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.

I had the absolute pleasure to sit down with Maria Menounos for an interview and to give her a reading, and I'm sharing that reading with you here. But if you want to hear the whole episode, you can find her podcast, called Better Together with Maria Menounos, wherever podcasts are heard. Please enjoy.

Jessica: Can I look at your chart right now, or is that—

Maria: Yeah. Go for it.

Jessica: Okay. That sounds fun. Hold, please. I come prepared.

Maria: Jessica, is it in my chart to adopt?

Jessica: Okay. So I'm going to say several things. One is no one puts baby in the corner. Right now, you're baby. Yeah. You do not like being trapped. So you have a Mars/Saturn conjunction in the sixth house in Leo. You will definitely need an agreement with your partner, with your husband, around responsibility share and how to communicate about responsibility share. I'm guessing if you married him and you don't want to murder him that you already have a pretty good dynamic around that, but—

Maria: I mean, sometimes, but . . .

Jessica: I mean, it's life. And kids are—you have to negotiate when you go pee because there's a baby there. There's so much negotiation, and that's not always your favorite thing. And so that is something that I—listen. Something that has blown my mind my whole life is why people do not talk to their partners in detail about how they'll share responsibilities, what their assumptions and needs are, before the baby is brought into fruition. To me, that's the most common-sense thing. Of course, I'm speaking like someone who doesn't have babies or want them. But I strongly recommend it for you.

You have three planets in the zodiac sign of Cancer in the house of children. It's not just the house of children, though. So a very heterotypical astrologer is going to be like, "Oh, you're meant to be a mother. You should have children." I'm assuming if you've talked to other astrologers, they've said that to you. I would not say that to you, because you have a Pluto square to Venus, the Moon, and Jupiter, which means you have seen—tell me if I get too personal.

Maria: Nope. You're good. We're with the Heal Squad, so they know everything.

Jessica: Okay. Good, because here we go. It looks like you have seen firsthand in your upbringing how a parent can lose themselves—

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: —and what it cost her. And you vowed to yourself, it looks like, as a small child—like before the age of 12 or by the age of 12, you vowed to yourself you would not do that to yourself, which is where those balls came from. Yeah.

Maria: Wow.

Jessica: Does that make sense?

Maria: Yeah. No one's ever said that. Shit.

Jessica: Yeah. Sorry.

Maria: That's so true.

Jessica: Yeah.

Maria: So true. I had to draw the line recently again. I was like, "These people put my mom in a grave, and they're not putting me in one too," and I drew the line. And Kevin was just blown away because it involved someone that I love more than anything. And I was like, "Nope. Nope, nope, nope."

Jessica: Mm-hmm. The dynamics in your family, and certainly in your early childhood, were unfair. That doesn't mean your mother didn't consent and participate, because she did. But you have different choices, and you have vowed already to break that family line. This is a thing in your matrilineage. It has been a source of great pain for generations, it looks like. And because of that, you have been taking care of yourself by not truly giving of yourself to people that you get close to because you saw your mother get taken advantage of and lose herself, and not in a, "Oh, I lost myself," but in a really difficult way.

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: One of the things that you have come here to do in this lifetime is to figure out how to share of yourself authentically without abandoning yourself or letting yourself go in a way where you're like, "Where the hell did I go?" And how does one do that with children? I don't know. I don't know. It makes sense to me that if you were going to choose to have kids, it would be when you're old enough to know who the hell you are and what you need, because in our 20s and 30s, it is very hard to know those things. By the time you hit late 30s/early 40s, you finally have enough lived experience with yourself to know what you need and who you are.

And so this is the time where, if you were going to do it, would make sense for you. But to your very specific question around adoption and fostering—you didn't name fostering, but I'm going to name it. You do have a Sun/Neptune opposition in your birth chart, which does suggest to me that it is within your nature to be very happy with fostering or adopting. But I put fostering first, and I put fostering first because that's how it tends to go.

Now, I'll say that, as an astrologer, what I see of the energies is not always what people choose to do because of convention and pressure and fear. But your chart absolutely has indications for fostering and/or adopting, and I would encourage you to explore fostering—if you're going in the direction of adoption, to also explore fostering. There's a lot more fear around it. There's a lot more issues around it that people tend to have. But it's in your chart that you could be really good at it because what you love is knowing what the problems are—you're not scared of problems. You want to know what they are. And then, when you can really understand what they are, you're very good at dealing with them when you're actually dealing with them. When you're thinking about them, maybe not as much. The anxiety is in your chart. That's from multiple places, multiple places. But the indicators are absolutely there.

But if I may say, the most important thing is being a parent is not going to change your need for alone time and self-care. You know how you need to self-care because you're a grown-ass adult, and you probably have always known it more than a lot of your peers. You're going to need to preserve those things. I just often find that if you think about the role of mother and the role of father and you think about them outside of gender, I think you would be such a great dad. You would be so happy as a dad, if you know what I mean.

Maria: Isn't that insane? We joke about that in the house.

Speaker 3: I'm dying here.

Maria: Kevin's going to be the mom, and I'm the dad.

Jessica: Good, because you don't want to be a mom. You've never wanted to be a mom. You would be a great dad, like a great dad.

Maria: I would be an amazing dad. I'll have all the fun with them.

Jessica: Yes. You'll also be tough.

Maria: Yep.

Jessica: You don't have a problem with consequences. You're really good at that. You're also really empathetic and supportive. You would be the greatest dad. And if you could, with your partner, have agreements where he takes the traditionally mothering role and you take the traditionally fathering role, I think you could be very happy as a parent. If you're with a man who needs you to be the mom because you're the girl, I fear for his life.

Maria: Yeah. No. The roles are very clear.

Jessica: Good.

Maria: And what's great is we've had animals for so long, so we know what each other does. He's the one who takes them to the vet. I diagnose them, and then I am home researching while he's at the doctor, and I'm like, "Okay, they need this, this, and this. Tell them that." So we know, kind of, our roles. He administers the meds. He does all of that part.

Jessica: Great. That's great.

Maria: Yeah.

Jessica: That's so good for you. If we stick with this astrologically, I want to just validate the—you have something called Pluto intercepted in your seventh house. You also have your north node intercepted in your seventh house. What I can share with you is that this issue around preserving your autonomy in family—so whether that's with your best friends, with your boyfriend, your husband, or children—or if your work environment is familial, it could be there too. Preserving your autonomy is something that is essential to your spiritual health, which means it's foundational to every other part of you.

When you are in a place where you can preserve your autonomy, you're very good at showing up and being vulnerable and being present and being nurturing and all the things. When you're seeing evidence of being taken advantage of or being minimized, this is where it's like the overflow valve—it's like your fuse box breaks down, basically. It's not good. And any number of things can happen from there. You can be too accommodating, not enough accommodating—you can go in any kind of weird direction, it looks like, from there.

And so one of the things that I think I would recommend you talk to your husband about before bringing on kids is, okay, if that's true, in whatever words you would put it, can you have a cacao, like a safe word? So I would say you probably need some sort of safe word when you're just like, "I don't know if I want to murder you or bake you cookies. I don't know what I'm supposed to do"—when you get to that state of overwhelm, to have a simple safe word where he knows not to take it personally, and he knows to encourage you to go sit alone, like go in the bathroom and think or something. That will really help in the busyness of coparenting. But, you know . . .

Maria: Say it.

Jessica: If you have a life that doesn't include travel and spontaneity and weird changes of plans, that's really going to affect you. So, again, there's this way that kids—you can take them on trips. You can do all that kind of stuff. But also, kids need stability and all that kind of stuff. And so I'm not saying, therefore, you can't have kids happily. But it's really about coming back to your dream, honestly. It's about being honest with yourself about the parts of you that don't want to do it and making decisions, because there are so many things we don't want to do all the time, and we make the decision to do them.

When we can recognize our agency that we made a choice, it's easier to bear the consequences when you feel trapped, like you are literally put in a cage by a big-ass bird. When you feel trapped, then it's panic. Then it's, "I'm right where I told myself I would never be," whereas when you're like, "I knew that this was a risk. I knew it would happen sometimes. And I'm choosing to participate in it, and I'm going to choose to be different than my instincts tell me to be or I've seen family members be." That's where we break family karma, we break family patterns, and we have the healing of ancestral wounds in addition to living successfully and well.

Maria: But maybe having them is breaking the ancestral pattern, because if this is coming from fear of me perpetuating the same behavior, when I have—I mean, I definitely—I threw the gauntlet down. I know. I was like, "Hell no to any of this stuff. No, I'm not marrying a Greek boy. No, I am not doing things your way. I'll do them until I am 18 and I have to so I can get out of here and do it my way." But I was very, very independent from "Go." I didn't want anybody in my way. I walked at eight months.

Jessica: Look at you.

Maria: I was like—yeah. I was very, very—my mom was like, "You didn't even want hugs." I was just like, "Everybody get out of my way. I have stuff to do."

Jessica: That's awesome.

Maria: But yeah. So I wonder if I broke the pattern in that way, by not conforming and not doing the same thing. I think I did a little bit of it when my mom was sick, where I gave everything I had to her. And then I started realizing—I'm like, "Oh my gosh. Am I doing the same thing she did with my dad where she gave everything to him?" But she needed me. She was terminally ill. It wasn't something that was going to be the rest of my life. And so it was a little bit of a different thing. By the way, this is the woman who did everything for me, so of course I'm going to do back. But I think that I also could break the patterns because I've already broken them.

Jessica: Right. Yeah.

Maria: It doesn't have to be the same way. My life doesn't have to be—I think it's a little unhealthy nowadays where life is just about the kids and making them totally happy and making everything amazing, which is why they can't handle pain or anything in life, because everything's just been taken away. So yeah.

Jessica: I really agree with you that it can be done. It's just about recognizing that there will be times where that pattern emerges because it's in your heredity, because it's an ancestral pattern, because it's been activated in your life this whole time. And the most effective way you've managed it is by being like, "I will walk on my own. Don't touch me. I will not sign the damn contract." You've managed by keeping things at arm's length, which I don't think is bad or good. I think it's effective. With kids, you're not going to be able to do that all the time.

Maria: It's really interesting. I think it's applicable to anybody who's listening right now who has to make a decision, who's thinking about things. So many people end up marrying somebody they didn't really want to marry, but they're marrying them because they fit the bill and the families like them. And then, later, they wake up and they're like, "Wait. Why did I do that?"

Jessica: Yep.

Maria: So all of this is just reminding us that we have to give things real careful thought. The good thing about me and Kevin is Kevin will do everything. He's already—"Maria, I got this." He's like, "You're going to hike them out to me"—first, he used to think I was going to give birth to them. So he would be like, "You're going to hike them over to me. I got it. Do your thing." So he's very content with—he's running the ball, for the most part, and I'm going to be the dad. It's so funny to say, but—

Jessica: That's perfect. I mean, it's in your chart. It's in your chart that that's what will work for you. And if you've got a guy who's like, "I want that. That is what will make me happy," you've already broken parts of the pattern, the inherited pattern. Having a partner who's just like, "Yeah. I want to nurture. I want to take care of. I want to listen"—

Maria: He really wants them. Yeah. He really wants them.

Jessica: Congratulations. That's really awesome. And I think part of what we're talking about also is there is no choice that is the perfect choice because every choice has compromise, and every choice has a downside. It's not about seeking the perfect choice, which is what we're usually doing to avoid any amount of pain. Instead, what it is is it's seeking the most authentic choice you could make. And at 35, would this have been the most authentic choice you could make? At 25, would this have been the most authentic choice you could make? No. That's why you didn't make it.

Maria: Yeah.

Jessica: I think it's really about, also, people are in such a rush to, again, settle down—my nightmare—but people are in such a rush to settle down that, like you said, they just make decisions based on a scarcity of time instead of an authentic choosing.

Maria: And environmental pressures.

Jessica: Exactly. And that doesn't age well.

Maria: Or societal pressures.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whether they're real or not, people really do take them on.

Maria: So how do you use your medium powers with your astrology powers?

Jessica: I like that you're calling it powers. It makes me feel like I should go, "Pew, pew." I don't exactly work with them together exactly precisely, because astrology is math and interpretation. So everything that we've been talking about, other than the dream interpretation, has just been astrology. But mediumship is—

Maria: But astrology is an interpretation as well.

Jessica: Yes.

Maria: So, yes, you're doing the math and you're seeing the Moons and the Suns and the planets and all of that aligning, and it'll tell you certain things. But then, from there, there's a little bit of finessing that has to happen, and it is your intuition. So you have to be able to rely on your—

Jessica: You're right about that.

Maria: Okay.

Jessica: It is intuition, and it's also the lineage of astrology that I use. It's like a combo platter because I am always looking at inherited trauma. I'm really, really interested in it, which is why most astrologers—

Maria: It's the answer to everything.

Jessica: It's everything. It's literally everything. Most astrologers would look at your chart and be like, "Three planets in Cancer in the fifth house? Have all the babies of the world. You're the most nurturing woman of the world." And I glance at that, but I look at what Pluto's doing, and Pluto is squaring it. So I'm just like, "Yeah, this is not what you want. You've made promises to yourself to avoid this. You don't want a parasite in your body." There's a lot of really intense feelings that your body has about having kids and has always had.

I have this—anyways, I was going to go off in a whole direction, but I will keep it on topic to say—

Maria: No. Don't forget that direction, because that direction sounds interesting too.

Jessica: Okay. I'll give you the quick direction; then we'll come back to the astrology—

Maria: Go. Okay.

Jessica: —versus psychic versus medium. So I have this theory that for people who are raised as girls, we fall into one of two buckets. There's those of us who, when we were little, we put baby dolls under our shirts and pretended to be pregnant, and those of us who it just never occurred to us to do that. If you're in the first bucket and you put little baby dolls in your shirt and pretended to be pregnant when you were little and there were no pressures on you, you probably will grow up to be somebody who really wants to have kids, like really feels that need. For those of us who it just never occurred to us to put a doll in our shirt and pretend we were pregnant, yeah, we don't need it. It doesn't mean we can't choose it. Doesn't mean it wouldn't be great. But we don't need it.

I think that that's important because there's this lie we were raised with that all girls need to be moms, which I reject with passion. I just don't think that's true. Even if lots of women need to be moms, that doesn't mean all women need to be moms, and not at all times. Having babies in your 20s when you're a damn baby is, to me, not ideal. Wait until you're post-Saturn Return. That was my little quick offset direction.

But back to astrology/medium/psychic—okay. So I'm going to do quick definitions because I'm a Capricorn and I can't help myself. Astrology we've unpacked, right? There's also medium. And so being a medium means I can talk to dead people and animals. And then being psychic—the way I describe it is it's like I have this really high-speed internet connection, and I can just connect. I just have access to data. So I cannot see all of the websites of the world at once. When I am looking at a website, I am not able to consume all of the data of that website, only the page I'm looking at. So it's not like I know all the things, but I have access to information that I wouldn't otherwise have.

So, when I'm reading a birth chart, I will often be psychic without even planning on it. It's hard not to be, though I wasn't doing that with you, just for clarity's sake. With the mediumship, it's specifically having conversations with people who are no longer in their bodies. I don't really cast charts for dead people. I don't cast death charts. I mean, I have done it, but I—

Maria: Never heard of a death chart.

Jessica: Yeah. You can cast a death chart. And—

Maria: Like a chart on someone who's already passed?

Jessica: It's the chart of the moment someone passes.

Maria: Wow.

Jessica: And what that chart—I don't think there's a great deal of reason for it. There's other ways of doing what a death chart does, so I don't mess with it. Also requires you have an exact time of the person's last breath, which is morbid.

Maria: So hard.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. It's hard and morbid and a lot of things. But a death chart can articulate the conditions of the death but also the conditions of the wake of that death, of what happens within the life of that death, essentially, because charts—we cast for the life of a thing. So it's the life of the death, which sounds intense. But I used to use those, again, not too much, but before I knew I was a medium. And when I started to realize that I was a medium and that it wasn't just a fluke that I was able to do these things, which took me a couple years to believe, I just kind of dropped a bunch of practices because I was able to just talk to the dead.

Communicating with the dead has taught me—and different people have different beliefs, and I don't want to contradict anyone's beliefs. I'm a medium. I talk to dead people, but I don't know anything. And I think that anyone who's alive who tells you that they know for sure what happens after death has got some hubris because you can't know until you're there. But, that said, in my experience, there is no there there. There is no separation when we're no longer in a body because the body is the state of separation. You're in LA. You're in LA, right?

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: I'm in Oakland. We are in different places, and that is a thing. But are we actually? Energetically, are we actually in different places, or are we in one place right now? Because I feel like we're in one place. So, if we pull the body out, if we pull physicality and location out, if we pull out linear time, then we just have our energies connected. But also, maybe you're thinking about your dog and your Mr. Kevin and a million other things, so your energy is in other places as well. When we are past, when we are dead, our energy is not limited by time or location. And to me, that's so freeing. It's so freeing.

And I'll say there's a lot of difficulties with being a medium, and I don't encourage people to just try to be a medium lightly because there are some definite risks associated with it. But it is really a gift for me to be able to connect with people who are in spirit and to see their evolution over time, and it's also—I really like working with bereaved people because I have the tolerance for it. And as you were touching on earlier, most people are like, "You've been sad for a month. Let's move along."

Maria: Yep.

Jessica: And my attitude is pull out your hair and gnash your teeth and wail for years if you need to, because that's human. That's what happens when we go through loss. It doesn't go away. It changes us, and it's supposed to change us. I really just have a great deal of passion about being able to be present with people for emotions that they're hiding from other people because they're scared of it overwhelming them or whatever. So I'm not sure if I exactly answered your question about astrology and mediumship, but there is a crossover between those two things. But I don't really hold them as the same, if that makes sense.

Maria: Yeah. So interesting. I'm really curious about the medical stuff, as well, because when you were saying everything in your body is like, "Uh-uh," I—I've always thought that there was a reason that we tried everything you could to get pregnant, but I know my body could be pregnant.

Jessica: Yeah. I agree with you completely.

Maria: I know one billion percent I am fertile and totally okay.

Jessica: Yep.

Maria: But there's something that blocks it.

Jessica: If I was to—okay. So there's two things that I can see. You comfortable with me going there?

Maria: Yeah. Go for it.

Jessica: Okay. Cool, cool, cool. One is you don't want to be pregnant.

Maria: Yeah.

Jessica: It's like, listen—

Maria: No. I want it, but then I don't want it. It's a very weird thing where I was like—

Jessica: Correct.

Maria: —"Oh, it would be so cool," but then I don't want the birthing part. That scares me.

Jessica: Correct.

Maria: I've never wanted to be vulnerable in a hospital, legs in the air with all these people pulling at a child out of my body.

Jessica: Yeah. The way that I think of it, it's kind of like I would love to lose ten pounds. It'd be so fun to be ten pounds lighter because I have all these jeans that would fit so well. But you know what I don't want to do? All the things that need to be done to lose that weight. Sure, I want the outcome, but do I want the process?

Maria: Yeah.

Jessica: And I kind of feel like that's your feeling about pregnancy itself. It's like, yeah, you want it, but do you actually want it? Do you want to do the things that make that happen? So, for whatever that's worth, that's part of it. But it's only one part. You also—and I agree. You have Venus, the Moon, and Jupiter all in the fifth house in Cancer. You're fertile. It's not about fertility. That Mars/Saturn conjunction—are you comfortable with me talking about your period?

Maria: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. It gives you a punch of a period. You're a bleeder and you feel it, but it's not the longest period in the world. Is that your experience?

Maria: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Are there thyroid conditions in your family, thyroidism?

Maria: Yes. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. And do you have thyroidism?

Maria: I have Hashimoto's.

Jessica: Okay. Yeah. So that's in the chart. And that would be the only physiological indicator for a difficulty in timing procreation because it gives you wonky ovulation cycles—

Maria: That makes sense.

Jessica: —the regulatory systems of your body. Right? And so your window's weird. It's not that you don't have a window. It's just a weird, random window. And if you did the basal timing tests, all the shit that people do, it probably would be maddening for you.

Maria: It never worked. It was so hard.

Jessica: It's not for your body type. It wouldn't work.

Maria: That's really helpful for people listening, I think, because I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about their thyroid and their ovulation window being at odds.

Jessica: Really?

Maria: Yeah.

Jessica: I talk about it a lot. Obviously, I'm not a doctor, and no one should take medical advice from an astrologer over a doctor. But I will say I will never stop being mystified and outraged by the lack of medical care for people who ovulate. It's shocking, for people who have periods—it's shocking how little we talk about perimenopause and menopause and ovulation and all those things, because we don't just ovulate so we can get pregnant. I feel when I ovulate—and I don't want to get pregnant—but it's an important part of my monthly cycle.

Anyways, that Chiron/Uranus opposition that you have is the indicator for the thyroid condition, and it is also the indicator for your window being erratic. So sometimes you'll ovulate for a nice, normal, expected window, and sometimes it's hours. And there's no way to predict it because it's erratic. That is part of why your body says, "I don't want to incubate," because your system really likes to be a dude. It likes to just be like—I mean, you know, like The Big Lebowski, like, weird, independent, walks their own path—not like a man, but like The Dude. And I don't think it's good or bad. It just is what it is. You know what I mean?

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Okay. But there's one last thing. There's a number of factors in your chart that articulate how emotional you get around cycles, so not just hormonal cycles, but certainly hormonal cycles. I would imagine that if you were going down an IVF path as opposed to an IUI path that it would be torturous for you, and I would never recommend it as a—

[crosstalk]

Maria: It was. I did it.

Jessica: You did it? I'm sorry. It was torture.

Maria: Yeah.

Jessica: Your system doesn't like drugs.

Maria: I knew—oh my God. That's what I say. I hate medicine unless it's absolutely necessary.

Jessica: Yes.

Maria: I hate taking anything, and I knew it was totally counter everything in my body to do it. But I was like, "I need to have an insurance policy. I don't want to wake up and want kids and not be able to have them."

Jessica: Yep. Yeah. I understand why you did it, and—

Maria: And then it created a whole host of other issues.

Jessica: I'm sure it did. Your body has the unexpected reaction to drugs. Everyone gets calmed down by this pill? You're speeded up. Your body doesn't like drugs. And on top of it, your system is very good at surviving, which sounds good until you're trying to do something like IVF, and then it's like you're being tortured by your body and by the whole process. It's just not—it's not your version of healthy.

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And if you do decide to get pregnant, you would be a great candidate for doing it with acupuncture, Chinese herbs, if you do ayurveda—something like that that is complementary that has a very long and steadied lineage of treating hormonal issues, which I feel like Western medicine does not—

Maria: No.

Jessica: —because your system is so sensy, so sensy. And if I can keep going with medical astrology for just a moment—

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Your lungs are sensitive.

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: So in this COVID mishigas, definitely be super conservative. And the other thing that I would say—this is going to sound like it's left field, but bear with me—floss. Make flossing your part-time job. Just floss and floss and floss, and use all the Waterpiks of the world. It looks like there's some gum stuff in your family. Is that correct?

Maria: Yeah. I mean, my parents had terrible dental because they never had toothbrushes in the village. So they've always had problems. Yeah. But my teeth have always been great, and I never floss. That's so funny.

Jessica: Floss. I give you good advice. Here and now, I say unto you, my friend, floss.

Maria: Okay.

Jessica: Or get a Waterpik because that might be easier for you than flossing.

Maria: Okay.

Jessica: Do you wear a NightGuard?

Maria: I do.

Jessica: You need it. You're a grinder.

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Girl, you grind.

Maria: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: I know the kids say grind, but you grind and then you also grind. And that grinding's no good. And I assume—let's just keep going with this medical astrology for just another moment. If you look at your shoes, they're worn down at the base of the heel.

Maria: Huh.

Jessica: Have you paid attention to that?

Maria: No.

Jessica: Take a peek, if you wear shoes frequently enough, like if you wear down shoes, because it looks like you tend to be heavy-heeled. The way you step can be heavy on your heels, which can actually create knee or hip stuff over the course of time. You're young enough to not have that be a problem yet but old enough to be aware. Same thing with the gums.

Maria: Okay.

Jessica: And if you do decide to get pregnant, and perhaps when you were doing any kind of hormonal therapy, your gums would get sensy. So pay attention to that just to preserve your beautiful teeths.

Maria: Well, Jessica, I am so grateful you decided to spend an entire day with us.

Jessica: Oh my God. Thank you for having me. I'm planning on moving in. I hope you don't mind. I'm coming with a bunch of suitcases.

Maria: Come on down. You've got Winnie and Max, who will greet you. Max might want to eat you at first, but then he'll be your best friend later.

Jessica: That's cute.

Maria: But no, I'm super grateful for everything today. I mean, man, did I need it.

Hey, everyone. Maria Menounos here. I'm so happy that you are with us and enjoying the show. We have so many amazing guests just like Jessica on my show, Better Together, daily. So, if you have never checked out Better Together with Maria Menounos, I hope you'll give it a try. We're on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or you can check out my website, mariamenounos.com, M-E-N-O-U-N-O-S, to see everything that we do. We're all growing and transforming every single day together, so I hope you'll join our Heal Squad. Enjoy the rest of the show.

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, my loves, there's so much going on right now, obviously. We're going to talk about a bunch of things today. We're going to talk about the horoscope. We're going to talk about what's happening astrologically kind of in a more broad context. But let me first say that knowing the future—what will happen next in your life, what will happen to you, what will happen in the world around you—isn't what keeps you safe. The most common thing I get asked by people when they're given readings is what will happen. "When will this happen for me?" Those kinds of questions.

The truth is knowing that information really doesn't help you. I mean, it can. It can help, but it doesn't keep you safe. What keeps you safe is being aware of and associated with what's happening here and now. There's so much going on in the world, and there's so much talk of war. There is so much war happening in the world—not just, of course, in Ukraine, but alarmingly there. And in the context of that, I want to just acknowledge that assuming everything's going to be okay, just like assuming everything will not be okay, are both kind of equally dangerous enterprises.

We don't want to make assumptions. We want to, to the best of our ability, be informed. And we want to also be kind of aware of the fact that no one has the answers. No one has the answers. There are certain things in life that are unanswerable until you have hindsight. So, when you catch yourself looking for predictions or assurances, try to ask yourself, "How is the information I'm seeking going to help me to contribute? How can I help?" or, "In what ways do I need help, and have I asked the appropriate and correct people or resources for that assistance?" If you can prepare in life and at this time, do. And if you can't, try to train your mind to focus on what is constructive, on what can help. This is difficult. It's a difficult thing to do in the here now, and it's difficult in general.

Now, as I mentioned, I'm going to talk about the horoscope for this week, but the truth of the matter is there are no exact transits. Mercury is ingressing into the zodiac sign of Pisces on the 9th. We are feeling the tail end of the Sun conjunction to Jupiter, which I talked about in last week's episode, on the 6th. And then, on the 12th, we'll be feeling the beginnings of a transit that won't be exact until the 13th. So I'll give you a little bit more information about that in a minute. And really, that's it. It's a quickie this week.

But there are ongoing things that we need to talk about astrologically. When you're reading about astrology, it's tempting to think, "Okay. So there's the Pluto Return, and it happened, and now it's done." But that's not how it works. When we have transits, especially big transits, what we experience is the first wave of impact, but things continue to unfold. And so there's so much that is happening even when there are not exact transits. And on weeks like this where there's not as much happening astrologically, there's more room for us to feel our feelings, for better or worse. So be prepared for that.

I'm going to speak a little more specifically to the transits in a moment, but first, I want to talk a little bit more about what's happening in the world and even touch on Vladimir Putin's birth chart. I want to acknowledge that there are wars happening around the world frequently, certainly now. What's happening between Russia and Ukraine is absolutely awful and heartbreaking. And the reason why the West is so compelled by what's happening in Ukraine is ultimately about racism. It's ultimately about racism, but it's not exclusively about racism. It's also because of the threat of World War III and nuclear war.

It's important to acknowledge that not all nations are capable of waging nuclear war and that that is not on the table, usually, in the way that it is here currently. And that is alarming and newsworthy. It's worth noting that on the 22nd was the exact date of the Pluto Return of the United States, and then Russia waged its war and invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February of 2022. It's interesting to see from an astrological perspective that there is a way that the United States is linked to what is happening in that region of the world. In many ways, this is pretty murky how that is. I have my theories, and I'm sure many people have their theories about this. But it will become very clear in the coming years.

This is a really important thing to remember: World War II did not truly become a world war until years into Hitler's reign. Hitler had a lot of time to do a lot of terrible things before all of the world or so much of the world became involved. It's important to remember that the destabilization of one region of the world can have catastrophic effects on other regions of the world—or not. Or not, right? But it can.

So let me pull back a little bit here. When we're talking about the Pluto Return of the United States, we are talking about this place that is now called these United States of America. And the U.S. becoming independent of Great Britain is one important way of talking about the U.S. Sibley chart, American history, and the U.S. itself. Another way of talking about it is acknowledging that this group of people were fleeing and fighting an oppressive regime only to abuse another peoples. They came to these lands, and they perpetrated war on the people who were living here, on their way of life, and on their land, on their bodies. That war is ongoing from the colonizing state of the U.S. to the people indigenous to these lands. That is really important for us to be talking about.

So, as we see what is happening from Russia to Ukraine and we're horrified, it's important to remember we did exactly that here to establish the place that is now these United States, and we do this to other nations. It's very important to acknowledge this for a million reasons, but here we are on an astrology podcast, so astrologically, it is very important to acknowledge this to understand what the lessons and trauma of Pluto really are.

The Pluto Return of the U.S. is not just about the birth of our nation. It's about the wars we feel entitled to wage to gain personal freedoms. The role that we take as a nation, that the United States takes as a nation, in response to Russia/Putin will impact the world in a meaningful way. As tempting as it is to obsess on this and to look for answers and feel secure in whatever progress we see or to get terrified about whatever setbacks we see happening in Ukraine, happening from Russia, etc., it is important to acknowledge that this is very much the beginning astrologically. So, again, I'm speaking very much as an astrologer based on the transits here.

Since we understand that the first hit of the Pluto Return just happened not even two weeks ago, it's important that we understand that we need to pace ourselves through the stress, through the way we engage with the news, through our willingness and ability to find ways of participating and being constructive. We've got to pace ourselves because it's just beginning. So this is my advice with that: it's to center your humanity as you deal with fear and scarcity.  It's important for us to watch out for our individual tendencies to displace our emotions and to dissociate. To a certain extent, we all have to displace our emotions and we all have to dissociate. That's part of being a person. On the other hand, it's important to be aware of when we're doing it and aware of whether or not it's serving us, because sometimes it really does, and sometimes it really doesn't.

Now, as I've touched on before, any war in the 2020s is likely to be held on the cyberspace in a meaningful way. But humans are violent, and groups of humans are very violent. And so it's important in this time that we, to the best of our ability, get clear about how we're engaging—how we're engaging with information, how we're engaging with others, our friends, our enemies, our frenemies, all the people—because when most people are in heightened stress and fear is when we become emotionally violent or physically violent.

When you're in your flight-or-fight mechanism, when you're in your root chakra, when you're dealing with Pluto issues—those were all synonyms—what we tend to do is abandon our humanity and abandon our integrity because we're only focused on survival. So the building is burning; I'm going to push down all the people in front of me and run out the door as quickly as I can because I'm only thinking about not getting burned—that kind of a thing.

This is a time, to the best of your ability, to ask yourself, especially when you're in a high level of stress, "How am I participating? What are my skills, and how can I contribute? What do I need to let go of right now?" Create a small list of constructive questions that really resonate for you. Stick them in the notes of your phone and return to them when you get overwhelmed by the world because, honestly, you can't control the world. All we can do is control our engagement within it.

That brings me right back to the Pluto Return. When we talk about the United States, it's hard to not be talking about capitalism and even NATO. And I know many astrologers are saying that this is the end of capitalism, that the Pluto Return marks the end of capitalism. I personally feel that this is an idealistic interpretation and also kind of a—it's just not what I'm seeing; I'll say it that way. More than that, though, if capitalism fails, what exactly do we imagine will take its place? Because when a system collapses, it tends to collapse upon the most vulnerable of people, not the people benefitting from capitalism. The people who were never benefitting from capitalism are the ones who are to be directly impacted.

And so this is a time to seriously consider what actions we can take to build systems. And I say this because Pluto is in Capricorn. We are meant to be building systems and destroying the ones that don't work. So this is not the time for analysis to kind of twiddle its thumbs. This is the time for investing in community-based systems, systems where we build support with each other—so be on the lookout for people in the world who center themselves in the way they describe or participate in systems that are meant to be community support systems, which is very common, especially in this world of social media.

Seriously, the Pluto Return of the United States is inevitably a time where we are going to have a revolutionary experience. Literally, the last time Pluto was in Cap at 27 degrees, we had the American Revolutionary War. This is a time of revolution. And so, when we look at the current leaders of the United States, Biden and Harris, does any amongst us imagine that they will herald a revolution? Me personally, not so much. They seem to be very status quo. That doesn't mean that they're all bad or all good. It just means very status quo, not bringing a revolution.

But the astrology tells us we will have a revolution. So whose revolution will it be? It'll be progressive, or it'll be very conservative. It won't be a maintaining of what we've had, and currently that seems to be the current American administration's way to go. And this is why I'm not pulling up their birth charts to talk to you about—Biden or Harris. And just a quick aside, I don't look at famous people's birth charts and discuss them in public. I have an ethical conflict with that. But for civil servants, people who put themselves in a position to serve the government, to serve the people, that's the one exception I'll make for looking at the birth charts of those people.

So, anyways, at this point, what I'm more focused on is the citizens of the United States and the soul of the United States. We have a lot of toxicity to contend with. And on an individual level, we must find ways of having greater empathy for each other and of being less violent, not just physically violent, but emotionally violent, defensive, cruel with each other. We must find ways of confronting our history. And whoever you are, whatever your personal lineage with the history of the land that you're on is, we've all got work to do, from reparations to healing, whether you're connected to a lineage of perpetrators or victims. And a lot of us have a lineage of both. This is the stage I think that we're at as a nation in many ways, finding ways of doing healing work with ourselves that is relevant to the context of what's happening in the collective.

This all brings me to talking about Vladimir Putin. And I honestly hesitate to talk about his chart, and I'm not going to go too deep into it for a number of reasons. One is that, quite frankly, it's a little scary. But who amongst us would be surprised that Vladimir Putin's birth chart would be a little scary? If you know anything about his life and work, you know to be scared. He was born on October 7th, 1952, at 9:30 a.m. in St. Petersburg. And it is important to note that his exact time of birth is definitely not reliable. And because he was KGB, maybe his birth date isn't reliable. 

So we're going to use a major grain of salt when looking at his chart. And if you are doing your own research or you're looking along with me, it's important to remember that when we do not have a reliable time of birth, we do not put much stock into houses, into the Ascendant or Midheaven, or the Moon placement, even, because the time is necessary for those key bits of data. Now, again, it is possible this is not his real birth date. With most civil servants, with most political leaders, we have a reliable birth date and year. But again, he was KGB, so we don't fucking know. We don't know. So we want to keep that in mind, okay?

A lot of how I work with astrology relies on the outer planets, those slow-moving planets that do not change very much from day to day. And that is what I am drawn to focus on within his chart anyways. So I'm going to take a few minutes to talk about this, and then we're going to get into a little more details about this week's horoscope. So, if you're not in the mood to hear about his chart, this is your moment. You just scooch along the audio file till you hit the horoscope. Okay? Okay.

So Putin—he has a Libra stellium, and he's got this Neptune conjunction to Mercury, Saturn, and the Sun. This placement—and in the chart that we have, it's in the twelfth house, which does make sense. It's a place of secretiveness, but again, not a reliable point of data, so I'm not going to focus on it. But this configuration of planets with Neptune and Saturn in the center can absolutely lead to purist-style thinking, and being a purist can lead to extreme violence and it can lead to people feeling entitled to doing whatever it is that they feel called to do because they believe in the purity of their own vision.

The real thing that I want to focus on is the fact he has Pluto at 22 degrees of Leo and 43 minutes, and it is square to Jupiter in his birth chart. The reason why I'm focusing on that is a couple things. One is, with this time of birth that we have, he has a Pluto conjunction to the Midheaven, which is an alarming bit of data that I will not focus on simply because I'm not confident about that Midheaven. But what I can focus on is the fact that Pluto is at 22 degrees and 43 minutes of Leo, and that means Saturn is currently opposite Pluto.

Now, Saturn opposite Pluto is a transit we all go through once every 29 years. It's one of those kinds of transits. But when a person goes through Saturn opposition to Pluto, it's like your very survival is being tested. Your feelings during this transit, like anyone's feelings during this transit, are, "If I don't do this, something terrible will happen." Pluto is, again, flight-or-fight mechanisms, and Saturn is your sense of reality. And so this transit is very difficult. It's a very stressful transit. And generally, there are major losses that we experience, and those losses are actually meant to happen so that we release what is no longer serving us, what is not in alignment with us.

However, when it comes to Saturn and Pluto—and this is something that longtime listeners of the podcast will know because we have gone through Saturn/Pluto conjunction in the past couple years—when it comes to Saturn and Pluto, it is a time where we can really compromise our humanity for our own sense of stability. But it's not really stability when it comes to Saturn and Pluto; it's power. And so seeing that Vladimir Putin is going through this transit throughout 2022 is deeply concerning because this transit suggests that he will not stop fighting. There's just no way that he's just going to be like, "Okay. I lost. I'm moving on." No.

With this transit, we can expect that he will become more dogged and more intense. This transit signifies major power struggles. And because he is a world leader, because he has nuclear power, and because he is all the things he is, doing all the things he's doing, this is a great cause for concern. This transit signifies that he is capable of basically doing anything to achieve his aims and that he will feel entitled. And this is a really important piece to acknowledge. He, like most world leaders, are driven by a sense of purpose. And that purpose is really hungry because he has a Pluto/Jupiter square in his birth chart. It's just ravenously hungry. His drive for power, his drive for dominion, is ravenous. It's compulsive.

And with Saturn forming this opposition to Pluto and forming a square to Jupiter at 20 degrees of Taurus, it is concerning because that particular transit tests how well a person puts their lives together, and it will often kind of bring up shortages. So, again, we are seeing that. The sanctions being placed upon Putin and the oligarchs of Russia and the people of Russia is all being reflected in his birth chart. Now, again, these things will last throughout 2022, based on his birth chart. In May of 2022, he's entering into a once-in-a-lifetime event called Neptune square to Mars. This transit is really demoralizing. It's often a time where our ego-based drives get leveled so that we don't get the same kind of validation, we don't achieve the same level of success, that we would at other times.

So you might hear that and be like, "Great. Putin's going to lose." But the problem is, when someone is driven by power and dominance and feels that their very security, their very foundations, are being threatened, and then they feel demoralized—whether it's because of personal losses or because of health problems, which Neptune square to Mars can often bring out health issues, and there is talk of Putin having health issues right now that are further destabilizing him—what do people who are power hungry do? Well, they don't sit back and say, "I don't feel good. I should pull back," or, "Things aren't working the way I wanted them to. I should do less." No. Not so much. It tends to increase paranoia and defensiveness and intensify the aggression of their behavior.

And so I do have great concerns about what I see happening in this person's chart over the next two years, two and a half. Again, I want to acknowledge that I'm not looking at the chart of the nation of Russia, and I'm not looking at the chart of the nation of Ukraine, nor am I looking at the Ukrainian leaders. I'm not doing that for many reasons, one of which is I do not know enough about the very long history of Russia, and I do not know enough about Ukrainian history. I also see that Vladimir Putin is the one to look out for right now. He is the perpetrator of all of this.

And by understanding that he is being driven by, yes, dominion but also fear, and that he is feeling destabilized, understanding that astrologically this is likely to spur him on to act worse instead of better, is an important perspective. I imagine anyone listening who is a psychologist or a social worker, anyone who works with human psychology, can see how that would be. That is, on a much more relatable level, why cheaters think everyone's cheating on them and liars think everyone's lying to them: because when you perpetrate harm, you assume that others are going to do the same or worse to you. That's a thing.

So, honestly, that's all I'm going to touch on here. The truth of the matter is that Russia poses a threat to the whole world because of his willingness to engage with nuclear power. As I talked about in last week's horoscope, we had that Venus and Mars conjunction to Pluto, and then we had the fire and the conflicts in Ukraine at nuclear power plants that Russia went ahead and went there. Now, astrologically, this wasn't shocking. This was something that we were able to see coming. But I never want to predict something that scary or bad. But we do want to be aware that that is a possibility.

And so, to that, before I get into the details of the horoscope, which again are not many—to that, I want to say, wherever you're at in your life, have gratitude for your safety. Have gratitude for your stability. Make an effort to really feel grateful for your access to food, the air that you breathe. Remember to say thanks to this beautiful, bizarre planet we live on and these just utterly confusing, gorgeous, and weird meat suits we live in. When you breathe in clean air, be grateful for it. When there are threats to the planet or threats to the collective in any region of the world, it is terrifying. And it is also a moment for all of us to be grateful for the little things that we all take advantage of and we all take for granted day by day. Be grateful for what you got. Acknowledge it, because when we acknowledge it, we have more abundance. And in this time that is so scary and stressful, it is easy to feel more aligned with our scarcities.

Fear—all the things we're scared of, all the things you're scared of in your life and in the world, they're probably relevant. Good on you. Go be scared. I'm okay with that. I'm not going to tell you to not feel negative feelings. But I will say pair gratitude with whatever stressful thoughts and feelings you have to the best of your ability because, as we know, repetitive thought is prayer. So, if you're going to pray for what you don't want, try to also pray for what you do want. If you're going to fixate on what hurts, try to equally fixate on what flows, on what's working, on what you do have to be grateful for. And, yeah, within that I include the air you breathe, the water you drink, your ability to flush a toilet, all those basic things. No bombs overhead? Fuck, be grateful for that.

I know that might sound kind of grim, but also, it is worth acknowledging your relative safety if you've got it. If you can, train your mind to focus on what is constructive, on how you can be a helper or, if you need help, how to find the right kind of help and how to ask for it. Wherever you're at—because we're all going to be the helper sometime and we're all going to need help sometime—find ways of engaging constructively.

So, that said, let's get a little bit into the more weekly horoscope vibes. On the 6th, we are in the last day of feeling the conjunction between the Sun and Jupiter, and hopefully it is giving you a little bit of a break, a little more resiliency. This transit can coincide with good things happening, with a bit of ease. And so lean into that on the 6th as much as you can. On the 9th, Mercury moves into Pisces. And that shift from Mercury being in the analytic air sign of Aquarius to the more sense impression-based water sign of Pisces—what we can have is greater empathy, a greater willingness to connect with others, to receive, and to authentically give, to be generous. We can also have greater misunderstandings, skimming over details, that kind of stuff.

So, if you are consuming news, which—my hope is each of you is—make sure you're not just seeking confirmation bias. Make sure that you're not just putting yourself at the top of an outrage slide and just screaming the whole way down. We don't just want to get our confirmation bias. We don't want to just consume news that outrages us or terrifies us. You want to have balanced strategy in how you receive reliable, dependable news. Also, you want to remember that when people are reporting on developing situations like the pandemic or wars, they're doing their best, hopefully, to give you the truth, but the truth is still revealing itself. And so here we are. Here we are. We gotta use common sense when reading or consuming news. Right? We know that, but it's worth repeating because Mercury is in Pisces.

That brings us to the final transit I'm going to name this week. And that is, on the 12th, we will be feeling the Sun conjunction to Neptune. Now, that transit will be exact on the 13th, so I'm going to talk about it in greater depth on next week's episode. But the Sun conjunction to Neptune is kind of a total bummer. This transit is happening all in the sign of Pisces, and it's worth considering because of the speed of Neptune how rare this transit is. To have the Sun conjunct Neptune in Pisces is rare because Neptune is not frequently in any sign, let alone Pisces, the sign that it rules.

Having the sun conjunct Neptune can be really exhausting. It can literally make you tired. It can make you feel demoralized. It can make you feel sleepy or dissociated. It can also stir up major anxiety, and that's the thing worth naming is the anxiety that this transit kicks up. This is a very important time to be aware of your boundaries. There is a way that Neptune dissolves our boundaries. And so you may experience people trampling over your boundaries intentionally or unintentionally. You may be crossing some sort of lines without even realizing it.

The problem with this transit is it can coincide with you needing stronger energetic and psychological behavioral boundaries just at the moment when you're least likely to have them. You may run into an energy vampire. You may be dealing with people or situations that are kind of impossible, so you feel kind of at a loss for how to cope. And if that's the case, all you can do is your damn best. So to be empathetic, to be generous, to be kind are what the Sun conjunction to Neptune in Pisces truly want. But it's not healthy or appropriate with certain people and certain situations.

So this is where you need boundaries to understand that if kindness and empathy and caring and generosity for others comes at the expense of those same things for yourself, that's not good. That's what we don't want to do. So, to the best of your ability, show up. Pay attention. Pay attention to how you respond to your own energy and feelings, how you respond to other people's, and whether or not you abandon yourself in order to take care of people and situations. If you do, you may need to, again, rein in those boundaries. If you are somebody who in your anxiety and fear and overwhelm tramples on other people's boundaries, you may need to, again, rein that shit in and honor that we are all going through things and that no matter what you're feeling, that doesn't mean you get to trample upon other people's expressed boundaries.

All of that said, I want to remind you of something that I've talked about a fair amount on Ghost of a Podcast, which is your boundaries are your job. It is your job to identify your boundaries, to hold your boundaries, and to protect them. It's not anyone else's job to protect your boundaries. Hopefully, the people you're engaging with are being respectful—hopefully. But can you count on people being respectful all the damn time? No, you can't. Sometimes people disrespect our boundaries on purpose because they're jerks, and sometimes people disrespect our boundaries because they don't know any better, because they made a mistake; it's not intentional.

In any case, it is important that you take responsibility for and stay centered within your own boundaries. You don't have to be an apologist about it, and you don't have to be aggressive about it. Do your best to just embody what you know to be right and good for you at this time. And if you don't know what's right and good for you, that's a boundary too. "I can't say yes to X because I'm not sure if it's a yes for me yet." That's a damn boundary. Now, again, I'll talk about this more in depth in next week's episode, but I wanted to make sure you're empowered with a little bit of information because who needs a Neptune transit in the midst of all this? I beg of you. You tell me. Who needs it? We don't, but we got it. We got it, so here we go.

Now, my loves, thank you for joining me once again on this here Ghost of a Podcast. If you'd like to learn more with me, visit my website. It is gorgeous. It is glorious. Visit my website at lovelanyadoo.com, where I've got free stuff. You can also purchase digital workshops and my book, Astrology for Real Relationships. It's both cute and fantastic, in my humble view. Also, whilst there, you can always join me over on Patreon, where I post all the damn time. And if you're an astrology student or pro, you can subscribe to my astrologers' pro tool, Astrology For days, to track the transits and your delineations of them. That's at astrologyfordays.com, but it's all on my website.

As always, I ask that you subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you get value from it, give me five stars and write a review because it does make a big difference. Okay. Be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and go gently through these days, my loves. I will talk to you next week. Buh-bye.