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.

Hey there, Ghosties. In this episode, I'll be doing a live reading with one of my beloved listeners. Every Wednesday, listen in on an intimate conversation and get inspired as we explore perspectives on life, love, and the human condition. Along the way, we'll uncover valuable insights and practical lessons that you can apply to your own life. And don't forget to hit Subscribe or, at the very least, mark your calendars because every Sunday I'll be back with your weekly horoscope. And that you don't want to miss. Let's get started.

Jessica: Robin, welcome to the podcast.

Robin: Thank you.

Jessica: I'm very excited to do this reading. So let me know what you want to talk about today.

Robin: Sure. I'm actually going to read my question. I think I wrote it better than I've ever put it before.

Jessica: Okay. Good.

Robin: All right. I'm looking for guidance for keeping my child safe from my own fears and anxieties. I know how damaging it can be to absorb a parent's fear about your own identity, and I want to know how to handle the fears I have so I don't make them my child's problem. My child is nonbinary, uses they/them pronouns, and my spouse and I have worked to be as supportive and affirming as possible. I'm worried about the past experiences I carry with me, though. I'm cisgender and bisexual, and I had a hard time coming out as a teenager, particularly around my mother's fear-based reaction to my sexuality because she was so scared for me and my future. And that fear had effects that I'm still untangling now.

I'm working so hard to avoid doing the same to my child, but I'm not sure I'm approaching that work in a productive way. I know I need to get better at all of this and find a way to heal, but I'm lost as to where to start.

Jessica: How old were you when you came out to your mom?

Robin: Around 17.

Jessica: Okay, so significantly older. And was she like, "That's bad," or, "Ew, gross," or was she just like, "You'll be lonely. This is scary for you"?

Robin: More the second. More, "It's just scary."

Jessica: Okay. Did you ever end up having experiences with women?

Robin: Yeah. Through, probably, a little past college.

Jessica: And was it scary for you?

Robin: No, not in that sort of immediate way where it scared me to pursue somebody or scared me to be involved with somebody. But much later on, I figured out that I was not making good choices in those relationships because I was scared of them working out.

Jessica: That's fair, because then you would have to introduce her to your mom sort of thing.

Robin: Right. Exactly.

Jessica: And get real.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. And when you figured that out, were you already married to a man?

Robin: Yeah. This was a pretty recent discovery.

Jessica: Mm-hmm. Okay. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that, because you are not alone in having that experience, obviously. We could say it was a different time, but it wasn't that different of a time. I mean, you were raised in the '90s, right?

Robin: Right.

Jessica: You were a teen in the '90s. So it's like there was already Will & Grace. There was already Ellen. So I just want to acknowledge that this was absolutely about you taking on your mom's fears, but it is unlikely to be exclusive to that because I feel like that happens today. It is hard to accept the ways in which we are different from the norm, right?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: So I have to ask, is part of what you're going through now about you wondering about being with women, or is that really just like⁠—you're just aware that you didn't give it a shot at the time?

Robin: I don't think that's it exactly. I think it's more like I still have trouble with that moment of revealing something about myself in that way. I still have trouble telling people that I'm bisexual, even though it's arguably irrelevant, but not really; it's still part of who I am. And that has translated to having a hard time helping my kid in those situations.

Jessica: Okay. The way that you're translating it⁠—is it that you have a hard time being out as a parent of a genderqueer kid or of outing them? Is that what you're saying?

Robin: Yeah. Yeah. Kind of outing them. With their age, at nine years old, they're not always able to do that for themselves in some situations, for schools, for sports teams. It makes sense if I can help pave the way, or even just in casual interactions, I want them to be known for who they are. But doing that can be scary.

Jessica: And they want to be known for who they are, right? That is what they're asking for?

Robin: Yes.

Jessica: And is your partner on the same page as you, that they're cool; they're just trying to navigate it?

Robin: Yes. Yeah. He's very cool about it, very comfortable with it.

Jessica: Great. Okay. Good. And we're calling your child Drew. That is obviously not your child's real name.

Robin: Right.

Jessica: There's a lot of pieces to this, obviously, right? So let me begin with you. First of all, you, my friend, have a stellium in Taurus. You have Mars, Mercury, the Sun, Venus, and Chiron all sitting on top of each other in the second house in Taurus. And so that's a Venus-ruled sign. It's like, "Do you like me? Do you approve of me? Is this okay? I want to be safe, and I know the best way to be safe is by being approved of, not being upsetting to others."

You have got a Saturn/Jupiter conjunction in your seventh house in Libra. So, on top of it, you're like, "I know how to make people happy and comfortable. I do things for them and make them happy and comfortable." One more major component here is you've got your Moon in Aquarius, your weird fucking Moon in Aquarius, intercepted in the twelfth house. In your childhood, the ways in which you were weird, the ways in which you were eccentric or different, triggered your mother because she had already done a very good job of burying those parts of herself.

Robin: Oh.

Jessica: Does that make sense?

Robin: I suppose. I'm really curious about that now.

Jessica: Does she live a pretty conventional life?

Robin: Yes.

Jessica: I mean, I'm talking about especially when you were growing up. Pretty conventional life, right?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: She chose the role mom/wife.

Robin: Yep.

Jessica: Do you know what she did before marriage?

Robin: A little bit. My impression of her from the way she tells it is she was always kind of a good girl. The ways she talks about rebelling are adorable.

Jessica: Mm-hmm. Do you know when she was a teenager? Was that the '60s, the '70s?

Robin: Yes. Yeah. She was born in the '50s, so she would have been a teenager⁠—yeah, I mean, late '60s, early '70s.

Jessica: A time, in some ways, very similar to now, which is full of gender/sexuality transformation, right? There's an explosion of individuality. And she chose to be like, "Nope, not me. Nope, not me." Right?

Robin: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Asking her about it may not make a lot of sense. Her narratives may be too fixed by now because it was a long time ago. What the Moon in Aquarius intercepted in the twelfth house indicates is that she made a decision to not allow her eccentricities out. She made that decision specifically to be a caretaker, to be a mom and a wife. She felt that that was the only real choice for her. And what that did was it unconsciously modeled for you, "Don't be too weird. If you're going to be weird, that's fine; just make sure that it's not too weird." Right?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: As soon as I saw your question, I was like, "Okay. Let me look at Drew's chart," which⁠—if you've listened to the pod for a while, you know I don't look at kids' charts too frequently. They were born August 23rd, 2013, 8:57 p.m. in [redacted]. Straight out the gate, this child of yours has an Aries Rising with the Moon and Uranus conjunct the Rise. This child is not being told to hide their weird. This child is not learning that it will cost them love and safety to be their full, true, weird, and wonderful self. So I want to just start with that.

Robin: Thank you.

Jessica: You're welcome, because whatever generational pattern was at play in your childhood is not the problem here.

Robin: Good.

Jessica: Yeah. It is good. Congratulations. It doesn't mean there's no shit in the chart, right? And this is the thing that's complicated about looking at kids' charts. I am looking at Drew's chart, and they are nine years old right now. And this is the chart that they will have when they're 40 years old. So I will not look at this chart for this individual at any time of their development or life and be like, "Oh, you were told you couldn't be who you were. You were told it was going to cost you something to be who you were."

I just wanted to assure you of that because I was so pleased, when I saw their chart, to say that's not the problem here. But it doesn't mean we are free of issues. It does not mean that at all. What I see for Drew is that they have a bunch of interceptions. So the family patterns are still there; they're just not the thing you fear. I have seen this more often than not. The thing that we're the most worried about passing on to our kids because it happened to us is the thing we overcompensate on, so we definitely don't do it to our kid; we do something else.

Robin: Of course.

Jessica: Yeah. It's the terrifying part of having kids.

Robin: Great.

Jessica: Yeah. It is terrifying. It's true. I should also mention Drew has a Venus opposition to the Descendant, Moon, and Uranus. You got a fabulous weirdo. You got somebody whose gender is likely to really kind of shift over the course of their life, and that is okay with them. That is something that can be really healthy for them.

There's a couple things I will name. The first one is that beautiful opposition forms a T-square to Pluto and the Midheaven. And so I don't know what kind of school district you live in, in these times with increasingly transphobic and homophobic legislation. But can you tell me how progressive or not where you live is?

Robin: We're fortunately in a very progressive area, for the most part, and obviously still in the early stages of school, but have had a really good experience so far.

Jessica: Great. Okay. Good. This child of yours is a person who has so much energy. And I think it's going to be important, if things get rocky in terms of dealing with schools and stuff like that, that you have really honest conversations with them.

Robin: Okay.

Jessica: Of course, age-appropriate but honest conversations with them, because if you make decisions for them about what's safe for them, they tend to react poorly. And I'm sure you've seen this on playgrounds and dealing with cleaning up your room and stuff like that. They need options. They need to feel like they have choices to make.

Robin: Yes.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay.

Robin: Absolutely.

Jessica: You have a very individuated kid. And so the risk is that you or your husband do not martyr yourselves and try to do everything for the family without acknowledging the cost, without having really humble conversations that, "Yeah, this is messy, and this is what I'm choosing to do because I want to do this for you, for us," whatever it is. Does this make sense, what I'm saying?

Robin: Yeah. It does a lot.

Jessica: Yeah. That's more the risk. You or your husband, or both, end up acting unconsciously like martyrs because you're compensating for making sure that you don't place the burden on the kids or on your partner. And then that creates a whole different problem, which is, if you ask for what you need from someone you love, they might give it to you, but you might not really understand what's wrong. Something is clearly wrong, but you might not understand it.

Robin: Can you expand on that a little bit more?

Jessica: Sure.

Robin: When you say something's wrong, it's that they aren't really ready to give it?

Jessica: Think of it this way. Back in your own childhood, if your mom didn't want to take you out on the weekends to the park or something, if your mom didn't want to do these things but she did them anyways⁠—because that's her duty; she's your mom⁠—then she's not going to be in a great mood. She's not going to be really emotionally accessible. She's going to kind of be short with you afterwards or be burned out by the experience. But she's doing the right thing. And if you say, "Hey, Mom, did you have fun at the park?" she's going to say yes because she's a good mom, right?

It's easier to see it when we talk about your parents than talking about us as parents, right? But there is a way that you and your husband, in different ways, want to shield yourselves as well as your family from messiness. Pretending that the world is a tidy environment that's safe⁠—it takes a lot of energy to keep that lie up, right?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: It's too much energy. That's a risk I see in Drew's birth chart, where the parents are like, "No, no, no. It's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's okay. You're okay. Everything's fine," when in fact there's glaring issues that are clearly hard for the parents or hard in the environment. So there's this issue of being really honest and transparent because Drew is actually a very strong kid. Drew is a kid. So we want to treat kids like kids⁠—always be age-appropriate⁠—but a strong kid, a kid who sees what's happening in an environment. Drew is able to kind of suss adults out pretty well.

Robin: Oh yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. It's remarkable. Now, kids their age, maybe not as much. Kids their age are a little more confusing. Drew is an incredibly verbal person and a very analytic processor because they have that Mercury/Sun conjunction in Virgo. But it's intercepted in the sixth house, so there's this way you or Dad may be being like, "Okay. Well, you don't have to say all that to people. You actually need to rein that in. It's okay that you get it, but don't say it." Right? I'm guessing.

Robin: Yeah. Yep.

Jessica: Yeah. You do that? Okay. That's what happens when we have the intercepted planets. Drew is being taught, like, "Okay, you can be as smart as you want to be, but you don't have to tell people how smart you are."

Robin: Yep. Okay. Guilty.

Jessica: So what you want to be able to do is unpack why. Have you noticed that we say this, like, "Let me tell you why"? And be transparent. "Sometimes we do that just because we are not those kinds of people, so we're awkward with it, and we don't want you to have to deal with awkward situations. But you're actually okay with the dealing with awkward situations, so maybe that's on us⁠," because guess what: Drew is okay with dealing with awkward. Drew doesn't even notice awkward half the time.

Robin: Yeah. It's amazing.

Jessica: You have a stellium in Taurus. You are constantly clocking everyone's comfort as a way to keep yourself comfortable. That's you. Drew has Venus in Libra, but it's opposite Uranus and Square to Pluto⁠—no Taurus. Drew is not driven by making other people comfortable. And it doesn't mean that they're not empathetic, because they are. And it doesn't mean that they're not kind, because they are. It just means stewarding other people's comfort in the way that you do is not how they do.

Robin: That's so helpful.

Jessica: Yes. I love that.

Robin: I get it.

Jessica: They are a person who's likely to have social drama sometimes.

Robin: Okay.

Jessica: And you probably have already seen it, like they have a bestie for a while, and then something blows up the friendship and they're not their bestie anymore. Has happened so far?

Robin: Right.

Jessica: Yeah. With the Venus/Uranus opposition, oftentimes what will happen is friendships come together⁠—or relationships, when they're older, come together⁠—and they are dynamic and, "Yes, yes, yes. Let's be besties all the time." And then something changes, and then the relationship is no longer interesting to the person who has this aspect. And so things can kind of burn to the ground. That is something that is true to their nature that they get to work out. But they are much more comfortable with drama than you are. That's who they are.

Robin: That's good to know.

Jessica: Your mother-in-law⁠—is she like that a little bit?

Robin: Yeah. I think, generationally, she is primed to look after other people's level of comfort. But she is not really fazed if it turns out that they're not.

Jessica: She pisses people off?

Robin: I mean, not actively, but she's not too bothered if it happens.

Jessica: Okay, because it looks like this particular trait is more out of their dad's side than out of your side is what I'm getting.

Robin: Oh, definitely him. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. So that's your husband. Okay.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: This is where we talk about you. Your nature is to make sure that other people are comfortable, to make sure that there's not wrinkles in the bedsheets kind of thing. You just want everything to be smooth. Of course, you have a partner who is like, "Smooth? What's smooth? It's okay. Let's just go"⁠—a little bit more aggressive.

Robin: Yep.

Jessica: Yeah, and much more comfortable taking.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: This is where things get complex again because for you⁠—you have mixed feelings about whether or not that's okay and whether or not that's cool and whether or not you would want your child to be that way.

Robin: Yeah, somewhat. I mean, I would like them to be more assertive or more sure of themself than I am, I think.

Jessica: How about as assertive and as comfortable taking as your husband?

Robin: Generally, yeah, I'd be okay with that. It's hard to say when it's your kid and you just want them to follow the rules sometimes and not⁠—yeah. I see what you're saying.

Jessica: Yeah. It looks messy. It just looks messy. It doesn't look bad or good. It looks messy. And this is where in situations⁠—whatever it is, like in day-to-day shit⁠—right? Nothing too dramatic, but in day-to-day shit, what comes up for you is that your emotions get triggered and you get really emo about how to keep your kids safe or how to navigate this in the "right" away or how to navigate other adults' or other kids' comfort around your kid while you're trying to navigate your comfort around the whole situation.

Robin: Yes.

Jessica: What this does is it triggers you emotionally. And so we've established you have this Moon in Aquarius intercepted in the twelfth. And an intercepted twelfth-house Moon is like if you're sure that something is lost between the couch cushions and you just stick your hand in there and you're going in⁠—you can't see anything. You're just trying to feel around in the dark. You're sure something's in there. Whenever you put your hand in there, you end up finding something that is not the thing you were looking for.

Robin: Yep.

Jessica: That's kind of like having an intercepted twelfth-house Moon because sometimes when you access your emotions, you're like, "Whoa. There's all these feelings in here," and it becomes really overwhelming because you end up accessing things that you weren't planning on because even though you're a very emotional person, what you feel, like what you really are feeling, it takes time for you to access it. It's a process.

Robin: 100 percent.

Jessica: And so here we have this glorious weirdo who is comfortable taking up space, is comfortable being themselves, has a great deal of self-awareness⁠—way more self-awareness than awareness of other people and what they need and want in a moment. And it triggers the hell out of you because it's exactly what you were raised to not be like. And when I say it triggers, it doesn't mean that you don't like it. It means that it brings up parts of you⁠—hence you writing me this question, which is not like, "How do I take care of my genderqueer kid?" It's, "Shit. I am triggered because I have a somewhat parallel experience in my own childhood."

So, in regards to the part that's really about you, about your own childhood, ground me into if you have any questions around that or anything I could speak to that would be helpful.

Robin: I think there's a layer of this that has to do with level of anxiety in general that I deal with and have dealt with since I was seven or eight. And that's what kicks up with all of this. When I first had Drew, I had a period of postpartum anxiety, just this⁠—motherhood brings it on in some regard. And when I have to step up in that way, it's anxiety-producing. So maybe that is part of this pattern of you have to make everybody else comfortable, even though on the inside, I'm panicking.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. And when you say you're panicking, is there a narrative there? Is it like, "I am panicking about the sky falling," or is it just like fucking global panic, and it can be applied to anything?

Robin: It can be both. I've definitely had things that I will kind of fixate on and panic about, whether they make sense or not. And other times, again, when I'm helping my kid kind of come out in a situation, my body just washes over with this panic, and I'm like, "Where is this coming from? I know I'm safe. I know my kid's safe right now. What is this?"

Jessica: Okay. So there's two topics here, right? There's the helping your kid come out, which is a really big and important thing, and then there's the general global anxiety. Let's start specific and then go big. Does that feel okay?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Was there a recent time when you helped your kid come out?

Robin: Yes. This was kind of funny because it was unexpected, and maybe that's part of the issue, too. Drew plays on a sports team, and it was beginning of the season. And I was talking to one of the other parents, who started talking to my younger child, my daughter, and say, "Oh, how is your brother doing out there?"⁠—things like that. My younger child said, "That's my sibling. They're they/them."

Jessica: Yay.

Robin: The younger one just⁠—totally just right out with it. Love it. The dad kind of turned to me and was sort of like, "What is she talking about?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, Drew is nonbinary. They're they/them." And in that moment, I just turned red. My heart is pounding. I don't know where that came from. That kind of reaction happens now and then.

Jessica: And is that with the dad said? "What's she talking about?"

Robin: Not verbatim. He kind of looked at me like⁠—you know, started to pose a question, and I jumped in and kind of finished it, like, "Oh, yeah, Drew is this."

Jessica: Okay. So there's a couple parts to what I'm seeing here. One is they were being judgmental.

Robin: Oh. Okay. I wondered.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's why you felt that way, in part. They weren't being profoundly phobic, but that judgmental comes from phobia, fear of the unknown. And I think that his attitude is kind of like, "Well, I couldn't tell, so can't be that big a deal."

Robin: That is totally it.

Jessica: Okay.

Robin: Now that I know this guy better, that would totally be it. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Yeah. One layer of your response was you would feel, after a lifetime of attuning yourself to other people's emotions⁠—not knowing what the hell you're picking up but knowing, like, "Uh-oh, disapproval"⁠—right? Taurus stellium. You felt from him what you digest as disapproval. That is an intolerable feeling for you, so you have a swift anxiety response. Are you in therapy?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Fabulous. One thing I would do is I would bring to le therapist and be like, "I want work on my unconscious thoughts around what it means that randos disapprove of me⁠—not my best friend or my partner, but nerds on the soccer field." So that's one thing to work with them on. And the other thing to work with your therapist on his how to locate it in your body, how to know in your physical body what it feels like when you're experiencing disapproval from others when you're reacting to it, whether it's real disapproval or imagined. It doesn't matter.

Robin: I have worked in therapy before on that whole "find it in your body." I struggle with that so much.

Jessica: Yes. Yes, you do.

Robin: How do you do that?

Jessica: Great question. Excellent question. Thank you for asking. So you, my friend, have a North Node intercepted the sixth house. And so, if you told me, "Oh, yeah, I'm really good at finding it," I would say, "You lie to me," because the North Node⁠—you may have heard me say this before, but it is very difficult for us to come to true embodiment of our North Node before the age of 40. Not really realistic, okay? How old are you now?

Robin: 41.

Jessica: 41. Congratulations. This is the time where you have enough lived experience to be able to know yourself, to be able to integrate what you've learned and do the work. So you're on time. You're not behind schedule. That you tried it before and it didn't work only means that you tried it before, and you got a layer of work done, and that's all that got done. Sometimes it takes a lot of layers. I don't paint, so maybe this metaphor is not a good one, but a lot of times, a painter will paint a painting multiple times on the canvas before the painting is completed. So it's not a failure, that first go; it's just the foundation to the painting.

Robin: Okay.

Jessica: Yeah. You're terrible at this because you spend so much time being out of your body because you're trying to not feel bad. So what happens? You develop anxiety because when you're out of your body, everything can come in, and you're like, "I don't know what any of it is." It's like leaving your front door open and then walking into your house and being like, "There's critters in this house. There's stranger danger in this house, and also my husband and my kid. How do I keep anyone safe?" You can't, because there's too many unknowns in the environment.

So figuring out how to be with your body is a really important practice for you. Your South Node is conjunct your Moon. It's very tightly conjunct, which means, for you, that North Node in the sixth is all about you finding your fire, you finding what you feel strongly⁠—which you were, again, strongly and consistently encouraged never to do.

So, if you start to access your body, you will inevitably feel the ways in which you are uncompromising, the ways in which you're like, "Fuck that guy. Yeah, he's nice to run into on the soccer field. And also, I don't like that guy, and something in my body tightens up every time I'm around that guy." That, to me⁠—and I am saying this specifically about that guy. You don't like that guy. And that doesn't mean you don't like parts of him, because you're very good at that. You're good at being like, "Well, I might not like x, but I can deal with y."

Robin: Ouch. Yep.

Jessica: Sorry. And so it's cool, child of Venus, that you can find the good and that you can center the positive feelings you have. But what you're doing is you're abandoning yourself by ignoring the bad, judging that it's bad to dislike parts of people. There's nothing wrong with looking at that soccer dude⁠—who is a great example, by the way, because he's just fucking like, "Whatever, dude." He's just a whatever dude, not someone you should break bread with, my God.

And it's okay for you to find that part of you that's like, "I don't fucking like this guy, and he's as soccer dad, and I'm going to continue to deal with him. And he's totally fine, and I know I can find a way to enjoy him and get along well with him. And if I trust my gut, then I know that something in my body when he's around says no." And that's why you don't know how to stay with your body, because you don't feel comfortable picking a side, which means you take other people's side unconsciously all the fucking time.

Robin: I'm overriding what my body is telling me until it screams.

Jessica: And it screams in the language of anxiety, which does a great job of two things. One is keeping you disassociated from what you actually feel. So it continues the pattern. And two is it gets your attention, so everything has to stop and you have to take care of yourself. The good news is your anxiety is an adaptation that you took on for self-care. Now, was it not a great one? Yes. You could have done better, sure. But it serves a purpose. You're getting something out of your anxiety.

Once you can kind of find, "Okay. My animal brain or my inner child"⁠—however you want to hold it⁠—"is getting a great deal out of disassociating from what I actually feel, having fixed opinions, having a fixed perspective, and being so overwhelmed that I, quote unquote, can't cope with anything"⁠—and you can't in those moments, but you're getting value out of that. It's serving a purpose. So, if you can⁠—in therapy, not alone; this is too complicated⁠—sit with what you are getting out of it, what your anxiety as part of your survival mechanisms is giving you, that will help you find the right pathway into your body.

And I'm not suggesting that your anxiety will magically disappear forever, but it'll change dramatically, meaningfully, because your anxiety will start to emerge and you'll be like, "Huh. I'm starting to feel anxious," instead of, "Oh my God. What's wrong with me? Why?" which is where you go. You can look around and be like, "Who do I fucking hate here?" I mean, you don't have to sound like me. So you can be like, "Who do I not feel safe with? Who is somebody that I don't really feel like I can be myself around?" Sorry. I shouldn't put it in my words. I'm like, "Who do I hate? Stab, stab, stab." But for you, it's just going to be like, "Who do I not feel like I can be myself with?"

Robin: That one's profound to me. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Great. Good, because those people, even if they have no power and you may or may not interact with them briefly, will spark anxiety in your system because you instinctively abandon yourself. You leave the body.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Cool story is that Drew doesn't do this.

Robin: I am so happy to hear that.

Jessica: Yeah.

Robin: So happy for them.

Jessica: Yeah. They're very lucky. They don't do this. They do the opposite. They look at the soccer dad⁠—let's say they didn't like the soccer dad. They don't care about the soccer dad, but let's say they saw the soccer dad or some kid that was like the soccer dad they didn't like. They'd be like, "Huh. I'm turning my back on that person. I don't like them."

Robin: I've seen them do that.

Jessica: Yes. Literally. They're the opposite. They can learn greater diplomacy, but they should not learn how to lie to themselves. And that's your parenting conundrum, how to encourage your child to be honest with themselves when you don't know how to do that with yourself in a safe way.

Robin: Yeah. I can't⁠—

Jessica: Million-dollar question.

Robin: Can't teach it when I don't do it, don't know it. Yeah.

Jessica: I mean, you can, but it's a lot harder. And you're going to unconsciously teach other things at the same time. Being able to say to your kid, "I love it that you really know who you like and who you don't like and what you feel and what you think, and you should never change that. And also, you want to be aware that your body language, your tone of voice, what you say, what you do has an impact on other people. So how can you be empathetic"⁠—again, you have to frame it in a nine-year-old way, and when they are 12, in a 12-year-old way, and when they're 20, in a 20-year-old way. But, "How can you pair your self-awareness with diplomacy or empathy or a little bit of compromise?"

And in the meantime, when they are like, "This kid's stupid," and then just walk away, which they will do, notice what that makes you feel because they are doing the most scary thing in the world to you. It's likely to make you feel really disassociated, really anxious, like you have to fix it, like it's your job to fix what they're doing.

Robin: Right.

Jessica: And the cool thing is none of this has to do with their gender. It's just their personality.

Robin: Yep.

Jessica: It is.

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Jessica: Now, I will add something else to this, which is, in your upbringing, gender and sexuality were tightly linked.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: So the kind of girl you were was really important. So, if you told your mom you were bisexual, she may have been surprised if you were super feminine-looking.

Robin: That's likely. Yeah.

Jessica: And some of that is about the generation. It is about the time because sex and gender were very linked in the '90s in a way that I think we know better now. I don't see that same link for Drew. We're just talking about their gender. They're too young. They're not too young to know who they are sexually; a lot of people do. But they are. They as a person are. This is just about gender for them. That is a great model for you. It's a great model for you because there is this part of you⁠—and it is an anxious part⁠—that's like, "Everything is connected to everything, and everything has to be okay."

Robin: Right.

Jessica: I'm so sorry. And they do not have that kind of approach to things. They are, "This is what I feel right now. This is where I am right now. This is what is right now." And that's cool⁠—so different from you, and it's really different from your husband.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: They are themselves, and that is something you look up to and you value. But then, when you're the steward of it, you're like, "I don't know how to do that. That's not me. That's them. I want to make you comfortable. They don't care." And that's really hard. And so it comes down to, now, coping with the global anxiety that you have. Is there anything that you do to take care of yourself around anxiety?

Robin: I've tried lots of things. I meditate⁠—not always regularly enough for it to really help⁠—move my body, most of the things that most people would try. I mean, it gets better, but it's never gone. I don't know that it will ever be. I don't think that's a realistic expectation, but getting it to a point where it's not intrusive is my goal at this point.

Jessica: Yeah. I have such annoying advice for you. It's super fucking annoying advice. I'm so sorry. I have noticed in the⁠—however long we've been talking⁠—that you haven't breathed once. Did you notice?

Robin: No, I did not.

Jessica: Okay. Does that make sense?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: If you want to deal with your anxiety, make a practice of, every time you feel the squdgiest squidge of anxiety, breathe.

Robin: Okay.

Jessica: What you will notice if you do this is that your anxiety is somehow a little worse. Let me explain. Your anxiety isn't worse; it's that your feelings of unrest⁠—you can feel them better because when you breathe, you're entering into your body a little more. So, now, we're back to looking around for the remote inside the couch cushions to find your Moon. You gotta do that through breath, unfortunately. Very twelfth house of you, twelfth-house Moon in an air sign of you.

Why your anxiety, again, serves you, why you may unconsciously be getting a lot out of it, is because your anxiety keeps you away from feeling unrest or restless or unhappy. And as much as you dislike being anxious, it's a habit. And you don't know what to do with the unhappy. You don't know what to do with the feel, the emotional part. And you're scared of being depressed much more than you are of being anxious. So you're going with the devil you know.

Robin: Yeah. That's true.

Jessica: So what I'm recommending is that you practice breathing, fully knowing that when you practice breathing, you will feel sadder. And the reason why I am encouraging this is because you are sad, and the only way to heal the sad⁠—which you 100 percent can, and you know I'm no Pollyanna. But the only way that you can heal the sad is to feel the sad. You gotta feel it to heal it. What do they say? Emotions are just energy in motion. I didn't come up with that. I wish I had, but I definitely didn't. It's an expression.

By being able to be present with the energy in motion or, in your case, the energy that you've kept in stasis that's locked in your psyche and in your body⁠, by being able to be present with the sadness and the not knowing why⁠—it's just fucking old sadness you've been storing for later like a squirrel with emotions you don't know what to do with⁠—what will happen is you'll be dealing with the actual problem. So the anxiety doesn't need to knock you on the head, like knock on your head with a hammer, because the anxiety is trying to get your attention for something. It's you fucking feeling and telling you to breathe.

It's free. You can do it on the soccer field. You can do it while you're busy. And you will feel sadder for doing it. And so the reason why, if you've tried this in the past, it "didn't work" is because you do it and then you feel just as bad or worse. So you're like, "Why would I do this to myself?"

Robin: Yep.

Jessica: Think of it this way. If you touch a hot stove and you find a way to not let it bother you that much, is that good for you? The answer would be no. Ideally, you want to feel the pain of touching the hot stove so that you can be like, "Oh fuck. My hand hurts. I'm touching a hot stove. I shall remove my hand from the stove, or if I can't remove my hand from the stove, I will not tell myself there's something wrong with me. I will say instead there's something wrong with the fact that the stove is on or that I can't move."

So, when we identify the problem accurately, it does a lot for our brains. It does a lot for our mental health. And it empowers us to be pointed in the right direction so that we can find remediation, an answer, an approach that works.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Good. This is the first time in our conversation that I can feel a little bit of space in your chest.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: And to be fair, it's like you're getting a reading; people get nervous. Everybody gets nervous getting a reading. It's fair. It's the first time where it's like, "Shit. Okay." It's a path forward for you. It's like a way you can cope with your feelings instead of just naming them, because you're great at collecting data, figuring out what's wrong, but how do you do it is what's really hard.

And again, I come back to your Saturn/Jupiter conjunction. Saturn/Jupiter conjunction⁠—Saturn is like, "This is what we do. This is the problem, and here is the strategy." And Jupiter, sitting right on top of Saturn, is like, "It feels like it's really restrictive. I don't think we should absolutely have to do anything. If we do it, we should do it sometimes, not all the time." Do you know what I'm saying?

Robin: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: It's a difficult aspect to have in the birth chart because [indiscernible 00:39:01] becomes really tricky, which is where having really simple strategies serves you better. You're very capable of cooking a complicated recipe, but you're good⁠—like you enjoy⁠—cooking simple, repetitive things. That's actually more fun for you because then you don't have to be obsessed. Same thing with self-care. You can meditate, obviously. Sure. Who shouldn't? Go to the gym. Okay. Well, then you have to put on clothes for the gym, and you have to get in the car. You have to go to the gym. My God. And that's not even speaking of the atrocities of the gym according to me.

This just breathing when you start to feel a feeling, noticing when you're feeling anxiety, to scan for, "Okay. Who or what do I not like here?" because you know that you get an anxiety response to that⁠—these practices are less likely to have to deal with the Saturn/Jupiter conjunction where you're like, "This feels restrictive," because it's not really restrictive to breathe; it's just annoying to remember, and it's scary to feel. It's scary to notice what you don't like, but it's not going to trigger that Saturn/Jupiter. So it's not like all the steps of cooking the recipe, getting to the gym, whatever the fuck it is, right? You like your husband?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: You love your husband?

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Cool. That's lucky. Good. Congratulations. So, if you take all my advice, the things you don't like about your husband are going to become a lot more annoying.

Robin: Okay.

Jessica: Yeah, which is a great motivation to not do this.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. So here's the good news. You find these things annoying anyways. You're just repressing it. So I'm guessing by your little face you're already aware of what the things are going to be.

Robin: I⁠—yeah. I'm aware that there are things.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. Good. Some of those things are just the cost of entry into the amusement park of marriage. It's like everybody's fucking annoying. Nobody is perfect, and that is life. And so you'll have to figure out a way to make a decision. Is this worth it? He's an annoying person in this way. Fine. And then, other things, you're going to have to talk to him about it, and you're going to have to work on it with him. And it may create upsets because he's used to being married to somebody who doesn't name what she doesn't like and ask for change, right? So he's not going to adjust to that easily and quickly. So rocky roads. Again, another great motivation to stay anxious. It's a fucking great motivation to be anxious, right?

Robin: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: I'm looking at your birth chart. I'm seeing what's coming over the next several years. It's worth the risk. I'm not seeing anything where I'm like, "Uh-oh. This is right in time for a divorce transit." Nothing like that. Nothing like that.

Robin: Okay.

Jessica: Yeah. It looks like this is a good marriage, and also, he needs to fucking giddyap and adjust some things. But you haven't asked for it, or if you've asked for it, you asked for it once and then you never brought it up again. And he is a person who needs repetition. You need to say, "Did you turn off the light? Yeah. Okay." Next time he leaves the room, "Did you turn off the light? Yes. Okay." You know?

Robin: Yep.

Jessica: He never turns off the fucking light, and he needs to be reminded a million times until he's like, "I don't want to hear you remind me, so I'm going to turn off the light."

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: He is who he is. It's okay that you get to say, "This is fucking annoying, my love, and I need you to be more considerate of my feelings. And I'll own that I never asked that of you before, that I have been annoyed for seven years about this and you're hearing about it for the first time now." So you can own that while also being like, "But please listen to me, and please take it into consideration because I'm figuring this shit out." And will you say his name?

Robin: [redacted]

Jessica: He's a nice guy, but he really gets in his own head and he thinks other people should just not be annoyed by him.

Robin: Nailed it.

Jessica: Thank you. Thank you very much. So it must be nice to live in that world. What a lovely world he lives in. But if you frame it to him as, "I love you and I like you, and I need this. And I want you to know that it will make me feel more loved and liked," he'll be respectful. If you're like, "I need you to do this because I want it because otherwise I have anxiety," no. You can't lead with a victim story. He doesn't listen to those. Have you noticed?

Robin: Yep. Yep.

Jessica: So it's, "I love you, and I want to keep on liking you. And I'm asking you to show up for me in this way."

Robin: Okay.

Jessica: That, he gets.

Robin: That's helpful.

Jessica: He works with teams, eh? Yeah. So I'm seeing, at work, he understands back-scratching. He understands how to work with a team. So the way to frame your needs within the marriage to him is as a teammate. "I'm holding up this part of the team, and this is what I need in order to keep that up."

Robin: Okay.

Jessica: Yeah. That'll work. Have we addressed the topic of anxiety in a way that feels like it's given you shit to work with? Do you have any other questions there?

Robin: No. That absolutely validates a lot of what I've experienced in the past and why things I've tried didn't work or didn't work the way I tried them. So that's helpful.

Jessica: Good. Great. And again, you're right on time. And I know so many people are like, "Oh, 40 is old." It's very not. It's super very not. So you're right on time. Now, in terms of Drew, do you have any final questions or things I didn't speak to?

Robin: I guess, do they⁠—and this is really a question I guess I should ask them. Do they feel like I get it about their gender and who they are?

Jessica: I pulled up your relationship chart with Drew before we met, and I didn't tell you about it because I didn't want to focus on that because I don't think it's necessary. That's not really what your question is about. But in your relationship chart, you have⁠—and I should be really clear for the astrology nerds that I use Composite charts, not Synastry. I am not a fan of Synastry for intimate relationships, only Composites.

And a Composite chart is like we take their Sun and your Sun. We find the midpoint between those two Suns to create your Sun, like the Sun⁠—I'm using the word "Sun," which is annoying because it's a gender child. But I'm talking about the Sun in astrology. So that's where we find your relationship Sun. We find their Mercury and your Mercury, and then we find the midpoint between those two, and it becomes the relationship Mercury. So it's the chart of your relationship.

In your relationship, there is a Sun/Mercury conjunction in the fourth house in Cancer. So your child feels heard, listened to, supported, and that their identity is loved. That's not the problem. Here is the problem, though. In the relationship chart, we do have Saturn intercepted the seventh house, which is to say, inevitably, your fear of being difficult for other people is clearly communicated to your child. And they don't want to be difficult to you, so they may hold back at times or not really show up in a way where they're really telling you who they are. Or as they grow up, if they go more in the direction of their paternal side, they may be kind of withholding and judgy. I'll tell you don't worry. You want to be easy⁠—I'm going to tell you what it is. They could be kind of rough that way.

They're little, so there's a lot of time for them to ebb and flow in their development. And the key is really to be willing to have messy, uncomfortable times with them. It is not your job to keep everything tidy all the time. This is not an exclusive truth to your parenting skills. This is just you. It is not your job to make sure that everything feels okay. It's okay when things don't feel okay. Developing a habit of asking, "How do you feel? What do you need? Do you just want me to listen? Do you need me to try to do something?"⁠—those are great questions to ask because then they satiate the part of you that's like, "I have to take care of this." But it's also a practice of engaging the other person and listening to what they say.

And they might be like, "I don't know. Mom, fix it," in which case you do your best. But a lot of times, with Drew, they fucking know. They're like, "I need to be alone," is often the answer is my guess.

Robin: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Great. That looks like a healthy response for them. They process alone really well.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: So does that answer that question?

Robin: Yes.

Jessica: Do you have another one?

Robin: I think probably because the teenage years were so rocky for me, I think now I understand a lot more of why. I'm very curious about what that will look like for Drew and me.

Jessica: Okay. For Drew and you.

Robin: I know that's not something you can say, "Well, when they're 13, this will happen," but just in general what to look out for.

Jessica: This is what I don't do for kids, is predict those years, because if me or any other astrologer or psychic did that for you, you would be stepping into their life with all these projections. And that takes you away from being present in the moment and being responsive to whatever is. So it's a very common use of astrology to do that, but I don't think it's a good use of astrology to do that.

So I won't answer that question, but I will say underneath that question is the thing we've been talking about: "How can I keep Drew safe? How can I protect Drew? Is Drew going to be okay? Am I going to have to watch my child go through what I went through? Am I going to make my child go through what my mom made me go through?" And to that I can say, if you continue to be curious about the world⁠—maybe when Drew came out to you and was like, "Hey, I'm nonbinary," did you ask, "What does that mean to you?"

Robin: No. It was more that they kind of figured it out over time. We have talked about it a little bit, that it feels to them like they're neither gender, like that's just not a concept that applies to them.

Jessica: Yeah. They're kind of, like, agendered.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. I think continuing to have⁠—and you can only do this if you're authentically curious, so don't pretend to do this, because then you're doing what your mom did⁠—but if you're authentically curious, to be like, "Hey, have you ever heard this word, 'agender'? I just learned this"⁠—even if you didn't just learn the word, like, "I just learned this word, 'agender,' and this is what it means. What do you think of it?" Have regular conversations with your kid around gender, not about their gender all the time, but about gender.

Social media can be a great tool for that because you can educate yourself listening to young people who are older than your child, who are teens or early 20s. You can hear them talking about gender and their experience and then be like, "You know, I saw this TikTok," or, "I heard this thing from this person. They talked about x. Have you heard about this? What do you think about this? What does that make you feel?" Just to be curious and engage your child in conversation.

By just being like, "Okay. Nonbinary. Okay. I'll just work on that," then you don't really know what that means for them. And at nine years old, they probably don't know what that means completely either. And honestly, at 29 years old, most people don't know what it means completely. It takes so much time to get to know yourself, and especially with something like gender, which for many of us exists on this spectrum, it's complicated. It's so complicated. But having safe exploratory conversations where you can be like, "Huh. I never thought of it that way," or, "That's weird. I don't see it that way," where you just are able to have them be a little messy, non-conclusive⁠—that's going to be really powerful. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

Robin: Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica: And it'll spike your anxiety because messy and non-conclusive is not your favorite feeling.

Robin: No.

Jessica: And that's okay. You can have anxiety around this. It is okay. What you may want to make a practice of is be like, "Huh. I can feel that in my body, and it feels funny. I'm going to sit with this and see how it lands." You can say something to that effect to Drew, and they will actually be comfortable with that. You wouldn't be comfortable if I said that to you in a deep conversation, but Drew is comfortable with the unknown.

Robin: That's good to know about. I never would have thought to⁠—that, to me, feels like putting them on the spot, and to them, it's not, though, at all.

Jessica: It's not at all. It's just having a conversation to them. To you, being asked, "What do you think? How do you identify? What do you want?"⁠—it does feel like being put on the spot because that is somebody saying to you, "You have a personal preference. You have things you like and don't like. What are they?" And you're like, "Fuck you. That is not what I am. I am compromising. I am amiable to whatever needs to happen. Why are you accusing me of having a strong preference?" North Node in Leo, okay?

But this is a person⁠—they have a Sun/Mercury conjunction in Virgo. Now, Neptune is opposite it, so they are like floopy-doopy wonky-donky. They've got a very fantastical nature.

Robin: Oh yeah.

Jessica: But that Uranus/Moon/Ascendant conjunction in Aries, Saturn in Scorpio in the seventh house⁠—I mean, this is a person with very strong likes and dislikes and very strong interests. Am I seeing it right that they're really fascinated or fixated on a book right now?

Robin: Yes.

Jessica: Okay. It's like a book series, eh?

Robin: Yep.

Jessica: Yeah. Is there airplanes in it?

Robin: It's a historical series. Yeah. It's all kinds of stuff.

Jessica: Okay. It's all kinds of stuff like that. Okay, because I'm seeing, for some reason, it looked like an old-time airplane. But if you were to say to them, "What's your favorite part of the book?" they might have 12 parts, not one part, but they wouldn't feel pressured that you asked. They would just talk too much. They would just give you too long of an answer, right?

Robin: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: You know that about your kid. Okay.

Robin: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. So the same thing is true if you talk about, "How do you feel?" The same thing is true if you talk about, "What is nonbinary? What is a boy? What is a girl?" If you were to talk about all kinds of queerness in a nine-year-old age-appropriate way, they would have just as many thoughts. They would have just as many things to say. Or if they didn't want to say anything, they'd be like, "I don't know," and they would shut you out of the conversation. It would be over.

There's not a lot of guesswork with Drew. With you, there's a labyrinth of guesswork. David Bowie couldn't get through this labyrinth, if you know what I'm talking about with the movie Labyrinth.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. But this child is forthcoming. You don't have to protect Drew from what would hurt your feelings. And this is the hardest part of parenting, is how do we really not treat other people the way we want to be treated? I mean, we all do it, right? But that's not how Drew wants to be treated. That's not how Drew needs to be treated.

Drew likes ideas a lot. So asking about their ideas is going to be interesting. You're going to be surprised, I think, by some of their ideas. And what they say on Monday is not necessarily what they're going to mean on Friday, because they're nine⁠—and not about gender, but about everything. It's about not placing too much fixation on any one answer, but having kind of cyclical conversations with them so that you can start to develop more of a relationship with this fabulous weirdo you have. And it'll work. Again, it'll work.

Robin: Yeah. It sounds like fun.

Jessica: Yeah. It is fun. And we can't protect our children from having difficult teenage years. I mean, first of all, America⁠—not to freak you out or anything, but have you heard of America?

Robin: Yeah. I'm freaked out already.

Jessica: Yeah. But second of all, it's supposed to be torture. Isn't it supposed to be torture? Am I wrong about that? Isn't that what teenage years are, torture?

Robin: Yeah. I just want to⁠—again, I want to make sure they're comfortable. I want to make sure it's productive torture. That's not a thing. It's just going to be what it's going to be.

Jessica: No, but what you can do is be a safe place to land. So, for you and any parent in the world who's like, "I want to make sure my kid is okay in their teen years," all you can do is make sure that you are providing a safe place to land. You cannot make sure that they're never hurt, they're never challenged, that they're not miserable, that their hormones don't torture them. This is an inevitable part of life. I mean, anyone who's like, "Oh, I had great teenage years," I'm always like, "What are you saying?"

All you can do is be a safe place to land. You can be a place that your child can turn to and to be honest about what they're going through. You can be a place where your child can turn to and receive comfort and safety. And you're actually pretty good at doing that, that part of you that's like, "I take care of other people, and that's how I take care of myself." So you want to preemptively parent Drew as a way to satiate the anxieties you have about them struggling. Ain't going to happen. It's not going to work. It doesn't work. It's just not how life works is what I'm trying to say.

Within that, it's being comfortable with not being comfortable. Easier said than done. Well, I really appreciate you sending in this question and that you're willing to do this work that is so hard, that is parenting. And the sneak-attack important part of this conversation was not about Drew at all. It was about you figuring out how to be with you. It's right on time for you.

I'll say one last thing. You are currently going through your Neptune square to Neptune, which is part of the midlife crisis. So there's a series of transits associated with midlife crisis. Neptune square to Neptune is one of them. This transit creates a spiritual chasm within the self for all of us who go through it, where it is important to figure out, "Where do I have meaning in my life? Am I being authentic with myself spiritually?"

So most people go through a lot of anxiety or an existential crisis, a spiritual crisis, during this transit. So you're in it very much. You've been in it for about a year. So I just want to acknowledge that that's what's happening and say to you what I, again, will say on the mountain a million times. When we go through Neptune transits, we must learn boundaries. That's the lesson, is to learn boundaries⁠—spiritually aligned boundaries, yes, but boundaries.

And so the primary lesson for you is not having boundaries with Drew. It's having boundaries with yourself, and then as a result, in response, it'll be boundaries with your husband, hopefully⁠—maybe boundaries with your kids, but I don't think boundaries with your kids is your big issue. I think boundaries with yourself is your big issue. And then, inevitably, you'll have greater clarity around, "Oh, I really want to talk to Drew about this thing, but I'm anxious about it right now. So I'm allowed to bring it up tomorrow." That's a boundary with yourself that will improve your parenting because you won't be acting out of this "Oh my God. I gotta fix it" energy.

Robin: That makes sense, to make sure that when I'm acting or speaking, it's from a place where I can do that in a way that's not harmful to me or others.

Jessica: Exactly. And the "to you" part is the part to focus on because you're already too fixated on the others, okay? Yeah. I'm pointing my finger at you.

Robin: [crosstalk]

Jessica: Okay. But part of a boundary with yourself is being like, "Huh. Every time I'm around this person, I feel anxious. I need to just honor that. There's something that I feel like I can't be myself here," or, "I feel out of alignment with myself," or, "I feel freaked out in some way. I don't need to understand the why." You don't need a narrative. Just be like, "Note to self: whenever I'm around this person, I feel more anxious. So I need to be a little bit more on guard around this person, not waiting for something bad to happen, but to be like, "I don't think I like them, and I don't know why, and I have no real reason. But something in my system says no."

That's a boundary with yourself to just be like, "Okay. I'm going to give myself permission to have the no instead of being like, push it down. What's wrong with me? Why?" And for Venus-ruled people, which⁠—you are very Venusian⁠—that's slightly torturous because you're just like, "How can I make you comfortable? How can I be pleasant? How can I be safe by creating security for others?" So you see the best in people as a way to make yourself feel better, except for that it makes you feel awful.

Robin: Surprise.

Jessica: Surprise. But this is the thing, is that being a one-trick pony means, eventually, whatever joints and muscles that pony uses to do that one trick⁠—they're going to give out, and then they can't do anything. We don't want to retire our inner pony. What we want to do is be a many-trick pony. So we don't want to get rid of your diplomacy and your ability to do that. Those are some fucking glorious skills. You just need additional skills so that you don't burn yourself out, which you've already done with being diplomatic for others and not yourself. You just want to add more awareness of how you're feeling in the moment so that you can honor it into the mix. It's not an "only." It's an "and also," if you know what I'm saying.

Robin: Yeah.

Jessica: Thank you so much for reaching out with this question and really showing up for it.

Robin: Thank you for taking me where I needed to go. And so much of it is about parenting, and so much of it is just about helping myself. And I need to do both of those things together.

Jessica: Absolutely. It's why they say put the air mask on yourself before you put it on the kid when the plane goes down, because if you're not taking care of yourself, it's really hard to take care of someone else. So give yourself that grace. All right, my dear.

Robin: This has been wonderful. Thank you so much.

Jessica: It's so my pleasure.