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: Astra, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about today?

Astra: I am going to read my question about whether or not alcoholism is acceptable and to what extent. "I lost my father to alcoholism in 2017, and it triggered my current track of self-care, therapy, and healing. I myself have a complicated relationship with booze and have been drinking less and less. My body can physically no longer stand it. Now that I'm not drinking as much, I'm feeling like everyone around me has a problem. I am in puppy love with a Gemini and now living with my mother, and⁠—surprise⁠—they are dependent on drinking to cope. It's excruciating to witness. I smoke weed as a coping mechanism. Who am I to distance myself from others who love me and are just trying to survive?"

Jessica: Your birth date and time⁠—September 10th, 1994, 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time, Houston, Texas. Let me just ground into your question and, as I do, just say I am really sorry for the loss of your father. Were your parents together when he passed?

Astra: No.

Jessica: They were long separated, eh?

Astra: Long separated. They separated when I was very young.

Jessica: Yeah. That was the feeling I had, that he was kind of, in some ways, very separate from your family. And I just want to make sure that I'm understanding that, really, this question⁠—it's not about your dad. It's about you in the present, in your current intimate relationships and alcohol/weed stuff.

Astra: Yeah. Alcoholism and addiction and coping mechanisms kind of in the apocalypse that we're in.

Jessica: Yeah. That's real. That's very real. So let me begin by saying, my dear, that you have not only a big stellium in Scorpio⁠—like a very big stellium in Scorpio⁠—but you also have a stellium in the twelfth house. Addiction is a very big issue in your birth chart, and it doesn't just show up as a big issue in you; it's a big issue in your heredity. And there are indicators of addiction on both sides of the family. So it's not shocking for me to hear you say your dad suffered from alcoholism, and now that you're more aware of addiction, you're able to witness your mother's own addiction issues with alcohol.

Now, I want to just kind of⁠—before we get into any details, I want to share my take because it's going to influence my read, okay?

Astra: I want your take. I want it.

Jessica: Yeah. I'm going to give it to you. I promise. I've got a big mouth. You know it. So alcohol is addictive. One can be dependent on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because they're nostalgic and they're yummy and they're cheap, and you can just put them in your mouth and just chomp and go. You can become dependent on that. But PB&J, bread⁠—they're not actually physiologically addicting you, whereas alcohol is. And so the same behavior that one might take with, let's say, PB&J versus the identical behavior with alcohol will have different outcomes in the body and in regards to addiction. Does that make sense, the way I'm saying it?

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: And between alcohol and weed⁠—also meaningful differences around the addictiveness of those substances and the impact that they have on our organs, on our body. I'm nervous about framing somebody's dependent on alcohol because alcohol is addictive. 

Astra: Yes. Like the difference between, "Oh, it's a coping mechanism," and, "Oh, this person has become addicted to this substance."

Jessica: Yes.

Astra: Okay. [crosstalk]

Jessica: And this is because alcohol is addictive. It's nothing moralistic about it. It's just alcohol is addictive. It has kind of its own life in the body. I think it's important that I just kind of, out the gate, come out with that because, within your question, you're naming a bunch of things at once. There's the issue of having borne witness to your own father's addiction and passing as a result of the addiction. I'm assuming there's your own struggles with addiction. You live in the world, and there's so much around alcohol and weed use, which, again, we can get into. But there's so much around addiction⁠—hold on. Let me just ground this because I'm just getting⁠—okay.

We're going to pause, actually, because my brain was getting all fuzzed up, and I realized it's your dad. Are you okay with me checking in with your dad, or do you prefer to have a boundary with him?

Astra: I am okay with checking in with my dad. Yeah. We're close.

Jessica: Okay. And you were close during your adult life?

Astra: Yes. Yeah. We were separated during childhood⁠—

Jessica: Yeah. I see that.

Astra: ⁠—and then we had a couple years when I was kind of coming into adulthood, and then he passed.

Jessica: Okay. And did you know he was ill?

Astra: Yeah. He had a lot of mental illness, and so did his parents. And yeah, he had a lot of addiction. It wasn't clear that he was that close to death, so it was a little sudden. But it was clear that he was trying to die, so in that way, it was not a surprise.

Jessica: Okay. I'm sorry. So I want to just acknowledge your dad is really chaotic. His energy is really, really chaotic. And so I was talking to you, and then I was finding myself losing track of my thoughts, and I wasn't really landing my thoughts and I was like, "This is not normal for me." And then I was like, "Oh. It's your dad."

He wasn't well suited to being a provider or a parent, a structure giver⁠—not so much. And I'm trying to understand why he's here because you already have a good relationship with your dad is what I'm being shown. You already have figured out how to have contact with him and to have a sense of his love and to be able to feel like you're able to offer him love. Is that correct?

Astra: Yeah. We do connect.

Jessica: Yeah. I see that. So⁠—

Astra: But it's been a while.

Jessica: Time for us is not the same as time for people in spirit. So, from a body perspective, it's been a while⁠—I'm putting air quotes on that. "It's been a while" is very material and real, and I have a sense of what you're saying. But outside of the body, on a spiritual level, when there's connection and love and reciprocity, there's a time frame with that. It is. It was the moment it was, and it continues. It is. It lives. Right? I think your dad is trying to show me something about your own coping mechanisms. I see. This is what it is. Will you give me his full name?

Astra: [redacted]

Jessica: Okay. Thank you. I mean, he's kind of a Peter Pan, like a fun⁠—

Astra: Oh my God. Yes.

Jessica: ⁠—dynamic Peter Pan. He is aware of how ill-equipped he left you to cope with certain things. I mean, your dad loves you. It's just such a powerful love. He loves you. And you guys have in common⁠—I don't know how else to frame this other than he is so your father; you are so his child. The two of you are just made from the same cloth. This is what's so hard about your dad when he was living, is just he's so smart and so⁠—not smart. He's bright. You know what I mean? He's really insightful and capable in all of these ways. And then it's not just his addiction; it's definitely his mental health and his spiritual health because he had wounds that he just never worked to heal. They overwhelmed him. And also, he did not try to heal them. I think this is important for me to say to you⁠—

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: ⁠—because you do try to heal your wounds. You do try to come to healing. And this is something that he was never strong enough to do. I mean, this is all from him. This is what he is showing me. This way that you get really excited on a train of thought or an injustice or anything you're working on, and you get really focused on it and really fixated on it, and then it's like a light goes off⁠—something happens, and you're just a little confused and a little like, "Wait. What?" It's hard for you to track your thoughts as much, and you get like, "Wait. What? Is it⁠—I don't know." And then you're kind of deflated.

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: This is so much like your dad. I mean, this is what your dad dealt with, but he had mania in him. I don't know what his diagnoses were, but he struggled with a lot of very intense demons, very loud, very noisy demons. But this thing of losing track of things, losing the thread when the thread was so in your grasp but a second before⁠—he came through, because I was like, "Why is this dude coming through? We have something to talk about here." He came through to show me this and to show me how it's in the family line. It's a thing you inherited from him.

And for him, it led to unending chaos is the way he's showing it to me. He responded with chaos, and that was just like slipping down a mudslide. Your dad was constantly slipping down mudslides, trying to dry off from being in a mudslide. I'm sure he was really fun, but he really struggled. He doesn't know what the answer is, and he just keeps on showing it to me so that I figure out the answer, which⁠—I appreciate his confidence in me, but⁠—

Astra: Sounds like when him and I connect also.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. That makes sense. This is my theory on what your dad is showing me. When you get like that, you've left your body. You've gotten so into your head or so into your heart, your feelings, that you've just abandoned your body. There's leaving, which is like you leave your house. You walk out the door. Before you walk away from the door, you lock the door. And then there's abandoning, which is like jumping out the window and running, leaving everything open.

So you abandon your body to your thoughts and your feelings. You wind yourself up, and you get wound and wound and wound up further about⁠—could be any little thing, not just big things. And then, all of a sudden, you've kind of lost your tether to the ground. Does this make sense?

Astra: Yes, it does. And it spirals me⁠—the spiral up and out is such a good way to put it because it's like I'm seeking an answer, and I'm feeling the truth getting closer and closer around the thing that I'm fixated on. And it seems to be just around the bend of this upwards spiral for hours. And one of two things will happen. Either I will lose interest, or I will start to give myself anxiety because I'm kind of processing multiple outcomes as I'm spiraling up and selecting for each one as I go. So it's kind of an anxiety thing. It's like I start seeing a darkness. I start feeling a fear around mental illness in my lineage, and I think that might be what you're seeing with how it [crosstalk].

Jessica: How it voops out⁠—yeah. Okay. The first thing I'm going to say⁠—weed is terrible for this. Let me just jump in the game, okay? Weed basically mimics this. Smoking weed is this homeopathic thing where you're like, "This is what happens to me when I feel terrible, but if I smoke, then it just makes me feel that way and it's not like a trauma thing." It's just like, "Oh, I'm in this comfort zone." And the reason why I'm calling it a comfort zone is because the reason why this happens is your survival mechanisms at some point or another determined that the best way to feel, the safest place to be, is to feel nothing, essentially, and to be away.

But as a grown-ass adult in a body with actual problems that you are responsible to engage with, it actually feels terrible to you, which is why anxiety nips at its heels. But your survival mechanisms have reason to believe⁠—they really do⁠—that when you get too close to the answer, you're in trouble because if you figure anything out, now what the fuck are you going to do? You have to do something about it. And let's say, to this question that you've asked, you figured out your Gemini that you've caught feelings for isn't good for you because of his drinking. Then what the fuck are you going to do? Then you have to leave him? To date who? Right?

So we have a great reason to never find the answer. What if being around your mom isn't healthy for you, around your own mental health and your own addiction issues? Then what? Where are you going? Are you going to leave your mom? What are you going to say? You've got great reasons to never find the answer to your survival mechanisms, to your fears. So your dad was really helpful for coming in, and I want to thank him for that because we got to it.

But I want to just acknowledge that you, just like all of us, have survival mechanisms that are there for very good reasons. And as we grow up, what happens is we all⁠—those with serious trauma, those without, but certainly those with trauma⁠. I'm involving you in that bucket, thank you. We, at a certain point, realize that our survival mechanisms don't work in all situations, and yet they're the only survival mechanisms we have. And so we have to figure out how to basically put⁠—I'm going to go analog on you and be like, we need a dial on our survival mechanisms, whereas survival mechanisms just come with an on or an off switch; that's it.

Being able to accept that there is something you're getting out of this thing that you want to change in yourself is really foundational to helping you talk to that part of you that's like, "I don't want the fucking answer." Yes, you're a million planets in Scorpio. You're obsessed with the answer. You want nothing but the deepest truth, obviously, 100 percent. Plus you're a fucking Virgo? What? Sagittarius Rising? Yeah. You want the 100 percent of the truth 100 percent of the time, except that you don't.

And so part of being able to engage with this in a healthy way is to give yourself permission to find the truth and not do anything with it. I mean, you've got a Moon/Pluto conjunction, my dude. You feel like, "Well, if I know the truth, I must act immediately and judiciously." You can get really heavy-handed with yourself and even with the people you're close to. But you can figure out, for instance, as an example⁠—and I haven't looked at it yet, so I'm just⁠, you know⁠—you can figure out that you and your mom are not good as roommates, that her drinking is destructive to you. You may learn that. You may learn that in time. You may determine that through our conversation. Anything's possible.

You can determine, "This isn't healthy for me, and her addiction is really not healthy for me to be around, or her dependency is not healthy for me to be around," and not leave⁠—not be able to or not be willing to leave your living situation or meaningfully change your dynamic with her. If you are aware that it's an unhealthy choice and you continue to make it, at least then you're clear, "I'm making choices, and here are my motivations for making those choices. This is what I'm getting out of what I know is an unhealthy situation." You're allowed to do that.

And I want to say before we get into any of the details of your weed use or their drinking, you're allowed to know that something is imperfect and still actively choose to engage with it. And if you don't give yourself that permission, it's going to be difficult to ever make a different choice. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

Astra: It does. And the "perfect" is just such a trigger word because⁠—yeah. The idea of knowing what the right thing to do is or the most right thing to do is and not being able to is really⁠—it makes me feel trapped.

Jessica: Hey. That's real. And also, part of why it's important to accept⁠—let's say, as an example, "My mom's drinking is unhealthy for her; therefore, it's unhealthy for me." Let's say you determine that. "Therefore, living with my mom is unhealthy for me." And let's say you're living with your mom for financial reasons, or you're taking care of her in some way or she's taking care of you in some way that is unrelated to this other truth.

You may determine, "Her substance use is a problem from my perspective for her. Her substance use is a problem from my perspective for me. And this is the best economic choice I can make at this time. And there are other parts of our relationship that are so good and I'm getting so much from, and I'm going to center those two things this month. And I'll make a decision again in 30 days or in 60 days"⁠—whatever you decide.

And in the meantime, if you were to accept, "I can recognize x is imperfect, but y is valuable to me," then you can with that messy truth⁠—Scorpio, Scorpio, Scorpio. With that messy truth, then you can put in place support for yourself. You can, with your therapist or your besties or whatever, work through, "Huh. Maybe this is a pattern in my life. What do I get out of this pattern?" not, "What's wrong with me, and why are these things happening?" but instead, "Okay. I can look around my life and be like, 'Oh, I'm always around people who imbibe a lot and in a way that's on the verge. What is the value of that for me?'" Not, "What's wrong with that?" That's obvious. But, "What's working about that for me?" so that you can understand your own unconscious motivations that are consistently getting you in pretty much the same situation, with varying shades of the same situation.

Astra: It sounds challenging.

Jessica: Yes. And tiny, tiny aside⁠—you're in your Saturn Return. I mean, it hasn't begun in⁠—wait. Has it begun in exactitude? Yeah. It begins June 2nd of this year, and we are recording this at the very end of April. Make no mistake: this is your Saturn Return. This is your Saturn Return. You have Saturn in Pisces, and it's in the third house but hugging the IC, which is the fourth-house cusp. Of course, you're dealing with your family stuff. You're dealing with core family issues which are spiritual and psychological, and you're also dealing with your actual family in your actual housing, right? Fourth house.

If you were hoping that your Saturn⁠—anyone who's like, "Oh, my Saturn Return will be easy because I've done lots of work on myself," I always think⁠ (laughs)⁠—because it's not like a morality test. It's not like a test of how well you've worked on yourself. It's the closure of your childhood. It's the opening of your adulthood. From my perspective as an astrologer, our 20s are the adulthood phase of our childhood, but it's still our childhood. And then that post-Saturn Return⁠—you know, like 29, 30-year-old, until we hit whatever 29 years later⁠—those are our adult years.

Of course, it's going to be fucking hard to go through our Saturn Return. At all stages, it's fucking⁠—eh. So this is yours. And the fact that this is incredibly difficult for you⁠—you fuck with astrology, so you could have known that this would be hard for you, right? And I will tell you that your Saturn Return will be completely over March 1st of 2024. So you really have two separate one-month-long direct hits, but the transit of the Saturn Return we are going to consider not completed until March 1st of 2024, even though it begins June 2nd of 2023.

What this tells me is that you have a year to work on this. And because I see that you have a year to work on this, I want to offer you and your perfectionistic tendencies the expectation that the math doesn't math that you would figure this out a couple weeks before your Saturn Return starts or even in the first two months of your Saturn Return. The math doesn't math. And hopefully that gives you little bit more permission to be in process, because here's the thing. And we're going to get more into substances in a minute, but perfectionism, which⁠—you and me and most everyone else, perfectionism is a plague upon our souls.

But perfectionism is a fixation on outcome which is an abandonment of process. The only way to get it perfect is to do it multiple times and fuck up each of those times some way or another, to some extent or another. Having patience with little things shows you that you can have patience for big things. It's just developing a new skill.

So I'm going to slow myself down and pause and check in and see, is anything up for you? Do you have any questions? Or should we dive into these important relationships?

Astra: So what's coming up for me and seems a little related is that I am really challenged by feeling embarrassed. I feel like I've worked through a lot of my triggers, in a way, and embarrassment is still so hard for me. It sends me spiraling. So what's up with that?

Jessica: It's a couple things, I would say. One is you have a Pluto/Moon conjunction in the twelfth house, but Pluto and the Moon conjoin your Ascendant. It's wide, but you're going to feel it, which makes you controlling about how other people perceive you. You want to call it embarrassment. I'm going to call it⁠—if it came out differently than you meant for it to come out or if it landed to others differently than the way you wanted it to land, it's shame.

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: Now, a little bit more on the embarrassment tip. You got Saturn opposite your fucking Midheaven and the Sun in the tenth house. So Sun in the tenth house, Saturn opposite the Midheaven⁠—you want a good reputation. Again, this is a control thing. It's like you want to feel in control of how you come across, and you want to come across together, like, "Don't worry. I've got that. I've figured that out. Yes, I'm in process with that. Don't worry about that. I've got that. I'm working on it."

And a lot of times, you are good at that. But the embarrassment and the control piece and the shame piece, I would say, kind of all smoosh together. And when you feel embarrassed and then you go home and you're alone with yourself, does the embarrassment spike into shame?

Astra: Yeah. I think about it.

Jessica: Yeah. And then I'm assuming you smoke weed about it.

Astra: Yeah. I smoke weed about it.

Jessica: Of course you do, because it distances you from your fucking feelings and your thoughts. So good job self-medicating. The problem with self-medicating⁠—self-medicating is not inherently wrong. Let's say you have social anxiety and you want to go out, so you drink. You drink for social anxiety, and then you don't have social anxiety anymore because you're buzzed or you're drunk. That doesn't help your social anxiety for the next time. It only helps it in the moment.

Similarly, every time you smoke weed because you're having a shame spike or an embarrassment spike, it helps it in the short term, but it doesn't help⁠—there's no evolution there. Sometimes that's perfectly fine, and then sometimes it's a holding pattern. I would say, for you in this moment, it's a little bit of a holding pattern, from what I'm seeing energetically. And again, it can be a holding pattern, and you can still decide, "This isn't the moment I'm going to heal it." You're in control.

You get to give yourself the authority over your own life to say, "I'm working on x, y, and z, so this is not the fucking month that I'm going to try to pull out my weed use, even if I've become somehow aware in this moment that it's not serving me." You get to decide. And I think this is really important both for your relationship to your own substance use and also for being able to tolerate other people's choices.

I kind of want to stick with your substance use before we go to your crush and your mom. That feel okay?

Astra: Let's do it.

Jessica: Okay.

Astra: That feels great.

Jessica: So you smoke every single day?

Astra: Not every single day. Probably three to five times a week, depending on how busy I am.

Jessica: Are you waking/baking? Are you just⁠, like, after work? What's the habit?

Astra: My preference is after work. Yeah. I come home kind of up and tense, and I come down into the weed and I have a little flow-over awhile, and then that kind of rocks me to sleep. And then, occasionally on a day off, I will do a wake-and-bake to do chores.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. Great. So do you feel concerned about your weed use?

Astra: Sometimes I do. Sometimes I feel hypocritical around being triggered around alcoholism because I have regular weed use as a part of my practice and life. And I hold myself to a high standard around productivity, and so smoking helps me not do that, but then I feel a lot of shame around not having done anything.

Jessica: Right. That makes sense.

Astra: So there's a push and pull on that as well.

Jessica: Yeah. Saturn governs weed and hash.

Astra: Cool.

Jessica: And again, Saturn is at the bottom of your chart. You are not the first or the last person to be having a meaningful moment with weed around their Saturn Return, whether that means starting to smoke too much, recognizing that you're smoking too much, introducing it into your life, taking it out of your life. There's a bazillion ways that that can happen. But Saturn governs weed. And it makes sense because Saturn interrupts productivity but also helps you sometimes to have flow with productivity, right? You mentioned that you like to smoke weed and to do chores, right? It helps you to do that kind of administrative tasks around the house⁠—maybe not the heady ones, but the body ones.

When you say, "I'm not sure that I really have a right to say something about somebody else's substance use when I myself smoke weed," some of that is about shame about your behavior. You have some level of, "My own weed use is not completely aligned, and I have not completely investigated it." That's part of what you're basically saying. And anyone who's ever said, "I don't have a right because I do x⁠"—that means there's some shame and there's not total alignment with your behavior. Let's flag that.

But then I can say you have a right to have boundaries around alcohol and not weed. You have a right to be a loud talker who's emphatic and constantly just being really loud about all your thoughts and feelings, and not like screaming matches even though they're really similar. Wait. What was that face? What was that face? What did that mean?

Astra: That was very specific, like targeting a thing that I have around how I am emphatic and I like teasing and I like joking and I like a roasting, and then it kind of takes a turn in some cases, or when people come at me and their energy is different, I have⁠—and it's exactly the same. I feel like I'm holding them to a standard that I don't hold myself to. And I feel shame around being offended or wanting a boundary.

Jessica: So Mercury in Libra⁠—you have Mercury in Libra square to Mars. It's, again, a bit of a wide square, but it's a square to Mars. Some of what we're looking at with that specific example⁠—also with the example of weed versus alcohol⁠—is certain things are comfortable for you, and other things aren't, period. Why does this have to be so complicated, Scorpio? You know what I'm saying, Virgo? Come on. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

I love wearing the color red. Also, I'm wearing hot pink right now. Give me hot pink. Give me red. But you give me coral, like a salmon⁠—which is definitely in the family⁠—I'm not going to wear it. A red with too much orange in it? I'm not going to wear it. Am I allowed to have the preference that I like a loud fire-engine red, but I don't like an orangey, flamey red? Obviously. Of course I can. It's a subtle difference, but I don't like one red and I do like the other.

It's, on the one hand, perfectly okay that you like razzing on people and being razzed on when it's light and playful and everyone knows that it's just flirtatious, whether it's platonically flirtatious or sexually⁠—doesn't matter. It's just like, "We're fucking around. We're playing." That's fun for you. But the second the energy turns and there's conflict a-brewing, yeah, everything is like, "Nope. I'm out. I'm out," which is very classic of an addict, right? Because with addiction, we don't want to be in certain feelings.

Something that I would say all addicts have in common is, "I don't like certain feelings, and so I'm going to medicate those feelings away." Some of this is just you like bright red and you don't like fiery red. And some of this is, "I don't know how to cope. I don't know who to be. I don't know what's right. I don't know what's wrong. And so, even though I may have been the one to start it, I don't know how to cope."

And this brings us back to your addiction issue because you're coping with your own addictive nature and your own addictive behaviors and your own motivations for substance use that are an addict's motivations⁠—child of addicts, and you have your own addiction issues. One could be a very beginning astrologer and look at all the fucking Scorpio in the twelfth house and be like, "Oh, addiction's a concern here." It doesn't mean you're destined or doomed. It means, yeah, this is going to be a conversation you need to be having with yourself throughout life. Are you addicted to this song? Are you addicted to these pants? Do you have a substance issue? All of these things would be a question, right?

So, coming back to do you have a right to say, "Alcohol triggers me and weed doesn't"? You fucking yes do. Yes, 100 percent. And also, you're not completely in alignment with your own substance use and your own addiction issues, and so you don't want to say to anyone, "You have to be sober," because you're not willing to be sober even though there's a part of you that believes you should be sober.

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: This is a difficult position that a lot of people find themselves where, "I don't want to be sober, but I don't want to be around addicts." And the older you get, the harder it is to find people who have a healthy, balanced relationship to substance use, especially when you are drawn to addictive people or you yourself are partaking in your own addictions in your own way.

There isn't a tidy, perfect, clean, Virgonian bow I can put on this box for you. It's messy. I'm sorry. I know. It's messy. And that's where it needs to be. Okay. Think of it this way. Do you ever craft or do witchy projects?

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: Think of this issue as a big, beautiful vintage wooden table⁠—that's my aesthetic, maybe not yours, but we're going with it⁠—big, long table, like in the magician card in the tarot. So it's a big, long table, and you have all kinds of tools. Some of them are tools that you've got wrapped up with tidy little bows and you know exactly what they're for, and some of them are tools that you haven't yet used. Some of them are just messy because you have been using them, or you haven't used them in a long time⁠—all that kind of stuff.

That's what this is. It's a project that you're engaged in. It's not a mess that you have to tidy up right now. It's a project that you're engaged in. Does that shift it a little?

Astra: Yeah. That released a lot.

Jessica: Okay. Great. Good.

Astra: That released a lot.

Jessica: Good. So come back to that visualization when you get into your perfectionistic stuff. It's like, "Okay. This is what I'm doing." And if you do any kind of spiritual ritual work or any kind of arts and crafts stuff, you know you can't just fucking do a thing and then it's done and then you clean up your room. No. It has to stay on the table sometimes for a month or a couple months. That's just how it goes, because you're working on it. And sometimes the muse is loud and clear, and sometimes the muse isn't in the room. And you have to heed that. Same thing with healing.

Astra: The messiness in my room with my projects and with my spell work is also a part of this, which is coming to light, too, because I have shame around, "Oh, my desk is such a mess. Oh, my room looks like this. Oh, I don't clean up right after myself." So, when you were saying that, it was just showing me, literally, it's all the same feeling. It's all the same feeling.

Jessica: Yep.

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: That's where that "so above and below" expression comes from. I had set up this ritual to do for myself, I think two years ago, and I really meant to do it. And then the energy was never there. It was just never there for two years, and I always had it in my office for two years. And then, just maybe a week and a half ago, I looked at it and I was like, "Oh, I feel a yes." And I just did the ritual, and it was done.

If I had shamed myself around this particular ritual, then I wouldn't have been able to give myself the gift of doing it in its right time. Our own psychological and spiritual and material evolution is just the same. Theoretically, you could figure out the answer, act on the answer, and keep on going. We are complex, and emotional evolution is messy. And such a fucking Capricorn thing, a visual that I always return to, but I think of emotions as a corgi with a cone on its head. Have you ever seen a corgi with a cone on its head?

Astra: It's delightful.

Jessica: It's delightful, but it's also lacking in grace, just bumping into things⁠—like, the cone⁠—because they have such short legs. It's a mess. You really can't expect a corgi with a cone on its head to move very fast. You need to help it a lot. So that's a lot of what our emotional development is like.

All of this said, it is wise for you to continue to stay in conversation with yourself and with people you trust about your own substance use. And in the meantime of that, you are entitled to and allowed to have boundaries with other people. What you are not entitled to is being an asshole or putting out ultimatums.

An ultimatum is, "If you don't do x, I will leave you or I will punish you in some way." However, a boundary is, "I know I need to not be around people who are drinking every day. That is not something I can do in a healthy way. And if that's something you need to do, I'm going to go take care of myself, and I'm probably going to have to remove myself from this situation just to take care of me."

Same thing on its head. It kind of can look, on its face, very much the same. But an ultimatum and a boundary are two different things. An ultimatum⁠, you're placing the onus on the other person, and a boundary, you're taking responsibility for your own needs. This is a real trigger for you because you're like, "I don't know how to do that, and I don't think I can. And therefore, I don't even want to look at this because I don't want to have to do this."

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Jessica: So let's get into it. Do we start with the crush, or do we start with the mom?

Astra: Let's start with the crush.

Jessica: Okay. And is he somebody you're dating?

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: So will you say his full name for me?

Astra: [redacted]

Jessica: So he smokes weed and he drinks?

Astra: Yeah. He smokes a little.

Jessica: And he gets drunk?

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: Mm-hmm. Blacks out?

Astra: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Yeah. Are you around when he does?

Astra: Sometimes.

Jessica: Mm-hmm. Are you somebody who wants to have kids and get married and all that kind of stuff?

Astra: Yeah. I'm looking for a baby daddy for sure.

Jessica: Oh. Okay. So, if you want somebody who can coparent with you and you want that in sooner years than later years⁠—is that something you're thinking in the next 15 years, or are you thinking the next five years?

Astra: I'm thinking in the next five years.

Jessica: Okay. So, if you want to coparent with an equal partner in five years and you're dating somebody who gets blackout drunk and drinks daily⁠—great guy, charismatic, smart, kind. But is he starting to sound like someone to you? Is it sounding at all familiar?

Astra: I did it again, Jessica. I did it again.

Jessica: It's your dad.

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Your dad's great. Your dad's great. [crosstalk]

Astra: My boyfriend has a job, though, so…

Jessica: So how old is your boyfriend right now?

Astra: 31.

Jessica: And when your dad was 31, did he have a job?

Astra: Probably. Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Alcoholism is degenerative.

Astra: Yeah. That's true.

Jessica: It will either degenerate or you will get sober⁠—for most people. There's some people who are an exception to that, but that's for most people. So he has a job, but do you think he could coparent with you?

Astra: Not in this condition, no.

Jessica: And does he express to you any desire to change his condition?

Astra: He has.

Jessica: Let me reframe that. When he is sober⁠—not hungover, just sober⁠—does he ever express a clear desire to change?

Astra: He doesn't initiate that kind of talk sober without some conversation. So, usually, it's me initiating a conversation about the drinking, discussing boundaries around it, and then him kind of expressing his desire to⁠—well, and you used the word "sober." He hasn't expressed an explicit desire to get sober.

Jessica: Correct. It took you a long time to get there, girl. The answer is no. He has never expressed any desire to get sober⁠—to not be as bad, to not upset you, to of course be a little less intense, but no, no willingness or desire to be sober. Listen. You've got a Moon/Pluto conjunction in the twelfth house. Your mom ended up with an addict who essentially abandoned her to take care of everything. And I'm guessing there's some version of that in her parents' marriage. Is that true?

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: Yeah. So you're in your Saturn Return. This is where we make choices that lead us straight into repeating our familial patterns or breaking them. This guy is charming and lovely and fun, and you're in your 20s. If you didn't want to have babies and get married in the next five years, I'd say fuck him. Play with him. Have fun. Fall in love. Get your heart broken. Do it. You're young. I got no problem with that except for the fact that you want babies in the next five years, and you could easily get pregnant with this guy. Right? He's a cis guy?

Astra: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Which, by the way, is a whole other conversation. Are you having safer sex? Because I don't know that you are.

Astra: No, we're not.

Jessica: Yeah. It's fucking bananas. I don't know what state you live in, but have you looked at the news? I don't know what you're doing here.

Astra: I know.

Jessica: It's not what I would characterize as grounded, self-loving self-protection, because you're dating your dad. Do you have the right to be concerned about his drinking? Fuck yeah, you do. Fuck yeah, you do. Is his drinking concerning? Ten out of ten, yes. His drinking is very fucking concerning. I'm surprised that you framed it as a dependency when I asked these simple questions I've asked and when I look at him energetically. He is an alcoholic. He's a young alcoholic, so he's doing fine now. It fucks up his life here and there. It fucks up relationships here and there.

Let me put it this way. If you go to a bar with a bunch of people in their 20s, it looks a certain kind of way. Do you ever go to bars with people in their late 30s and their 40s and their 50s? Do you ever go to those bars?

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: Feels different, doesn't it?

Astra: It does, yeah.

Jessica: Sure does. How about a bar with a bunch of 60- and 70-year-olds? How does that feel? The same behavior with drinking over time and with age becomes a different thing. Either a person wants to change because⁠—you know. You know. You know this through and through, that quitting drinking is fucking hard. Changing your behavior with alcohol is really hard. It's not just hard on you physically or mentally⁠—socially. It's socially, because the world will continue to drink around you. If all of your friends drink, as all of his friends do, that means you lose all of your friends.

It's very hard to get sober, and this is not a person who has any intention of getting sober. Let me disavow you of whatever fantasies you're running here. He has zero intentions of getting sober, ever, okay? So I'm not saying he won't change his mind one day, but what? You're going to change his mind? Are you going to be the woman who changes a man? For the record, for the podcast, you are making barfing faces. Yes.

Astra: I did a little gagging noise. I don't know if you heard the gagging, but I was doing some gagging.

Jessica: Yeah. It was gagging. It was gagging. So that's the answer.

Astra: It's so funny how I can have the paradigm of, "Oh yeah, I'd never be the person who thinks that they can come into a man's life and change him," but around the addiction, around the drinking, like⁠—I just want him to change for me because I wish my dad changed for me. And I'm just so blind to it.

Jessica: Yeah. And your dad didn't change for your mom.

Astra: No.

Jessica: He didn't change for you. And this guy's not going to either. I'm sorry.

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: So he's fun. And if you can change your goal and you no longer want kids, sweet fucking Jesus, bag that thing up. Get yourself an IUD, an IUD. It's 2023. Get yourself an IUD. May I disavow you of the fantasy that having his baby would change him?

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: It won't. It just won't. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a dick, but I want⁠—I mean, how often are you talking to somebody who can predict⁠—you know what I mean? This is like you gotta take care of yourself here. Right?

Astra: Oh, no. Yeah. I feel you.

Jessica: So what this boils down to is do you really want what you say you want? Do you really want kids in five years? Because if you want kids in five years, staying with this person interrupts that goal. It doesn't matter how much you love him. It doesn't matter how sweet he is. In my life⁠—and I'm confident I've said this on the podcast more than twice, but I am a big believer in the television show that you can now watch on YouTube because it's old, called Deal or No deal with Howie Mandel. Have you heard me say this before?

Astra: I have. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. So this is a Deal or No Deal moment where the Universe is saying, "Charming alcoholic reminds you of your father. Maybe he'll change. Deal or no deal?" And you have the opportunity to keep on saying, "Yeah, I'll take this deal. This is a great deal for me. I believe in this deal," or to say, "No deal." And then the Universe will give you another version of the same shit so that you say, "No deal," until you actually mean it when you say, "No deal."

The way we break our patterns is by saying no to our patterns⁠—no to our patterns with a charming smile, no to our patterns with a hat on, no to our patterns with open-toed shoes. We have to say no to our patterns no matter how they show up. And this guy has shown up in the most obvious and literal form. So that lets me know that this will be like⁠—if you break the pattern, if you say, "No deal," this will be your first time because this is⁠—my God. He could be the poster child for your pattern, right? This guy.

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: This guy. You don't have to wait until he gives you a reason. You don't have to wait until things get better. If you do decide to end it, you can say, "I really want to be coparenting with somebody"⁠—and this is where you get fucked up because you can't say that you want coparent with somebody who's sober, because what would happen to your weed use if you were with somebody who's sober? But you can say that you don't want to be with somebody who drinks the way he drinks to coparent, that that doesn't feel like a safe thing.

Astra: Yeah. It's not safe.

Jessica: It isn't. And anyone who was raised by an alcoholic parent or abandoned by an alcoholic parent will testify to that, right? You're one of them. It's just not safe. And unless he's taking active steps to find his own balance or sobriety, why should you believe that that's what he wants? Because it's so difficult to do, if he's not doing it⁠—and maybe him losing someone that he truly loves or is falling in love with will be a meaningful help for him to find his own healthy place. And maybe it won't. You don't get to control that part. All you can to do is make choices that are in alignment with what is healthy and right for you.

And also, again, you can hear this, you can agree with this, and you can keep on driving this car off the cliff. That's fine. You have free will, and you need to give yourself permission to have that free will.

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: I'm sorry.

Astra: It's okay. I knew.

Jessica: I mean, yeah. I mean, this was⁠—

Astra: That's what's waiting at the end of the spiral, unfortunately.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. So that brings us to your mom. Now, why are you living with your mom right now?

Astra: It is economic. I was raised by my grandmother, which is her mother, so I didn't spend a lot of my childhood with my mother either. And at the end of last year, my job was unstable. I had a rent situation, so I left my big city because I couldn't really afford it, and it wasn't really working for me. And I was kind of feeling super restless and like I needed to turn stuff upside down. I landed here for a little bit to kind of figure out what I'm going to do next.

Jessica: Are you figuring out what you're going to do next?

Astra: Kind of. It's been a lot more challenging than I thought. I don't have as much⁠—sorry.

Jessica: No, it's okay.

Astra: I don't have as much clarity around what I want anymore.

Jessica: Yeah. Are you working a job as well?

Astra: I'm working a job. I was working part time thinking that I wasn't going to stay here, but it's feeling like I might stay here. So I'm looking for a more permanent job.

Jessica: Okay. And is it looking like you're going to stay there because of the boy?

Astra: Yeah. So that kind of⁠—enter stage left⁠—a new paradigm.

Jessica: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. Will you say your mom's full name? And we're going to beep this out.

Astra: [redacted]

Jessica: What do you call her?

Astra: I call her Mama.

Jessica: What's her last name?

Astra: [redacted]

Jessica: Much better. Thank you. Does she take pills as well?

Astra: Not that I know of.

Jessica: Okay. She's not on any kind of psych medications?

Astra: No, but that's her history.

Jessica: So she has a history with pill addiction?

Astra: Yeah. When she was seeking help for psychological stuff, she was in a lot of studies and she had some dependency issues. It moved into some harder stuff for a chapter of her life. And now, as far as I know, it's just drinking and a little bit of weed here and there.

Jessica: Okay. And the drinking is daily?

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: What is she drinking?

Astra: Beer and liquor.

Jessica: Okay. Yeah. Does she kind of drink herself to sleep?

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. And you're calling this a dependency?

Astra: Mm-hmm.

Jessica: Just as a fun Virgonian experiment, I'm going to give you homework to actually Google reputable definitions of addiction and dependency because I think you may be using the wrong word, Virgo. Sorry.

Astra: Actually, I'm never wrong, so⁠—no. I'm kidding.

Jessica: Okay. Well played. Well played. That's totally fair and totally true. You're right. I think this would be helpful for you. And I also think it might be helpful for you to find a local or a Zoom-based remote Al-Anon meeting for children of addicts and see what comes up. I mean, we already know your dad was an addict, and maybe your mom is not; maybe she is. I mean, I'm calling her an addict. That's not fair, but whatever. I think it could be really helpful for you in sorting through your stuff, and it's separate from your own weed use. Okay?

Astra: Okay.

Jessica: It's not completely separate, but a lot of people who are in Al-Anon have their own addictions, and a lot of people don't. You are where you are, and that's okay. So let's just start there. You don't have to be perfect to go and get help. So, in terms of your mother's drinking, it is no bueno for you. I mean, it's not good for her. It's kind of sad, eh?

Astra: Yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. Your mom's substance use looks really sad. She's sad, and she's drinking⁠—I mean, alcohol is a depressant. Is that the word? Yeah. A depressant. I might be seeing this wrong, right? I'm not there. I'm looking at this psychically. But I'm concerned that you're calling this a dependency, because it looks really dramatic to me. So⁠—

Astra: It's pretty dramatic.

Jessica: Do you think addiction means homelessness or addiction means can't walk or keep a conversation? Do you have a very dramatic interpretation of what addiction is?

Astra: A little bit is that, and a little bit is, when I can see why, when I see a direct correlation between the wound and the ointment, I am calling it that because I understand she's doing it not to feel the sadness. She is dependent upon that substance to not feel the thing.

Jessica: I see. Well, just so you know, every single addict across the globe has a why. Everyone does. Everyone has a wound that they're medicating. There's not bad addicts and good addicts, addicts who are justified and addicts who aren't. Everyone is struggling who loses track of themselves to addiction⁠—everybody, whether it's a shopping addiction or substance addiction, whatever the fuck it is. And so, while that's very twelfth-house empathetic take, it's also, I think, a little bit of a misunderstanding. You're like, "Well, if I get it, then it's not really addiction. If I see that that self-medication actually does work 20 percent"⁠—that's still addiction. It's still addiction.

Your mom's substance use looks deeply concerning. And again, she's not interested in changing it. She's not interested in getting "help." She doesn't want to hear about it. She has certain buzzes where she's happy to talk about it. If you catch her at the right moment of her buzz, she's really happy to talk about it, and she's so smart that she can talk about it in what sounds like a good way. But that buzz⁠—it's like she's eased into her buzz, and she isn't wasted yet. So, if you catch her in that moment, you can have a great conversation that makes you feel better about her abuse of alcohol. And this makes sense; you know what I'm referring to, correct?

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: Okay. So I guess I'll just leave that there because that's not the same thing as asking for help or desiring change. That's just what comes up for her in a particular part of her buzz and her pattern with her addiction. This is not a good environment for you. If your mom wants help, I think that you can make a decision to try to help her, as long as you have boundaries⁠—or not.

If she doesn't want help, you can make the decision to try to help her whether she wants it or not, and that's a whole other conversation, like a whole other hour-long conversation, which is, again, why I'm telling you to go to Al-Anon, because you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Telling somebody, "I'm worried about you. I need you to change," over and over and over again⁠—they just tune it out. You have to find a way to communicate.

If she's sober long enough during the hours⁠—even if she⁠—I don't know. When I look at this, it looks very dramatic to me. So I'm concerned for you that there's some cognitive dissonance here about what's happening at home and what's happening with your mom. Again, this is another table full of a lot of messy tools, some of which need to be thrown the fuck away. Some need to be used. Some need to be used differently. It's a messy table, but it's a worktable. So, before you get⁠—I was catching you getting really overwhelmed. We just want to come back to visualizing this is a big magician's table. It's the beginning of the suit of⁠—you fuck with tarot. I keep on using tarot metaphors. You fuck with tarot, right?

Astra: I do. That's my main⁠—

Jessica: Okay. Great. Good. So the magician is right at the start of the major arcana. Haven't even hit the suits. We haven't even hit the fucking⁠—any of the other cards, right? So there's a lot of growth to be done from this table. This is a messy table, and also, it's not her table; it's your table. You can't make decisions for her. You can't fix her. You can't save her. All you can do is show up in the best way you know how.

But you don't need this table to be tidy. It's not an option, actually. It's not an option. Can't have a tidy table on this topic. It's just not an option. And you have choices to make. I will say that if you're still living with your mom in 2024, I imagine it's going to be very challenging for you because you have a bunch of Saturn transits coming up. And I think it will be⁠, yeah, quite challenging. It doesn't mean bad, but it's not going to be easy, and I think it will make it hard to leave, ever, a little bit.

Your mom⁠—her self-care is diminishing. Have you noticed in the period of time you've lived with her?

Astra: Yes.

Jessica: Mm-hmm. So I do think it's important for you to make decisions around whether or not you want to provide for her care, help her interrupt her addiction to get into a program, something like that⁠—and again, don't make these decisions today. You're calling it a dependency, and I'm saying she needs a program. We're having very different ways of looking at this conversation. And of course, I'm a psychic. I don't fucking know anything. Trust yourself. Also, you can help her from an apartment in town. You can help her from a different city. You can help her from your house.

I will say that this is a lot for you. I also will say the way you wrote your question, the way you framed this whole thing, was like, "What right do I⁠—smokes weed three to five times a week⁠—what right do I have to have any kind of thoughts or boundaries or judgments around my mother's dependency?"⁠ The way you framed that is⁠—and again, please do tell me if I'm seeing this wrong, but it's so dramatically different than what the situation actually is because your mom's drinking herself into oblivion every single day. And her ability to cope with her life is diminishing before you. That's not the same thing as smoking weed five times a week, even if one of those days you wake and bake or two of those days you wake and bake.

Astra: Yeah. I just feel so obligated to protect her.

Jessica: That's right. That's fair. It's partially how you love. I mean, she's your mom. And also, all this twelfth-house Scorpio stuff⁠—it's like, "We keep our family stuff secret. I protect them, and that's how I get them to take care of me." Yeah. And the truth is you can protect her. But pretending that she doesn't have a problem that's kind of ravaging her health is not protecting her; it's enabling her. Again with the Al-Anon⁠—protecting her is helping her get sobriety is what I would say. Get help.

And can a person who smokes weed seven days a week⁠—which is not what you said, but let's say you have a week where you smoke weed seven days a week⁠—can that person identify somebody else suffers from alcoholism and help them get help? Yes. Of course. Yes. It can be messy. You don't have to be perfect and sober to help somebody else get healthier.

Your mom has a lot of things going on, and you're not going to fix them or solve them on your own, because you're a person, and also because you're her kid, and also because you have your own problems. It's like all the things. She needs help, but it can't be only help from you. And she doesn't want help at this time, and neither does your boyfriend. So the question you have to ask yourself is, if you can accept⁠—if you believe⁠—so it's me, some psychic, saying these two people don't want help. They don't want to change their behaviors. I don't know if you believe that. You don't have to answer that in this moment, but it's something for you to sit with.

If you determine that these are not people who actively want help⁠—they're not saying they want help; you want them to want help, but there's no evidence to support that they currently want help⁠—then you have choices to make around how to take care of yourself in those intimate relationships. And what you have to decide for yourself is, do you want help? Do you want help coping with your own childhood trauma and your own patterns around loving people who suffer from addiction? Do you want help with figuring out how to deal with your own motivations and behaviors around substance use?

Those are things that are in your control, that you can figure out for yourself. Then you can come up with boundaries and behaviors and ways of psychologically and spiritually holding these things. The first step is always acceptance. It's always self-awareness/acceptance. It has to be the foundation. That's the table. And it's okay that you come into acceptance, and then you abandon that acceptance, and then you tell yourself an old story, and then you come back to it. It's okay that it's messy.

This is not a straight shot forward, because what I said to you, for instance, about the boyfriend⁠—you knew it, although you also seemed shocked when I said you were dating your father. So you did and you didn't, and you did and you didn't, and you did and you didn't. And do I expect we're going to get off this call and you're going to call him and end it? No, I don't, because that's not how humans work. You have to come to this in your own way, in your own time.

I don't want you to feel like, "Oh, now that I have an answer, I must act on that answer." That's not realistic. It's not healthy. You need to find yourself within it and make a call for yourself one way or another. And your decision today might be hold him tight and double down on the relationship, and your decision the next day may be take a little space; feel into your feelings. You can ebb and flow. Twelfth-house stellium. You can ebb and flow as long as you remember to resource yourself.

That's the key, to not just be that balloon that isn't tethered to anything, but to remember to kind of ritualistically/routinely bring yourself back down into your body and to check in: "Where am I today? What can I tolerate today? What can I do today?" So where are you at? How did that land? Do you have any final question? What's up?

Astra: I'm definitely feeling the urge to immediately act on all the truths⁠—

Jessica: Yes. Uh-huh.

Astra: ⁠—and having some new awareness around the ways that that has not served me in the past, recognized I've thought that to be virtuous. So that's a good shift to know that I can take time and I can wait. I'm just kind of stuck in making plans. I can't stop.

Jessica: So let me just give you this frame. Again, we're recording this at the end of April. Mercury goes direct on May 14th. So maybe you give yourself this Mercury Retrograde⁠—less than three weeks⁠—to do your rule of re's and do your reflection and your reassessing and your recalibrating so that you do the inner work of sitting with truths and letting them be messy, and not step forward and kind of speak your truths, whatever you've determined them to be, however you determine is best, until you've done your reflecting.

I don't know if you remember this, but Mercury Retrograde is in Taurus, and that Retrograde chart got kicked off with a Moon conjunction to Mercury. This is all happening in your sixth house and opposing your fucking stellium stuff. It's good to sit in your body and to be uncomfortable with the mess. You could say it was written. So that helps a little to just be like, there's⁠—again, I'm just going to encourage you also, as a piece of homework, to just really go fucking full nerdy, every tarot deck, especially the old-school ones, about what the magician's table is. Make it your own, but maybe learn more about it because you're Virgo, so you like to do that research, right?

Really get into the magician's table. Start to use that more so that you are tapping into what feels like a doing when you're in the stage of the magician, which is not a doing; it's a preparing for the doing. It's a bringing together of your powers. And also, you're not a fucking magician. You're a witch. So it doesn't have to be tidy in the way that fucking card is written. Tarot cards can be very puritanical. We don't want to get puritanical here. Let this be Plutonian. Let this be twelfth house. Again, let it be messy and emo and go circular instead of linear. That's, honestly, the move.

And I'll just kind of bring it back down to your Saturn Return. Everyone who's going through a Saturn Return in fucking Pisces is dealing with the need for spiritual, psychological, and material boundaries, and I just think that's so hard. Saturn in Pisces is not chill, because Pisces is just like, "I don't want to be contained. I just want to be devotional in the way I love, and I want to be interconnected, and I want flow." And Saturn's like, "Yeah, but fucking reality. But fucking time. But true and false. But morality. And what will other people think?" So it's very hard for Pisces. It's very hard for Pisces.

But so much of what we've talked about, so much of this magician's table metaphor, is we've got this stable, sturdy table, the tradition of standing at the table with all your witch's tools, and yet we're working with the ethereal, and we're not rushing time. Again, hopefully this tool and metaphor⁠—you can work with it, reject it, whatever works for you. But I encourage you to play with it through your Saturn Return, a.k.a. the next year-ish⁠—a little more than a year⁠—because I think it will help you to give yourself permission when your habit is to take that permission away from yourself.

I guess the very final thing I'll say is that your dad's got nothing to add. He came and he did the best possible thing he can do for you, which is show me how chaotically he impacted you, and also how much you loved each other, and also how you feel. He showed up in the only way he really knew how, and it was very loving. And also, he's not getting in your way. You know what I mean? This is kind of like, again, Saturn Returny. It's like you coming into you, you determining what kind of an adult you want to be.

And you don't have to get it right. Saturn Return⁠ is not about not making mistakes. It's, if you're going to make mistakes, make the right mistakes, because we all fuck up during our Saturn Return. We all make mistakes during our Saturn Return. The key is don't make the same mistakes you made as a kid or the mistakes of your parents instead of your mistakes. Make the best possible mistakes. That's how we evolve. That's how we grow. And that's something both your parents struggle with.

So you're allowed to struggle with it. And also, you're already kind of further along than they've gotten in this regard, if that makes sense, which is not⁠—I'm not trying to be hierarchical, but just to validate you're on the right path. It's just a slow fucking path.

Astra: Well, that's cool.

Jessica: How are you feeling?

Astra: Well, in that last part, there was kind of this underlying fear of ending up like my parents. I do kind of have some choices to make around where I want to end up.

Jessica: Yeah.

Astra: Like this is kind of the moment for that. And yeah, I look forward to implementing a lot of messiness in my practice and maybe releasing some judgment I have around being witchy and being influenced and participating in magic.

Jessica: That's perfect. I mean, it's right on time. And I think it's good to have a healthy and balanced amount of fear about not becoming our parents. I'm not going to say don't be scared of not becoming your parents. I think it's a great fear. It's just don't let that fear be 50 percent of your fucking identity or your process; it's a good 10 percent or smaller, something that you return to as a guard post, because what that really is is checking in on our ancestral patterns and being like, "Oh. This is an ancestral pattern. My parents were great. Look. They showed me exactly what not to do, so I can keep returning to it to be making sure, 'Oh, I'm not doing that? Excellent,' or, 'I am doing this thing that they did great? Beautiful.'"

We don't want to throw out all the survival mechanisms. We don't want to throw out all of the fears. They have a purpose. It's about that balance. Now, do you have something scheduled for after our conversation?

Astra: Not exactly. I do have an event tonight, but I don't have to leave in this moment.

Jessica: Okay. Great. So, if you can, my advice to you is to take a walk, ideally somewhere nice. So, if you're around houses, somewhere with nice gardens, take a walk. I'm not going to tell you not to smoke weed tonight. I am going to give you the advice, when you're like, "Okay. I'm ready to smoke now," wait 10 to 20 minutes before you actually do it. That's all.

Astra: Okay.

Jessica: Just notice what comes up in those 10 to 20 minutes. That's all. That's the only remediation I'm going to say. Don't smoke immediately after the reading if you can avoid it. Go take a walk. It will do some of what weed does for you without any of the leaving-your-body stuff.

Astra: Okay.

Jessica: Okay?

Astra: All right. Roger that.

Jessica: Okay. Good. That's what I need to tell you. Okay.

Astra: Thank you so much, Jessica. I am so, so, so grateful.

Jessica: It's so my pleasure.