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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Jessica: So, today, I am joined by the lovely Lindsay Mack of Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I'm so thrilled to get to give you a reading today. Welcome to Ghost.

Lindsay: Oh my God. I could not be more pleased as punch. I'm so happy to be here right now. Thank you for having me.

Jessica: Oh man. Thanks for showing up. What would you like a reading about today?

Lindsay: Okay. I would love a reading about my roller coaster ride from hell of a postpartum.

Jessica: Is this your first child?

Lindsay: Yes. First and only. First and only. I had a rough pregnancy even though she was great; my daughter was spectacular. Just the transition, the identity shift, the physical toll, was a lot⁠—mental, whatever. My birth was very smooth. Everything was great. And pretty much the moment I got home from the hospital, everything blew up. I'm a trauma survivor. I have a history of mental illness. I absolutely knew that I was a candidate for postpartum depression and anxiety so spent, like, a year basically building out a support team. The head of that support team, two days before I left the hospital, got COVID. So all of that fell apart.

Jessica: Damn.

Lindsay: Had to call 9-1-1 the night I got home because of an issue I will not mention. But it was, in retrospect, hilarious, but did have to call 9-1-1. Thankfully, did not have to go to the hospital. Got an infection a few days later. Had multiple, multiple problems. And my postpartum depression, anxiety, and OCD were⁠—they were beyond anything I ever could have imagined, and I imagined the worst. But then, in May, all of a sudden out of nowhere started to get abdominal pain. Went to the ER in the middle of the night. Had my gallbladder removed the next morning.

Jessica: What?

Lindsay: Ten days later, had the worst pain of my entire life. Had to call an ambulance. I actually went to the hospital, and turned out I had a blocked bile duct that they couldn't do anything about for ten days. So I'm just cycling through pain medication just to pick up my daughter, literally, and make it through the day, turning yellow. Eventually had that unblocked. Thankfully have not had any continued surgeries yet. Let's just put that out there⁠—yet. My PPD and PPA is okay⁠—postpartum depression and anxiety. I had fibromyalgia/allodynia chronic pain before and am just really now in another level of physical pain and health challenges that are very humbling, very humbling.

Now, I will say this, not that I feel like I have to but because I want to. Incredibly⁠—and if I were on the other side of this listening to this, I would be like, "Bullshit." But it's true. I am so in love with my daughter and so obsessed with being a parent and a mother, I'm actually surprised that I⁠—because I didn't know. I really said yes to my pregnancy with a lot of questions and courage related to how I was raised, and being a daughter of an abusive parent myself, I just wasn't sure how my feelings were going to be. I absolutely love it, and it has shifted⁠—I wouldn't change it for anything. It has been definitely an underworld time and a time of great fire and transformation, but it's also been the hardest time of my life, to be sure, with also the greatest joy that I've ever experienced.

To boil that all down, my question is I would like to understand more astrologically about, dare I say, the why of it. Is there anything that I can pay attention to? Is there any medicine I can take from it, not to romanticize it, but to understand, to have more awareness? Because I don't feel like it's "over." I think I'm very much still kind of unwrapping many different things.

Jessica: I'm so sorry that you've been going through all this.

Lindsay: Thank you.

Jessica: And also, I'm hearing the joy and the transformation in it.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: So it's complicated. It would be so cool to have all the joy and transformation without all the pain and torture. But let's —

Lindsay: I do wish⁠—yeah.

Jessica: ⁠—[crosstalk] to all of it.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's here, and it's not new to me, so far, anyway. It's just sort of been the thing in this lifetime for me. A lot is expressed through the physical, unfortunately. So yeah. I sense I'm on a voyage out to sea and that I've left where I've been; I've definitely made some headway, but I'm not in any way⁠—I feel like I'm in the middle of the journey, so to speak. And I would love to understand so I can embrace the journey with a courageous, open heart as much as I'm able to.

Jessica: Spoken like a Moon in Leo. Beautifully put.

Lindsay: Thank you.

Jessica: I'm going to share your birth information if you're cool with that.

Lindsay: Please.

Jessica: Okay. You were born April 10th, 1984, at 3:59 p.m. in big city of Paterson, New Jersey.

Lindsay: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Okay. Great. I actually have a lot to say, maybe surprising nobody. But I will preface it with something important, which is of course I'm not a doctor, and any astrological perspective or advice about anything medical should be taken with one of those Himalayan sea salt big lamps of salt. You know what I mean. Common sense/doctors before astrologers.

Lindsay: [crosstalk]

Jessica: Okay. Thank you.

Lindsay: 100 percent.

Jessica: You know I need to say it. So there's a lot of layers of what you shared and how I can give you feedback. One is that oftentimes, when someone comes in with a new baby, the best way for me to see your mental health and your physical health is actually through your baby's chart because that becomes programmed into the baby's chart, whereas in our adult charts, we have free will. We have transits. But in their chart, we have a reflection of basically the first seven years. And it could be the first two years, the first ten months, but it's up to seven years.

So we can use their birth chart as a resource to get a little bit more information about you. So let's just bookmark that and come back to it if it feels like we want to get a little extra. But you're describing a lot of things, and I want to kind of pull back for a moment because, separate from this immediate situation that you're in, you shared that you've had this kind of chronic health emergencies and highs and lows throughout your life. Is that a fair way of saying it?

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. And so I'm curious. So, when I'm looking for the body in the birth chart, the first two places I'm always going to look are your sixth house and Mars because they're both⁠—I mean, there's a lot of places for health, but those are the first two places I look. And you've got your sixth house with Aquarius on the house cusp, so I look to what is Uranus doing? Oh, Uranus, sitting there with a South Node conjunction. We'll come back to that. The next thing I look for is Mars, and Mars is opposite Chiron. Okay. So that's where we're going to start. Mars opposite Chiron. Fucking Chiron. Okay. Were you raised with your dad around, or was it just your mom?

Lindsay: My dad was around, but Mom was the primary figure.

Jessica: Yeah. There's a lot we can talk about in regards to childhood, but we're not going to start there. What we're going to start with is your relationship to your body and the spiritual lessons around that because that's the thing. From what you said and the way you said it, I get the sense that yes, you've done therapy. Yes, you've worked on your story about your early developmental experiences enough⁠—a lot. Maybe not enough. It's never enough, but a lot. The thing that I'm really struck by with this Mars/Chiron opposition in your birth chart is the struggle it describes with being in a body and that this struggle is both from, yes, early developmental environment, but it's also inherited. So you're not the first person in your family line to have this really intense struggle.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Jessica: And so the question I have with this is do any of these health problems actually run in the family, and what side of the family is it if so?

Lindsay: Mom for sure.

Jessica: Yeah.

Lindsay: I can map it. It's definitely on my mom's side, and it's her, my great-grandmother, her grandmother. There are specific people in the family that have never gone through this. My grandmother has never gone through this, my mother's mother. But my grandfather's mother did. I absolutely see it.

Jessica: And it's just with the women in the family, eh?

Lindsay: I think so.

Jessica: Yeah.

Lindsay: With health emergencies, yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. The Mars/Chiron opposition can give⁠—doesn't always, so if somebody has this in their birth chart, I don't want you to freak out; if you've never had this experience, it's not likely to happen. But it can give these explosive, sudden inflammations, and that's what Mars is related to. And Chiron is just a bit of a gut punch kind of asteroid. What it does is it brings these healing crises. And because it's speaking to Mars, it's healing crises through the body. And so, if I'm going to kind of start at the end, which is definitely what I'm doing right now, the why is kind of, in a way, everything in this situation for you at this stage of your life. I don't think I would have said that to you if we met up three years ago, but right now I would.

And that "why" has so much to do with being in your body on your terms, even though it is not always safe. And when we talk about inherited trauma, there's the parts of our lived experience that is⁠—we've had our own individual trauma; we can track, "I walked into a wall. I hurt my toe. Boom. Now I'm scared of walking into walls." Okay. Cool. But then there's inherited trauma where it's not⁠—we can intellectually track it, but it's not quite the same. And those things are in our bodies. They're in our epigenetics. And those things are a lot harder to work with and on because they're kind of in our tissues.

This Mars/Chiron opposition is one of those things, this inherited trauma of not feeling that you have agency or not having had agency with your body⁠. And a lot of that has to do with in a polarized gendered way because we have Chiron in Taurus and Mars in Scorpio here. I don't know if what that suggests is that through the family history of women having these health issues, there's also themes of them struggling around their autonomy, within relationships, or within the world. But generally, we'll see a link there. Does that make sense?

Lindsay: Very much so. Absolutely.

Jessica: It sounds like⁠—and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you've had these experiences in your life, but then having a child just triggered some sort of domino effect of your body just kind of freaking out. Am I understanding that right?

Lindsay: Yeah. And I knew it was going to happen. And I remember being very early pregnant and crying every day through the first trimester because I was like, "This is going to explode, everything that I've done to take such careful care of these things." I definitely knew pregnancy and postpartum were going to be massively difficult for me physically, and they were. I just didn't understand how much so or that there would be emergency elements to it.

Jessica: I'm so sorry.

Lindsay: Thank you.

Jessica: And I want to share that over the course of decades of my practice, I have heard a part of that statement from an alarming amount of people who are like, "Yeah, I knew it was going to be hard to be pregnant," or, "I know it was going to be hard to be a parent," or, "I knew it was going to be hard to have postpartum, but I didn't know how hard."

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: And I think some of that's because we don't talk about it enough, maybe. And some of that is also because of that biological imperative where it's like if you knew how hard it was, it would be [crosstalk]⁠—

Lindsay: You wouldn't do it.

Jessica: Yep. Sometimes you're just like, "I'm going to jump off the cliff. I know I could break all the bones of my body, but I really want to go swimming. And this cliff looks like fun." And so there's both of these things, and it's easier to make that assessment when you're not breaking all your bones jumping off a cliff. So okay. And you are a double fire, so you were going to do what you were going to do.

Lindsay: That's right.

Jessica: And as you said, it wasn't a mistake. But from my perspective, from the Mars tip, what has happened is that it has sparked a Chironic crisis, which would be lots of inflammation-related explosions in the body, which you've already had. I'm going to give you the good news before we kind of come around and do the beginning and the middle better, but I wanted to give you the validation of the terrible stuff and then the good news. And the good news is this, my friend: you started to go through something called Pluto sextile to Mars, and that Pluto sextile to Mars is a beautiful transit. It started in February of this year. Yeah.

Lindsay: Oh my God.

Jessica: Yeah.

Lindsay: When my daughter was born.

Jessica: Exactly.

Lindsay: Wild.

Jessica: Yeah. Let me see the exact date just to see if it lines up perfectly. We don't know. Oh. Actually⁠—

Lindsay: 2/22/22.

Jessica: I've got⁠—no, it began on the 3rd of February.

Lindsay: Wow. Okay.

Jessica: So this transit is a two-year-long period, and there will be some overlap with Pluto forming a trine to your Chiron, which actually begins in 2023⁠—in early 2023. And that's two years. So you've got two and a half years ahead of you of this, ish. Pluto forming a sextile to your Mars and trine to your Chiron is a gift because Pluto is never a free pass. Pluto is just like, "You're going to work. You're going to work." But when it's forming a sextile or a trine to a vulnerable point, what it does is it pushes you off to the edge of the cliff where everyone else is jumping, and it's like, "Oh, look. Somebody else fell," or, "Oh, look. Common sense jumped into your head. Now I'm going to pull back from the cliff." Not that this cliff is the choosing-to-have-kids cliff. It's a different metaphorical cliff, but you see what I'm saying.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: It gives you the difficult experience without the difficult outcome, and it facilitates healing.

Lindsay: I love it.

Jessica: Exactly. Me too. When I saw that, I was like, "I get to give you good news," because this transit⁠—and I'm particularly focused right now on the Pluto sextile to Mars. This transit is fortifying for the body. It is strengthening for the body. It puts you in contact with⁠—a random friend mentions a random doctor, and that doctor just happens to be a specialist in the thing that you really need. It kind of lines things up for you, which again⁠—it's Pluto, so it's not a free ride. You have to do the work, which you're clearly doing. But it tells me that you're going to be able to work your way through this, and that is a beautiful thing.

And that's why I wanted to start at the end. Usually, I kind of end on the information, but let's start there because there's other things going on. Before I keep going, let me just pause and see, do you have any questions about that, or does that make sense?

Lindsay: No. I feel like that's lovely, and it makes total sense.

Jessica: So then that brings us to the rest of what we've got to talk about here. Okay. So, on March 15th, shortly after you got back from the hospital, a transit that you'd been going through for two years⁠—so before you got pregnant and all throughout your pregnancy⁠—it ended at that point. Neptune square to Midheaven⁠—it indicates a lot of things, but in the context of this conversation, it can be really destabilizing for your spiritual and mental health. It's not inherently bad; it's destabilizing. It just makes you feel, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure." That kind of feeling.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: And that happened while there is an overlap with the Neptune opposition to the Ascendant, which you're still going through, which is why you said it doesn't feel like it's over: because it's not over. So, again, Pluto sextile Mars, still happening. Keeping that front and center in your thinking, Neptune opposite the Ascendant is a once-in-a-lifetime transit, as is the Neptune square to the Midheaven. And this one will be over soon, March 11th of 2023. There's going to be, after that, one little dribble November 16th through Christmas of 2023, little dribble through the holidays. That's super annoying. But other than that, it's over March 11th of 2023.

And this transit, Neptune opposite the Ascendant⁠—it's, again, destabilizing. Neptune makes us feel like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I don't know who I am." It can really weaken the immune system. And a common thing that can occur in this transit is that it's like your body doesn't absorb nutrients. Again, not a doctor, right? But I just have to say it. Just gotta say it.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Jessica: The body doesn't absorb nutrients. The body doesn't function the way we expect it to because Neptune's just crossing over your Descendant right now. It's been in your sixth house for many years. So, for the better part of your adult life, you have been going through a Neptune transit through your sixth house, which not everybody goes through in their lifetime. And it's really rough on the health⁠—mental health, physical health. It's rough. Again, Neptune makes us feel like we're in a fog or we're treading water. And so what Neptune is doing is it's flirting with the cusp of your health house and your intimate relationship house. And that tells me that part of what this period is about for you is being able to have healthy boundaries with people, being able to ask for help, and being able to pivot.

I mean, unfortunately, when you were describing, "I had the perfect plan, and my perfect person who was going to be by my side got COVID and I could do nothing and I couldn't blame anyone; it just happened"⁠—that is classic of this transit. Neptune is like⁠—it's no one's fault it happened, so you're kind of just stuck. What can you do? The reason why this transit occurs is so that we develop better boundaries. I have a question when I look at your birth chart: if it's really about interpersonal boundaries or if it's more about spiritual and energetic boundaries. My money is on the latter.

Lindsay: Yeah. I think you put it beautifully. I would say that it's both, although both have gotten better. I grew up with a person who was in every way, shape, and form a violator⁠—a violator of space, of speech, literally someone who would burst through doors and was capable of anything. So I have my safe little nooks of people, and that's good for me. That is a-okay for me. And I feel like having a more semi-public career, I've gotten a lot smarter and a lot cleaner with, "This is what I'm available for. This is what I am not available for."

But I do feel like in considering some other extensions of my career, like other things I want to do that just are by their very nature more public than the things I've been doing, it's been sort of heavy on my heart a little bit, like do I actually have the desire? Do I have the ability? Do I have the stamina? I'm so sensitive. There's a lot of things that I think it's a miracle I'm even here. But I would say both of those areas I'm still working on. Interpersonal is better. Energetic is harder. It is harder.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. I would imagine. And I would expect that you've made a lot of progress because this transit's been going on for quite some time, so you've had tons of opportunities. And we're going to talk a little bit about those energetic boundaries because I think it's linked with how safe you do or don't feel in your body, how you greet your body, how you protect yourself from yourself, from the world. I want to stick with this boundaries theme here because Neptune's not leaving you alone. Also, Uranus is opposite your natal Saturn, and that won't be over until April 6th of 2023. So you got some time left on that one.

And the Uranus opposition to Saturn is a very radically different transit, but in a way, it also forces the issue of boundaries, which really has to do with knowing yourself and accepting what you know. And to me, this is a really powerful foundation to having energetic or spiritual boundaries. And it's the one that so many of us who are woo try to skip over and just go to, "What's the tarot card I can pull? What's the thing in my birth chart?" instead of this really simplistic foundational self-acceptance. I may not like it. I may not want it. I may embrace it; I might not. But it is the foundation to energetic boundaries.

And what I see in your birth chart is that you are so good at being like, "Problem? I will lasso that problem. Issue? I will uncover that issue." You're really good at having a thing and then engaging the thing.

Lindsay: Definitely.

Jessica: And that is a gift. It's such an important resource. And I don't just see you do it like⁠—I used a cowboy metaphor. I don't know why I went full country road. It's not just that. I mean, you've got in your birth chart this beautiful Neptune trine to your Mercury. You're intuitive. You're creative. There are so many ways that you have these inner resources, and you also prioritize being resourceful.

Here's the bummer part is that you're at the age where you've done such a good job of identifying these parts of you that are so effective⁠—you've done a good job of strengthening those parts of you. And there's something that happens somewhere in the mid to late 30s where it's like, okay, but now you gotta actually create more balance in the nature and bring into more consciousness and awareness the parts that aren't as strong so that you have more resources and balance.

And that's really where I see things are at. So it's really about, for you, there's a lot of things that you can do to work on yourself. And it sounds like you have a really good sense of what they are, and they're all wonderful things. And also, I would recommend⁠—and tell me if this is already part of your practice, but⁠—creating a practice around just sitting with what is without trying to fix it or understand it. Is that part of your practice?

Lindsay: It is a huge part of my practice.

Jessica: Yes.

Lindsay: And one that does not come easily. It's been something that's been, I would say, like since 2018. It's been longer than that, but I would say 2018 is when I started to have more acute health issues, or acute pain in a different way, and it brought me much more into that space of⁠—it's really actually the foundation of the way I use tarot. It's just like, how can we just pull for what is rather than what will be or whatever?

So it's a big part of my practice, and it's definitely something I'm working on in therapy where when you find yourself as a survivor of trauma and a lot of dysfunction in an emergency situation or in a situation of chaos when you've worked so hard to not have chaos in your life⁠—and so I think when those things come in⁠—as they will do; we're alive⁠—it's really where the pedal hits the metal to be like, "Okay. How can I be in the is-ness of this while I'm in a hospital bed and my baby's at home?"

It feels like I'm on a video game level, and I'm leveling up to a different kind of world of, "How can I be in just what is rather than trying to fix or come up with some kind of solution or resource for this?" So you're definitely on the money. Even though it is a part of my practice, it feels like another level of it. Does that make sense?

Jessica: It makes perfect sense. And what I especially love about what you shared is that it sounds like this part of your practice is connected to your body and coming into acceptance of your body and supporting your body when it's in struggle, which I think is a huge part of what we're talking about. I would say that⁠—okay. And how woo do you go? You go deep woo, right? You go deep woo or no?

Lindsay: I go moderate woo. I'm actually a pretty critically thoughtful, scientific gal. I go moderate woo, but I also dabble in deeper woo and will happily roll with people who do. So I'm woo-flexible.

Jessica: Okay. Woo-flexible. Great.

Lindsay: Does that make sense?

Jessica: It does. It does. And I will say let's do away with the idea that somebody's pro-science and is against woo. You can be woo [crosstalk]⁠—

Lindsay: Oh, I agree.

Jessica: ⁠—science. You and I are on that same page. Yes. Yes. Great.

Lindsay: Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica: 100 percent. Okay. So let me tell you why I asked how woo you go: because when I look at your chart and I look at what you're going through, I feel like this is a powerful time for you to do some very grounded woo work with boundaries because part of what I think is happening for you and I think chronically happens for you as a survival mechanism is you're pulling in all the information⁠—all the information available, all the information. You're like a loofah sponge. You're pulling in everything. And when you are vulnerable because you're having a bad day⁠—let alone health event, let alone a baby human, let alone a couple plagues, wars, climate crisis, yada, yada⁠—it's too much. It's not sustainable over the course of a life.

And so where I go with this is not just psychological because this isn't inherently or exclusively a psychological problem. Now, a shrink might completely disagree, and I respect that. But I would say a lot of this is actually energetic. It's about locating your system, validating your rights, your agency⁠—right? We're still talking about that Mars/Chiron opposition⁠—and giving yourself the energetic space, like really mapping it out, and there are different ways that you can work with energetic boundaries. We can talk about them, or you may have your own resources, or it might be too woo for you. Nobody knows.

Lindsay: No, not at all.

Jessica: It's not too woo. Okay. Great.

Lindsay: That is not. No way.

Jessica: Okay. Great, because what I see is the thing that runs through the matrilineage⁠—although it's not completely matrilineal, but it goes through your mom's line⁠—is not feeling total ownership of one's own body and the direction of one's life and safety. And this may have played out in radically different ways for the people in the generations before you, and it sounds like there's the childhood trauma, but in your well-crafted, safe, and loving adult life, it's coming up through health crises.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: And this is like, okay. All right. So this is the plane it's being worked out on. And if the way I'm reading this is accurate, if that's the plane it's being worked out on, then the assignment is actually nice for you to know. And the assignment, from my perspective, is having boundaries energetically with others, with yourself, etc., so that you can⁠—hold on. Let me just ground it. There's this thing that happens⁠—again, it's out of your matrilineage⁠—where it's like you're hyper-present. You're so present. And then there's an impact. Could be from something or someone else. Could be from your health. It could be just you feel the weight of the world. There's this impact, and then something wooshes out of your system. And when it kind of⁠—I don't know if it's this part of you that's kind of instinctual playing possum, like there's part of you that's like, "Get low to the ground. Play dead." Yeah. That makes sense.

Lindsay: Absolutely. Yeah.

Jessica: And your brain doesn't stop. Again, you've got this great coping mechanism. But it's something very core and essential in you has kind of gone offline. This happens to your mom. Again, it's in your family line. And again, a psychologist might look at this and say this is mental illness. I don't say this is mental illness. I say this is like a spiritual condition, and it may also be mental illness. But this, to me, really looks very energetic. And I couldn't see it about you until you shared your mom's maiden name. Again, it's out of the matrilineage. It's this place where you drop off.

That's the place to learn how to be because it's this place that you are, as a means of survival, instinctively abandoning yourself. You're jumping ship on a meaningful level. And it's like, well, how do you jump ship on you? That's a place to investigate and practice investigating. So, when you hit this wall where you feel⁠—it looks like you feel this kind of disorientation after it happens, just like, "Oh, I was in the middle of saying something, and now I feel disoriented," or, "I was in the middle of doing something, but something shifted." That makes sense?

Lindsay: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Yeah. When that occurs, if you can⁠—which you won't be able to do in all situations at all times. But if you can, my advice is to name it. And you can be like, "Oh, that's Carl." Call it whatever you want. You can be like, "It's that thing. It's Nancy." Okay. Fine. And if you can just be like, "Okay, I'm going to try to breathe into my body," great. Boundary work/energy work is slow work.

Lindsay: It is.

Jessica: And I think if you practice doing this over the course of time⁠—months/years, not weeks/days⁠—things will be so different for you. You will change so much. It would just be such a big deal for you. And when I come back to this idea of energetic boundaries, in order to have a boundary, like a real boundary, you have to believe you have a self worth protecting. And you're an Aries with a Leo fucking Moon. On a certain level, fuck yeah, you believe you have a self worth protecting, obviously.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: But this is not the part of you that we're speaking to. We're not speaking to the part of you that can run around, get everything in the supermarket, come home, cook it all up, invite people over for a relaxing meal. We're not talking about that part of you. We're talking about the part that needs⁠—I hope this doesn't sound too heavy, but that needs a mom.

Lindsay: Oh. Yeah. You're speaking very directly to something that has been, I would say, the core focus of my work, especially in the last two years, which is basically me adopting little Linds and creating a safe space for her and letting her know I've got her and I'm here. And because of PTSD and because of dissociation and because of derealization, all of which I experience, it's easy for me to inadvertently get so swept up in what-ifs and worry that I do abandon her. And I feel like, honestly, my life practice is remembering that I'm coming back home. I've gotten so much better at it, and yet you're absolutely right that there are still big holes. And there should be big holes.

Jessica: Yes.

Lindsay: I was abused until 19 and didn't figure out I should cut off a relationship with my abuser till I was 30, and I'm 38. So the majority of my life was lived believing that this person⁠—I had to do whatever they wanted me to do. And I didn't start questioning that till I was 30. So this is⁠—it's new. There was just so much work I could do while she was still my life. And she's not. So⁠—

Jessica: Well, congratulations. Congratulations.

Lindsay: Thank you.

Jessica: Yeah.

Lindsay: Thank you.

Jessica: It is really massive. And there's this way that⁠—it's really interesting. There's this way⁠—sorry. I keep on seeing these weird shapes with you. Let me just find what it is. Do you paint?

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay.

Lindsay: I do.

Jessica: Okay, because it's just like I'm like, okay, so this is actually one of the ways that you really do a great job of resourcing yourself, of having this really back-and-forth conversation with yourself that isn't so linear and analytic; it's more spiritual, energetic, emotional. It's not representational, the paintings that you do; is that correct?

Lindsay: Sometimes. It's really just whatever I feel like. Most of the time, it's whatever. Whatever kind of…

Jessica: Mm-hmm.

Lindsay: You know. But I do not sit in front of trees and paint them, if that makes sense.

Jessica: Yeah. Of course it does. Yeah. That makes perfect sense because it's not exactly about that. Again, it's that conversation with inner-child you that does need protecting. So that brings me back to what I just want to kind of affirm is that grounded energy work to have boundaries with the world, with the people in your life, with yourself, is really supportive to the body, and it really does look like this journey with your physical health⁠—it's doing this really powerful thing of putting you in some ways really in a state of agency with your body, which⁠—easily, that could be the opposite. When so many of us struggle with health, we feel a lack of agency. But this is just like kicking something into gear, and it's really transformational. So, even though I do see that this period is probably going to last another minute⁠—and if you aren't already doing some sort of anti-inflammatory protocols⁠—

Lindsay: Oh yeah.

Jessica: You are? Okay.

Lindsay: Yeah. Oh yeah. Big time. I just⁠—yes. Absolutely kicked it up into high gear this week, on another level, again. But yes. Absolutely.

Jessica: That makes me so happy because that's really at core, I think, what your system is needing right now. So I'm glad that doctors have already agreed, and you've got something lined up for it.

Lindsay: Yeah. Can I ask you a question?

Jessica: Yes. Please.

Lindsay: Do you feel like⁠—first of all, this is brilliant and you're amazing, and I hope I'm not talking too much.

Jessica: Not at all.

Lindsay: But my question about this Mars/Chiron coupling⁠—it makes me feel like⁠—okay. There are times when I will move into the full space of doing anti-inflammatory measures. I get to a point where flares are down, and then I'm more casual about it, and I'm like, "Eh, it's not"⁠—this is making me consider that this is about forming a lifelong partnership with anti-inflammatory measures, not just because I have fibromyalgia and things, but also because it seems like it's in my chart that there's inflammation.

Jessica: So there's a couple things I'll say to that. The first is just because it's in your chart doesn't mean it can't play out a different way. So there's that. I see all kinds of things that are in family lines that people deal with at some periods of their life and not others that⁠—it doesn't always have to present that way. That said, when we have oppositions in the birth chart⁠—and you don't have many; I think this is your one big opposition⁠—we tend to be all or nothing, in or out. So this thing that you're describing⁠—

Lindsay: That's me.

Jessica: ⁠—like, "Yeah, I'm anti-inflammatory in June"⁠—that's very normal.

Lindsay: Yeah. Absolutely. Drag me. Yes.

Jessica: Yeah. It's classic opposition shit. So here's the thing. You're like, "Okay. So it was just in June, and now I will for the rest of my life be anti-inflammatory." Okay. Okay. Cool. What I would say is there's two things that really stand out to me. One is baseline anti-inflammatory for an American with an American diet with American stresses and pollutants, yeah, that's a great idea. I mean, I think it's a great idea for most people, certainly for you. That said, where you are now is that really kind of Chironic crisis point. Right?

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: And anyone⁠—a therapist could have predicted this, not a doctor, because you have such intense childhood trauma and you had a child. Let's not be shocked that that would trigger a lot of body-based fears and repression and all this kind of stuff. It's somewhat inevitable, right? And so having a more heightened approach or a more dramatic approach to an anti-inflammatory lifestyle⁠—because it's not just about diet; it's a lifestyle⁠—I think is a great idea for this period. And when your health is stabilized for a period of many months, then you can⁠—and this is like⁠—it's like violence to say this to a Sun/Aries Moon/Leo person, but I'm going to say it anyways⁠—you can slowly, step-by-step, just play with introducing⁠—I know. I know. It's like I'm basically being mean right now. I'm so sorry. But you do have that Jupiter in Capricorn. You do.

Lindsay: I have something. Yeah. I do.

Jessica: You do. I mean, and a Virgo Rising. But I think for you the carrot to wave is this: you want to be able to eat delicious foods. You want to be able to be flexible. What will allow you to do those two things? And what will allow you to be able to do those two things is having not a restrictive lifestyle, but a lifestyle that supports your body⁠—and when I say body, I'm including your mental health because I do think your mental health is connected to this, which⁠—

Lindsay: Very much so.

Jessica: We are in agreement that I am not a doctor, but I'm going to throw something else in the mix, which is your hormones. Your damn hormones. Your hormones look very keyed in to most of these health issues that it looks like you deal with. And there's a lot of reasons for that, and the most obvious astrologically is your Neptune/Venus square. You've got Capricorn on your fifth-house cusp and Mars/Chiron opposition, again. These dudes will not leave you alone.

So, with the Neptune/Venus square, I think generally people who are AFAB are misdiagnosed and minimized a lot. There's not enough information out there unless we're getting it from each other by ourselves, and that's not consistently reliable. Because of the fact that Neptune squares your natal Venus, you're more likely to have things misdiagnosed or not diagnosed around your hormones and to be⁠—

Lindsay: Buddy…

Jessica: Sorry. Did you say buddy?

Lindsay: Yeah, I did, like buddy, you don't even know. Absolutely.

Jessica: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

Lindsay: It's okay.

Jessica: It is really intense in your chart.

Lindsay: It's a fucking clown car of ridiculousness. Absolutely. Yes.

Jessica: Yeah. And so, because of that, I can't help but wonder if there's something underlying all of this that is actually related to your hormones. And I don't know if fibromyalgia is related to hormones. There's a hormonal component, but it's not a hormonal thing, correct?

Lindsay: Yeah. It certainly is affected by hormones and can affect hormones, but it is not hormonally rooted.

Jessica: I see. Yeah. And that checks with your chart, for better or worse. But I would say that if you're also like, "I'm going full hippie on my health. I'm not abandoning doctors, but I'm doing all the damn things," I would find a practitioner who specializes in hormonal issues in whatever modality, and put that on the list of priorities because my astrological take is that that is going to be the pairing you need because you can do all the anti-inflammatory work in the world. You can eat what you're supposed to eat, never get stressed out, whatever⁠—I mean, no you can't, but sure.

Lindsay: No. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Exactly. But that Neptune/Venus square tells me that your hormones are so sensitive, and because you've got Capricorn on the fifth-house cusp, it tells me that your system's response to sensitivity is restriction. And so your tendency to⁠— there's a lot of ways this can play out. There's a lot of ways this can play out, but it's further smoke in mirrors. It's further confusion and mixed signals from your body. So, when you go in to your doctor, especially if they're a conventional doctor, and you're like, "Here are all my symptoms," they're like, "I don't know. That's too many symptoms. I don't know what to tell you. They're contradicting."

And I think that there's your hormonal system and what it does, and then there's your meat suit's reaction to what your hormones are doing around and within it. And that's where you're getting really mixed signals and where a lot of conventional doctors struggle because integrative is not the key that they most consistently use to open doors, right? When I look at your chart, I do think yes, we want to focus on anti-inflammatory for now, getting hormonal care that's supportive now, being a little bit more mindful about what happens when you ovulate, what happens when you bleed⁠— I would encourage you to take notes once a month, or for each event, if they're happening once monthly each⁠—just to start gaining some more information. You only have to do it six times, six months, to gain a lot of information about yourself.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Jessica: I think because you had a child so recently, it's not going to be completely reliable information because your body's in a state of, "What just happened?" But it will be really helpful because I wouldn't be surprised if part of what was happening is more neatly lined up with your cycles than makes sense.

Lindsay: Definitely.

Jessica: Yeah. I'll add to all of this that when Neptune fully leaves⁠—it's not fully out yet, but it will be in the spring of 2023, so very soon. When it fully leaves your sixth house, I think you'll gain more clarity. You're going to get more of the benefit of that Pluto sextile to Mars when Neptune's off your buns. So that's the good news.

Lindsay: That's great news.

Jessica: Yeah. It's great news. But in the meantime, energy boundaries, hormonal stuff, anti-inflammatory lifestyle⁠—bada-bing, bada-boom, bada-bing. Now, do you have any other questions?

Lindsay: I don't think so. I feel like, though, I'm coming away from this with so much just hardy nourishment. Damn. This is so helpful.

Jessica: Thank you.

Lindsay: And while you were speaking about anti-inflammatory⁠—because as someone who also has disordered eating, my life has been really legitimately saved by autoimmune paleo protocol. I would sincerely recommend it to anyone who is going through some pretty active pain flares. But I like thinking about that as a part of the boundary work.

Jessica: Good. I'm so glad.

Lindsay: I'm really just putting up a really⁠—yeah.

Jessica: It's linked for you.

Lindsay: It is.

Jessica: I think that this is the thing. When you're dealing with interpersonal drama, you're body's linked. When you're dealing with health issues, your relationships are linked. These things are really tightly linked for you, and it's not surprising to hear you say that in some ways, health crises have saved your life because what they've done⁠—and this is classic of that Chiron opposition⁠—is they've destabilized you to a point where you're like, "Oh shit. I'm going to change now. I'm going to change." And that's exactly what was needed. And for you⁠—hold on. There's something in here that I'm supposed to get at. Give the me just one second.

Lindsay: Yeah. Take your time.

Jessica: It comes back to just choosing to be here in this meat suit. Oh, these meat suits are such a burden. They're so beautiful. There's so much joy, and then there's so much pain in them. It's just like what a mess.

Lindsay: It's hard.

Jessica: Yeah. And there's something so important⁠—this is going to seem like I'm going off on a new direction, but it feels like it's the same place. There's something so important about developing a relationship with your anxiety that is cordial, which is friendly, which is healthy.

Lindsay: Absolutely. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. And it looks like your anxiety is sometimes your system just being anxious, period. And sometimes it's your system saying, "Hey, something's off-center. It's out of alignment. I'm panicking. What is it? OMG. Is the world ending?" But there is this core of wisdom to it, and this practice that it sounds like you're working on, part of this practice is about being able to tolerate the anxiety so that you can listen to the anxiety and that you can understand, "Oh, this is the sky is falling," or, "This is like something feels destabilized. Okay. Well, that's different. That's actually a little bit of a different messaging." And in the end, when we are activated with anxiety is not the time to try to figure out what the anxiety is trying to say. But being curious is an act of not abandoning.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Jessica: And your Mercury in Taurus can fixate on getting stable before it fixates on being curious.

Lindsay: Damn. You're dragging me. Dragging me.

Jessica: Thank you very much.

Lindsay: So great. Drag me to hell. It's great.

Jessica: It's what's happening. It's what's happening.

Lindsay: So true. So true.

Jessica: And that's the piece right there. It's the piece because you do have a lot of fixed energy in your birth chart, like a lot. Do you have⁠—very little mutable, right?

Lindsay: Yeah.

Jessica: And so there's this tendency for you is to, "I know what works. I know what to do. I'm doing it." And when it comes to anxiety, that won't work well. So there's this thing that I want to say about creating a cathartic, maybe⁠—I just keep on hearing the word "wild"⁠—letting-go ritual of⁠—I'm not going to put words to it because it's kind of like it's not⁠—I don't want to get that specific. It's about this way of being that you've held. It's about whatever guilt or anger that you have about the time you lost from your childhood issues. Yes, it's about your mom, but it's not just about your mom. It's so much more.

And it's like taking these emotions, bringing them up, allowing them to sit in a stew for a little while, and then finding a way of releasing them when your system says, "Yes, it's time to release them," I think would be really meaningful for you right now. It may have an anti-inflammatory impact on your system, on your physical system, and it might not. But it certainly would be⁠—I think it's time, not to do this out of rage, although please tap into your rage when you do it, but to do it as a further parenting of your inner young self because, of all the ways that you've been angry and all the ways you've been generative in response to your anger or your pain, this is something different. It's just something⁠—is this making sense? Because it's really just standing out to me.

Lindsay: Yeah. It actually is and does make sense profoundly, more than you know.

Jessica: Good. Okay. Good.

Lindsay: It really resonates.

Jessica: I see it's like it's this thing that's missing. It's like 25-year-old you would have done it so different. Oh my God, like incomparable. What 25-year-old you would have done with this advice⁠—I would never have given this advice to 25-year-old you.

Lindsay: No.

Jessica: This is only you who's had your DNA changed through having a child. You're different. You're different.

Lindsay: I am.

Jessica: I mean, one less gallbladder. You're different, right?

Lindsay: Yes.

Jessica: Not to brag. But I think that you are ready to bring it up without losing yourself in it and let it go. And again, when I say to do this, it's not something you have to do in an afternoon. It's just a process to introduce to bring up and release. And I want to say that as I see that⁠—is your partner scared of anger?

Lindsay: I don't know about that. He was not allowed to feel emotion in his home.

Jessica: That's what I'm seeing, then.

Lindsay: And he is working on it.

Jessica: As I was giving you this advice and I was looking kind of energetically at your landscape, not just at you, I see that in doing this, which I think is really good to do, I see him getting triggered. And it's because of his own relationship to anger, and it's his own issues with taking up space. And I want to say to you as a stranger not in your relationship or your community, like social community, let him have that. Let him be uncomfortable. Do not fix it for him. Do not explain it to him, because he is at his own precipice. This is part of his journey.

And I think part of your journey, again, with energy boundaries, is allowing him to struggle and letting⁠—because you know that so much of what's helped you is struggling, actually. That's how you found yourself. And I don't think we need to struggle to find ourselves, because I could equally say what's helped you has been community and your partnership. But this particular thing is going to shift something so deep he's going to feel it even if he's not really aware of what he's feeling, and it's going to trigger some shit for him. Let it be. And unless he asks for help, I wouldn't push help, because you're going to be like, "I have all this insight. I have all this energy. Let me share it," and it will feel like flooding to him. Does that make sense?

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Jessica: And he's on his own journey, and he's not far behind you in this regard. He's just on a very different path with it. I don't know why that felt so important to tell you, but it's like I keep on being shown that he's going through his own thing trying to find his voice.

Lindsay: Yeah. He's doing such a great job, but yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica: Yeah.

Lindsay: Not taking on what people think or how they feel is probably⁠—is not number one, but it's in the top three for me because, again, I was raised by a total narcissist, total. I mean, the gaslighting was profound. So the idea that I don't have to take on how other people are uncomfortable, if they have an issue, if they have a problem⁠—it's one of my biggest pain points/stress points. And I didn't, believe it or not, for one second ever consider that it was a part of the boundary work I had to do. Not for a moment.

Especially being a teacher and a facilitator, it's very hard. That line is very thin between, "Wow. This person is coming to me with a very important piece of feedback that I must take in or I must acknowledge or I must repair with this person or clarify what I meant." And then, other times, it has absolutely nothing to do with me. So you bringing that down⁠—just thank you to the folks that you work with and thank you to you for bringing that in because it was⁠—meaning your guides or whoever you work with⁠—because that was incredibly important for me to hear and I would have never thought of it. So thank you.

Jessica: Wow. Thank you for sharing that. Lindsay, thank you so much. I really appreciate your vulnerability and showing up.

Lindsay: I just cannot thank you for this. This was such an exquisite, such a helpful reading. You're amazing. Thank you.

Jessica: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

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Hello, my darlings. Let's get astrological. So I want to talk about something that I've actually talked about a fair amount a couple years ago for just a hot minute, which is the nature of transits. If you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, you may remember that for about a year, I did hot takes, which were midweek episodes where I would teach various topics about astrology. If you haven't heard them, of course, you can go back and listen. But the reason why I'm bringing this up is because it's nice to have a little context on what the hell astrology is and what it isn't.

And one of the things that it is is a resource for understanding cycles that are at play in the world and in our lives and understanding that every time we have a "positive" or "good" transit or a "bad" or "challenging" transit, they're just energy. They're cycles of development, and they're energy. There are many ways that energy can play out, and there are many ways that our circumstances, our nature, kind of pair up with our situation. This basically means that there are many ways that a thing can go. You can go through a trine, a.k.a. a 120-degree-angle transit, a.k.a. a good transit, and have your ass handed to you. You could go through a really challenging transit like an opposition, a.k.a. a 180-degree angle between planets, and find that things really come together and meaningful progress is achieved.

It's not inherently good or bad. And when we think about astrology⁠—nay, when we think about our lives in terms of just good and bad, we miss out on the present. We miss out on our opportunities. And I think a risk with astrology in general is to essentially intellectualize, to separate ourselves from our lived experience. We are trying to figure out, "Why am I going through this? What's coming next?" And obviously, I'm into that. I'm an astrologer. But I'm into that with the caveat, and that caveat is when we try to figure things out with our great and powerful Oz⁠—a.k.a. our brains⁠—without doing the work of being present, of using common sense, of being emotionally engaged with our here and now, when we essentially try to project into a future as a way to make ourselves more comfortable in the present, that gets in our way.

And so, week after week, you hear me sharing the transits. And a lot of the transits are lovely, and a lot of the transits are challenging. It is easy to hear about the challenging stuff and to think, "Oh shit. How is that going to impact my chart? Oh my God. Things are going to fall apart. Now I'm scared." And on the one hand, hey, that's fair. That's life. But on the other hand, what happens when you take in data⁠—you get flooded by fear, and then you seek to justify your fear by checking it in your own birth chart or whatever else you're doing⁠—is you kind of abandon staying with the emotions of it to understand what they're really about. And sometimes what it's about is, "I'm scared of the unknown." Sometimes it's, "I'm scared of pain."

What I want to basically say is, in your drive to make yourself happy and safe and well, don't abandon the feelings part, because the feelings part is the magic part. It is the beauty part.  It's the place where real healing occurs. I know that we are going through some really challenging transits and really challenging times globally/domestically here in the U.S⁠.—all of it. It's pandemic on pandemic on climate crisis on economic crisis on humanitarian crisis. And that's just a real broad-strokes painting right there. And so the astrology is hard, obviously. The astrology is hard when life is hard. You can just expect that to always be the case or to most usually be the case.

The most impactful people in the world have "challenging" charts. The most radical, revolutionary, progressive moments and movements throughout history come out of stress. Stress on its own isn't bad. Challenges on their own are not bad. And so, if you find yourself getting caught in anxiety-fueled negative thinking or fearfulness, I want to encourage you to notice that so you can take steps to engage with it⁠—to engage with it in a way that is more supportive and sustainable over the course of time. And it's a damn practice, which means you don't have to get good at it. You don't have to get perfect at it. But it's a practice. It's a perspective and an approach, and it's one worth engaging in and playing with.

Okay. I guess one last thing I'll just briefly say about this⁠—when you hear me or any other astrologer talking about transits that are oppositions, you can expect the themes to play out in your life or the world around polarization and integration. There can be projections onto you or from you. When you hear an astrologer talking about squares by transit, you can expect challenges, kind of like⁠—it's a 90-degree angle, so like sharp right turns and potential for creativity and for things to really come together in a powerful way. When you hear me talking about conjunctions, you can expect those transits are going to bring about the potential for confrontation with the self. So that could come through external circumstances. It could come through having your hand forced. It could come through personal revelation. But just very broadly, very broadly, I just wanted to share that.

Sextiles are a dynamic spark of change. Those kinds of transits⁠—they give us a little juj, a little spark. And then trines, those 120-degree angles between planets, those transits give us a flow and ease of energy. And so things tend to work brilliantly, as they were set up, when we are dealing with transits that are trine. Just a really very brief hot take, but it's worth sharing. Now to your horoscope.

This week, we are looking at July 31st through August 6th of 2022, and it feels worth naming it's Episode 270. Yeah, 270 episodes of Ghost of a Podcast have been dropped. I feel pretty good about it. Anyways, we are looking at the first transit of the week. Now, listen. If you missed Episode 269, then you missed me talk at length about the Mars conjunction/Uranus conjunction to North Node. That will be exact on the 1st. I will speak on it in a moment. But if you haven't heard that part of the horoscope from last week, I do encourage you to maybe pause this episode, go listen to that, and then come back⁠, if you're in the market of having a thorough horoscope experience. But that's on you. But I will say that throughout the week, we are going to be very much in the feels and in the consequences of that transit, which kind of puts an unpredictable edginess to the astrology of the week. That's just⁠—thanks, Uranus. Thanks, Mars. That's what's happening. So just wanted to put that out there.

And then that brings us to the two exact transits that are happening on July 31st. let's just leave July with a bang. Okay. So, on the 31st, we have a Sun trine to Jupiter and a Venus square to Chiron. So Sun trine Jupiter is a gorgeous, fabulous transit. It can kick up a sense of resiliency, a feeling of being drawn to adventure, and having the energy and willingness to play, to try things out, to see how they go. It's a really lovely transit. The Sun trine to Jupiter can bring opportunities your way, and this is in particular if it hits your birth chart directly. Now, this transit will be happening at almost nine degrees⁠—eight degrees, 42 minutes⁠—of two fire signs of⁠—the Sun's in Leo; Jupiter is in Aries. So, if you have anything around nine degrees of a fire sign or basically any sign that would get directly aspected by Aries or Leo, you're really going to be experiencing the most of this transit.

This, again, can bring about opportunities for adventure and expansion and healing. So, if you have some sort of meaningful insight on and around this date, if you have an opportunity emerge on and around this date, yay you. Here's the caveat, and the caveat doesn't come from the transit itself. It comes from the other transit that's exact on this date. And when delineating a horoscope, we can't just focus on each individual transit. We have to think about the synthesis of all the energies at play because we don't exist in a vacuum. Nothing does, except for maybe things in vacuums. That would be my exception to that rule.

Okay. So the other transit that is exact on the 31st is a Venus square to Chiron. This is happening at 16 degrees⁠—again, Chiron is at 16 degrees of Aries, and Venus is at 16 of Cancer. This transit is kind of a whole other ball of wax. It can bring up crises, as Chiron loves to do, in consciousness, self-awareness, and therefore, your life. This may show up as relationship issues. This may show up as crises around your finances, your relationship to money, what you have, what you don't have. This could show up as crises related to your gender experience or expression, your body-image stuff, all that Venusian theme. Chiron is going to bring some sort of crisis around.

And from a therapeutic standpoint, this is the kind of cool thing is that Venus square Chiron is not going to bring something up that is perfectly lovely and smash it to bits. No. What it's going to do is it's going to bring to surface, bring to more awareness, what hasn't been working, what isn't healthy or well in your life or within you or some combo platter of the two. This transit can bring to the surface some sort of difficult truth that needs your attention. And that sucks. It doesn't feel great. Luckily, the Sun trine to Jupiter gives us the wind in our sails. It gives us the energy and the resiliency to cope. It indicates that we are likely to have resources available to us or that we actually remember to choose to use the resources we have within us or in our lives. This transit can be really uncomfortable. And something kind of essential here is that we are dealing with your agency in a meaningful way. And we know this because of all this Aries energy. Jupiter and Chiron are both in Aries.

And because Venus is in Cancer, there may be a struggle that you're experiencing around feeling victimized or like you can't do it or you don't know what to do, but you're supposed to or you have to. You may be dealing with somebody who is pressuring you, or you may simply be feeling pressured by a situation. It's important to align with your agency. It's staying in contact with your choice. You may not always have a good choice. You may not always have choices you like. But you do have choices most of the time. And that might not be true on all the levels, but on a spiritual level, on an emotional level, on a mental level, on a physical level, we have choices. And the more you can be connected to your choices, the choices you're making and your motivations, the easier it is to deal with difficulty. It doesn't make the difficulty go away, but it is strengthening. It's fortifying. And it can be very helpful in facilitating your own healing on your own terms for your own reasons. Agency.

So this fucking transit, the Venus square to Chiron, it's a little bit of a pain in the ass. Yes. 'Tis true. But it's an opportunity for healing. Chiron always brings us opportunities for healing. So, if you're dealing with some sort of breakdown, crisis, or issue in general in any of those places, in any of those Venusian places that I've named, tap into that Sun trine to Jupiter energy, and do your best to align with your willingness to play, to heal, to try and experiment, to participate in a generative way in your life. The energy is there for it. Even if you're dealing with something that feels really shitty, the reality is if things aren't well in any area of your life, we need for you to have a crisis. It's the only way to change, unfortunately⁠—or fortunately, depending on your attitude.

And so another piece of this is to be aware of your emotional reactions so that you can be aware that you're in a reactive state. When you become aware that you're in a reactive state, it becomes a lot easier⁠—not necessarily easy, but a lot easier⁠—to be like, "Okay. I'm in a reactive state. That's an emotional state. That means I need my emotional tools to support myself and to deal with it. And then, when I'm less activated and more centered, grounded, present⁠—whatever it is⁠—then I can deal with the content that triggered such a strong reaction." And through that process, your responses don't have to reflect your strongest knee-jerk reactions but instead more of the wholeness of who you are and where you are and what you want to be now and in the future. It's a tool that can make your present a lot easier to bear and your future a lot more of what you want it to be. So it's a little something to put in your pipe⁠—smoke it now, smoke it later, as you wish.

Now, that brings us to the August 1st Mars conjunction to Uranus/conjunction to North Node in the zodiac sign of Taurus at 18 degrees and 43 minutes. This transit will be exact at 4:53 p.m. And I talked a fair amount about the global impact we're likely to see, and we've certainly seen evidence of it in the last week. What I'm going to talk about in today's horoscope⁠—and again, this is why you might want to go back and listen to last week's horoscope. But what I want to talk about today is a little bit more of how we can expect to feel. And again, when I'm talking about feelings, today what I'm really talking about is your emotions and your body. And what I want to encourage you to be a little bit on the lookout for is entitlement and defensiveness.

When you don't have healthy boundaries in a particular situation or in general as a person, when someone else has healthy boundaries, it can feel like they're being a jerk. It can make you feel really defensive. When you don't feel that you have a right to having boundaries yourself, you can express those boundaries or hold those boundaries in a really defensive way because you literally are trying to defend your right because you don't believe you have one. And when we behave defensively, or even when we feel defensive, people tend to pick up on it consciously or unconsciously, depending on a variety of factors. And when other people pick up on your defensiveness, they get defensive or shut down or aggressive or any number of things. But they're not generally feeling nothing. You know this because you've been around people who are defensive, and when you're around people who are defensive, you know it makes you feel some kind of way, and you generally respond in some kind of way.

So, when Mars and Uranus meet up with the North Node in Taurus, we are likely to be feeling a little extra on edge, a little extra defensive. And for any of us⁠—which kind of includes most of us⁠—who struggle around boundaries, like what's the right amount of boundaries and how do you stay emotionally present while having them and how do you not be defensive when you feel like somebody's trampled on your boundaries, whatever it is⁠—this may be extra intense because that struggle that we have with boundaries and with entitlement can lead to acting in ways that come across different than you hope and work counter to your aims, which is part of why this transit can be associated with accidents. You're pissed off at your bestie for doing whatever, and instead of expressing it to them, you walk into a wall in your bedroom or something stupid like that.

This happens because when we don't experience and express our feelings in our bodies, we can act out unconsciously. And because Uranus is involved, it can lead to accidents. But it's really about being in a state of disconnect from the visceral part of our will. And it's important to develop a relationship with ourselves that allows us to stay present with restlessness, with irritability, with frustration, with egoism. Staying present with these emotions is really an important skill to have so that we can respond to them in healthy and sustainable ways. And so I want to encourage you to be aware of that. And you know what? Maybe you're perfect. I imagine you probably are, that this is not your problem, but you're going to be dealing with somebody else who isn't perfect and does have issues with this.

And so you might be tra-la-la-ing, living your best life, super woo, super healed, but then you have to deal with some jerk in traffic or at work or whatever who is not in any way aware of their ego energies and is acting out. And when that happens, you've got a confrontation with self. As I mentioned, it's a conjunction. Conjunctions tend to foster confrontations. How you choose to respond to your reactions is a really powerful thing to consider. Now, to make things a little more complex, this is all happening in Taurus. Taurus is a fixed earth sign that is ruled by Venus. And what this means is that it can be a little people-pleasing, so smile on your face but maybe secretly holding a grudge forever. I'm not talking about Sun in Taurus people, because I don't like to Sun sign stereotype. But these are the energies of Taurus, of the zodiac sign of Taurus.

And so part of all of this stuff I'm talking about has to do with your willingness and ability to not always please people. Can you tolerate it that someone doesn't like you, that you don't get along with someone? A lot of us get so fixated on, "What does this other person think about me? What does this other person feel about me?" that we stop putting energy into, "What do I feel about them? What do I think about them?" If they don't like me, whether it's a good reason or bad reason or a confusing reason⁠—if they don't like me, what does that actually mean about me? A lot of times, it doesn't mean anything about you, or it's too mysterious; you'll never know what it means.

So this is a really good time to investigate your ego⁠—Mars⁠—and to find yourself, to truly find yourself, your individuality, in a healthy way within it⁠—Uranus. And this is happening on not just a personality level, like a situational level, but there's an evolutionary juj to it⁠— thank you, North Node. So it's a lot. And you may be feeling really overwhelmed, and if you're a person who is super uncomfortable with being overwhelmed, if you're not super body-based, if you're not comfortable with anger and any of those Martian feelings, you may feel exhausted. That's not technically what the transit is about, but this is like a way that humans respond to certain kinds of emotions, and therefore it's what is likely to happen for many people⁠—feeling exhausted, feeling demoralized, again, feeling victimized, feeling like you don't have options.

So we really want to align, to the best of your ability, with your agency. And the good news is this transit is a very fucking powerful transit, TBH, but it is overlapping with that July 31st Sun trine to Jupiter. And that's good news. That's a resource you want to tap into to the best of your ability⁠—resiliency, a willingness to try things. You don't need to be perfect in order to be on the right path, to be pointed in the right direction. Failure is truly only failure if you don't learn anything. And I know that's easy for me to say, but at the end of the day, it's real. It's true.

So okay. Last little bit I'm going to say about this. This transit may make you feel this uncontrollable urge, this really strong urge, to break free of limitations, to fight back, to stir the pot, to maybe behave erratically, do something really impulsively. This is very normal for these energies. And again, you've been feeling it for about a week building up. So, if you're going to feel this way, you're likely to already be feeling this way before the 1st, but certainly pay attention to the 1st.

And I want to say it's not a great time for taking risks, just because Uranus is so erratic and Mars is so egotistic that your passion and your drive can careen you into a wall a little bit. And so, if you can, exercise some caution. That's not a bad idea. It's just not a bad idea. There are certainly situations that are safe, and you can assess the risks, and they're great for taking leaps. If it's kind of like all of a sudden, somebody looked at you sideways at work, and you're like, "Fuck this. I'm quitting my job"⁠—yeah, maybe don't do that. Give it a week. Let this energy ease, and see if you still feel that strongly. Don't blow up your life is what I'm trying to say. Don't blow up your life. I mean, it's just good advice, astrology or no.

Okay. On the 2nd, we've got two more exact transits, and these are sextiles, a.k.a. 60-degree angles. Venus in Cancer is forming a sextile to Uranus in Taurus, and Venus in Cancer is also forming a sextile to Mars in Taurus. And for my astrology nerds, this makes perfect sense because on the 1st, Mars and Uranus are conjoined. So any transit that is exact happening to either of them the next day would happen to both of them. Right? We got that math on. Excellent. So Venus in Cancer sextiling Uranus and Mars is a wonderful transit to have overlapping on the 1st and exact on the 2nd, and that is because Venus is diplomatic. Venus is relational. And Venus in Cancer cares a lot about how you feel and about how I feel and how safe things are.

So these transits are incredibly supportive to prioritizing and acting from a place of self-care and self-love and care for others, and not just caring for others but caring for others in a way that makes them feel loved and cared for. If you don't know what to do but you want to do something to show up for someone, ask them, "Hey, would this feel good if I did X for you?" "Hey, would this feel supportive if I did Y for you?" There's nothing wrong with asking questions. And if somebody is really struggling, in general⁠—just a quick hot tip⁠—asking people, "What do you need?" is not always the greatest thing because when people are really activated, when they are really struggling, it's hard to know what you need or it's hard to ask for what you need. So it's nice to come in with an offer or an idea and then follow it up with, "And if there's something else you need, please let me know." That's just a hot tip aside.

These transits are just lovely for socializing and connecting and strengthening your bonds with, again, yourself or others, strengthening your relationship to your finances. If you have to really deal with your finances and you're trying to find new ways of doing it, more effective ways of doing it, this is really good day to do that⁠—again, not to blow up your life, not to destroy old systems⁠—not quite yet. Let that Uranus/Mars/North Node pass little bit more. But this is a great time for doing that.

Now, on the 2nd, the Moon is also in Libra. So we've got these two sextiles from Venus, and the Moon is in Libra. So, again, this is a really diplomatic energy. The only word of caution that I'm going to offer you is to make sure you're not trying to placate yourself or others, kind of go into Pollyanna vibes where it's like, "Everything will be fine. Yes, the world is melting, but everything will work itself out." We don't want to do that with our Venusian energies but instead to find diplomatic and authentic ways of showing up and participating in whatever it is that we're engaging with, whether, again, it's our inner world, our relationships, the world around us, our finances⁠—whatever. And Venus governs all that shit.

Now, listen. In different circumstances, I would say you may find someone exciting to date. You might connect with somebody from your past. You may meet someone brand new. It's more likely to be brand new because Uranus's involvement, and there will be sparks flying. These transits, the Venus transits to Uranus and Mars, can do that. But because of the Uranus/Mars conjunction on the 1st, I would not assume that anything that comes into your life this week is stable or will last. It might, but I wouldn't count on it. So, before making proclamations of love or doing anything too risky, I just want to remind you this energy is super unpredictable from Uranus and Mars, so you want to be a little self-protective.

Have adventures, but stay somehow connected to reality⁠—yeah, 3D, here we are, reality⁠—before you do anything too wild. But you may have a lot of fun. This can be a real fun set of transits. And with that Uranus/Mars added to the mix, you can get real weird in the bedroom and have a fantastic time. So, if you're in the market and you got the tools, may I recommend a little experimentation?

That brings us, my friends, to the 3rd, when Mercury moves into Virgo. I'm a fan of Mercury-in-Virgo times. Mercury is co-ruler of Virgo and Gemini, and Virgo is the earth sign associated with Mercury. So it's a really happy transit for Mercury to be in because it's very comfortable and happy in the zodiac sign of Virgo. This transit is a good one for figuring things out, getting to the bottom of things, analyzing, communicating. So, if you've been kind of lagging on any of that stuff, this is a transit that is fortifying and grounding. And so it's one worth trying to capitalize on to the best of your ability.

And, my friends, that is it. That's our horoscope for the week. Kind of short and sweet with a little Mars/Uranus spiciness, but short and sweet, and I'm into that. I want to say if you came to the opening of Hella Feminist at the Oakland Museum on the 29th, I want to thank you so much. I got to meet so many just amazing, wonderful people, and it was really just such a pleasure. If you're in the Bay Area or you think you'll be here between now and the 8th of January 2023, please do check out my portal at the Hella Feminist exhibit and, while you're at it, of course, all of this just really amazing art. I can't wait to go back and get to really take in a lot more of it. It's a great show, and also, it's the first time I've ever created an installation where people can kind of self-facilitate energy work in a space that I have really jujed up. I mean, it's very jujed. So, yeah, check that out. And as it's the 1st of August, I will be dropping on the kittens level of my Patreon the bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast where it is a month-ahead horoscope. I will also, at some point this month⁠—the month of August⁠—drop a video describing how I made the portal and how you can make one at home, too. So, if you're into woo and you want to learn more with me, join me over on Patreon at patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo. It is in my website. It is linked in show notes.

Take care of yourself. Take care of others. Stay safe. Have fun. Talk to you next week. Buh-bye.