you. She's so impressed by you, and she loves you so much. She was a very spiritual person. I mean, it's what helped her to die so gracefully. And she died very gracefully. I mean, I don't know what was happening on the outside, but the way she shows it to me—

Rashunda: She just left. Just left. Yeah.

Jessica: And when I say she died gracefully, I'm not just talking about the moment where she left her body. The whole process of dying, which did take a couple/few weeks, is what I was actually talking about because that was dying—the whole thing.

Rashunda: Yeah.

Jessica: I mean, most people—most adults who die resist it.

Rashunda: The nurses had told me, "Okay, she's probably going to die tonight or whatever. So go ahead and if you have something you need to say to her, you go ahead and say it." So I get by her bedside, and I do my own thing because they were measuring her breath and how she was taking her breath. And it was a long time between breaths. And so I tell Mom, "Hey, thank you," and yadda, yadda, yadda, and all this.

So the next thing I know, she—(breathes in audibly). And I'm like, "Wait. You're not supposed to be—wait, wait, wait. Stop." And then I was like, "Mom, you're supposed to be going." And maybe a couple of seconds later, she (breathes in audibly) almost like, "I die when I want to die."

Jessica: Yep. Yes. Yes. That's your mom. I mean, to me, that just seems like your mom. And, honestly, it seems like you. When I look at you through your mother's eyes, I see an independent individual who lives on her own terms.

Rashunda: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Now, listen. I spent the first chunk of our conversation talking about the ways in which you repress your individuality and you repress your will and all of that. But you do live a unique life that is all your own. You have taken a unique path in life. Right? Like it's—

Rashunda: Mm-hmm, but it took a while to get here.

Jessica: Sure. Sure. It took a while. I mean, you've got Saturn involved in a T-square. Everything takes a while. Also, you are driven—please tell me if I'm wrong, but you're driven by impact. Right? You're driven by doing something that has meaning.

Rashunda: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And whenever somebody is driven first and foremost by meaning, the path is often slower because there are so many ways to move faster on a path, but they often take not doing all the steps. That's not your way. You do all the damn steps.

Rashunda: You're not wrong in all of that. I do all the—yeah.

Jessica: All the damn steps. Some people are like, "You know, you could skip. You could do two steps at a time." You're like, "No, I cannot." Exactly. Exactly. So you live life on your own terms. You do, in a very different style and manner than your mom, but more so than your mom in a lot of ways, according to your mom.

I cannot thank you enough for doing this with me. I'm really, really glad that we got to connect and to connect in this way.

Rashunda: Same here. Thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Jessica: It's totally my pleasure.

Rashunda: Yeah, and I've got my homework, so I'll go find a pillow or something and [crosstalk]—

Jessica: That's all you need, one fluffy pillow. That's all you need.

COVID-19 is raging again, and healthcare workers need our support. Consider donating to Emotional PPE at emotionalppe.org. They're an organization that provides any worker in healthcare impacted by COVID-19 free mental health services with licensed therapists. Another way you can help is by donating to your local general hospital's spiritual care department and to earmark that donation for staff support. Give what you can.

My loves, let's get astrological. This week, we're looking at the dates of January 16th through the 22nd of 2022, and there's a lot going on. But before I get into the details of what to expect from this week, I want to just acknowledge that something really shifted last week.

I noticed something shift in the collective. Maybe you noticed it, too. I attribute the Mars square to Neptune to be part of what really triggered it, but I don't think that the Mercury Retrograde is helping matters. But here it is. There is a lot of stress in the world. You may be feeling a sense of overwhelm or exhaustion or just like you don't know how to cope anymore. I've noticed a lot of people feeling really defensive and easily activated or triggered at this time, and I think this has so much to do with the accumulation of stresses that we've all been collectively living under.

I want to just acknowledge that this is happening, and you may be experiencing it yourself or you may be noticing it in other people. In either case, it's important to kind of name things and accept them so that we can approach them in the healthiest and most effective ways. And so, within that, I want to acknowledge this little concept called toxic positivity. You may have heard of it. It's when you're not supposed to have any negative thoughts. You're not supposed to have any negative feelings. You're not supposed to fixate on anything negative because the thought or the feeling of negativity only expands those negative realities. Right? And I am not a fan of this.

We are living through a very fucked-up time. There's social injustice on top of social injustice on top of social injustice, domestically and globally. We are living through an unprecedented climate crisis. We are watching it come at us—sometimes it feels like in slow motion; sometimes it feels like at full speed. There are a great deal of issues at play in response to the pandemic. Some people are moving through the world like it's an inconvenience, but it's not really stopping them, while other people are pretty much having their lives completely halted by the pandemic and not leaving the house.

We're all struggling. We're all struggling to figure out the best ways to live, the most sustainable ways to live. And we're all scared. And the way that people respond to scary things, the way that people engage with stress and limitations and frustrations, it's individual. But as a collective, it gets stickier and stickier as time goes on. And Omicron is no fucking joke, and we are at a peak, certainly in the U.S. and in many places around the world, where just so many people are getting sick, and we still don't understand this damn thing. Right? We still don't know about long COVID. We don't know enough about it, anyways. We don't know what this disease really does to people.

I'm not saying this to frighten you. I'm just acknowledging, here we the fuck are. It is okay to feel bad. It is okay to feel fucked up. And I know that technically this is a wellness podcast, although I don't exactly identify that way, but technically, here we are in a wellness space. And I want to acknowledge that we cannot self-care ourselves out of collective trauma. We cannot individually self-care ourselves out of systemic pain and struggling and strife. That's not how this shit goes. And when we use spirituality or other wellness tools to manage our lives and our welfare, it's important to remember that we cannot fix systemic problems through self-care. And it is healthy and appropriate to feel shitty about shitty things.

While you and I and all the people we know are doing our best to survive and hopefully thrive and do well and be good people in the world, we also must have a real understanding of the world around us and an understanding that we can only thrive or survive within the world we are in at this time. Yeah, I'm talking about reality, my friends. Part of the period that we're in—and we can attribute it to any number of astrological things, but let's just stay broad. Part of the period that we are in requires that we adjust our expectations, that we accept that the reality that we are living through is not the reality any of us banked in. Nobody knows what to do. Nobody has the right answer. A lot of people have really great answers and great ideas, and then there's implementing them.

We're in a difficult place right now. And part of the assignment is to be able to experience discomfort and pain and sadness, even depression, to be in struggle and to not abandon ourselves, and also to not forget that while we're feeling fucked up—all kinds of fucked up—we can also move in the direction of joy and freedom and love and care and interconnectedness.

But when you feel like shit is when it's hardest to remember to choose the positivity, not in a toxic positivity way but in a real way, because when you feel like shit, maybe the best you can do isn't that great and doesn't feel that amazing. But doing the best you can do hour by hour, day by day, month by month—that's the best you can do. And holding space for that actually builds up your muscles, your happiness muscles, your willingness to do your best even when you're feeling your worst muscles. Those are important muscles for a person to have.

Now, all of that said, I will remind you of what I've reminded you of a million times already. And if you haven't already heard the year-ahead horoscope that I dropped a couple weeks back, I definitely invite you to do so when you have the right mood for it. But I want to remind you that the Saturn/Uranus square persists throughout 2022. It's definitely—there's going to be a period of the year where it pulls back, but for the better part of this year, we are still struggling with the tension between our desire for security and freedom, our need for something new in the face of the tried and true.

This is true in every aspect of our lives, and it's hard. It's really hard. It requires that we not only do things in response to it but that we acknowledge our mental health and we support our mental health; we take pains to ask for help when we need it, to find the right resources and tools, and then to follow through because go to a therapist, go to an astrologer, go to a psychic—none of these people are going to do the work for you. They're going to help you to identify the work you need to do for you, and not just for you, of course, because our wellness is interwoven with the wellness of others, just like our struggles are interwoven with the struggles of others.

And so, when we self-care, when we prioritize finding a way toward self-care, our relationships are benefitted from it, which is a really valuable thing. And, in particular, it's a valuable thing during this period because, as you know, Mercury is Retrograde. Venus is Retrograde. So many Retrogrades. And they're such relational planets, Mercury and Venus.

And so this month, January, for the rest of the month—because Venus doesn't go direct until the 29th and Mercury goes direct on the 3rd of February, I believe—so, for the rest of this month, what the Mercury and Venus Retrograde want from us is for us to reflect on our relationships, on how we relate to others, on how we receive others, on the ways in which we invest in our relationships because Venus is in Capricorn, and the ways in which we communicate our intention and our care and our difficulties with others.

Yes, these Retrogrades can bring people up from your past. Absolutely. I know the internet gets real fixated on that. It's easy to get real fixated on that in your thinking. But people coming back into your life is not the point. It's not the root issue to be focused on. That's just a symptom of the root issue. The root issue is to look at your own patterns. It's to review, reflect, and reconsider how you are and how you choose to be and how you respond to other people and to yourself. And so, if people come back into your life, that's the assignment, my friends. So giddy-up and get on that.

This is a time for reflection. What that means is that it is not primarily a time for marching forward. That can be incredibly frustrating in this difficult time. However, here we are. And for me, as an astrologer, I find it very reassuring to know this is a Retrograde season. So even when my little Capricorn brain is like, "I gotta giddy-up. I gotta get things going. I gotta do things," I know that that's not exactly what the Retrogrades want. The Retrogrades want us to reflect. If you've got a goal that you feel really passionate about, if you've got a relationship issue that is really demanding your attention, don't just focus on the symptoms. Don't just focus on the most obvious presentation of whatever's going on. Look at your patterns. Look underneath the hood, as it were.

So that's Retrograde time. And, of course, of course, if you can avoid signing contracts, if you can avoid making major decisions or starting a business at this time, absolutely do that. And if you cannot avoid those things, then triple-check the fine print and make sure you are asking for help and that you're not being glib with your agreements. Mercury Retrograde. You know the damn drill, right?

That brings us, my loves, to the first exact transit that I want to tell you about this week. It's happening on the 16th. I mentioned it in last week's horoscope because we started to feel it on the 15th, and here we have the Sun conjunction to Pluto. The Sun is conjunct to Pluto. It's exact on the 16th. We felt it the 15th, and we're going to feel it on the 17th. And this transit is difficult. It is happening at 26 degrees of Capricorn, which is real close to that United States Pluto Return degree, which is 27 degrees. And so I do expect that we're going to see some real intensity here in these United States of America, and not just domestically, but we're going to see some intensity in the world as we may find that the United States is being called to answer for the ways in which it conducts itself globally.

But on a more personal level, the Sun/Pluto conjunction is intense. Pluto governs shame. And, unfortunately, you're going to hear me talk about shame a lot this episode because Pluto is busy. Pluto governs shame. It's shaming yourself and shaming other people. I gotta say shaming doesn't work. It doesn't work. I can say this from my vantage point, being the astrological, psychic, intuitive counselor that I am. But, also, there's been studies. Shame doesn't work. It doesn't keep people in line. All it does is it drives our negative emotions and negative compulsions in deeper, and that can make all of our worst behaviors and impulses stronger.

So, if you find yourself shaming yourself, blaming yourself, if you find yourself in a compulsive cycle of self-harm, try to bring awareness to it this week. And we're going to be feeling this, like I said, through the 17th. But you're going to see in a minute how the effects of this transit are kind of going to pull us out through the full week, unfortunately, even though the transit won't be exact through the whole week.

The key here is bringing awareness to how you're feeling and striving to make a different choice. And here's the different choice: it's to name what you're feeling, to name the emotion, to name the situation—what you may have done wrong, what you may have done right—without looking for any kind of blame but instead just as a fact-finding mission. "These are the things that I'm feeling. These are the things that happened." By naming things, we start to externalize them a little bit, and you start to pull yourself out of the emotional messiness and stickiness that the Sun/Pluto conjunction can bring.

And from there, my next bit of advice is to let it go. Name it. Maybe write it down on a piece of paper. Then let it go. Stop obsessing on it. Come back to it when you feel less activated. And if I could give you a date, come back to it after the 19th. Sometimes we just need to be in our emotions. When we start pairing excuses and descriptions and justifications or any kind of storyline to our emotions, we do that as a way to make sense of our feelings, but we also do that as a way to distance ourself from our feelings. This isn't a great time for doing that. It's a tempting time. It's just not a great time.

This transit can kick up power struggles. So you might not feel like shaming yourself. You may feel like you need to shame someone else in efforts to keep them in line or change their behavior. And I want to say again that shit doesn't work. You are not the judge and jury. This is not a time for trying to police other people's behaviors, and a lot of people are going to feel called to do that. If somebody else comes at you as a self-appointed judge and jury of what is right, I would encourage you to know that that is about them. That doesn't mean there's not feedback you need to hear. Maybe there is. But it is important to know that people are going to be activated by this transit. This week and last week, there's a lot of activation.

And so, as much as you want to listen to feedback from others, I want to encourage you to also listen to the energy with which it comes at you, and use that information. This is not a great time for coming to clarity. It's a great time for asking questions. So, if you feel like it's absolutely your job to reach out to other people, I want to encourage you to have a call to action that you think is appropriate for you to be asking for, and not just a criticism or, again, a shame-and-blame situation.

This is hard. It's all very hard stuff. But because we're dealing with Capricorn energies, we want to look for a practical solution, a call to action. And if you cannot find a practical solution or a practical ask, then keep your mouth closed until you figure that shit out. And that's okay. There's not a rush.

That said, the intensity of Pluto makes us feel like we have to do it right away, like there's a burning need to express ourselves. Pluto governs our flight-or fight instincts. So there's a way that this transit can absolutely make us feel like our survival is being threatened. And certainly, if your survival is being threatened, you gotta take arms. You gotta do what you gotta do. But a lot of times, we feel that way when there's no actual threat to our survival. So just check in. Check in.

You may feel like you're falling apart. You may feel like you're being threatened. Ask yourself, "Is this a feeling which is valid, or is this a reality and a feeling? Am I actually in danger?" because if it's just a feeling and it doesn't really match up with the situation at hand, then you get to cope with those feelings, but you don't have to do it with the person or persons that are triggering you. You get to do it with your bestie or your therapist or your journal or whatever. It's about identifying the problem accurately so that we can find a solution or a healthy approach. Wellness is not about fixing. Wellness is about coping, and that's what we want to strive to do this Sun/Pluto conjunction—but not just the Sun/Pluto conjunction. Also, on the 17th, we have a Full Moon in Cancer.

And, as always, I want to just throw in a quick reminder that if you want to keep track of the transits, if you want to know when the Retrogrades and the Full Moons and the New Moons are going to be happening, please do subscribe to my astrologers' pro tool for astrology students and astrologers called Astrology For Days. It is linked on my website, but of course you can also go to astrologyfordays.com and get your subscription there and always know when the transits are coming, and keep track of your experience of those transits in the notes so that you learn astrology.

Okay. Back to this damn Full Moon. It's a Full Moon in Cancer. So it's the one time a year that the Moon is full in Cancer. We've got the Moon at 27 degrees and 50 minutes opposite the Sun at 27 degrees and 50 minutes. We're going to round that shit up to a 28-degree Full Moon in the Capricorn/Cancer polarity. Now, this has so much to do with the tension between what needs to be done and how you need to do it. So, in other words, our external ambitions and our internal needs, home versus career, that kind of stuff.

And wherever it is in your birth chart that late-degrees Cancer and Capricorn fall is the area of your life that is going to be stimulated by this Full Moon. This Full Moon is very much a Sun/Pluto conjunction, Moon/Pluto opposition, Full Moon—which means all this shit I've been talking about applies to the Full Moon, which is why we're going to be feeling it throughout the week. It's going to kind of drag out this transit and make it much stronger.

So, again, we have buried feelings. Deeply buried feelings are likely to be stimulated and triggered. That might look like any number of things, including secret resentments you've been holding on to with your bestie for the last two years. They might do one little thing, one stupid thing, and it's just—everything avalanches out of you. That kind of shit can happen. It can be much deeper around your own healing process. It can look any number of ways. But what you want to know is that when we bury our emotions, it's because we don't know how to cope with them. We don't want to or we don't know how to.

It is important to have grace with ourselves and with others for not knowing how to deal with our feelings. This Full Moon brings with it the opportunity to approach our emotions and our situations with a practical strategy. Now, this is because not only are we dealing with the Sun and Pluto in Capricorn, but also, we still got that Mercury Retrograde conjunction to Saturn. Now, granted, it is square to Uranus, just Uranus sitting out there stirring the damn pot all the damn time. But the Saturn/Mercury conjunction can absolutely help us to be systematic in how we think of things and our approach. It helps us to cope with reality.  Now, unfortunately, Uranus is like, "What is reality? Reality is nothing but a frustration, and I don't want to deal with it."

So it's not smooth sailing; that's true. But here we are. We're dealing with the potential of resentments and manipulation and other kinds of power struggles that can be either internal or with other people, so individuals, groups, whatever. Within this, the potential for healing is as high as the potential for drama and struggle is. But, of course, healing takes more intention and effort, and it means not meeting the shittiest person in their shittiest behavior at their level. It means remembering who the fuck you are and remembering how you want to be in your life, in the world, and even when everyone around you is acting a fool, remembering that you don't have to do that, that all you need to do is live in a way that is healthiest for you.

There's something else about all of these things—the Full Moon in Cancer being so emotional, opposite Pluto or the Sun conjunct Pluto, the Saturn/Mercury conjunction, and of course, we are still feeling the effects of the Neptune/Mars square; it is still active. And all of these transits in their own unique ways can trigger isolation and loneliness. This isolation and loneliness that so many people are feeling is really awful, and it can lead to real pain.

Also, when we feel isolated, when we feel lonely—when we feel isolated and lonely and frustrated and resentful and burnt out and all the things, it can lead to real bad behavior. It's not bad behavior because you're a bad person. It's bad behavior because you're just all fucked up and don't know what to do, and so shit can only be repressed and held back for so long. Full Moons are definitely a time when we are not successful in holding back our emotions. That's why emergency rooms tend to get filled up every Full Moon. Full Moons are when our cup is meant to overflow, for better or worse.

And so I want to just acknowledge that shame thrives in isolation. Something that we know about shame is that Pluto governs shame in astrology. Pluto also governs AA. Now, I know lots of people have lots of different fucking feelings about AA, the Alcoholics Anonymous. But the thing about AA that is so Plutonian and that works for so many people—not for everyone, not at all times, but it works for so many people—is it's individuals coming together to talk about their greatest pain and to share their shame and to share their struggles, to share things that they've done that are not what they wish they had done, and to do it in what is meant to be a non-judgmental and totally private environment.

This is the good side of Pluto. Nothing is perfect. What I'm trying to say is not specifically about AA, although it is a great example. When we share of ourselves, when we name our greatest pain and we do it in an appropriate and supportive environment, we are doing what Pluto wants us to do to heal our Plutonian issues. If you are alone or if you feel alone, this is an important week to consider, who can you reach out to? Maybe you need to listen to your friends. Maybe you need to share of yourself with your friends. If you don't have friends, if you don't have people, there's the World Wide Web, this big fat net we got access to. Go on various forms of social media that have lives, and these days now there are lots of social media apps where people literally just talk to each other and there's no video component, or there is video—there's so many different ways of connecting with people.

But I want to encourage you to take steps out of isolation if feeling isolated or lonely is a shit feeling for you, to take active steps, because a good way of trying to cope with these energies is active, to actively take steps. So, if you find yourself stuck-feeling, isolated-feeling, resentful, any of this kind of Plutonian shit, I want to encourage you to ask yourself, "What steps can I take right here, right now, to accept what I'm feeling, to accept my situation, and to cultivate greater love and connection in my life?" And, honestly, for some people, that's going to be hugging a goddamn tree. That's right. Hug a tree. For other people, it's going to be talking. And for other people, it's choosing to be alone. It's about really making that conscious, intentional choice that you want to be alone with yourself.

There are so many different ways of being. There's not just one way of doing it right. But it's about, again, being honest with yourself, having acceptance of who you are and where you are, and from that place determining what do you need, and of what you need, how can you approach your needs? How can you take steps to getting your needs met? We can't all get our needs met all the time, obviously. Have you seen the world? But taking steps—that's the move.

For me, when I feel down, sometimes the thing I find to be the most soothing is to read the damn news, to look around the world, and to understand that there's a larger context to what I'm experiencing and feeling and to understand the difference between what I'm personally experiencing that is a collective and systemic issue versus just my feelings and my personal isolation. But we've all got our ways. Find your way, my loves. Find your way.

Now, one more thing I want to say about this Full Moon in Cancer is that it's a Full Moon in Cancer, which means it is a good time for letting go, for releasing. And what it is that you want to let go of and release is going to be intense because of Pluto's involvement, just period. It's going to be intense. And so your best move at this time is to be willing to be present with your emotions as you release them.

If your motivations and your intentions are sticky or shitty, whatever you put into the world right now will come back at you because Pluto is involved, and Pluto has a boomerang impact. So make sure that you're not trying to create harm or pain in others as a way to make yourself feel better, because you may or may not have success in the short term, but in the long term, it will definitely come back to bite you in your sweet little behind. You don't want that.

So do your best this Full Moon. It's going to kick up a lot of emotions in a lot of people. And as we know, when emotionality gets really intense, that's when drama tends to happen. We may see violence. We may see power grabs in the world. And you may experience that in your personal life. I use the term "violence" in a very broad way because there are so many levels on which violence occurs and that we experience and express violence. But the astrology of this period is a lot, and it is meant to test our coping mechanisms. It is meant to test our emotional maturity, our emotional integration. And that's hard. It's hard under any Full Moon, but certainly under a Full Moon in Cancer.

So don't forget the wisdom of Cancer, and the wisdom of Cancer is love. It's nurturance. It's care. It's showing up to protect yourself, to protect those you love. It's the sanctuary of home. That might mean for some of you the sanctuary in your bedroom or in your house or your apartment, and for others, it may be your sense of home in connection to community or nature. It is important that we have a sense of home within ourselves. And that might encompass and include home with others, home in location, but it doesn't have to.

A Full Moon in Cancer is a moment to consider your relationship to home, and to nurture that to the best of your ability. And because it's a Full Moon and not a New Moon, because of Pluto and Uranus and Neptune all doing their mishigas, what I want to encourage you to remember is that you may need to let go of old attachments or narratives or identities, even, as a way to truly embrace the home you have within yourself, the home you have with others. And that's hard work. It's not easy. It's not all posi-vibes. It's hard, but it is worthwhile—meaningfully worthwhile.

Now, that, my loves, brings us to the next exact transit, which is happening on the 18th. And here we have a Mercury sextile to Chiron. Does that sound familiar? It should. I just talked about it. On January 9th, we had a Mercury direct forming a sextile to Chiron, and now Mercury is Retrograde forming a sextile to Chiron. Now, you know the drill. I just talked about this last week, but to kind of recap, this transit is really good for making connections and confronting difficult or painful things. Luckily, this shit is just on time for all this Plutonian Full Moon in Cancer stuff.

So we have celestial support for thinking about communicating, processing, listening. And those things are all necessary for coping with the intensity of this period. So it's about making the choice to align yourself with these energies, to do your best to be present in that Mercurial way, keeping in mind that Mercury Retrograde is all about reviewing. It's reflecting. And Chiron wants us to look at our patterns in a deeper way. Some of that is related to trauma pattern, of course, but it's not exclusive to trauma patterns. But Mercury is going to help us, or it can help us here.

So, again, it's about remembering to orient your approach, orient your thinking, and to not lose track of it's not just about what you say. It's not just about how you say it. It's about whether or not and how much you listen to other people and who you're listening to. So this transit's really supportive for all of that, and I encourage you to bring as much intention to this energy as you can.

And then the final thing I will tell you about this week's horoscope is that on the 19th, the Sun moves into Aquarius. Hey, now. As we move into Aquarius season, it is a lightening of the load—or at least it can be—of the heaviness of Capricorn season. And that's a beautiful thing. The sticky part is that Aquarius season is really good for feeling a sense of connection to others and community in general. It can be a great time for exploring freedom, really looking into, how can you have more freedom in your life? What can you do to achieve more autonomy in your life? And it's coming at a time where we are definitely dealing with the Saturn/Uranus square, and of course Saturn is in Aquarius. We are also dealing with COVID. And so this may be kind of a frustrating solar season, but you know what? We can get through it together. That's what we're here for.

We may need to be leaning on our digital communities at this time. And it's important within that to remember that when we have relationships with people that are exclusively or primarily digital, that we are not getting as much information as we would if we had IRL relationships. And so it's important to remember that there are certain kinds of information that we're just not getting and we're not offering, we're not able to show up with in our digital relationships. Just important to keep that in mind this Mercury Retrograde in Aquarius/Sun in Aquarius season because Saturn's there just waiting to teach us some consequences, for better or worse. So it's just good stuff to keep in mind as we move through this solar season.

Now, my loves, I'm going to run through the transits one more time just for your edification. We've got Mercury and Venus Retrograde this week and throughout the month. On the 16th is when the Sun is exactly conjunct to Pluto in Capricorn. On the 17th, we have a Full Moon in Cancer. It's exact at 3:48 p.m. Pacific Time. On the 18th, we have a Mercury sextile to Chiron again. And then, on the 19th, we've got the Sun ingressing into Aquarius. This is a big week. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of intense emotions at play. And as I said at the top of the segment, I do have a lot of concerns about the influence of that Mars/Neptune square and how it is so demoralizing and exhausting.

So I want to remind you to be kind to yourself and to others. Do not demand or expect perfection. Instead, look out for progress. Do your best, and when others are doing their best, even if they're fucking up, even if you don't like the way they're doing their best, try to see that in them, not just because it makes your relationships better and because it's generous and kind but because it is actually easier to live this life when you are willing and able to see the best intentions and efforts in others, even people who are fucking up. That doesn't mean absolving them of responsibility. No. It doesn't.

It's just about taking in all the information, not just the critical and not just the positive—taking in all of it, being comfortable with paradox, being comfortable with mixed messaging and confusion. That's actually part of being a grown-ass adult in a fucked-up reality, just like we all are living our lives in our fucked-up reality. Here we are. Just keep doing your best.

As always, if you get value from Ghost of a Podcast, please do join me over on Patreon, where I drop lots of exclusive content. And when I say exclusive content, I mean I get spiritual. I get astrological. I talk tarot. I do lots of fun stuff, and I just really love my patrons and I love getting to create stuff on that platform. So join me there.

Also, if you haven't already subscribed to Ghost of a Podcast, please do. It does help the show so much. And you probably already know this, but you know I have a weekly horoscope. It's free. It's on my website. Comes out every Wednesday. So yeah. Check that shit out, my loves. And while you're over on my website—I think it's fucking gorgeous. I love it, and I hope you love it, too. There's lots of free goodies, including, on the home page, Tiny Spark. My app that was previously only available for iOS is now available to you to use over there on my website. So do check it out at lovelanyadoo.com.

Really, what it all comes down to is find resources that are supportive to you. Use them. Remember to use them. I know this is a rough time, so be gentle with yourself and others. And I will talk to you again next week.