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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Welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. I am very excited to be joined by Cat today.

Jessica: Cat, you wrote in an amazing question, so why don't you just let me know what you want to talk about, and we will dive right in?

Cat: Thank you, Jessica. It's great to be here. So I felt inspired to write to you after I was doing a three-day intensive first-aid training course for my work. I work in an arts institution, so everyone comes in. And it was really important for me to know how to do first-aid training, and it brought up so much anxiety and I felt so stupid. I felt like I was that child in school all over again. I'm a 35-year-old adult, and I felt like being a little girl in school, bilingual, having a special teacher coming in to take me out of the classroom.

And I had this moment where I thought, "How can I learn these tools, these skills that can save a life? Surely I must be capable. And does me being neurodiverse—how does it affect me, and can astrology help me with this? Could my chart say anything about my dyslexia, my dyspraxia, and my ADD symptoms, and how can I work with it in order to be"— you know, I want to be a thriving being that can continue to learn, because it's really sad not being able to learn. I had a grandmother that didn't read or write. She was born in a dictatorship in a very poor family. So there's something about learning that feels with the important to me.

Jessica: Yeah. Let's get into it. There's a lot, too. And I want to just name you were born June 30th, 1986, in London, UK, at 3:45 p.m. I want to ask a question before I begin. So you named ADD, dyslexia, and one other thing that I didn't quite catch.

Cat: It was dyspraxia.

Jessica: And what is that?

Cat: I don't really fully understand either. I mean, that's the issue, was when I was assessed, they diagnosed me as dyslexic. They then said, "Oh, she also has these symptoms of dyspraxia." But no one—I tried to talk to my GP about it, and I don't know if I would have to maybe take a private health direction in order to get awareness around how is this affecting me and where, because when you read up on the NHS dyspraxia symptoms, it says a lot about motor coordination, but it's quite vague. So I don't know how it affects me. I know that I was very clumsy. I'm not very good at coordination.

Jessica: Are you still clumsy?

Cat: Not as much, but not quick to learn. But then that can also be a very dyslexic thing, that it will take me a longer time to learn.

Jessica: Yep. It can also be ADD, depending on a variety of things. Okay. So we're not really kind of working with that part of the diagnosis as much because it sounds like it's not—at least consciously, you don't see symptoms of it clearly. Is that right? Am I hearing that right?

Cat: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. So there's a lot to unpack here. Neurodivergent is a very big umbrella. It's a massive umbrella, and it seems like more and more bodies are huddled underneath that umbrella these days, right?

Cat: Exactly.

Jessica: There are so many reasons why. And that's for another conversation. But as an astrologer, sometimes when I look at people's birth charts and I talk to them about the diagnoses they think of, and I'm like, "Oh, it's this aspect in your birth chart," and that makes sense and that can be worked with. And sometimes I see that diagnoses are validating and they're life-affirming and they give you community and structure and resources and all this stuff. And sometimes I've seen people actually harmed by these diagnoses because you feel penned in. And while it might be technically true, it might not be constructive.

So I just want to kind of acknowledge all of that and then pulled back to say when we are looking in a birth chart for how your brain operates—so let me reframe that—how your mind operates, how you process data, how you analyze things, how you learn, how you listen, how you communicate—we look to Mercury, right? And in your chart, you've got Mercury at the top of the chart. It's not the highest planet, but it's close. It's at the top of the chart in the ninth house in Leo. And generally, when we've got Mercury in the ninth house, there is this emphasis on intelligence and higher learning as being really important. And that can come from the childhood in really traumatic ways or really encouraging ways. In your chart, because Mercury is square to Pluto, I imagine it came from really rough ways for you. And some of that is what you even described in your question—is your grandmother couldn't read. I assume that that—and that's your mom's mom?

Cat: Yeah. Both my parents. That was my mom's mom and both my parents. I mean, I [indiscernible 00:05:52] my dad, but I know that my mom left school really young. I mean, she was a child and working. So, yeah, a lot of trauma around that.

Jessica: Yeah. But they're really smart people, eh?

Cat: Yeah. Yeah. They were not dumb people. They were hardworking people.

Jessica: Yeah. And you say "were." Are they passed?

Cat: My grandmother has passed, yeah. And I never got to meet my dad's parents because they died when he was 19.

Jessica: Oh. Wow.

Cat: Yeah. And my mom is— she has a lot of health issues, and I think that the medication that she takes perhaps might blur a lot of her judgment. I think it does. I think it fogs her brain a bit, so she's not as present as I think she would like to be or could be. And my father has passed. So I think that maybe during that time in the last decade, things have been really tough.

Jessica: I'm sorry. That's a lot. And I'm going to acknowledge all that stuff, and time permitting, we can kind of come to that. But this question you're asking, I really am hearing how important it is, so let's go in. Mercury in Leo. Let's start with that. Mercury is a mobile planet. The mind is supposed to be flexible and receptive and all these things, right? Leo, not so much. Leo is a fixed fire sign. So there's a way that works for you to learn. There are conditions where you have an easier time—a much easier time—hearing what people are saying and communicating, like speaking your mind. And then there are circumstances where that just doesn't work.

And that's pretty consistent with having Mercury in a fixed sign. Now, that can pretty easily play into these diagnoses, but I'm going to stay away from the diagnoses for this moment and just say that with Mercury in Leo, regardless of everything else, cultivating self-awareness of what does and doesn't work is really helpful so that you can be like, "Okay. So I know I'm in a group class where there's a lot of information coming at me quickly, and I'm also social. I'm in a social situation. That's not my ideal setup for learning"— if you can kind of have that self-acceptance and know that that is just how your learning style works, from my perspective, that can be really empowering because then you don't have to feel like, "Oh, I'm failing," or, "I'm not smart," or, "I can't learn."

It's, "This is not a situation that sets me up for success." And so then you can do other things to support your learning needs in a situation like that. Again, we can talk about that a little bit more in a moment. But this is where things get really complicated for you. You have a Pluto conjunction to the Ascendant, and what little you've shared of your family history already—yeah, that is all pretty classic of the Pluto conjunction to the Ascendant in Scorpio. For you, how you present yourself to other people, how people perceive you and engage with you, it's something you're really sensitive to. And it can be really hard when you feel like you don't fit in or match other people's expectations. Does that make sense?

Cat: Yeah. Yeah, it does.

Jessica: And of course, because you've got a Scorpio Rising and a Pluto conjunction to your Scorpio Rising, yeah, people misinterpret you for sure. For sure. People project all manner of shit upon you, and they may think you're being angry when you're actually just listening. They may think you're being defensive when you're being inquisitive. There is a way that you actually do best when you're very direct, and the world is not well suited to that all the time. People have a really hard time with really direct, largely because people don't know how to be direct, I think. So when others are direct with them, it can feel assaulting.

This Mercury in your chart is square to the Ascendant and Pluto. And so the way that you process data, whether it's learning or communicating, is in many ways wrapped up in these identity issues that you have about how you present yourself to others and how you're received. If your chart was written in a slightly different way, you may have the cognitive and learning stuff that you have and be like, "Fuck it. I'm different. That's it." This Pluto dynamic in your chart is not quick to be chill about not being able to work well with others and not be able to get your thoughts across in a way that you really want. Does this make sense so far?

Cat: Yeah. Yeah. It does.

Jessica: Do any questions emerge so far?

Cat: I'm just taking it all in.

Jessica: Yeah.

Cat: I'm feeling a sense of relief to kind of be—yeah. It's just amazing that you can pick up on all of this because I feel like, "Oh, yes, it's here. You got it."

Jessica: It is here. And on top of it all, you've got Saturn in the first house, and it's not forming a hard aspect to any of these things, but it is a trine to Mercury. And so it strengthens this feeling of, "I just want to get along. I don't want to stand out." Saturn in the first does not want to stand out. It does not want to be seen as difficult or have special needs in any way. And so there is a way that you, I imagine, work hard to take care of everything on your own. You have this hypervigilance, with Saturn in the first trine to that Mercury, and you think, "Well, if I keep my head down, if I try harder, then I should be able to sort this out on my own." Honestly, you often can. You often can. But at what cost, I ask you? I imagine the cost is your mental health, a feeling of isolation and a feeling of exhaustion from having kind of run yourself so hard in order to keep up.

Cat: Yeah. You get it. You get it.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. And so the irony is you're actually very good at keeping up. You're very intelligent. That's actually, I think, part of your problem if I'm being honest, is that your brain is scanning for details all the time. You're not just scanning for data; you're scanning for details. You're pulling in so many details that sometimes it can be hard to stay on topic because you're tracking all these details, and again, especially with people. So learning in groups can be tricky for you because if somebody's sitting around kind of with a nervous tic, it can really throw you off your game because you're just tracking the tic or whatever it is. And honestly, so many of us have nervous tics, so no shame on those with the nervous tics that are driving you to distraction, but it is what it is.

So for you, you're tracking so many details and you're synthesizing so much information all the time—because again, Mercury square to Pluto does that—that it's hard for you to stay centered or grounded around, "What am I trying to learn?" Because you could learn lots of things all the time. But, "What am I trying to learn?" So, if we come back to—it was like a CPR class that you did, eh?

Cat: It was CPR and it was a basic first aid, like how to tell the difference between someone having a stroke or having heat exhaustion and being able to discern the differences between them.

Jessica: So life-or-death stuff.

Cat: Yeah. Exactly.

Jessica: Yeah, which— of course, whenever we are talking about life-or-death stuff, we look to Pluto. So this is the perfect storm for you to get triggered because you're like, "It's not just that I'm not learning or I feel frustrated by how I'm learning, but if I fuck this up, someone could die." This is like your nightmare situation, honestly. So it's actually perfect we got to do a reading immediately after this class occurred. And would you say that you actually learned the information?

Cat: Yeah, I did. No, she did say don't overthink this. And there are just so many acronyms for just general first aid, like RIDDOR and all these other things. And everyone knew how to say, "Oh, blah blah blah blah blah," and I was just like— felt frozen. Even though I got the gist of it, even though I knew, yeah, this is for recording—like I know that in the heat of the moment, you just do it, and you know how to do it and it just comes. But I just felt very small not being able to say these words the way all the other people were. And yeah, I did feel, "Gosh, I can't help anyone." And I know that's not true, but that's what the triggers sort of brought up for me.

Jessica: Right. Right. And I'm glad you use the word "trigger" because you had referenced how it felt like high school, like this is not your first rodeo with being in a situation. And in regards to high school, you passed?

Cat: I left.

Jessica: You left?

Cat: I left. It was really—I mean, I think—I do feel quite emotional talking about it, but it's not a bad thing because I think it's good. So I have a sibling who is 12 years older than me, so they were born in 1974, and they have battled with—they're okay for me to share this, by the way, that this is something that we had discussed beforehand. But they battled with drug addiction for a very, very long time. And they had moved back home when I was 15, and they were going through what they were going through and we all sort of split apart. My dad found his mechanism, my mom found her mechanism, and my brother found his mechanism. And then I found my mechanism, which was a boyfriend, first love, and not being able to focus on studies.

And I just felt, "Well, I have love. I don't need anything else." And yeah. I left kind of just before I turned 16. And the law is different now. This is when Tony Blair was in power, in that time. I can't remember the year, but you could leave school at the age of 16. And I did have one teacher that was like, "Cat, come in, please. I know you can do your art. I know you can do your English. Just come in and do it." And I was like, "I don't want to do it." And that's been my thing: just disappear, just leave, just go.

Jessica: Yep. Okay. So let's stay with this for a moment. So, when you were in school, how were your grades?

Cat: Not great. I mean, I—

Jessica: Did you pass?

Cat: Yeah, I passed. And I think in the UK, you kind of—I think you have to be in a really bad position not to pass.

Jessica: I see.

Cat: Yeah. So I did pass, but I would either do really, really well—there would be moments where people will go, "You're doing so well, Cat," and especially in certain subjects. And then other stuff, I just didn't care. And then I definitely had some acting-out behavioral issues and would have to kind of be put in with the sort of naughty girls. It was an all-girl school.

Jessica: It was an all-girl school. Okay. I was going to be like, "Okay. Naughty girls. Sure." But—

Cat: No, not that. No, no sexual—

Jessica: Wasn't a bad movie, but no, I get it. I get what you're saying. I mean, okay. So we're pulling on lots of things, and let me just acknowledge first you've got a Moon in Aries, and it is conjunct your North Node and also conjunct your Descendant. So, impatient? Check. Easy to anger when you don't feel like you're being seen and you don't feel like your relationships are working? Check. Strong emotions? Yeah, check. So you didn't need any complexity in your family life in order to have all of that. So, for whatever that's worth, that is related to the learning stuff, but it's actually also just you've got an Aries Moon; what are you going to do about it?

And your Aries Moon is square to your Mars in Capricorn. So, when things piss you off, yeah, you fight or you flight. That's what you do. And because so many of us are nurtured to believe that fighting is bad—and also, it can be very bad if we don't fight fair—flight can seem like a way of avoiding conflict when in fact running away from things often is just a different way of engaging with conflict. Right? It's turning the conflict within instead of fighting with circumstances or family or whatever it is.

But I want to just tell you why I was asking this question. Your birth chart tells me that you're very smart. You're very resourceful. Now, I do not see academia, whether it's high school or college, as a great measure of intelligence. It can be for some people with certain kinds of learning, but just for whatever it's worth, I really don't like school. So that does color my perspective here because when someone's like, "Oh, I did well at things I liked and I didn't do well at things I didn't like," all I hear is, "Oh, you're smart. You're a smart person," because to me, that's what smart people do. It's like, "Why should I fuck with this if I don't like this?" To me, that seems like a smart way of being, and I know conventionally that is not considered.

But here's what I see about you, and then I'm going to have you kind of ask me questions and point me in the direction of what would be constructive, because what I see for you is that when you set yourself to learning something, you always learn the thing. You don't always learn it the way other people do. You might not learn it as quickly as you'd like, but I don't see that you have endeavored to learn many things and not being able to learn those things. Your capacity for understanding is incredibly strong, so none of this is about your capacity to learn or your intelligence. It's more about your willingness and habits or capacity for accepting yourself so that you can be like, "Oh, yeah, this does work for me, and therefore I'm more likely to thrive here," or, "This doesn't work for me, and I'm going to have to figure out ways to accommodate myself."

I personally am not great with details. I've got a lot of Aquarius stuff in my chart, so I'm like, "Fuck it. I'm not great at details. Who cares?" Very Aquarian of me. It doesn't matter. But you've got that Leo Mercury, so you're like, "Oh, it does matter. If it matters to other people, it does matter." And I want to share with you that the acronyms for things have nothing to do with actually using those skills. They have to do with the admin around it or the social component of how you communicate about it, but if we distill what is the purpose of what you're here to learn—and I want to encourage you to do this moving forward if you can remember to. "What is the purpose of what I'm meant to learn? What's actually important in this?" And you give yourself that reminder of, "This is what I'm here to learn." Then when you don't hold on to the acronyms that everyone else seems to be holding on to, you can be like, "Okay. Well, that's annoying, and maybe it even makes me feel bad. But it's not actually getting in the way of me learning what's important." Does that make sense?

Cat: Yeah. Yeah, it does. It really does make sense.

Jessica: And it's really about starting with self-acceptance instead of starting with "What's my learning skill?" or "How do I work with X diagnosis?" And again, I mean, I don't know, because I'm not a mental health—I'm not a therapist or anything, so I don't really know if what I'm saying is consistent with the advice you would be given by somebody who is an expert in those diagnoses. But based on your birth chart, when you allow yourself to refine your goals of what you're learning or how you're going to show up or engage with people or information, and you refine those goals to one to three things—one to three things— it becomes much easier for your mind to not—I'm not going to say stay focused, because focus actually isn't your problem. I mean, you're very focused. It's to have a constructive focus, right?

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: It's to have a focus on the things that matter, because what happened the other day in the class is your focus when to, "Why am I not keeping up with these people in the way that they're keeping up?" Your focus went to the thing that was causing you harm instead of helping you learn or stay present, and that's that Pluto placement. If you've listened to Ghost, then you've heard me say this a million times, but that Pluto placement can have you focusing on your strongest feeling instead of your wisest feeling. And so having that kind of ambition of "What's the one to three things I'm here to learn or am here to do?"—because this could apply to social situations as much as it could to learning situations—that can empower you to be like, "Okay. I'm actually not here to compare myself to others. I'm not here to figure out why I'm not learning acronyms easily. I'm here actually to just learn how to breathe air into someone's lungs or recognize the difference between heatstroke and a stroke stroke."

So I want to just pause and see—I know you had this overall question about your learning style in the context of your neurodivergence, and I want to make sure I'm actually answering that or speaking to that. Am I? And let me know if you have any questions around it or connected to it.

Cat: I think what you were saying about refining my goals really spoke to me because I did go to a university in the end, and I did a creative arts degree. And I would like to do a master's. And I think this is why—but the MA that I'm applying for is really creative, and there's a lot more conversation around everyone learning differently. And because it's a creative writing MA, there's a lot more space for me to really refine my voice, and—because I just felt like this is all too much. Opportunities come. It's like saying, "Oh yeah, here's an amazing dinner, but I have no teeth; I can't chew." That's kind of— it's like opportunities were coming, but I didn't feel like I had the foundation to deal with those opportunities, didn't feel good in my—and as I've been doing the work, I feel like I'm trying to build that foundation within myself.

Jessica: So, here, let's go back to your ninth house because you're talking to me about going back to university, and here's the thing. I gave you my little spiel about how much I hate school because I have to give that to you before I tell you that this Mercury placement—so not just having Mercury in the ninth house, but having Mercury in the ninth house square to Pluto unfortunately means you will thrive in higher education and in academia. Not thrive like, "Oh, this is chill." Some people go to university as a way to escape the world and to just take a break and focus on their art process. That's not you. You are looking to substantiate yourself through the institution of higher learning, for better or worse, right?

Cat: Yes.

Jessica: I have given you my perspective on education because I can wax poetic about "You don't have to do that" and all my counterculture values as an Aquarius Mercury person.

Cat: But that was also school school, which is awful, you know?

Jessica: Yes. It's awful.

Cat: High school. Yeah.

Jessica: It's all awful. I mean—

Cat:: Yeah.

Jessica: School can be pretty awful. However, my guess is it will be very difficult and you will love it, and it will give you so much value because for you, having a space where you can dig and dig and dig and dig into a thing is— it's your happy place. And because we're talking about Mercury square to Pluto, your happy place is painful. Your happy place is a little bit of struggle. And the question isn't how can you have a lack of struggle—I mean, that would be cool. But what I'm more excited about for you is how can you see that struggle as striving and excavating and healing? It's more about your Mercury is a little adventurer who is like a captain of a ship. It is a captain of a ship, and Pluto is the waters, and the waters are choppy. But you're not going to stop being on the ship or stop being the captain just because it's choppy waters.

And so your writing practice, your creative journey, your relationship to school and learning in general, is unlikely to be a super straight line, and it doesn't need to be. It's more about it being an authentic creative process, which includes struggle, and allowing yourself to be with that. I know so many people hear the word "struggle" and they're like, "Oh, that's bad. Struggle is bad." But I would like you to share with me a single piece of art, a single bit of activism, a single bit of anything worth anything that didn't involve some measure of struggle. And even when, as creatives, we create something and it just flows straight out of us and there's no struggle, generally there's struggle behind that one experience that brought us to a place where that one piece flowed.

So to me, struggle isn't bad. Struggle is the path. If we can remove judgment from that struggle, then it just becomes the choppy water. It doesn't become like the choppy water means something is wrong or the choppy water means something is wrong with me.

Cat: Yeah. Absolutely, because when I was younger, if anything was too much— my dad used to say this thing, which is ridiculous. He'd say, "If you don't like it, don't do it." Don't do it. Whatever. And I think that got a bit confusing in my brain. "Well, I don't want to do it. I'm going to bunk off school and just be on my own. I don't want to be with"—you know. And now, as I'm an adult, there are things where I know it doesn't feel good, and you talk a lot about this. It doesn't feel good. How can I behave well even when I feel bad? You say something similar. But I always find that really helpful.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Cat: Yeah, and to kind of, "Can I stay with this uncomfortable feeling and know that it's not going to kill me and that I'm not dying, and it doesn't mean that I'm worthless?" because it brings up such terror in me, like to the point of fetal-position crying. I don't know if this is Aries Moon. I don't know what the hell it is.

Jessica: It's the Pluto on the rise. All the words you're using are literal key words in a textbook of Pluto. It's you're in the fetal position. It's the flight or fight. You feel like you're dying. That's Pluto shit right there.

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: And it's because your flight-or-fight mechanisms are so well developed—and some of that is lived experience. A lot of that is epigenetic; it's inherited—that when you start to see any evidence of "This could turn against me," your flight-or-fight mechanisms, your survival mechanisms, say, "Okay. Then we gotta fucking change things. We gotta get out of here some way or another." So that's, again, fight or flight. That's fetal position or just stop engaging. The reality is your fight is good. So this is where I wonder, do you get mad?

Cat: At people?

Jessica: That is a great question.

Cat: Okay.

Jessica: In general. I mean, I'm asking the umbrella, like do you experience anger? Do you express anger?

Cat: It's a complicated one. I have a hard time with anger. A couple of years ago, I remember having to fight for something, and I had to stand up for a situation, and I did it. And I had to leave, but then the aftermath of it is exhausting. I feel depleted, and it was almost like it was too much. I wasn't really stable. And whenever you talk about the choppy waters, I kind of see that someone having to navigate a boat under these extreme conditions and that I can see myself learning how to do that with these extreme emotions because it was like the emotions are too much, and I'm no longer in control. And then it all comes out, and then I want to die, and then I'm so depressed. And then energy's gone for a really long time.

Jessica: So here we go. We gotta get into this for a minute here, because listen: you have a Mars/Moon square in your birth chart, and you've got this Pluto on the rise. We're talking about your survival mechanisms. It seems like you always go to flight: "I'm going to leave. I'm going to shut down, fetal position." That means your survival mechanisms have one move that they're comfortable with, and that would only be the case if you have an embedded belief that fight is bad and flight is good. This is going to seem like it's taking you sideways and off topic, but I'm going to give you very annoying advice: practice activating your anger in small, safe ways because, believe it or not, it is linked to your learning stuff, and it's—

Cat: I agree with you.

Jessica: Does that make sense?

Cat: Yeah. It makes complete sense.

Jessica: Yeah. It's because in situations like you were the other day when you were learning in this group, instead of being like, "This is frustrating. I am annoyed by this room of people who have such an easy time learning acronyms," or whatever it was, you went to, "What's wrong with me?" And then it's defeat and depleted, right? In that kind of situation, it would actually be pretty cool if you had the ability to be like, "These people are annoying me. I am annoyed by the situation I'm in," not because I'm trying to get you to be mad at people all day long, but because you were annoyed with the people because it was an annoying setup. You were learning something, and it was just annoying for you.

Anger doesn't mean rage or punishment or abuse. It can. That's maladjusted anger. But having the ability to experience agitation and anger is empowering. The way I often think about it, it's like you know when you were a kid in a swimming pool, and you would swim laps and you would use your feet to push off a wall so you would swim faster than your sibling or the kid in the pool with you? That's anger. That's the healthy, happy part of anger. We push off of our anger, and it can embolden us to access our ego energies in a healthy way. And that's something that it sounds like you really are struggling with when it comes to learning situations. Your ego energies aren't there, because if they were there, you'd be more irritated. And irritated is actually not a bad thing. It's not awesome, but it's better than demoralized—I mean in my book, anyways. Whether it's better or worse, it might be more honest.

Something you've probably heard me say before but I will say again a million times is when we don't properly label our emotions, when we don't understand what they are, when we do the best things to take care of them, if we're kind of  treating them in the wrong way because we've misunderstood what they are inherently, it doesn't work. If we even go back to 15-, 16-year-old you who ended up leaving high school, so much of what you had going on at home was probably really frustrating. It was sad and all those things. But I imagine you were furious. You were pissed off. And so a great place to redirect those energies is sex and love/dating, because it's passion. It's just like a safer way of experiencing passion.

When you have an outlet for passionate, intense—basically, I'm talking about Martian feelings—then you have more options. And that's really what it comes down to, is having more options so that you can find more ways of supporting yourself. So a good place to start—do you like dancing?

Cat: I love dancing.

Jessica: Okay. Cool. Good. That's very good for you. A good place to start is dancing, but not like gentle swaying. We're not doing that. We're leaning into angry music kind of dancing, and ideally alone so that you don't have to feel self-conscious or how it's affecting other people.

Cat: Because it's going to get scary.

Jessica: Yeah. Get weird. I want to encourage you to get weird because there's this part of you that really feels— now, I should pull back to say the highest planet in your chart is Venus. You have Venus at the top of the chart. So, yeah, you're always going to refer back to, "How is this affecting other people? What do other people think? Is this palatable for others?" And so I want to again encourage you to do things in ways where you're doing it for yourself; you're doing it for your experience of it. I'm not encouraging you to walk around being a selfish person.

I'm encouraging you to find spaces that feel safe where you can do things for yourself because you're always going to have Saturn in the first and Venus at the top of the chart. In other words, you're always going to care what other people think. You're always going to be aware of the impact you're having on your environment, and that is not bad or good. It's you, and it's something to embrace and accept about yourself And therefore, that means when you're trying to learn something that is challenging for you, whether it's experiencing anger or learning content that you feel self-conscious around, your learning style is actually like you do better alone or in a pretty contained environment. That makes sense to you, eh?

Cat: Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica: And for the master's program, I'm guessing it's a small group, eh?

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: Great.

Cat: It's small, and then we do some exercises together, but then a lot of it is self-motivated. I can do it at home [crosstalk]—

Jessica: That's where you thrive. That's where you thrive. You do really well alone because you are motivated. And it's just writing; is that correct? Did I hear that right?

Cat: Yeah. Well, I also used to make visual work, but—I did my degree in photography, but I ended up just kind of being guided to write, and then I was blocked for a really long time. And I even had a studio in my late 20s, and I just would go there, and I just couldn't get in the swing of it. And now I've realized, "Oh, I actually read more and write more when I wake up, have a cup of tea, and just get into bed." I don't need the camaraderie as much as I thought I did, because in art school, they're very—still have emphasis on [indiscernible 00:36:15]. And those conversations are really important, and I do get a lot from talking to people. But I feel like I can create more and read more when I'm on my own.

Jessica: Yeah. It's Pluto. Let me tell you about it because the way that Pluto thrives is—I always—okay. So, when I think of Pluto, I often will think of a Japanese sunken tub. Have you ever been in one of those?

Cat: I have seen them. I've never been in one, unfortunately.

Jessica: They are delightful. May you get your body in one one day. It is super narrow and super deep, right? It's a sunken tub. And that's so Plutonian. It's this narrow scope of focus that goes incredibly deep. And so, when there are distractions, whether it's environmental distractions or people, even sounds/smells, it can really throw off the focus that Pluto wants you to have. So, yeah, writing from bed— do you live with other people or alone?

Cat: I moved back home. So, at the moment, it's me upstairs and my sibling downstairs, and my mom's in Portugal. So it's actually much better with just the two of us.

Jessica: Much, much, much better. And it's your sibling, the elder one, eh?

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica:: Yeah. And are they doing okay now?

Cat: Yeah. I mean, they're suffering from a very deep depression, and they tried everything. In the last 20 years, they've done all different forms of treatments. And at the moment, what's working for him is having— he's on a methadone script, and so he kind of feels like, "Okay. Well, I'm not using." You know? It's been a few years, and he's never gone this long without it. And we did talk about it today because I was telling him about you because he was saying, "Oh, I don't know what to do because I feel like I'm not using, but I'm"—the system doesn't know what to do with him because it's like, "Well, you're still needing methadone to survive." But I said, "You just go slow." [crosstalk]

Jessica: I agree with that completely. Will you say his full name? Let me look at him energetically for a moment.

Cat: In Portuguese?

Jessica: Mm-hmm.

Cat: [redacted]

Jessica: So he also has an issue with rage, anger.

Cat: Yeah, but he just doesn't express it as much.

Jessica: Yeah.

Cat: I think it's all inside.

Jessica: Oh, wow. You express more anger than he does? Wow. That's something.

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. That says something. Okay. Yeah. He's pissed. He's angry. He's so angry, and it's—so this is something that I see with both of you. I'm not surprised you ended up living together and how linked you are. Again, Mercury—it governs our siblings also. So all this stuff we're talking about, from your sibling to your learning style, yeah, all of it's Mercury, which is—and writing? That's all Mercury. It's really interesting. When I look at him, I mean, he's just got this fire in his belly. And much like you, although of course very differently than you for a lot of reasons, when he doesn't express and experience his anger, it becomes demoralization, depression, exhaustion.

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: And I think that so much of his substance use over time has been trying to self-medicate how out of control he feels, in part in response to his own anger. Was there violence in your early childhood?

Cat: Yeah. He experienced it more than me because we have such a big age gap. But I think he saw a lot more anger from my father. So my dad was 19 when he had him, and my mom was 17. And I was told that my dad was violent with my mom and that—yeah, and had a lot of really bad things that my dad had done to my mom, and that when I was born, he changed and he didn't drink whiskey anymore and he wasn't as violent. But both of my parents were very—in a way, it's almost like me and George cannot be angry because with me, it was like, you're angry; you're going to get a slap across your face. And it was quite scary. And I felt like for a time, I was a punching bag.

But then, also, my mom was incredibly loving. So it's really complicated, that kind of dynamic. But my dad was very alpha, you know, very macho and mustache and—you know. So George, compared to him, I don't think was ever—we were never really allowed to be bigger than our parents, or it felt like that. That's my own judgment. I don't know if—

Jessica: You're again really accurately describing what I see as well. You were allowed to be a lot of things, but it was better for you to fail than for you to fight back or to take up too much space. That is shown in your chart. And I think that for your brother, things were much worse.

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: And also, the pressure that your parents placed on him as a guy were different than what was placed on you. And he's actually a really—he is a gentle guy, and he's a different kind of man than your father was in pretty much every way.

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: But he does experience rage. And because it's so off topic of what we originally were talking about, I didn't want to bring up the abuse stuff that I do see in your chart at the beginning because, again, it felt like it was a bit off topic. But the more we get into it, the more that it becomes really clear that it's not off topic, because we are talking about why you can't experience anger, why your flight-or-fight mechanisms are so on, like 100 percent 100 percent of the time, and how, in both your life and in your brother's life, that has played itself out—and you're very brave. I imagine that you don't always believe that, but everyone who actually knows you knows how brave you are because you're scared of shit and you do it anyways. You think because you're scared, that means you're not brave. But the fact that you're scared and you do it anyways, yeah, that's what bravery is.

And your brother—he's got more of a struggle trying to contain himself, and so he doesn't let himself do things as a result. His flight-or-fight mechanism is stay silent; stay still. Stay still. Don't move. Don't change anything too rapidly. And we could spend a lot of time on that, but I think he would—and I'm not able to counsel him and all that kind of stuff, but a movement-based therapy would be really good for him. I don't know if he's ever done any kind of Tai Chi.

Cat: I don't think so. No. I think this is really helpful, Jessica.

Jessica: Oh. Good. I'm so glad.

Cat: Yeah. No, this is so helpful because—

Jessica: Good.

Cat: —he asked me—because he was like, "Could you ask her something about me?" And I was like, "I don't know."

Jessica: I would say a safe place to start might be doing a Tai Chi class with a lot of old people. Old people do Tai Chi. They do them in parks, stuff like that. That would be a safe place for him to start to work with the energy of his body. Does he also like dancing?

Cat: I don't know.

Jessica: I feel like what I would ideally want to do is to encourage him to do various physical things. Again, start with Tai Chi. Maybe do some sort of martial art that is not combat focused, and eventually to play with Capoeira. Have you heard of this?

Cat: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica: It's like dance combat. It's like sneak attack, learning to work with anger in a more playful way. I wouldn't encourage him to start there, although I'd love for you to go to a class. I think that would work for you. I also think a self-defense class with all women in it would be a great move for you. Those can be a one-off, or doing it for a month or whatever, because a lot of times self-defense classes for women will not just be about the moves, but they hold a container for the emotions that come up.

And I mean, if I was queen of the world, I would have you learn how to kick ass and not bother with taking names, just kick ass, because it would give you so much more access to your own energy and show you that you are not your parents. You are not a victim, and you are not a perpetrator. You're a messy human. And if there's something that you've been protecting yourself from that you fear is true within yourself that is, again, inherited from family, that the more you actively engage with it, the more you will have evidence that you don't need to fear yourself as much.

And the exact same thing can be said for your brother. The difference is he is much older, and he's done such a thorough job of kind of—you ever see Dirty Dancing?

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. So he's done such a thorough job of putting baby in a corner that it'll take more work for him to come out of that corner. You're in the Patrick Swayze dance where you're like, "No one puts a baby in a corner, but maybe someone does. But maybe someone doesn't." You're back and forth. You're near the corner, but you're not in the corner. You've been in the corner for a long time. [crosstalk] it would have been so sad if I had to figure out a different way to say that.

Cat: No, I get it. Thank you.

Jessica: My pleasure. My pleasure. Anytime. Anytime. So it's going to be a different path for the two of you, but—hold on. Say your full name out loud for me.

Cat: In Portuguese or in English?

Jessica: First Portuguese, then English.

Cat: Catarina Alessandra Marks Feliciano, and Catarina Alexandra Marquez Feliciano.

Jessica: You're still in London, yeah?

Cat: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Yeah. Do you like it there?

Cat: Oh, I don't know.

Jessica: It's not a great culture for you.

Cat: It's hard. It's difficult. I'm the only one of my family that was born here. It's really tough when you don't have a stable—I'm home, but it's not easy. It's not an easy space to be in. It's quite a hard space to be in and in a really gentrified area, so the area has really changed, like most places in the world. But it kind of feels like people around me—and I know I'm comparing here, but—

Jessica: Sure.

Cat: —they all have their parents to help them and support them and set up a life, and I can't quite seem to—I'm still kind of here, and I'm not sure if I'm being dragged down or I need to just—I need to come back to, then, really get out because every time I try to leave, I come back.

Jessica: Okay. So there's pieces. There's pieces. The house itself is one of the few and most supportive things that I see that you have from your parents. Not to say that your mom hasn't been really supportive in certain ways, but—I hear what you're saying, but I want to start with the foundation of that Moon/North Node conjunction. The house itself is a gift.

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: It's a support. And so let yourself have that. Let yourself have that.

Cat: That's really nice. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. And it's easy to miss, right, because of all the things you're naming. But this is a gift to receive and to lean into it, like be lazy with that sometimes. Whatever. You don't have to work so hard around it. Now, the other thing is I've got to ask, do you have Portuguese community, like peers?

Cat: No. This is another thing. Five years ago, when I went into therapy, this woman said to me, "Oh, you're suffering from diaspora." And she said, "You need to find your community." And I have now—I have a really sweet friend who's Queer and Portuguese, like really lovely. But they're doing their thing; I'm doing my thing. And London's so expensive and tiring that—and I pick up on so much that I end up feeling really exhausted. So I've been probably a bit more introverted recently, and especially with COVID and everything. But I find it quite difficult to fully engage with the Portuguese community in London.

Jessica: Let me throw some shit at you here. First of all, you are introverted. So you said, "I've been more introverted," but you have a Sun/Neptune opposition. You've got Pluto on the rise, Mercury square to it. Yes, you've got Venus at the top of your chart. Yes, you've got an Aries Moon. So when you like socializing, it's awesome, but it always costs you. You are by nature somebody who does really well operating from bed for periods of time, and you need recovery time from socializing. And that's, again, just your nature.

Now, the other thing I'll say is it is hard to make friends at any age, but certainly as an adult. And I do see that some of what you're speaking to by kind of looking around you and the communities around you is you're just not seeing yourself reflected, and it's not just around people's parents or whatever it is. It's cultural. It is cultural. And I think it's really important for those of us who live in melting-pot places to not allow it to melt our own cultural experience and identities, even when those cultural experiences are actually really traumatic. And I think it's something that happens, is we kind of distance ourselves or we don't make the effort to find people who are from similar cultures or the same culture.

I might be just suggesting a unicorn idea, a.k.a. something that doesn't exist, so we'll see. But I wonder if you could find some nerds, even online, who want to create a writing group who are Portuguese writers.

Cat: That's a great idea.

Jessica: Thank you very much. I just came up with it.

Cat: Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

Jessica: It wouldn't have to be like, "We have to have everything in common and be friends," because oh my God, how does an adult make friends? It's very difficult. But writing groups are actually things that you do really well with, especially if you're not meeting in person, if instead you're going off and yo're writing and then you're coming together to share and having that kind of cultural connection. There may be a group out there that already exists. And because of COVID, it's, I think, more normal for us to meet via Zoom. So they don't all have to be in London. They could be anywhere. It might be really fertile in ways you can't even project into, you can't guess about, just being around people of similar cultural resonance. You may even explore not writing in English, but instead of writing in Portuguese. I don't know if you're already doing that.

Cat: Well, this was something that I wanted, that I thought, "You know, I'd really like to"—five years ago, I gave up—I stopped drinking. I stopped doing anything—

Jessica: Congratulations.

Cat: Thank you. I stopped doing stuff. I was like, "I need to do this work, and I need to stop escaping." And one of my goals was to be reading and writing in Portuguese. One thing that—I know that you get this—is, because of the Portuguese colonial past, there's a lot of unknown about—like my parents were born into dictatorship, and my great grandparents. The revolution didn't happen until the '70s. And I remember looking at pictures of my great-grandfather on my dad's side, and I'd say to my dad, "Where is he from?" And my dad would be like, "From Portugal."

And when I was growing up, because I grew up in Central London, all of my friends were the people whose parents weren't from this country. And we all felt safe around each other because we weren't the English. Like if you look at me, "Oh, that's the Portuguese girl." But if I go to Portugal, "That's the English girl," which is crazy because I don't look English in any way. But it was looking at images and going, "Yeah, I don't know anything about my family, or could they have come from somewhere else?" And if they did, you wouldn't really share that. You'd keep it really—you know. It's like if you were Jewish there, you just didn't tell anyone. It's all very secret. You don't share anything. So it may be even at some point trying to figure out some of those roots, because I do think that I feel disconnected from my ancestors or who they are or where they came from. It doesn't feel like they were just from Portugal, you know?

Jessica: Something that I'm kind of picking up on here is that—okay. So one thing about what you said is, "I see this in my family history, and I want to explore it. And I am aware of these gaps in my knowledge of my own people." But part of what I'm hearing kind of folded into that is, "Do I really get to own that? Is this really my culture to claim?" And this is the same shit you put on yourself in the CPR training. "Other people are here, and they're learning in this specific way, and I'm not learning in this specific way. What's wrong?"

There's this way that you have a tendency to look for the ways in which you are imperfect or maybe don't have a right or shouldn't, and again, that's your strongest feeling. It's not your most authentic feeling. It's not your wisest feeling. It's not your most true feeling. But it is your strongest feeling. And this trauma pattern of always looking for the strongest feeling will most of the time find you looking for the most upsetting feeling. Every once in a while, with art and sex, it'll be the best feeling. But often, it's the worst feeling.

I want to name there's the part where there's exploration of your heredity and all the things that that may or may not mean for you, but there's the other part, which is, yeah, you are who you are. You're from the family you're from. You're from the place you're from. And yes, you do not have all the answers, but your heredity, your culture—it's like I'm not sure what the right word for it is, but it's your body. I'm talking about your body. It's yours, and having ownership of it is really important for you. And I think it's kind of connected to Mars: anger, passion, and ownership, embodiment—that's all Mars stuff. And that's something that I think is scary for you but something to lean into. So, from this perspective—now, say your name in Portuguese one more time.

Cat: [Catarina Alessandra Marks Feliciano].

Jessica: It's fascinating because when I am reading someone energetically, I ask for a name. That's how I see, and I ask for the full name. And when you say your name in English, I see all these fears and all this stuff we've been talking about. It's right there. But when you say your name in Portuguese, I don't.

Cat: Wow.

Jessica: It's not the first thing I see. So, from that perspective, I want to say I really encourage you to explore reading and writing in Portuguese, to explore this part of you, because it isn't just trauma. It isn't just trauma. I mean, sure, yes, I'm not going to take that from you, but also, it isn't just trauma. It's so much more, and also, it's almost like when your parents immigrated to the UK—and perhaps this isn't related to immigration for you, perhaps for your family. Perhaps it is. I can't tell, and I don't want to lose the thread too much by looking at them energetically. But it's almost like they decided, "Okay. We're going to leave certain things behind. That's what we're doing. We're cutting these things off."

And you were born in the UK, and so you were born into that, like, "Okay. I'm cutting these parts of myself off." Those are your parts, and they shouldn't be cut off. So it's about kind of inviting them back in and letting them be weird or different.

Cat: I am a bit weird.

Jessica: Yeah. You're weird. I mean, to me, this is a compliment, but to each their own. But this kind of brings us full circle to what we're talking about, which is as a neurodivergent person, how do you participate, how do you learn, how do you engage with others, but also with your own thinking, with your own learning process? And we can see this really interesting mirror of these two issues around your cultural heritage and how you fit in in the world or in London, or however we want to frame it, as well as around neurodivergence and how you process data. I'm not going to say they are the same topic, but they mirror each other in such important ways.

And for me, with the work that I do, whenever I see a deep theme repeat itself, I get very excited because it's like, well, the Universe has got a neon sign pointing, "This is the work right here. This is the work." Self-acceptance and integration, bringing your parts back to you, inviting all of your parts into your energy body, into your personality—that's the stage you're at. And I think you're actually already doing this. Sometimes when you do it, it feels awful because now you're feeling feelings that you spent your whole life actively not feeling, not because it's bad, but because, "Oh shit, this is why I avoided this. Now I'm pissed."

And if you do start to involve your anger and your irritation, what I want to encourage you to practice doing is to stay with it— and I know, again, I talk about this a lot, but to stay with it instead of react to it, because you're not a physically violent person.

Cat: No.

Jessica: You're not. You're just not. But that part of you is like, "I'm going to die." That feeling is also like, "What if it's worse than that? What if I harm someone else?" They're kind of like heads and tails of the same coin. And if you haven't expressed and experienced anger very much, you probably haven't experienced that very much. But if it starts to flow, you might be scared of what comes out of you, not like you're going to physically do something, but more—it's a feeling, right? It's a survival mechanism. And so, again, this is where you want to just stay with the feeling instead of react to what your brain is telling you the content behind it is. Doesn't make sense?

Cat: Yeah. Completely.

Jessica: Good.

Cat: Everything that you've just discussed and you have been able to say about my chart, about me, has really helped me fit everything together if that makes sense. I'm like, "Oh, yeah," because it is all connected. How I learn has so much to do with even my feelings and what's going on and when did I get cut off? Because if I can go into a new environment and take in new information and what that can trigger in me, that can be something that's just learned behavior that I can't unlearn or I've been doing it for so many years.

So, in a way, it's like it's kind of an incredible simple question that's helped—you've given me answers to things that—not answers, but maybe just affirming them. You've affirmed them for me. It's like, "Oh, yes, I'm not going mad." This is really helpful because it's—yeah. Now I know it's okay, because I get lost in that, and then it's just too many thoughts and then too much scanning. And sometimes it's too much, and I just stop, and then I'm just not doing. I don't want to be small. I don't want to be trapped by shame anymore.

Jessica: Yeah. Well, I'm glad it's helping, first of all.

Cat: Yeah. No, it really is.

Jessica: Good. Also, Pluto governs shame. So almost everything that we're talking about is just like, bing, bing. It's hitting these specific parts of your chart. It's right back to the same advice I gave you around that class you just did, the CPR class. It's like that wasn't important. Learning the acronyms actually wasn't important, but it felt so important because it was the only thing you weren't good at, so it became this really important thing.

So had you labeled, "What is the most important thing for me to get from this class?" Then you might have been like, "Okay, these acronyms were never on my list." So it would have been easier for you to be like, "Okay. I'm having feelings about not being able to keep up, but I actually already know that's not what I'm here for." It requires some shifting in thinking and also a lot more self-acceptance, which is a practice. It's a practice. But that's the move. Is there any final question or anything left kind of question-marky for you?

Cat: I'm scared. I think that's something that it feels really important to share, is this—I think I've accepted the fact that I'm kind of on my own, and it's okay. I can do this. I'm kind of like, after so much codependency and trying to untangle from that and to really be with that loneliness and befriending it—and I think maybe this is where the anxiety of learning has come from, but I think I'm scared because my mom's getting on a bit, and she's not great. And my brother is older and not feeling so great. I'm not married. I don't have a partner. And I think I just want to really voice that I'm really scared. How can I find—I feel like you know the question; I know the question. But I just can't find the words to say it, that—

Jessica: I think I got it.

Cat: —[crosstalk] do this? You know?

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. I think I got it. So there's a couple things. The first thing is, yeah, you're scared. I'm scared. Welcome to the party. We're all fucking terrified. You know? I mean, some people aren't, but yeah. For real. And your fear is a reflection of how much you care. It's not a reflection of something being wrong. And again, I know that fear feels bad and there's a lot of spiritual truisms around fear being what we want to avoid, and they're real. And also, your fear is there to protect you. You're scared of being alone. You're scared of failing. You're scared of getting it wrong or not, or making choices that are creatively great, and maybe mean you're not making enough money or whatever it is.

These fears are trying to keep you safe. And you're actually really good at staying safe. What you're trying to figure out is how to be whole and how to expand, and that means hanging out with their fears. Fear doesn't go away in life, especially if you have any kind of trauma history. Again, you're in a well-attended party, a very well-attended club, this one. So it's not about not being scared. It's about being brave in the face of your fear, which you already are. So I want to encourage you to take whatever judgment you have about your fears out of the equation, and then you're just left with your fears.

And you can work on your fears. You already have made huge progress. I know we haven't talked about that at length in our time together, but I can see that you've made massive progress over the course of your life so far. And yeah, your fears don't make your choices. I mean, sometimes they do, and then you learn from it and you come back and you make another choice. So, yeah, I don't think there's anything great. It's not fun being scared, but there's nothing wrong with you being scared.

And in regards to relationship, which is a whole other topic, which we can't quite get into, but I will say—I'm assuming you're single right now.

Cat: Yes. [crosstalk]

Jessica: Yeah. Congratulations, first of all—

Cat: Thank you.

Jessica: — because I imagine you were kind of chronically partnered or with someone in one way or another throughout your life. And you do need a break from that so you can figure out who you are. And from that place, it's not going to be very hard for you to find a partner. I just don't think so. I don't think it's ever been very hard for you to find a partner. Your problem is finding yourself and accepting yourself, not finding other people and accepting them.

So, when it comes time, whether it's to partner up or get laid, you're not going to have a terribly hard time doing that. I mean, it'll feel bad if you want something and you don't immediately have it, and you have an Aries Moon. That feels bad. But that doesn't make it actually inaccessible to you. Now, money is a whole other topic. You've got Neptune and Uranus in the second house, so you're not naturally wonderful at managing resources. When things come in, they just seem to flow right out. But you are not meant to be perfect. Capitalism should not define your value, right? For real. And also, you want to be able to eat and hopefully get new shoes and do the damn things that need to be done. Life is about learning how to navigate choices. It's not about getting to a place where we only have good choices. It's about navigating choices.

And I actually think that your nature is to kind of run in circles, sometimes screaming, when you have a choice to make, panicking a fair amount, and then eventually settle down and you make your fucking choices. You handle things. And so that's just a little bit of your process, right? At the end of the day, if your process is to kind of run in circles screaming for a few hours and then you sit down and you handle a thing, if you take the judgment out of it, can you actually make that be just part of your process?

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: And this, again, brings us full circle to the idea of not everything that feels bad is bad. Not everything that feels good is good. The truth of the matter is, whether we're talking about fear or resentment or any of the other heavy Plutonian feelings, because Pluto is on your Ascendant, you don't have the luxury to separate yourself from those feelings ever. And so it might feel to you that things are worse for you than they are for others, and I'm sure that's true for some people, but not for lots of others. The truth of the matter is Pluto makes us feel isolated and alone and like we're the worst, even when none of that is true.

And so, when those Plutonian emotions come up, the trick is to not abandon yourself. That makes all of it worse. Right?

Cat: Yeah.

Jessica: So, if you're going to bounce, don't do that to yourself. Don't abandon yourself. A kind of last bit of homework, if you've never read Donna Cunningham's book called Healing Pluto Problems—

Cat: No. I love it when you reference books.

[crosstalk]

Cat: I think, "Yes, a book."

Jessica: Book nerds, unite. Yeah, Donna Cunningham has a book called Healing Pluto Problems, and it is spectacular. It's such a great book. Everyone with strong Pluto placements should have this book. So get it. Read it. Re-read it. You will love it. It'll really, really help. And you don't need to go out and get lots of new information or even tons of new tools. It's about slowing down and giving yourself the space to actually reference and use the tools you already have. You're not behind schedule. You're just not. I know that interwoven in all of your questions is, "Am I behind schedule? Why am I behind schedule? Will I ever catch up?" You didn't say that, but I feel like that's kind of what—yeah. Yeah. You're not behind schedule at all. You're exactly where you are, and there's no other place for you to be. Yeah.

Cat: Oh my gosh. Wow.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. It's been, really, such a pleasure. And also, I hope this isn't weird, but send my love to your brother as well.

Cat: Yeah. No, I will. And everything that you've—you've given me so much. I don't think—well, you know. But you don't even realize, but you've really, really helped me. Thank you.

Jessica: It is so my pleasure. I'm so happy we got to do this. Thank you so much for doing this with me. It's been really lovely.

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Let's get astrological, my damn loves. We are going to hop into the horoscope in just a second here, but I want to say if you missed my Plants and Planets class, Boundary Allies, last weekend, you don't need to be sad because you can still get that class and the very informative and cute ‘zine that me and Rachel Budde have created over on my website at lovelanyadoo.com. It's always linked in the show notes, and there are other classes there, but certainly, Boundary Allies was a real chef's kiss experience. I really loved it, and I want to thank everyone who showed up to that class. Probably my favorite work was sharing energy work exercises. I'm really into sharing this stuff, which is not what I've done for the bulk of my career, sharing energy work with the world, and that's also something I'm doing a lot more on my Patreon, talking about how to work with energy in practical, user-friendly ways. And yeah, I'm really into it. I don't want to blow your mind, but I'm pretty damn woo.

We are in an Eclipse season, and as you probably know, Eclipses always happen in pairs. And the first of the two Eclipses is happening on the last day of April. But on the 16th, we had a Full Moon, and that is the last lunation before the Eclipse. So emotions are running high. This may land in so many different ways for you, depending on what's going on in your life and your birth chart, etc. But it's an emotional time. And so I want to, before we get into details of the horoscope this week, gently pull your attention to the question of, how are you embodying empathy? How are you embodying empathy in your inner landscape, in your relationship to yourself? When emotions get kind of keyed up, we can find ourselves unconsciously reverting back to old emotional patterns, reiterating stories that we've always told ourselves, or just feeling ways that we, when we pull back, know aren't necessarily healthy or productive. But we are in an old pattern.

So how are you embodying empathy for however that may show up in your innermost personal life? And how are you expressing empathy for others, for the world at-large, for individuals that you engage with? How does that show up in your life? We are not just dealing with lots of Moon energy with this Eclipse season, but there's also big shifts at play from the Jupiter/Neptune conjunction. How we articulate care and how we show up and express our humanity in our actions are really big themes right now. Essentially, what I'm talking about is the integration of your spiritual values in your daily life.

And so ask yourself these questions. This week and moving forward, return to, "Am I empathetic? Do I care about being empathetic towards others, towards myself?" If the answer is, "I don't know," or, "No," ask yourself if you want others to be empathetic towards you, because it is on each of us as individuals to be the change we want to see in the world, to show up with care and kindness, and it really helps when we do that for ourselves. It's kind of like if you fuck with the tarot, as I do, how cups cards, which are the cards that represent emotions and care and empathy—some of those cups cards, you see the cups just overflowing and filling up everything around it, and sometimes it doesn't. That's a lot like life.

We want, ideally, to have a relationship to ourselves which is healthy enough, that is kind enough, that it can overflow and it doesn't necessarily take from our wellness to be kind, empathetic, and generous towards others. That's the goal. That's the path. So check in where you're at with it this week and again moving forward. Okay. Let's get into the details of your horoscope.

On the 17th, we've got two exact transits. The first one is a Mercury sextile to Venus. Now, this transit is lovely. It facilitates socializing and connection. I'm talking about interpersonal connection. It can be romantic connection and certainly creative connection. So it's a great transit, and it's not especially spectacular. It happens quite frequently, and its energies are really dynamic and useful, but you kinda gotta make use of them. You have to go out of your way to try to connect with people, to try to be receptive when others connect with you, to enjoy creativity or to actually bust out your sketchbook or bust out your favorite music, and remember how fun it is to play air guitar like a damn hero. And a fusion of fun and play and connection can go a really long way in life. So don't underestimate it, my friends.

Now, at the same time on the same day, we have got a conjunction between Mercury and Uranus in the zodiac sign of Taurus. And Mercury conjoined to Uranus is kind of a mixed bag. Some people really will love this energy, and some people will really dislike it. It really kind of depends on how you are. So Mercury and Uranus are the two planets related to our minds. They are both related to our nerves and our minds. And when they meet up, it can spark and trigger mental anxiety, hyperstimulation, and agitation. It can just as easily trigger inventiveness, curiosity, a willingness to explore, and enough electricity in the air to inspire you to perceive things differently and to make new kinds of connections. This transit is very exciting, but the excitement can feel upsetting. It's a destabilizing transit, which can reveal things to you in your friendships that you didn't necessarily want to see. Things can come at you from left field and throw you off or surprise you.

This is a terrible time for gossiping, not because gossiping won't seem fun for you but because secrets told may come back at the person who you're betraying their trust, and you also just may not have facts. When we have Mercury and Uranus together, people tend to jump to conclusions and make connections based on impulse instead of data. So the best thing to do is to pace yourself through your reactions, in particular if you have a really strong knee-jerk reaction to information.

People often feel really awkward and weird with this Uranian energy so close to Mercury. And so, if people are acting awkward and weird with you, try not to take it personally. It's a lot of weird energy in the mix. And also, people may react in ways that you find mystifying to what you're saying or doing. And again, that might be in a number of things, but you want to kind of give it space if you can. Uranus and Mercury can both be a little impatient. Now, Taurus, on the other hand, is a fixed earth sign, so it wants things to move really slowly and steadily. So, again, there's a kind of real discomfort in this energy, and this discomfort can be fertile ground. It can also really just feel destabilizing and like you don't know what's happening or how to handle it.

Uranus is a planet that governs electricity, literally. And so there's a way that this transit can interrupt your focus. So it's not a great time for doing something that requires a great deal of concentration, basically. But it is a great time for doing something that requires innovation and open-mindedness. This is a powerful time for changing your mind—for being open to changing your mind, at the very least—for connecting with new friends, trying new approaches, all that kind of good stuff. It's a creative transit. But socially and mentally, it can be quite disruptive. So it's hard to be interested in our thoughts when we are thinking them without being really intentional about it, but this is a great time for doing that, being interested in the tempo of your thoughts and the kind of content of them, and not rest on assumptions, assumptions you may hold about yourself or about the world around you.

Plans or connections made under this transit are not reliably stable, which doesn't mean that they won't work out for you; it just means you want to wait until this transit is out of influence before you sign any contracts, if possible, or make any permanent decisions. Be in the moment. Try to be really present and interested in whatever it is that's coming up for you internally or in your life, and don't assume that anything is going to stick that comes up now. And that might be good news or bad news. Who knows? It's unique to you.

Now, one last thing I'll say about this transit, it can stir anxiety. So not, per se, a fear-based form of anxiety, but more of an overstimulation. So, if you're somebody who drinks too much coffee or consumes too many stimulants through soda or whatever else, this is a good time to lay off, honestly—honestly, all week, but certainly on and around the 17th or 18th, depending on what coast you're on, where in the world you are, when this transit is exact, because having a racing mind can be a consequence of this transit. And if you are also, on top of it, taking stimulants and feeling really racy anyways, that can end up making you feel pretty shitty. So take care of yourself in whatever way seems best suited to your needs, my friend.

Now, on the 18th, we also have two exact transits, and much like on the 17th, we got a soft pitch and a hardball. These are sports metaphors, I believe, for baseball. I'm not a sports person, but I do find that I enjoy the occasional sports metaphor, and I just felt like I should share that. Okay. So, on the 18th, Venus is sextile to Uranus. This makes sense for any astrology student paying attention because on the 17th, Mercury formed an exact sextile to Venus, and Mercury conjoined Uranus, so it makes sense that the next day Venus would form an exact sextile to Uranus. So Venus sextile Uranus, it's a lovely transit. It is wonderful for fostering social connections, creative connection, playing with your luck, having fun, flirting with people, or just exploring what you like and how you like it. And you can apply that to aesthetics, to your value systems, or to the part of your life that is sexy and romantic.

Venus sextile Uranus, much like Mercury sextile Venus, is not necessarily spectacular in its results in the context of the Sun square to Pluto or the Mercury conjunction to Uranus. So, if this sounds delicious to you, this Venus sextile Uranus, you're going to have to go out of your way to access these energies by bringing playfulness and experimentation to your connections with other people, to your relationship to your body, to aesthetics, to your finances. This is a great transit for exploring and experimenting, not setting things in stone, and again, unfortunately, not for concentration or focus. It's more playful than that.

Now, we are still very much feeling the Mercury conjunction to Uranus. So this can be a great time for social connection. The big but—because you know I have a but here—the but is that on the same day, we have a Sun square to Pluto. The Sun is in Aries, and it is square to Pluto in Capricorn. And this transit is difficult, and we will be feeling it on the 17th, 18th, and 19th, but it is exact on the 18th. And that transit is exact at 8:14 a.m. Pacific Time.

Okay. So Sun square to Pluto is an intense transit. It can trigger defensiveness, power struggles, resentments. It's a difficult transit, and it can make us feel a little desperate. This is because it can stimulate or trigger deep psychological or emotional issues. Pluto is related to trauma. It is related to our survival mechanisms. And so, when things get submerged and then we get a Pluto transit, yeah, it tends to bring it to the surface, and often in ways that we're not super conscious of or ways that don't quite make sense to us or take us by surprise. This is where having a relationship with yourself becomes really important so that you don't invest in your maladjusted coping mechanisms, but instead try to become aware of them so that you can respond to them in ways that reflect the adult you've become.

Oftentimes, as I said, with this transit, we undergo power struggles. You may find yourself obsessing on what someone does or doesn't have, but I want to say that's a reflection on you and your issues and your triggers. Don't focus on someone else, especially someone who actually doesn't matter to you personally, isn't actually someone in your life. Instead, try to be interested in and to work on what it is that is triggering you and how your thoughts and feelings are working. You may also find that you are in a power struggle with someone who actually has power and authority over you—I'm talking landlords, bosses, hospitals, that kind of shit. And in that case, depending on what's going on, you may really need to identify and advocate for your rights, or you may need to identify that you'll have more power if you let it go, or a million different things in between.

But in any case, it's important that you identify your agency and you understand that whatever choices you're making, no matter how shitty your options are—that the choice you're making is the best one that you can see fit to make at this time. Often, under a Sun/Pluto square, we end up having to fight one way or another. And that is difficult, at best. But what we want to be able to do is make sure that we are fighting for something that actually matters to us instead of engaging from our most basic, petty instincts. And Pluto can get pretty damn petty. So try not to be petty, because it really just eats at your own fucking soul more than it does any damage to anyone else.

If you've got a personal relationship where there's some sort of struggle or a need to confront things, you might not be able to avoid dealing with it on this date. But if you're going to fight, fight fair. If you've got shit to say, make sure you say it in a responsible way and you don't just barf out all your thoughts and feelings, because once you put anything out there, it cannot be taken back. And Pluto tends to function like a boomerang: what you put out there comes back at you. So treat others as you wish to be treated. Engage with integrity. It doesn't always have to be clean. It doesn't always have to be easy. But engage with integrity.

Now, in the context of the world around us, this transit can signify major drama. This can be in the context of war, in the context of people with power choosing to use that power to abuse, restrict, limit, or harm others. Yeah. We might see some real shitty stuff around this transit. And when we see injustice in the world, it is—from my perspective, anyways, it is on us of as people of conscience to say, "All right. If that fucked-up thing is happening, if this unjust thing is happening, that's the assignment. Now I need to advocate for, work towards, righting this wrong in whatever small or large way that I am capable."

When we come to a state of acceptance of how things are, even unjust, unfair, and fucked-up things—when we come to acceptance of how things are, we are better empowered on all levels to do what needs to be done to change it or to cope with it. So, whenever we are dealing with Pluto, we can struggle with acceptance. And that's why I want to remind you to check in with whether or not you are able to accept things as they are as a foundation for being able to change them or cope with them, whatever it is that is best suited to your moment.

Now, on the 19th, the Sun moves into Taurus. You know me. I am not the astrologer who is going to focus on Solar seasons that much. But as the Sun moves into Taurus and we know that on the 30th we have a Solar Eclipse in Taurus, I can just kind of gently predict for you that this Taurus season is going to be an intense one. And so I want to remind you about the connection between the zodiac sign of Taurus and the principle of values. Again, this is a great time for checking in with and revisiting how you are or are not living in accordance with your values. Check in with it so that you can make adjustments as needed, or maybe you just need to feel good about yourself because you're doing a great damn job. You're doing a great job. Okay. Sun in Taurus. The end.

On the 21st, there is the last transit I want to tell you about. The nodes, the South and North Node, are forming a square to Saturn. I don't actually talk about the nodes very much in transit. I felt really compelled to name this particular transit or these transits because it may stimulate a sense of inertia or a sense of motivation for making plans, creating structure, and this is related to big-picture stuff, big-picture stuff in the world—so we're talking about world events—but it's also related to big-picture stuff in terms of how you organize your relationship to reality, responsibility, that kind of heavy stuff.

And in the context of what we have going on from the Moon and all the other transits I've talked to you about, I think this particular transit is going to have a meaningful impact. So I just wanted to kind of put that little bee in your bonnet so when it starts buzzing, you can be like, "Oh, yeah, that's a damn bee in my bonnet." So that's all the exact transits of this week. That said, we are going to be feeling towards the end of the month a transit that will be exact on the 24th, and it's an exact square between Mercury and Saturn. I want to name it because it can lead to depressive thinking, a sense of scarcity-based thinking, and can be difficult for friendships.

And so, while at the start of the week we've got all this Uranian energy, which is very exciting and stimulating—we've got this Plutonian energy, which is bringing up triggers and deep, kind of roiling emotions—then we have Mercury squaring Saturn, which is just kind of a boner killer. And so it's a bit of a roller coaster out here. If you're feeling it, I want to say, yeah, this is what's happening. This is what's happening. To the best of your ability, I want to encourage you to not waste too much energy on, "Why is this happening?" and instead step into, "How can I respond to this energy? How can I respond to these emotions? What do I need right now, and how can I rise to the occasion?" It's the most constructive way to engage with this energy. And hey, listen. We're all humans. We're all doing our damn best. And it's easy to forget to do the healthiest thing in the presence of our strong emotions.

Now, my loves, I'm going to run through the transits again because there were quite a few. On the 17th, we have an exact sextile between the planets Mercury and Venus. On that same date, Mercury forms an exact conjunction to Uranus in Taurus. On the 18th, Venus forms an exact sextile to Uranus, and the Sun forms an exact square to Pluto. On the 19th, it's Taurus season. Welcome, bitches. On the 21st, we have an exact square from both the South and North Nodes to the planet Saturn, and we are going to be feeling towards the end of the week that Mercury square to Saturn, which won't be exact until next week on the 24th.

And that's your damn horoscope. I hope that you use this information to empower you to engage with the energies and emotions of your life in a healthy way and to understand, of course, that your wellness is interwoven with the wellness of others. So, if you have a chance to show up for others, to show up in the world, take it. Take it. Tend to your heart. Be gentle with yourself and others if you can. And yeah, I know I say that frequently, but from my perspective, the cultivation of emotional maturity, emotional accountability, is the foundation to a life well lived. It's foundational to spiritual health, and it's also foundational to psychological health.

Cultivating emotional wellness, emotional maturity, is a slow slog of a process. It requires work that other people can't see and can't necessarily weigh in on. And that tends to be hard in a world that so outward facing. So that heart of yours, it's a part worth embracing and protecting. And I hope you're doing this week and every damn week. And when others are doing it with you, have a little respect because we're all doing our best on our damn paths.

Now, as always, if you get value from Ghost of a Podcast, I invite you to send me a question over at ghostofapodcast.com. Maybe I'll give you a call and we'll do a damn reading. Wouldn't that be fun? Also, hit that Subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast. It is a great and kind thing you can do for any of your favorite podcasts, and certainly for me. And if you haven't already given this show five stars and written a kind review, I invite you to.

All right. Thank you for joining me for the 255th episode of Ghost of a Podcast. Haven't missed a week yet. And I will talk to you, my loves, next week. Buh-bye.