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.

Jessica: So today I'm really excited to have this conversation, and I want you to tell me your question in just a moment. But I first want to set the expectation that we're going to keep your birth information private. But welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. What would you like to talk about today?

Guest: Yeah. Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. When I was a teenager, my father died unexpectedly. And as a grieving teenager, I was prescribed antidepressants and, I would say, overmedicated, and was so for several years. And I think that these medications impacted any kind of, quote unquote, normal grief process. And so I now am at a place where I have not been on meds for quite some time, and I'm really wanting a more connected relationship to my grief and my emotions in general. And I have been feeling myself bumping up against a lot of rules that I have around feelings and a lot of boxes they should fit into, and I wonder if some of this is from my Virgo Moon placement.

And so I guess my question is how I can work with that and work with my chart to be more connected to my grief and my emotions and my father, and have a more flowy relationship with it.

Jessica: I'm really sorry for your loss.

Guest: Thank you.

Jessica: Yeah. And is one of the things that you want to do to try to check in with him as well, or is this more about your own emotions?

Guest: We can check in with him, too. And I would say that I would like to talk about my relationship to my emotions, but yeah, I would definitely be interested in that.

Jessica: Okay. Yeah, if it comes up. It's not like he's here right away, but if it comes up, just good to know that you're open to it. When you say you've been off the meds for some time, how many years is that?

Guest: About five years.

Jessica: Okay. And did you get yourself off, or did a doctor say, "You don't need these; get off"?

Guest: No. I did it myself in ways I would not recommend, probably. But I was kind of being passed around to different psychiatrists, and each one wanted to put me on something different or up my dose. And I was just really wanting to come off, and so when I wasn't feeling [indiscernible 00:03:01] of my doctors, I decided to do it myself.

Jessica: I mean, good for you. Also, yeah, that can be really fucking rough, so also, sorry. I'm so sorry. So there's a lot of things that I want to talk about with you, but I actually want to start with mental health stuff. So, first of all, you're a Cancer, and you have Neptune in Capricorn. You've got a Sun/Neptune opposition. It's really tight. And this opposition predisposes a person to having anxiety and feeling easily overwhelmed by energies around you, the world around you, people around you, all that kind of stuff. That makes sense, eh?

Guest: Yeah. That resonates.

Jessica: And that's without a tragedy. That's without puberty. That's without the world on fire. That's just your nature. On top of that, you have Chiron conjunct your North Node in the first house. It's also conjunct your Ascendant. And Saturn is opposite to that hot mess. That articulates many things, but a big one is this feeling that I imagine that you always had but probably got worse⁠—I'm assuming that your dad passed when you were around 14. Did you say 15, actually?

Guest: I was 15.

Jessica: You were 15. I'm really sorry. And the reason why 14, 15 is important is because it's a Saturn time. And your Saturn conjunct the Descendant opposite the Ascendant Chiron and the North Node⁠—it can predispose you towards having a very depressive nature. So, when you were little, people told you you were wise and you were so mature for your age.

Guest: Yes.

Jessica: I mean, they're probably still saying that to you because you're in your 20s. But yes. Sure. That is true. Also, it comes from having a world weariness and a depressiveness. So I'm not saying you have clinical anxiety or clinical depression, but having a depressive or anxious nature can fuck a life up without it being clinical. The combo platter of these two things can essentially create a depressive form of anxiety or anxious form of depression. That's not all.

Guest: I've always described how I feel as depranxious, like the combination of depression and anxiety.

Jessica: Depranxious. That's really good.

Guest: Thank you.

Jessica: I would wear a T-shirt with that on it. I would.

Guest: Thank you.

Jessica: No. Thank you. You've just helped a lot of people with that. So let's add another layer to it because that's not enough, apparently, according to your birth chart. Yes, your Moon is in Virgo, but again, that's not it. What's it is that Pluto is forming a square to your Moon in Virgo; I mean within minutes. It is such a tight square. And so, yes, you're depranxious. Also⁠—sorry. Thank you. You've coined a term that I'm going to use until the day I die.

Guest: Great.

Jessica: Thank you for it. But that Pluto/Moon square, it gives you an emotional intensity that it's so deep that your own emotions can overwhelm you, and they can overwhelm other people. So I'm not surprised that your family after your father passed were so scared of where you went that they were like, "Shit. We gotta wrap this thing up. We can't let this be," whereas what I would say looking at your birth chart is that your capacity for grief is incredibly intense, just incredibly intense. And when you go into kind of heavy, shadowy places, you go to the darkest parts of them and you put rocks on your back. It's not like a choice you're making, but it is kind of your nature. And you just go there. And so you may have really compulsive, emotional/mental nature and do a fair amount of languishing, like pain-induced languishing. Does that make sense?

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. And that's not⁠—again, that would be like if you flirted with somebody and they didn't flirt back. That would be⁠ if you were having a shit day or reading the news. But something this traumatic at such a tender time, it makes sense why people wanted to support you and take care of you, and this is the way that they thought was best. Whether or not it was, who could know?

Guest: Yeah. No, I understand why they did. And hindsight's 20/20. I don't blame anyone for that. I think that it's hard watching somebody you love being in a dark place, and there aren't just enough resources.

Jessica: There are never. I wonder, do you mind if I ask what your cultural or religious background is?

Guest: I'm Jewish.

Jessica: Okay. So did your family have⁠—was there a lot of religious or cultural practice around his loss?

Guest: There was. We did have Shiva, like a period of really⁠—like an open house is how it ends up being, which is really hard for me. I felt like I didn't have any privacy at that time. But yeah. I don't think we did a full week of it, which is traditional, but we did several days of Shiva. I mean, there was a funeral within like 48 hours or whatever it is.

Jessica: Did your family do the unveiling in a year, the tombstone unveiling a year after his passing?

Guest: Yeah. Yeah, they did.

Jessica: And was there spiritual counseling or any kind of intentional conversations around that for you?

Guest: Not really. There was someone who's like a close family friend who is a spiritual leader, but I wouldn't say there was a lot of spiritual counseling for me, exactly.

Jessica: So I'll tell you why I'm asking: because this Moon/Pluto square⁠—when I'm counseling parents who have children with this placement⁠—so not usually 15-year-olds, but smaller children⁠—I always advise them to teach their kids to say bye to their poop, to say goodbye to the slide when they're leaving the park, to really focus on teaching their children to have agency in their relationship to closure. Closure is like⁠—it's a big thing for you.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: And the kind of ritual around the unveiling of the tombstone, I think, can be a time of acknowledgment of this year of pain and loss and a time of confronting and really looking at it, if it's done with spiritual counsel associated with it. Within your adult process of figuring out how to come to a sense of closure or acceptance with the grief that you have, there are practices within Judaism that are really good at this, actually. Judaism is great at suffering. And so you have a lot to pull from in your cultural lineage. And I don't know how religious you are. I look at your birth chart, and it doesn't look like you're exactly religious. No. Yeah.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: I do think that there is a value in doing some kind of reading and research into this because you do have that Virgo Moon, and you can read and research, and it can really spark validating thoughts or inspire you to do your own adjusted rituals that are really supportive because when I look at the whole picture of your birth chart⁠⁠—and I'm going to look at you energetically in a moment. But when I look at the whole picture of your birth chart, what I can see is that currently Neptune is squaring your Mars. Currently, by transit, Pluto is opposing your Sun and sitting on top of your Neptune.

And so your chart is being aggressively leaned upon by the Universe, and that's hard. I mean, you're going through a hard time. And within that difficult time is the energy, like it or hate it, for coping with this and coming to a sense of closure or shifting around it. Closing doesn't mean an ending, just so I'm⁠—

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: I'm using the word "closure" and realizing I want to be clear nothing ends here, but it can come to a new cycle, like a close of a cycle/start of a new one.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: Pluto lights things up, brings them to the surface so that we cope with them. But unfortunately, that means on some level reliving abandonment, fear, depression, disassociation, all of the themes of that period for you. And because of how this runs through your body, currently, we have the planet Neptune running through your sixth house in your birth chart. So it's forming a square to Mars from the sixth house, which is where you've got a double hit of body stuff. So a lot of the grief and anxiety and depressiveness that⁠—oh my God. How did I forget my favorite new word?

Guest: Depranxious?

Jessica: Depranxiousness. So a lot of your depranction is visceral. It's in your body. And Neptune is giving you all manner of difficulty, I would imagine, so that you're having weird nervous system things or weird immune system things. Is that what's going on for you?

Guest: Yeah. I feel like nervous system things⁠⁠—I feel very reactive in ways that I have not always been. It's interesting because I kind of was associating that with working a burnout job. And I'm in a different job now, but it's interesting to hear that that's something greater also, because I have been feeling that a lot.

Jessica: Yeah. And it's not disconnected from the burnout job because, without getting too much into the burnout job, the theme here is about honoring how you feel even when it's inconvenient or hard or scary and taking actions to take care of yourself not by squashing your lived experience but by actually caring for yourself through actions. That's the pattern, right, from this early developmental wound but also, I'm guessing, in your burnout job. And so the fact that you were like, "This is fucking me up. I will remove myself and put myself in a different situation," is this transit. It's like closure. It's a different expression of it.

And of course, it's happening in this larger cultural context of the Great Resignation and COVID and all this stuff, but again, this is in part because it's Neptune. It's a generational planet, so it's hitting all of us, but it's hitting you in the face⁠—technically in the head, because Mars governs the head, which is again where it's neurological.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: And as a hot aside, I will say floss your damn teeth, girl. Floss them. Do you floss? Are you good at flossing?

Guest: Okay. Sometimes. Not all the time. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Neptune is related to many things, but one of them is your gums. And there's teeth stuff in your family and also gum stuff in your family. You're young. Get a Waterpik. Floss them up. Just a hot aside, but it feels important.

Guest: Okay.

Jessica: So, all of this said, let me have you say your full name out loud for me. Include middle name and your mom's middle name as well as your last name if it's not your mom's.

Guest: [redacted]

Jessica: Okay. Hold on. Are you okay with me checking with your dad?

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Your dad⁠—you were really close with him, eh?

Guest: Yeah. I would say that we were close, and I was 15.

Jessica: Right. You were a teenager, so…

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: Right. So that doesn't mean everything was perfect. It just means you genuinely liked him and he genuinely liked you.

Guest: Yeah. And he got on my nerves, too.

Jessica: I mean, sure. I mean, I'm sure it was mutual. I'm not seeing that psychically, just teenagers are annoying; so are parents. So I just want to make sure I'm seeing your dad correctly. He just was like a pretty nice guy. He was just like a nice man. He wasn't especially aggressive. He wasn't especially passive. He's just like a nice guy who wanted to be a dad.

Guest: Yes.

Jessica: Yeah. It was a heart event?

Guest: We don't know. We didn't do an autopsy, but the thought was that it was a brain aneurysm.

Jessica: Yeah. It was very rapid, right?

Guest: Yes. Yeah. He was completely healthy and then dropped dead.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. That's why I wondered if it was a heart attack, because it feels like he had a feeling, and maybe that feeling lasted for a couple days. It was like a little offness, but it's not like he was having a heart attack and didn't know it the whole time. It's not like he was in pain or suffering, which is⁠—it's kind of my vision of the best possible death to have, but it's the worst for everyone who's left behind.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: So, in these past five years, you have started to talk to him?

Guest: I would say that I've⁠—I don't know if I've been talking to him. I've been thinking about him more. Before that, I think I was doing this push-pull thing, mostly on the push side, and now I'm not wanting to do that. And so I feel like more of this kind of an inviting in, but also like I don't know what I'm doing, kind of.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds human. So I'll tell you what he's showing me. He's coming in really, really cautious because he doesn't want to upset you. And he is showing me that you fear that if you get overwhelmed, you will lose yourself. And he does not want to push that with you. He is showing me that you're a little more scared of your mental health than I was getting the sense of in our conversation so far. Does that make sense?

Guest: Yes. And I feel like recently I've been relating to it a little better, but in general, yes.

Jessica: Okay. I mean, he's your dad, so he's a little⁠—he wants to catch you if⁠ you⁠—you know what I mean? He doesn't want to be the cause for more problems and more harm. When you are thinking about him, it's like you're calling him in. And this is a problem for you. You're a little psychic. You're a little psychic. I apologize. It sounds great on paper, but it's actually very difficult. So I can see why you're being a little bit extra careful: because you may actually feel his presence if you think about him too hard too long. It's true. And honestly, I think that would be⁠—okay. Let me just tell you what I'm seeing is that there's a part of you⁠—and please tell me if this is wrong, but I'm seeing that there is a part of you that is scared of intense experiences that other people aren't comfortable with or other people can't see. And the healthier you get, the more you're going to have intense experiences with yourself. Does that make sense?

Guest: Yeah, it does.

Jessica: And so you're in this state of struggle with yourself around figuring out how can you be healthy and present and have access to all the emotions and not be isolated, which is ironic because abandoning yourself is isolating even if you're around people who really like you or love you. But what your father is showing me is a number of things. The first is that you don't need to call him in, think about him, talk to him. He's cool with whatever. He loves you, and he's very confident in you. He sees that you're going to have a really good, well-adjusted life.

Sorry. He's very careful, so I just⁠—what he's showing me is hard is that it's hard for you to gauge, "Am I listening to my limits and boundaries and taking care of myself, or am I pulling back and hiding?" Does that make⁠—yeah, that makes sense, eh?

Guest: Yeah. Yeah, it does.

Jessica: Yeah. It's interesting because your father⁠—his energy, when he doesn't want to overwhelm you, kind of⁠—it's almost like he dissipates his energy⁠—I've never seen anyone do this before, but he kind of dissipates his energy, and then it makes me feel like my minds a little scrambled, like I can't really focus. That's what happens for you, eh, when you kind of tap into this too much?

Guest: Yeah. It's interesting because I think that the way that I've thought about it is wanting to kind of tap into the grief, but then also being afraid of the intensity because it does feel so intense. And I actually think that when I've kind of talked about that before and kind of met with more of the⁠—you know, it's better to feel it. And I know that, and it feels so intense in this different way, too.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. So, when I look at you energetically, I want to say you do not need to feel all your grief. You don't. What you want to do over the course of time is process your grief. Acknowledge it. Care for yourself around it. What I think is really hard is that you start to feel it, and then you come up against this internal resistance, which is actually like, "I don't want to lose myself. I don't want to drown." And then you pull back, and you're like, "Oh, I fucked up. I didn't feel my grief." You go into this, "Here's the goal, and I didn't reach the goal."

Guest: Yes. Yes.

Jessica: Okay. So, when it comes to achieving material goals, that is a great skill. I'm happy for you that you have it. When it comes to working through psychic or emotional and oftentimes psychological issues, it is not a useful way of holding it. I mean [crosstalk]⁠—

Guest: Yeah. I feel that.

Jessica: Of course. Of course you do. Of course you do. I mean, you're a damn Cancer, so you know how to feel a feeling. But what is happening is you're hitting this kind of resistance point. And so what I want to kind of give you the homework to do the next time you start to feel grief or any other overwhelming difficult-to-experience emotion⁠—when you feel it, give yourself permission to recoil. Give yourself permission to say, "Okay. That's a boundary." And instead of fully recoiling, which is the habit and the pattern, sit with, "Okay. I'm just going to breathe with the feeling. I'm just going to feel how all that resistance and fear⁠—I'm going to stay with it."

To stay with it, I would recommend 60 seconds⁠—set that intention in your mind. "I'm going to just sit with this. I'm going to sit at this uncomfortable frightened boundary. I'm not going to push it. I'm just going to stay with the feelings of it," because that's what you don't know how to do yet. Stay with the boundary.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: When you were a kid⁠—and again, this is not a criticism of the adults around you, but when you were a kid, if you had a magic wand and all the power in the world, the boundary would have been, "Leave me alone. Shove food in the room. I need a couple months."

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: That wasn't allowed.

Guest: No.

Jessica: That wasn't allowed for a lot of reasons, and a lot of them are good reasons. But you really needed to be alone to gnash your teeth and pull your hair and weep and moan. You had a very deep experience of your grief, and what you learned is that you don't get to experience your emotions the way you want to because there's something scary or bad or wrong about that. And so this is where, as an adult, you are struggling with that belief that you⁠—because you've experienced it, because you know that you're not supposed to feel that intensely.

So, by practicing being present for your own system's internal "no"⁠—you know, boundary system⁠⁠—you can start building trust with yourself. And then, eventually, it might get a little further out that wall, and it might not. And you can make a decision if you sit with that "no" to say, "Okay. I'm going to sit with it. Instead of 60 seconds, I'm going to actually sit with it for five minutes or 30 minutes," or whatever. And I don't want you to set hard goals for yourself for the next six months or something. This is a lifetime process.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: This is going to be part of your process when you're in your 80s. This is a lifetime process. And so you do not need to feel all your grief. What you need is to have internal permission to feel your feelings, and some of your feelings are, "I'm not ready. I'm not capable in this moment to feel this emotion." That's a feeling, and that's worth respecting, too⁠—and even the unintended consequence of you being medicated through your youth and not having had the ability to feel the full breadth of your own emotions.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. I was just numbed out. So then, when I tried to do that, it didn't work, and then that was frustrating.

Jessica: I would imagine, and also confusing, right?

Guest: Yes.

Jessica: Like, "Where am I? What does this mean?"

Guest: Yes. Yeah.

Jessica: So you're getting to know yourself in your 20s in a way that you just didn't know in your teens.

Guest: Yes. Yeah.

Jessica: And that's really difficult. Giving yourself a lot of grace around the process of acquainting yourself with yourself⁠—it's in your nature to do this. This is where I am often talking, with birth charts, around working with your nature to overcome your nature. And the Saturn on your Descendant opposite all that stuff is patient. You can do this if you give yourself time and actionable steps. The Pluto/Moon square, it's very much about your flight-or-fight/survival mechanisms being intertwined like vines that have twirled around each other, with your emotions.

Guest: Yeah. Yes.

Jessica: And so it is your nature to build a healthy and consensual relationship with your survival mechanisms as a way to access your emotions. But it has to be consensual. And this is why I tell parents of small children with these kinds of aspects to say goodbye to their poop before you flush the toilet: because then there's a sense of agency in letting things go. Pluto governs poop. That is why, just so you didn't think it was totally random. It is not totally random.

Within this, the Neptune/Sun opposition indicates that you do get really overwhelmed. You do get really overwhelmed, and it can spike into anxiety pretty quickly. Sometimes it can spike away from anxiety quickly, too, it looks like.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: But it is a really important part of working with your nature to overcome your nature because having an anxious response is kind of in your normal. Finding ways of not recoiling from your anxiety, finding ways of staying present without acting from that place of anxiety, is just one of the most invaluable life skills you can develop. And you've got to do that in concert with your Saturn and your Pluto shit.

So, within all of this, you're a Cancer, which means you can nurture yourself through the process. You have a Virgo Moon, which means if you have a cognitive concept of what's happening and that it's normal or that it's accessible, it actually soothes a part of you so that you have a little more space to follow through with methodologies⁠—Saturn⁠—nurture yourself and your process⁠—Sun in Cancer⁠—and to do that in a way that is both self-sufficient, like you doing you, but also leaves room for relationships, which is the thing we haven't touched on yet because, yes, you have a Libra Rising, but also, you have the North Node in Libra.⁠ Relationships⁠—close relationships, not pals or colleagues, but close relationships⁠—are tricky for you because you know how to be in relationship with people by making yourself less than or not fully there.

Guest: Yes.

Jessica: This is intertwined. These topics are just impossible to separate, truly. I don't know how much you've heard me talk about the nodes, and usually what I tell people is if you're not 40, I don't want to talk about your nodes that much. But in your case, I do, even though you're very far from 40. Having the North Node in the first house in the sign of Libra, the way to be able to have healthy, equal, consensual relationships for you is by not giving up your identity, your agency, and your sense of self in order to connect with others⁠, which means you need a lot of fucking time alone, like a lot of fucking time alone.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: And I do want to ask, are you in a partnership at all?

Guest: I am. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. And what's the right pronoun to use?

Guest: They/them.

Jessica: They/them. Okay. So are they somebody who gives you a fair amount of space?

Guest: Yeah, and I would say, actually, in this relationship, what I think has felt so good and so different is I think my partner also is someone who historically has made themselves small in relationships. And so, now, the two of us together⁠—it's like, well, someone has to take up space. And so I feel like we are challenging each other in that in a way that feels different and very good.

Jessica: Great. I'm so happy to hear that because, again, this is your time to be consciously, intentionally confronting things. And it's really very difficult, and I think that you're needing to learn or you're learning that intense emotions are not bad emotions; they're just intense emotions. And sometimes your need to be away from people is very fucking intense, and that doesn't mean things are bad with them if you give yourself permission to be like, "Oh, hey. This was a really fun dinner date. I've got to go home now. I must run now." That actually is⁠—it's okay for you to do as long as you give yourself permission to do it and to do it in a way where it isn't stripping consent from the people you're connected to. So communicating is what I'm trying to say, verbally communicating, which you're pretty good at, eh?

Guest: Yeah. I think so.

Jessica: I think so, too. You've got this strong Mercury in Leo, and it's opposite Uranus. So sometimes you can be a little brusque, I'm imagining, a little to the point. But the rest of your chart tends to soften the point.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: So I think it works out. I think you're a good communicator. So, all of this said, I want to just kind of pull back because there are so many pieces to your question, and I want to see, what would be helpful for me to speak to? What have I haven't quite gotten to yet but you have questions around?

Guest: Yeah. Well, it was really, really helpful hearing how⁠—kind of my nature with the depranxiousness. You said something about kind of having intertwined with my fight-or-flight, and I guess I'm kind of wondering if you have thoughts about how I might do that.

Jessica: Yeah. Sure. Your Pluto/Moon square indicates that when you experience strong emotions, your survival mechanisms tend to activate as a way to protect you. And that actually existed in you before your father passed. And so I have to ask, are either of your parents related to survivors, or was there some sort of trauma in their early developmental experiences?

Guest: Well, my grandmother, I believe, was a survivor, and I also⁠—I mean⁠—

Jessica: Was that your dad's or your mom's mom?

Guest: My dad's. And then I don't know how this maybe plays into it, but I had a paternal half-sister who died when I was young.

Jessica: That's it. Yeah.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: So this theme of loss is really strong in your patrilineage, right?

Guest: Yes.

Jessica: Whether it's your grandmother's lived experience or your father's loss of his child and then your loss, these are just hot points we're pointing to. I imagine looking at your chart that there's many other things if we wanted to unpack them. And so this is an important place to start. This theme of the things I love, the things I need to be safe inside my own body, inside my own heart, in the world, are constantly a risk for me, I could lose my wellness, I could lose my safety at any moment⁠—it's in your epigenetics, right?

Guest: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: And that is reflected in the birth chart through the Moon/Pluto square. My personal approach to coping with this is by, first of all, practicing acknowledging it, which⁠—honestly, the process of acknowledging it, like being aware of it in the moment as it emerges, I think can take years. So just be really patient with this process. It can take years because if you come at a survival mechanism too fast, too aggressive, then its only function gets triggered: to survive. To survive you trying to change it. So, if we try to change our survival mechanisms, it backfires.

Instead, it's about being interested in what is happening, when it's happening, how you know it's happening, how it functions, how you react to it happening, all of that. It's like, yes, do it with a shrink if you like shrinks, or do it with a woo if you like woos. You can just do it with yourself. But it takes time. There's no rush in this. So that is one important point in terms of how do you unravel it? I don't know. I have grapevines in my backyard. I don't know if you've ever seen grapevines, but they kind of twirl⁠—

Guest: They coil. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. They coil around each other. That's kind of what I keep on seeing with your Moon/Pluto square. And it is possible to train it. So it'll still coil; it'll just coil in the right things. That's the visual I want to give you here because your nature will always be intense. Your epigenetics, your early developmental experiences, they are what they are. And by working with them instead of against them or around them, this is where you find the strength of your nature and some peace. This fear of loss or the lived experience of loss is⁠—it's really fucking hard for you.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. It is.

Jessica: And it's always there.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I will even⁠—I don't know. I get so in my head about it, too, and there will be a situation that I know I can talk myself down from as very safe to the degree that it can be safe, and I'll still be imagining the ways that something can go wrong, like things can end in tragedy.

Jessica: Yeah. And I'm not going to tell you that everything isn't a near-death experience, because that is my worldview. So I'm with you. But I also have a Moon/Pluto square, so there you go. This is astrology proving itself. But the thing that I think is really important is not trying to convince yourself that things can't go wrong.  Why would you convince yourself of something that you don't believe is true? Anything can go wrong at any time, yes. Also, being able to be with the emotions instead of converting those emotions into stories that you convince yourself and you justify the emotions with⁠—that's the move.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: So it might be you're starting to be friends with someone, and then your head starts going to this place where you're just like, "Ah, I can see how maybe this person is going to end up being a weird friend in this way, or they're not going to back me in that way," or whatever the fuck it is. Recognizing with your fancy Virgo Moon that those thoughts are a symptom of feelings⁠—so tracking the feelings of, "Oh, I'm scared of this not working. I'm scared of getting hurt." Okay. You can work with that. You actually have resources, and also, if you work with the roots of the grapevine, you will do better than if you're just constantly trying to clip the outside parts, if that makes sense.

Guest: Yes. Yeah, it does.

Jessica: So practicing recognizing that you have a story and it's justifying a feeling⁠—that on its own is hard work. But let's say you can do it. You can be like, "Oh fuck. I just caught myself for the last 20 minutes⁠—I was thinking about something, and I was convincing myself that I'm justified in my feelings. What's the feeling?" The way that I personally recommend tracking the feeling is through emoji wisdom because emojis are really useful in recognizing just literal emotions. So you start with sad, mad, bad, glad. Pick your emoji. Make a⁠—whatever, like a note in your phone with these emojis, and click⁠—which one is it? Okay⁠—

Guest: It's like the new emotion chart.

Jessica: Exactly. It's one of those things where if you can't use words and you can just use visuals, which speaks more to our subconscious, it can help to simplify. And that doesn't minimize. This is the sticky part for you. It's like we don't want to minimize or shrink the feelings. We want to simplify as a way to essentially distill so you can get to the most essential nature of what the fuck is happening for you. You are scared it won't work out, and then it will hurt your feelings. Or you are scared it won't work out, and it will be your fault⁠—or whatever it is.

You want to fall down to the most essential foundational motivator. Through doing this, you can kind of develop ways of, "Okay. So, when I have abandonment issues, I can maybe sit with that." And you go on YouTube and find a meditation for fear of abandonment. You can talk to a⁠—again, you can do a million different things with it. But when we focus on the wrong part of the thing, it doesn't matter what we do; it doesn't really satiate, which is why I'm often saying we want to get underneath the scab. We want to get beyond our reaction. We want to go with what's motivating that reaction.

And in this way, you start to untangle your survival from your feelings so that they can exist near each other and inform each other and interact with each other, but they're not one big thing.

Guest: Yes, especially because⁠—and I didn't say this, but I think in my processing, I will have a lot of thoughts but then really struggle with putting them into words. And with time, I will. In therapy, I'll have long gaps of silence, or even with my partner, I'll be like, "Yes. We'll come back to that," and I really have to think about it. But it feels like with words, it takes me a while to get there sometimes, which it doesn't when it's not about emotions.

Jessica: Right. So that's the Neptune opposition to the Sun. It's hard for you to locate yourself when things are overwhelming because you've learned a way to survive overwhelming feelings: you go away.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: And this is, I think, what your father was referring to at the beginning when I was like, "Oh, I see he starts to talk to you, you tap into him, and then you get fuzzy in the brain." That's this thing you're describing. It's your response to strong emotion. The other thing is Pluto in the birth chart, when it's in hard aspect to a personal planet, in particular the Moon, it can feel like there's a light switch in your psychic internal room. And it's either on, and all the lights are on and you're hyperaware, hypervigilant⁠—you're there⁠—or it's off, and it's really hard to locate yourself or what's happening, and it feels like you don't have access to the light switch. It just happens on its own. Does that resonate?

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. I believe that it was Donna Cunningham who wrote about this. If you don't have her book, Healing Pluto Problems⁠—I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but if you're a student of astrology, it's a must-have, especially with your birth chart.

Guest: Okay.

Jessica: This idea that I'm sharing with you is really because the most healthy way of engaging with this pattern is giving yourself the space that you need to be in overwhelm so that you can find yourself and then not abandon yourself through the process. So taking space is good. Having moments or chunks of time in therapy where you're like, "I'm not saying anything. I'm locating myself," is healthy. It's very healthy for you. It might be boring for you because I see your mind moves fast. It might be kind of frustrating for you because you've got this Saturn opposition to your Ascendant that is like, "I want to be responsible at all times."

But it's true. It's authentic. It's healthy. And over the course of time, might you get quicker with your responses? Maybe. It's not necessary, though. That shouldn't be the goal. The goal hopefully, for you, is having more self-acceptance around it so that you can kind of better navigate that you need some space to process emotions and that finding ways of communicating that to people or to feeling at peace with that in yourself⁠—that's the move more than anything else. So do you exercise?

Guest: Yeah. Yeah. Not every day, but I try to at least once a week. I would say that the pandemic has been hard because what I would usually turn to would be going to a yoga studio, and that has not been possible. So I've been doing things that didn't really feel like me but feel like better options.

Jessica: Yeah. That makes sense. And I would throw this in the mix: I just looked at you energetically, and I was like, "Oh shit. I can't see your legs." You don't seem to be very grounded in your body, and I think it's like a habit of separating from your body because it's where your emotions live and it's a tenderness. And so I would say a great form of exercise for you would be get those feet to a nice walk, a nice walk somewhere where there's space and not tons of people. And that's good for the physical body, but it's really good for all the stuff we're talking about because it gives you space. And what you really need is space. So yeah. A walk, even if it's a walk with a bunch of other nerds⁠—it's a good thing for you.

Guest: Yeah. Walking feels good. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. It does. There's no physical downside to it for you. So, as long as you have good shoes, I gotta say⁠—and again, forgive me; it's an aside⁠—but with your chart, you need to wear good shoes.

Guest: I do. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Good. You can wear cute shoes, but you pay. You got stupid girl shoes⁠⁠—you know what I mean? Yeah, you would pay for that. Okay. Sorry. Just hold on for one moment. Okay. So your dad just kind of popped back in. He's really proud of you, and he deeply loves you. And he doesn't need you to change the way you think about him or how you feel about him or anything like that. He doesn't need you to do anything for him, and he's just going to be around. So, when and if you shift and you kind of want to feel him more, he'll be around. And if you don't shift in that direction, he will not be bummed. He's very okay with it.

He really wants to be your dad. He really likes to be your dad, which is so cool because so many dads do not. But he's got a very healthy parental response to where you're at and what you need and where you've been at and what you've needed. And I just feel like it's important that I share that with you because I see you can pressure yourself. Don't let that be about him. He only wants you to be happy. I'm sorry⁠—what do you do for a living? Because he keeps on referencing it.

Guest: I'm a social worker.

Jessica: Okay. He's so proud of it. He's just very impressed by it. He has this belief that you're going to do something really important with this. So I don't know⁠—are you planning on getting a PhD or some advanced degree or something?

Guest: No. I mean, I have my master's in social work, but I don't plan on going back to school.

Jessica: School is torture. Good for you. Also, was he a professor or something?

Guest: No. He was a photographer.

Jessica: Okay, because he is showing me school. So I don't know if he's like, "You're going to teach. You're going to write a book. You're going to go back to school." I don't know what it is, but he has this idea that you're going to shape the way things go in your field in some way or that you have the potential to. This is not pressure. He just really believes in you, and he sees your capacity. And he's very proud. He's very proud. I see. Bear with me. Can you feel your emotions or your energy in your body right now?

Guest: Yeah. I feel a little tingly, and I feel it in my chest more.

Jessica: Yeah. How's your breath? Have you been breathing?

Guest: Yeah. I think maybe a little more shallow, but I'm breathing.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. Fun fact about the Sun/Neptune opposition: when people have this aspect in the birth chart, you're often holding your breath a lot because it's almost like this fear of impact, so there's like a pulling back that can occur.

Guest: Yeah. I often feel tightness in my chest.

Jessica: Yeah. I would recommend that you just ask yourself, "Am I breathing?" Just make a practice of three deep breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth. Make it an easy practice because what I saw happening energetically was that in that moment⁠—and it could have been because you were like, "Is this real?" or it could have been because it was emotional for you. It could be anything, right? But as I was just checking with him, it's almost like I saw your energy start to go into a tighter and a tighter ball inside of your⁠—it looked like your chest/sternum area. It felt like you were holding your breath. I don't know if it was physical or energetic or both.

Guest: Maybe I was. Yeah.

Jessica: This is not bad or good, but it's simply something to notice because it is a survival response. And if you stayed in that state, you would end up having anxiety because the tightness plus not breathing⁠—it'll make you feel physiologically anxious. And then, because you have a history with depranction⁠—if I said that right⁠—you'll look around and be like, "Oh my God. Why am I feeling this way? What is it?" instead of staying with yourself and tracking it back to where it started, which is this feeling.

So I want to just kind of notate it because what happens, I think for most of us but certainly for you, is that this anxiety or depressiveness starts with something a lot more subtle that we can note in the emotional body or the physical body or both. And being present with yourself enough to be like, "Oh, I can feel that thing that often leads to the other shit"⁠—it's a practice. It's a slow practice but is really invaluable because when I breathe into this feeling that you're having, it's sad. Underneath it, it's just sad.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Sorry. Is it kind of coming up to the surface now a little bit more?

Guest: I feel a little more grounded now, and I was feeling it a couple minutes ago more.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. So I think the more you breathe, the more you'll feel the root emotion, which in this moment is sad. And I imagine⁠—

Guest: I feel like it tends to be sad.

Jessica: I was about to say that. Yeah. That's what it feels like. It's like the emotion that you learned wasn't safe.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: Do you like watching sad movies?

Guest: I watched a lot of sad movies when I was younger. I feel like, now, my nervous system response tends to sometimes limit the amount of emotionally intense media I can consume for fun, at least.

Jessica: Yeah. I'm with you. So I wonder if⁠—and this might not work, but I'm going to just throw it out there. I don't know if there's still Lifetime movies. Are there still Lifetime movies?

Guest: I don't know. There probably are.

Jessica: You know what I'm talking about, right? You know what a Lifetime movie is.

Guest: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: It's like you know you're being manipulated 100 percent of the way. It's not deep, but it will make you cry. It's like whoever makes tissue commercials makes these movies, and [crosstalk]⁠—

Guest: I mean, honestly, it doesn't take⁠—I feel like when I'm watching TV, even⁠—I'll watch⁠—Call the Midwife will make me cry.

Jessica: Yes. Sure. Why wouldn't it? So here's what I'm getting at, though. So Call the Midwife⁠—it is about real-life issues. It is actually about serious life issues. What I'm getting at is something bigger like, "Yeah, it's about serious life issues, but we all know that this is overproduced and ridiculous and all those things." I kind of want to encourage you to, as an experiment, watch something that isn't deep, that isn't about real issues that are sensitive to you, so they don't tap into your own real grief, but they will get you crying.

The reason why is because then what you can do is you can pause it and actually tap into the emotions and experience the emotions. And basically, crying can be like sweating or pooping. I don't know why I'm always⁠—oh, because your Pluto. I keep on talking about pooping with you. But it's like crying or pooping, where you just need to let it out. And so to make it maybe once a week, just experiment and see if this feels like it taxes your nervous system. If it does, don't do it. But if it feels like it's actually a little catharsis without your actually being sad about something, that might be really helpful for you because sadness⁠—all of our emotions are like any muscle. It takes practice to be able to have some sort of control and agency around how we use it.

I think that, for instance, tapping into talking about your dad or talking with your dad, it taps into your sadness in a way that isn't safe for you. And I'm not going to be like, "Okay, so stay with this longer." I'm going to say, "Okay. Let's just notice it and let it be," whereas if you just feel sadness because of a stupid commercial, literally, there is an access point there for you to feel feelings without it being about anything. And I think that's a good move for you. So I would recommend⁠—

Guest: Like it kind of bypasses my trauma response to get there.

Jessica: Yes. Yes, and also your brain, which is like⁠—⁠it's like that grapevine interwoven with your trauma response⁠—Virgo Moon. So this is where terrible TV is your friend, terrible tear-jerking TV.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: So ridiculous romantic comedies that make you cry a couple times in the movie⁠—your friend. Don't be highbrow about that shit. This particular idea is a good example of how things can be really deep and meaningful and important without being torture, which is, again, part of the patrilineal pattern that you have experienced and been brought into.

Guest: Yeah.

Jessica: So bear with me. Just trying to see if he's got anything else for you. You are allowed to have anger that you were medicated and overmedicated, and also at the same time have gratefulness that you didn't have to feel all those feelings for years on end because it would have fucking ruined your life, in some ways much worse than what happened did. You're allowed to have very strong conflicting emotions. I want to affirm for you, yeah, that's being a fucking person. That's being alive.

You are allowed to have these mixed emotions, and practicing just giving yourself permission to have these very conflicting, very strong emotions will help you in untold ways. It really will. I know you're going through a lot, but it's exactly what you need to be going through. It doesn't always feel good⁠—

Guest: Yeah. I feel that.

Jessica: I'm so glad you can feel that.

Guest: Yeah. No, I do. And that's, I think, part of why it felt like an interesting time to reach out, because I feel like this is kind of a⁠—it feels like a transitional point emotionally, and so it's really⁠⁠—yeah. It's so wonderful to hear that mirrored back from you and also what else is happening in my chart around that. So thank you.

Jessica: Yeah. It is so my pleasure. It's been really lovely chatting with you, and yeah. Thanks for showing up and sharing.

Okay. Bear with me for a moment here. When you touch a hot stove and it burns your hands, that's healthy. It doesn't feel good, but feeling pain when things are in fact painful is a healthy reaction. It's what we want, right? It's what we want. We want to have a healthy and hopefully associated response to whatever it is that's happening.

The Supreme Court here in the United States has decided that U.S. Customs can make warrantless arrests. They can enter your home, do whatever the hell they like, and you have no recourse. And that is true for Americans living within 100 miles of the U.S. border, which is, by the way, 60 percent of the United States. There are mass shootings. The world is being shown how truly heinous the January 6th attack on the Capitol was. Our right to privacy and, for women and Trans folks, body autonomy is under attack. COVID is raging in many parts of the world, and the climate crisis is a terrifying reality that we are all living under. And honestly, the list goes on. That barely begins to scratch the surface of what is happening here in the U.S. or certainly around the world.

And I say all of this to say it's okay to not be okay right now. There is a lot of very scary stuff going on, and if you're thinking about any of these topics or any other number of scary things and you're stressed out, that's really okay. In fact, I would say it's really healthy. If you are somebody who doesn't pay a lot of attention to the news or you just try to shut it out and you're feeling a great deal of anxiety or fear, if you're having a hard time with concentration, that's also okay. That makes sense given what's happening in the world.

And if you, like me, are utterly and authentically confused as to why people aren't screaming in the streets as legislation is changed and our rights are being stripped one by one, bringing us in the United States in a terrifying direction⁠—also, all the while, COVID is spiking, yet we are somehow pretending like it's not? Now international flights⁠—you don't have to test negative in order to get on an international flight to come into the U.S. I mean, what? Wait. What?

Anyways, if you are feeling any kind of off or bad, you're not alone, and you're not wrong. The key is to cultivate emotional maturity by developing or using the resources that you have to cope with hardship. You are rising to the occasion. And as we know, due to the big-picture astrology that's happening⁠—so not just this week's astrology, but the big picture of the astrology that we're living through⁠—the direction that we're going in is pretty terrifying, even if it's predictable. I mean, certainly, if you've listened to this podcast, it's been predicted. But that doesn't mean anything. We're in it, and living through trying times is trying, to say the least.

So I want to just kind of encourage you to pace yourself. Don't stick your head in the sand, but also, you don't need to be on 24 hours a day. The key is to lead with empathy, integrity, and kindness however and whenever you can. And remember that it's important to do the right thing whether it's super important or not and whether anyone else is looking or not. This will help you feel right with yourself, but in the context of the collective, it will help you to do the right thing when it really counts.

Now, all that said, we're going to get into this week's horoscope, which has some serious highs and lows. But again, I just want to hold space for this wild human experience we're all having. It's a lot. And some days, it feels like too much, and some days it's a fucking joy. Either way, here we damn are. Find some things or something that motivates you, ways that you can participate in making the world that much better, whether it's by honoring your need for survival or showing up for others, or hopefully a fancy combo platter of the two. All depends on your nature, your circumstances, and your resources. So honor all that stuff, and let's get astrological.

We are looking at the astrology for the week of June 12th through the 18th. And yeah, it's got Chiron. It's got Saturn. It's got a Full Moon, got Neptune⁠—shit. It's got it all. We start off the week on the 13th⁠—Mercury moves back into Gemini. So this week is the final week where we're still in the shadow period of the Mercury Retrograde, so tidying things up. That's what's going on over here. We're tidying things up. Things are likely to move a little quicker because Mercury is back into Gemini. So your thinking, your plans, your ability to work things out with people, maybe to connect with people socially or work-wise⁠—all that stuff's going to speed up just a little bit because Mercury in Gemini⁠—it is fast, and it could be quite fun if you're into a little bit of speed. So lean in, my friends. I say lean in.

And that brings us to the first major transit of the week, which is happening on the 14th of June at 4:52 a.m. Pacific Time. And that shit is called a Full Moon. And we have a Full Moon in Sagittarius. So, for the uninitiated, a Full Moon occurs about once a month. Every once in a blue moon, we get it a couple times in a month. But it's about once a month, and it is when the Sun and Moon are exactly opposite to each other by sign and degree. The degree is important because astrology, my friends, is math. And whenever we have a Full Moon, emotions boil and bubble up to the surface. And this occurs because we are experiencing a meaningful tension between our will and our needs or our feelings. Often, it is our feelings that become the stronger, louder voice.

And when we're dealing with a Sun/Moon opposition in Gemini/Sagittarius respectively, we are dealing with the tension between the forest versus the trees, the details versus the big picture. Gemini can get really fixated on small stuff, and Sagittarius can get really fixated on big picture. And so this has so much to do with the tension that we're likely to be experiencing at this time on the Full Moon. But this Full Moon has something very important happening within it, and that is the Full Moon is forming a T-square to the planet Neptune. So we have the Moon and Sun at 23 degrees of Sagittarius and Gemini, and they both are forming a square to the planet Neptune at 25 degrees Pisces.

This is quite a tight⁠—it's not exact, but it's quite a tight square. And what we can expect from this is anxiety, uncertainty, misinformation, disinformation. Unfortunately, on a social or collective level, this can have to do with religious extremism and, for reasons that I will unpack in a moment, unfortunately, violence in the name of religious extremism. On a more personal level, you may be struggling with anxiety, just a sense of overwhelm and exhaustion, just a lot of fatigue. This transit can kick up the desire for simple and easy answers, a desire to disappear or just get away from the harshness of reality.

Neptune, unfortunately, is a planet that's associated with cults. There are so many cults these days. Have you noticed? So many cults. There are so many ways to get involved in cults and to be kind of unintentionally wooed by cults. It's a fun fact about how social media and the internet is a place that we have to be really mindful when we are in because we have access to all manner of ideas, and it's easy to just, as we're scrolling through, not realize how we are becoming indoctrinated to certain ways of thinking.

It's easy to be misled, to delude yourself, to believe in lies or to unintentionally present things in a way that's actually false under this influence. So these are all things to really pay attention to. If something is shown to you it happens that you are really upset by or really excited by, check. Check. Just check. You know what I mean? Do a little due diligence. Again, that tension between Gemini and Sagittarius can incline us to jump to conclusions, and Neptune does not guarantee that the conclusions that we're jumping to or the information that we're being inspired to do the jumping by is reliable or that we are receiving it accurately.

Ultimately, this Full Moon is going to make us all feel, or so many of us feel, hypersensitive, really touchy. Neptune is associated with all manner of intuition, sensitivities, feeling like you're in the wrong body, the wrong place, the wrong time⁠—idealism, fantasy, putting people on pedestals, putting yourself on a pedestal⁠—all this kind of stuff. And ultimately, all of these things can lead to increased vulnerability. It is important that you are honoring your need or desire for fantasy, for escapism, for spirituality, but doing it in a way that is not perfectionistic⁠—because that's another downfall of Neptune⁠—or at the expense of reality, at the expense of others.

This is a⁠—I would call it fucking terrible time for consciousness-raising drugs. What Neptune does is it weakens the auric field. It makes us incredibly permeable. It also makes everyone around you permeable, which can lead to getting really weird, really off, and in the context of substance use, again, it can make you really sensitive. So my advice is put it off. Not today.

Now, to make matters more complicated⁠—because, honestly, that was enough. What I've just described is enough to make this a very consequential and intense Full Moon in the context of our mental health because Gemini is involved, our spiritual health because Neptune's involved in Pisces, and then, of course, our emotional health because it is a Full Moon. So this is a very consequential Full Moon. And as we know, Full Moons are a time for releasing and for letting go. It's the closure of a cycle. It may feel extra chaotic because letting go is hard, and especially when we have all of this extra energy introduced by Neptune.

Again, this is kind of a messy one. I would not recommend trying to harness energy. Instead, I would recommend finding your center, finding your grounding, and really trying to note or learn from how and when you stay present, how and when you check out, and whether or not that's working for you. That's a good use of this Full Moon energy. But as I mentioned, that's not all. We're still very much under the influence of the Venus/Uranus conjunction in Taurus, and Uranus is very close to that conjunction. So we have this really strong push to align with our value systems. And when I say align, Taurus wants security and stability within our values. But Uranus will present us with new information, new perspectives, so that we expand or change our values to become more humanitarian.

That's the hope. It can go the other way, of course, but the hope is that we become more conscientious about the realities, perspectives, and then ultimately needs of others, and we change. We change because we learned something new. That's a healthy thing to do, BTWs. But identifying what you value and who you value is really important. And if you find that your values are not aligned with your beliefs⁠—because a lot of people have a big gap between beliefs and values⁠—then this is an invitation to do more integration work.

The thing, though, is that this is a disruptive, kind of, again, anxious bit of energy because it's not stable. It's a questioning. It's a yearning. It's an inventiveness. It's an inquisitiveness. But it's not stable. So, again, there can be a great deal of anxiety that happens here, and it may play out in relationships because Venus is involved, because it's the zodiac sign of Taurus. And it may be your relationship to money, to body image, to gender⁠—to your gender. It may be in the context of your relationships to other human people or, if you're like me, to cats.

It's very much a relational bit of energy. And again, there is a risk of placing oneself or others on a pedestal or going the opposite direction and assuming that your perspective, your feelings, your needs, your situation is more important and valid than others, which of course would be some bullshit. None of us are condemned to being shitty if we are shitty in situations. We can learn from that and turn that shit into compost and grow something new. Right?

Okay. So there's one more very, very important thing for me to tell you about this fucking Full Moon, okay? And I'm going to talk about it more as the week progresses. We also have a Chiron/Mars conjunction in Aries on this date. It's going to be exact the following day, a.k.a. the 15th. And I will unpack it further there. In the context of a Full Moon in Sagittarius with a Uranus/Venus conjunction, this Mars/Chiron conjunction in Aries is a fucking wildcard, but it's a wildcard on fire because Mars/Chiron conjunction is explosive. It's spontaneous. It's defensive. It's a lot of energy.

This transit may expose defensiveness, resentments, aggression, and depending on your nature, you may turn that inwards, which with Neptune as a focal planet of the T-square, of the Full Moon, could really happen for a lot of people. When we turn our anger and aggression inwards, it can often feel like anxiety. It can feel like sadness, depression, kind of like you're falling apart. And so, in the context of this transit, if you are somebody who doesn't have the skill set for experiencing and expressing anger in a healthy way, I would encourage you to safely use your body as a resource. That's dance your buns off. That's sing real loud to music. That's do some sort of exercise like running, punching, kicking, that associates the visceral expression that Mars in Aries and Chiron in Aries require.

Unfortunately, this combination can have us acting out. So, if you are not somebody who turns your anger within but instead it goes outside of you⁠—as many of us tend to be really irritable, aggressive, all that kind of fun stuff, or we may be dealing with other people who are behaving this way, of course. If you are somebody who gets pissed off, who gets angry, yeah, you may project or displace your anger and intensity onto others or onto situations. Again, Neptune is the planet to watch out for in this Full Moon chart because it gives us misinformation and disinformation. It oversimplifies things as a way to cope with anxiety.

This can be really explosive. If you feel like starting shit on the Full Moon, my advice to you, my loves⁠—and when I say on the Full Moon, I mean, honestly, all week. All week, but certainly on the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th. If you feel like starting shit, I want to encourage you to take a deep breath because Neptune requires some deep breathing. Take a deep damn breath and check in with yourself and ask yourself, "What are my goals?"⁠—Mars, Aries, right?—"What are my goals? What do I want to get out of acting out here?" And if you determine that what you want to get out of the situation will not be achieved by letting a person know "What the fuck?" then find a different way of managing the energy and feelings that you're having.

Again, Mars/Aries/Chiron needs visceral expression, so it's going to be hard to keep it to yourself if you are inclined to put it on others. That said, you might be dealing with other people who are being total dicks: unkind, impatient, triggering your own early developmental or core wounds⁠—yeah. This is a hot mess. It's a hot mess. So the opportunity within all of this is to become more whole, and we become more whole by being associated and present with all the layers⁠—the emotions, the physical experience, our thoughts, and our spirituality. It's a tall order. You don't have to get it perfect. Again, Neptune can be perfectionistic. We're not trying to be perfect here. It's about pointing yourself in a direction, and if you're going to hold yourself to a standard, this is a great standard⁠—being present.

You do not need to act on every impulse you have. Also, other people will act on all their shitty impulses or many of their shitty impulses, and you don't need to take it personally when and if that happens, because people will be messy this Full Moon, and in particular this week because the Mars/Chiron conjunction is going to be affecting us throughout the week.

So all of this to say, my loves, you may need to own your anger. You may need to own your anxiety, your sadness, whatever it is. But being present with your own emotions doesn't mean you're investing in feeling bad. It means you're not abandoning yourself when you have need for yourself. Be the friend that you wish you had, and that will empower you to be there for others, be there for the world, whatever it may be. This Full Moon, it's a little messy, so get ready and do your best to respond to your reactions with intention and integrity.

That brings us to the next exact transit, which as I said, is the Mars conjunction to Chiron in Aries. I've already talked about how you're likely to experience it on a personal level, but it is worth naming what we are likely to see on a collective level⁠—social/political level. Yeah. It's very warring energy. That's right. I said warring. We are likely to see presentations of toxic masculinity on display, but not on display like at a museum behind glass, but out in the field, active⁠—big cars on small roads⁠—you know what I'm saying, right?

This transit is not great. It's not great in the context of COVID for the spread, which⁠—COVID is objectively spreading like wildfire. Who could have predicted it? But here we are, Mars conjunct Aries⁠—a hot mess. So please mask up, I beg of you. What we can expect with this transit is unfortunately violence in any of its many forms. In the regions of this world that are experiencing war⁠—and within that, I do include the United States⁠—this is not a great transit. And we are likely to see activity, violent activity.

I would encourage you to choose engaging in battles with intention. Be wise about the shit you get involved in. This isn't a great time for reading the comments section on social media because when people feel aggressive, when people feel defensive, when people feel activated, a lot of times they don't have a healthy and appropriate outlet for those feelings, and that's when it becomes easy through the anonymity of the internet to go out and bark at people or sucker punch people. This is a time where I imagine we'll see people punching down.

If you have the energy, if you have the resources, this is a great time to be an advocate, to stand up for what you believe in, stand up for what is right. But again, choose your battles with intention. Choose them wisely because Aries and Mars and Chiron⁠—but mainly Aries and Mars⁠—they can have knee-jerk reactions, and this lack of consideration can create more problems, more defensiveness, more conflict than it solves. So pair intention with your actions, my fine friends.

If you want to know what part of your life this really intense transit is going to light up, you want to look to where the zodiac sign of Aries falls in your birth chart. And in particular, this transit is occurring at 60 degrees. It's 15 degrees and 56 minutes, and we're rounding it up to 60 degrees of Aries. So wherever 16 degrees of Aries falls in your birth chart is where things are going to get lit up, for better or for worse, and certainly intensely. And as always, if you yourself want to be able to track the transits, know when they're coming, log your predictions and all the things that you're learning in one place, subscribe to my web-based app called Astrology For Days over at astrologyfordays.com. That's what I use to track the transits, and I fucking love it. So maybe you will, too.

Okay. That brings us, my friends, to the 16th. And on the 16th, we have two exact transits, one lovely, one not as much. So the first transit is a Sun trine to Saturn, and the second one is a Sun square to Neptune. Sun trine Saturn is a stabilizing transit. We love to see it. It is a stabilizing transit that empowers us to identify what's real and how to best engage with it responsibly. And the Sun Square to Neptune, exact on the same day, is kind of the opposite. Sun square to Neptune makes us unsure of what's real, and it inclines us to have a difficult time taking responsibility for ourselves. And so, luckily, the Sun trine to Saturn will help to stabilize the Sun square Neptune. Unfortunately, the Sun square Neptune will undermine the Sun trine to Saturn. Let me explain.

Sun trine to Saturn is a great time for organizing, getting present, getting real, making things happen, like either making plans or moving forward with plans, while at the same time, the Sun square to Neptune makes us kind of exhausted. It's hard to find motivation. It's hard to find energy. It's hard to access your sense of strength or vitality. Neptune is kind of like a sieve for the Sun's bright light, so it kind of drains it and it strains it in a not-so-awesome way. The Sun square to Neptune can bring up martyred feelings. It can bring up victimization feelings. Or it can have us kind of fucking off and not dealing with things in our life in a way that unintentionally creates problems for others, and then we have to deal with demoralizing circumstances.

And all of that said, the Sun trine to Saturn may do a good job of kind of helping us feel a little bit more like our head is above water. It's also not inherently strong enough to motivate us to take responsibility⁠—in other words, as you know I like to say, to access and motivate from our willingness to respond. Neptune makes us not so much in the mood for such things, honestly. The Sun square to Neptune can make us feel sickly. It can make you feel just exhausted, just tapped. Happily, luckily, the Sun trine to Saturn is a transit that can help us not to feel strong, per se, but to remember to use the resources that we have.

So Saturn is not known in any configuration as an abundance planet, but it is kind of a reality planet. So you want to, to the best of your ability on and around this date, align with the resources you do have access to. Don't obsess on what you don't have or what other people have. That's not going to help you. But instead tap into what it is that is kind of available to you that you can access or resource. If you can avoid trying to do everything alone on and around this date, that's great because it's hard to have perspective⁠—honestly, this whole week is not great for perspective, exactly, and that's simply because there's so much energy going on. There's so much intensity happening that it's hard to know which truth is the truth to align with, what problem you want to focus on, whatever it is. And again, for a lot of people, that's just going to make you really tired. For other people, it's going to make you really defensive. Some people will be defensive and tired. Look at that, eh?

Again, this might not hit you directly. You might not experience this per se, but people around you will. And so I want to remind you to be patient with others. I'm not saying eat shit. Never am I saying eat shit. But I am saying don't assume the worst or even assume that it's about you if people act weird or off, because everyone makes mistakes, and everyone has bad days, and everyone struggles.

Okay. That all said, we've got one last day of the week to talk about. It's the 18th. And on the 18th, we have two exact transits. They've got a similar vibe to the ones I just described. We've got two transits from Venus. The first one is Venus square to Saturn, and the other one is a Venus sextile to Neptune. So we've got these two transits, and similar to the Sun transits, there's kind of a mixed bag because Neptune and Saturn are such different vibes, and one of these transits is a hard aspect and the other one is an easy aspect.

Venus sextile Neptune, the easier of the two transits⁠—this one is great for romance. It's great for beauty. It's great for enjoying the arts, for tapping into your spirituality, for hooking up, for flirting⁠—I mean, not for those who like to go on the prowl, who like to hunt. No. That's Mars. This is making eyes at someone. It's giving good text. It's just basically feeling yourself or feeling someone else in a tender and sensual way. The Venus sextile to Neptune is a transit in which we can lose ourselves in beauty. We can be idealistic and hopeful, which⁠—hey, who couldn't use a little bit of hope?

Unfortunately, Saturn is like, "Yeah, that's cute, but"⁠—because Venus is forming a square to Saturn on the same day, and Venus square Saturn is another difficult transit. This transit aligns us with insecurity and scarcity⁠—I'm sorry⁠—and it does this because Venus and Saturn are the two planets that I would say are the most concerned with what other people think. They're also the most concerned⁠—maybe the Moon is in the mix too⁠—with security and a sense of safety. And when these two planets form a square to each other, a 90-degree angle, we can feel not safe. We can feel not loved, not valued.

It can be easy to have a really rough physical existence day, a.k.a., you look in the mirror; you have a hard time with what you see. You compare yourself to other people. You compare yourself to where you think you should be or where you once were, all that kind of bullshit. It's really a difficult transit because it is essentially a struggle, an internal struggle with what is, with some form of reality or your interpretation or hot take on reality. This transit can coincide with feeling low self-esteem, loneliness, shyness, having difficulties in your interpersonal relationships, running into the consequences of your spending habits or other money problems⁠—so that can be related to systemic issues. It can be related to your individual choices. It can kind of go either way or both ways at once.

This transit is rough. And if you have a depressive nature or if this transit hits your chart in just the right way, you may be feeling depressed or depressive. And this transit doesn't last long. It's several days, but it's not very long. It's not a full week. And it's an opportunity to get clear about your self-talk, to allow the things that are really upsetting you to reflect back to you your values. And so it's an opportunity very different than the Venus/Uranus conjunction but not completely divorced from this idea of understanding what you actually value and making sure that you're valuing the right things, things that actually are important to you.

This is not a great transit for the juj. Venus square Saturn is kind of antithetical to juj. It may make you feel really flat in your energy, like you just, again, can't quite get it up, or it might make other people feel that way. So you might tra-la-la into a room in a good mood because this transit isn't really impacting you, and other people are feeling that flatness or the insecurity, that scarcity, and so the way they respond to you might make you feel some kind of way. And here we have the magic of astrology. Even if it doesn't directly impact you, you want to have empathy for and awareness of the fact that it's likely to impact others.

And again, this brings us back to your values. How do you respond to the world around you? How do you respond to yourself? And does it reflect what you actually value, or are you getting caught up in any kind of Keeping Up With the Joneses shit, which Saturn can do? Are you getting caught up with shoulds, quote unquote? This is really an important thing to consider, or these are important things to consider.

This is not a great time for relationships, and the reason why it's not great for relationships is because we tend to feel lonely and isolated. We tend to focus on what is not working. Is this a good time for a first date? Come on. You should know. No, it is not a good time for a first date. If a relationship begins under this influence, it is likely to have a heavy karmic field to it, which is not inherently bad or good, but it tends to be heavy. It's Saturn. This is not a super sexy transit at all, but not everything can be sexy.

On a more social level⁠—again, we're back to the impact of Venus and Saturn and our values, which, BTWs⁠—this is the weekend of Juneteenth. Juneteenth isn't until the 19th, which is next week's horoscope. But it is the weekend of Juneteenth, and so in regards to the Venus square to Saturn but also just common sense and being a person of conscience and care, support Black-owned businesses. Invest in mutual aid in your community. The Black Fairy Godmother is a great resource. You can also consider giving to blacktrans.org. There's lots of ways for showing up and for celebrating Juneteenth, and I hope you find yours.

But the Venus square to Saturn unfortunately can coincide with feeling really tight with your finances. And honestly, that might be necessary. You may be dealing with financial issues. But again, this is where you don't want to let scarcity drive you. Instead, you want reality to drive you. We often tell ourselves that we are being realistic when we're actually just being tight and rigid⁠—Saturn. And so what I find to be a really effective way of engaging with these energies is to invest in what you value. Invest your time, invest your energy, invest your care, invest your cash into what you value. And it's not just this transit. It's a goddamn practice, and it is one worth engaging in.

Now, my loves, I'm going to run through the week's transits one more time for you if you are in the market of taking notes. On the 13th, Mercury moves back into Gemini. And I say back into Gemini because it was Retrograde, but now it is in the final moments of its shadow. On the 14th at 4:52 a.m. Pacific Time, we have a Full Moon in sunny Sagittarius. On the 15th, Mars is exactly conjoined to Chiron in the zodiac sign of Aries. On the 16th, the Sun in Gemini forms a trine to Saturn in Aquarius and the Sun in Gemini forms a square to Neptune. And then, finally, on the 18th, Venus in Taurus forms a square to Saturn in Aquarius, and Venus in Taurus forms a sextile to Neptune in Pisces.

And that's your damn horoscope. I want to thank you, as always, for joining me on Ghost of a Podcast, apropos of nothing. This is Episode 263. We started in August of 2018⁠—have not missed a single week. I really love creating this podcast, and I love getting to go beyond Sun sign horoscopes with you and using astrology as a lens to not only make sense of our personal lives and our innermost psychological, emotional, and spiritual lives, but also the world around us and our place within the world.

If you get value from this show, I do invite you to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Just hit that little Subscribe button, and give me a five-star review. Write a review. It does make a difference, and I really appreciate it so, so much. And if you haven't already joined me over on Patreon, giddy-up and get on it because that's a great place to learn with me. Also, I've got webinars for sale on my website. The High Times and Addiction class was so much fun. We ended up going over. It was a two-hour class, and it's for sale on my website. You can go get it there, lovelanyadoo.com/shop. And then, also, if you haven't got my book, Astrology For Real Relationships, you can get it pretty much wherever books are sold.

I think that's a lot of information for you to take in, and I am wishing you as much peace, transformation, and love as you wish for yourself. Talk to you next week. Buh-bye.