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: Lavender, welcome to the podcast.

Lavender: Hi.

Jessica: Hi. What would you like a reading about today?

Lavender: I'll read my question.

Jessica: Perfect.

Lavender: "For as long as I can remember, I've been afraid of literally everything. I've never felt grounded or secure despite growing up in a safe and stable environment. Although I've learned how to mask my fears in order to get on in the world, inside, I'm still the same highly strung, scared child. I'm wondering if there's any information in my chart that might explain this fearfulness and suggest how to work with it."

Jessica: And you were born July 20th, 1981, 8:10 a.m. in Guelph, Ontario.

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: I want to start with something really specific you said in your question, this feeling of not being able to be grounded, because you know you have no earth in your chart; it would not make sense for you to feel super grounded. Not only do you⁠—I mean, you do have a Midheaven in Taurus, and you have Chiron in Taurus. But that's not going to be super helpful for you feeling grounded.

You also have your Sun in Cancer in the twelfth house. You've got your Moon in Pisces, and you've got a bunch of Libra in you, with Venus on your Leo Rising. And it's just a lot of astro details. But all of those things, in various ways, make you really sensitive, really sensitive to the energies of other people and of environments. And in addition to that, it is hard to find your grounding in your body, sometimes in time, sometimes in location.

Lavender: Oh yeah. I mean, when I'm going out in the world, sometimes I feel like I have no skin on. And if I'm around people who are having a rough time of it, I just kind of soak it up. And it's taken me a long time to try to find a way of enforcing these energetic boundaries. But in the last few years, it's just gotten harder and harder to do.

Jessica: Yeah. And in the last few years, do you mean during the pandemic?

Lavender: Yeah, definitely. But I feel like 2018, 2019⁠—it's like I started to feel really depleted. It got harder to do. During the pandemic, I was alone. It's like I hit a breaking point during the pandemic for sure. And recently, like the last couple years, I just have found myself really shutting off from people and kind of becoming an irritable and unpleasant person because I just feel too sensitive to be in this world.

Jessica: Okay. I'm sorry to hear that. So there's layers, right? So, as we start to unpack it, it's not exactly fear. It's overwhelm and permeability that makes you feel terrible. And so it sounds like you have fear of being around people or being in situations because you don't have confidence in your own ability to manage the world. Am I hearing this right?

Lavender: Yeah. But you know what? It's interesting. When I was a really small child, I hid from everybody. I was terrified of people. My favorite place to hang out was under my mother's skirts with my arms wrapped around her legs. If we ever had company over, I would be hiding under a table or behind the couch. I've always had this deep terror of people.

Jessica: I'm going to have you say your full name out loud for me, and we're going to beep it out.

Lavender: Okay. [redacted]

Jessica: What's your mom's maiden last name?

Lavender: [redacted]

Jessica: Yeah. There she is. Okay. Great. There's lots of layers. The first one is you have a Venus/Ascendant conjunction in Leo. And if you open any astrology book, it's going to be like, "You love people; people love you. You're the queen of the party. You love to socialize." Right? It's super annoying, I'm guessing.

Lavender: I have had surface-level confidence. I can walk into a party where I don't know anybody, but I can do it; it just feels like I'm playing a role, and my energy is depleted in about an hour.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. Great. This is really helpful to hear. Layers and layers and layers. I'm going to stick with this grounded thing because getting grounded is not a great goal for you, because you don't have a lot of earth in your chart. And you do need some form of what we call grounding. But what is kind of self-appropriate for you is getting centered. Getting centered and getting grounded are very different things, but they have the same kind of effect. It's connecting to the self, not just through the meat suit, but through the meat suit, which is where a lot of the emotional stuff lives.

I want to first and foremost say that developing a practice around identifying when you're no longer centered and returning to your center is going to be really important. Does that make sense, or does that sound kind of cryptic?

Lavender: Oh, it totally makes sense. Yeah.

Jessica: Okay. Good. Have you ever done Pilates?

Lavender: Yeah. I love it.

Jessica: Okay. So the thing I like about⁠—I mean, there's lots of great things about Pilates, but the thing I like about Pilates in this conversation is it teaches you where your core is.

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: And if you have the body habit of being able to isolate your core, that's where I would encourage you to start, to take a physical move, like an isolate-your-core moment, flex those abdominals, and then breathe into your abdominals, which is the center of your body. And call your energy into your center. Because you've got this twelfth-house Sun and you've got your Pisces Moon, visualizing is probably a good tool for you; is that correct?

Lavender: Yeah. Definitely.

Jessica: It might be helpful for you to watch nature videos or space videos or cartoons that are woo and get yourself a really good visual of energy coming from all over the universe⁠—that's your energy⁠—and calling it back home to your center. And as you do this, you can visualize at the same time all the energy that is not yours that is in your center being forced out by the same energy that calls your own energy in. Does that spark a visual for you at all?

Lavender: Definitely.

Jessica: Cool.

Lavender: I'm an artist, and I've always had a daily art practice, which has been very, very helpful to me. And I can't imagine living without it, but I've never really approached it with that level of intention.

Jessica: That's the move because with grounding, it's going to be different, right? But for somebody like you who has a lot of water⁠—I mean a lot of water, and you got a lot of fire, and you got a lot of air, right? You're going to need to work with your energies so that you can stay in connection with yourself because water and air and fire are so easily dispersed. And so this is where that visual kind of comes from, is this force of your energy coming home also being the same force that forces things that are not yours out can really work for you.

And whether you want to incorporate this into your creative art practice is kind of something you can do cyclically over the course of time or not. But this is something that I would say doesn't have to take a whole lot of time. You could do it on a bus. You could do it in a meeting. You could do it in the bathroom. And I would recommend doing it several times a day, certainly making the intention of doing it at least once or twice a day, like when you wake up, before you go to sleep, but any time you start to feel anxiety.

That's how you know one of two things is happening. One is you've lost contact with your center; you've lost your energy somehow. Or two, there is an actual danger. And sometimes you feel anxious because there's a reason to be anxious, and we don't want to strip from you that that is actually useful. Hold on. Let me just ground into this because even as I'm saying it, as I'm talking through this stuff, I'm feeling the way in which you make this effort to be here⁠—and your effort to be here is kind of at the cost of linear thinking and feeling super grounded.

This is a terrible visual, but it's what I got, so I'm going to just share it with you. It's kind of like trying to force a puppy to drink water. It's just kind of aggressive for no real reason. It doesn't work. And so I want to notice that even as we're starting to have this conversation, I'm feeling you do that thing. And did you notice yourself doing that, where you're just kind of starting to lose focus a little bit?

Lavender: You know what? I can feel it in my stomach.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.

Lavender: It's tightening.

Jessica: So this is when, every single time this happens⁠—and I'm going to say 99 percent of times that this happens⁠—you're not breathing.

Lavender: You're right.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. Cool. That's good. That is very workable. So, the second this happens, every time this happens⁠—and it will take months or years for you to really click this because it's such a deep thing for you⁠—your first thought should be, "Oh, I'm not breathing." And then breathe into that place, whether it's in your stomach or in your gut or in your throat, whatever comes up, because it'll move around. It's probably usually in your stomach, but it moves. So you want to breathe into⁠—like actually fill up your lungs with air and breathe into that part of your body.

What I like to do and I find to be the most helpful is to say your full name out loud in your head three times. So you might use nicknames. You might use your government name. You can use all the names, whatever resonates for you. A lot of times, when we're working through patterns of rejecting ourselves in some way, which is kind of what you're unconsciously doing as a way to survive, what I think can happen is we go into, "How do I fix this? How do I fix this? How do I fix this?" instead of, "How do I get here? How do I resource myself?"

Lavender: Oh yeah.

Jessica: Does it make sense?

Lavender: Yeah. Wow.

Jessica: Yeah. So we can sit with that for a minute because the thing about your childhood is it looks like your parents really enjoyed taking care of you. Is that true?

Lavender: There's a lot of depression in my family. I know that my mother had quite a lot of depression. To be honest, a lot of my memories of childhood are of being alone. But I don't have a lot of memories of my father. He and my mother were together, but I didn't see very much of him, and I was very clingy to my mother. But I don't think she was able to be totally present at times.

Jessica: Okay. There's a couple things I want to respond to in that. The first is you got Saturn square Mercury and Mars. You know?

Lavender: (laughs)

Jessica: So yeah. I mean, you being raised in an environment where your parent or guardian just couldn't because of depression, because of having a really, really, really full plate, and that leading to you either being alone or feeling like you were alone⁠—yes. #Astrologyworks. Right? Yes. That's in there. But there's this other thing, which is I asked a question about whether or not your parents⁠—and let me just make sure I asked this question correctly. I asked whether or not they wanted to parent you, and what your response was was about your mom's psychological stuff. So it's almost like, instead of referring to your own experience, most of what you said was about her experience. Is that⁠—

Lavender: You're absolutely correct. I will say I was definitely wanted.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. Cool.

Lavender: Yeah. I know that I was wanted. And what you just said kind of pushed me into⁠—I was like, "Okay. Yes." I definitely have had this very intense⁠—like, I adore my mother. I mean, when I was a teenager, I was obsessed with Grey Gardens. And I remember saying to my mother, "That could be us one day," and her saying, "Absolutely not."

Jessica: That makes sense on lots and lots of levels. Yes. Yes. There's layers to this, right? One layer is that, because you're so permeable, it is hard for you to not identify other people's experience as a way to describe your own experience because if your mom's depressed, then you're going to feel a lot of that. Now, the truth of the matter is you don't have to be empathetic or an empath to be directly impacted by your mom when you're a child. That's kind of⁠—it's the deal. But then you also have that added layer of you really did feel a layer of her depression.

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: And it kind of became your own in some ways. And that is something that is really important because it comes back to resourcing yourself, to be able to recognize, "I am around somebody who's really heartbroken right now. My bestie is going through a breakup, and they're heartbroken. And that means they're going to feel really sad and bad and scared and all the things that come up around heartbreak. And that means, when I'm around them or when we're on the phone for an hour, I need to remember that those are my friend's feelings and not my feelings."

So it's about resourcing yourself because when I was preparing for our reading, I was like, "Okay. Jupiter/Saturn conjunction⁠—not the easiest conjunction in the world." It's like, "What's enough? What's not enough?" Right? And then it's square to your Mercury/Mars conjunction, which influences your sense of what you should be feeling, what you should be doing, and it makes you really hard on yourself. It can feel like it doesn't matter what you do; it's not enough. And it gives you this depressive, kind of heavy-handed, scarcity-based perspective, right?

Lavender: 100 percent.

Jessica: Yeah. So you got that, right? And to that, I say the world's a dangerous place. It's terrible. It's very hard to figure this shit out. But I actually don't think that's your problem. I mean, it's a problem, but I don't think it's the problem you wrote me about.

Lavender: Yeah. You're right.

Jessica: I think the problem is more you don't trust yourself to navigate your own safety and welfare because you don't do a great job of it. And I'm not trying to shit on you or criticize you. But this thing about boundaries is that boundaries are exceptionally hard. It's really hard to stay present enough with your own self that you can identify your needs, and then from the point of identifying your needs, validating your needs, and then from the place of validating your needs, being able to express your needs, and then from the place of expressing your needs, being able to articulate those needs, and from there, being able to uphold the boundary that you've identified and embodied and all that.

Those steps require that we're present at each step. And your habit is, when you start to feel what, for you, starts to feel like this pulling apart⁠—like you're just really scattered. It's the best way I can put it. It's like your energy is all over the place. That happens before any kind of major invasion occurs. When you start to feel scattered, it looks like your knee-jerk reaction, 100⁠—okay, I'll say 99.9⁠—percent of the time is you abandon yourself. You're just out. You're out. You're out.

Lavender: Yep.

Jessica: And how can you take care of yourself? How can you be a good friend to yourself? How can you support yourself and provide shelter for yourself when you're not even there? And the answer is what you've experienced, which is it doesn't work. And then you have this kind of chronic anxiety and fearfulness because you could tell yourself, "Just go to the party. It'll be fine." But you know that it's not going to be fine because you don't have some brand-new exceptional plan on how to stay safe from people's energies.

Lavender: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's so funny, Jessica. I once had a therapist years ago who told me I should meditate, and so I started this meditation practice. And I came back to see her, and I said, "You know, this meditation thing, it's so easy. I could just sit there for hours." And she said, "You're not meditating. You're dissociating."

Jessica: Yeah. Yes.

Lavender: And it blew my mind because I realized I've been dissociating my entire life. And what I would do in these unsafe-feeling situations⁠—I'd just leave my body, and I'd daydream.

Jessica: Yeah. And do you identify with having depression?

Lavender: Oh yeah. I would say I've had chronic depression since I hit puberty.

Jessica: Okay. I'm sorry. And I will say a big part of the reason why you dissociate is because it has helped you to survive. As a kid, it helped you to survive a lot of things. It was very effective, and it was way better than the alternative, and it was a very good coping mechanism at one time.

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: And now what you're experiencing is how dramatically it limits you. And as you said, what's happening is your Mercury conjunction to Mars square to Jupiter conjunction to Saturn is starting to run your life. It's this, "Everybody get out of my way. I have to shrink everything to protect myself." That Mercury and Mars conjunction is in Cancer. It's all about self-protection. Cancer as a zodiac sign⁠—so I'm not saying Sun in Cancer, although you also have that. But Cancer as a zodiac sign comes at things sideways. It has pinchers. Pinchers.

And so it can incline you to be really passive-aggressive as a way to keep yourself safe, right? And that only works on the surface, just like you were talking about with your Venus aspect. It works on the surface, but ultimately it just makes you more and more agitated because you're not actually honoring yourself, and you end up alienating others as a way to protect yourself from others, which is not what you want because that Mars/Mercury conjunction is in the eleventh house, so it does make you social.

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: You're not a real hermit. Sorry. Your life would be so much easier if you were a real hermit. If that Mercury/Mars would just pop themselves into the twelfth house, you wouldn't give a fuck about people. You'd be like, "Fine. I have a couple casual connections, one real friend. Bada-bing, bada-boom. We're done." But Mercury conjunction to Mars⁠—that in the eleventh house⁠—that's going to make you want to be a part of groups and want to have circles of friends.

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: So it really comes down to cultivating the habit, identifying when you are abandoning yourself, when you're leaving yourself, and then choosing to stay, and then having boundaries around that. And what that means is cultivating the willingness to feel depressed and to feel anxious, which is the whole reason why you don't do it, because if you identify with having chronic depression, why would you gravitate towards the emotions that you know are associated with depression? Where's the logic there, right?

And this is where⁠—and this is something that happens to all of us at some point in our 30s or 40s, is that we must recognize that our survival mechanisms that were highly effective as children⁠—we now have enough evidence to know they're not effective as adults. And that doesn't mean we throw away that survival mechanism; it just means it can't be the premier survival mechanism. We just want to keep it in the basket and let it fall to the bottom of the basket sometimes. But there needs to be more.

And so I want to acknowledge that what I am recommending is that you tolerate feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, depression, alienation intentionally more frequently. And I don't think that means you'll feel those feelings more. I just think you'll feel them on the outside instead of as a result of how you've coped. Does that make sense?

Lavender: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Easier said than done. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's a tragedy. And let's bring it home because how old are you now?

Lavender: I'm turning 42 next month.

Jessica: Congratulations. Happy birthday. Then I can really lean into what I want to say about your North Node because at 42, you've probably noticed the last two years-ish⁠—right, because that North Node starts to really make itself known at around 40⁠—that your North Node is in Leo conjunct the Sun in the twelfth. What this means is, if you abandon your Sun, if you abandon your solar energies⁠—your will, your center. The glyph for the Sun is literally a circle with a dot in the center. That's literally what we're talking about, getting centered.

When you abandon your Sun and you hang out with your South Node, what happens is nothing works. Everything feels exhausting. Everything feels like the worst parts of the twelfth house, where you're like, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." And then you become more and more of a loofah sponge, and you just pull in other people's energies. But when you can identify who you are⁠—your will⁠—embody it, and even give yourself permission to have fun with it or have pride about who you are, things work better.

And that doesn't mean you're all of a sudden a tenth-house person. You're a twelfth-house person. So you having fun might mean macrameing in your bedroom and not talking to bitches. Right?

Lavender: Yeah. That sounds like heaven.

Jessica: Okay. Okay. Great. Yeah.

Lavender: In a bubble bath.

Jessica: Right. Sure. Yes. 100 percent. We don't want to go into conventional ideas of fun or conventional ideas of creativity, because that's not relevant to you. You're very twelfth house. It's about honoring what is true for you. And for you, you're good with having one social experience a week, sometimes every two weeks, as long as that social experience doesn't destroy you for a week.

And that's what I imagine is kind of happening now. It's like you can only tolerate one as opposed to you've identified that's all you need, and so, when you go in, you going without abandoning yourself. You take good care of yourself. Maybe you have to do a little extra psychic hygiene after the social event. Then you go home, and then you go back to your macrameing and your bubble bath.

Lavender: Yeah. It's interesting. Something I've been thinking about lately is I want to have more fun in my life. And then I hit this blank spot where I think, "Well, what's fun?"

Jessica: What's fun?

Lavender: I don't even know what fun is.

Jessica: You are not alone with that problem. Let me tell you that.

Lavender: Good.

Jessica: So there's a lot of places we can look in the birth chart to identify fun. One is we look at where Leo falls, like what house is Leo in? And in your birth chart, it's the twelfth, and it's also the first. It's things that kind of, in some ways, allow you to shine and show up, which is part of why you like to do it alone, because it's easier to shine and to show up alone⁠—not all the time, though, because fucking Venus is conjunct your Ascendant.

But the other thing is you got most of the Leo degrees in your birth chart in your twelfth. So a lot of it is going to be spiritual. A lot of it is going to be solitary. But Leo is always about play and fun, so identifying what feels like playfulness to you⁠—not what you think playfulness is. That's not helpful at all. It's what you feel is playful. And in your 40s, you have enough lived experience to know that for a lot of people, going to an amusement park is really playful and fun, and for you, it is not⁠—or whatever, right?

And it might be helpful⁠—because you do have a Mercury square to Saturn⁠—to make a list of all the things that you have found fun in your life. For me personally, fun is having really deep and intense conversations. I'm having fun with that. I'm having fun when I'm working. Now, a lot of people say work is bad or whatever. There's different ways that different people are. But for me, work is fun. And I think it's okay for you to identify things that other people will not say are fun that are fun for you. Again, Mercury square to Saturn⁠—you might have fun sweeping. You might have fun organizing your closet.

Lavender: I do.

Jessica: Yes. Exactly. It's like deep nerd fun.

Lavender: Yep.

Jessica: But it works for you. It doesn't matter if somebody else thinks it's fun or not.

Lavender: Organizing things.

Jessica: Yes. Yeah, like micro-organizing, right? Not reorganizing a room. It's organizing a shelf in the room.

Lavender: Oh yeah.

Jessica: Yeah. I mean, it's what your chart says. And so those are really fun things for you. What you also find fun in a very different kind of way is spiritual stuff⁠, being in nature. And it's less like Leo-y fun. But when we look at your fifth house, we see Sadge on the cusp, and we see Neptune there. And so, for you, it's about exploring worlds, which may be reading books. It might be watching movies. It might be traveling. It might be connecting with people who have really different lived experiences than you. But it's spiritual. But because Neptune is there, it's also disassociating, right?

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: You actually really enjoy disassociating, and that's not bad. It's only something that needs to be done in a healthy way with intention and not at the expense of your wellness. So, if you're going to⁠—I don't know⁠—cultivate a meditation practice, you might as well just be doing any number of things if you're disassociated the whole time, whereas cultivating a practice where you meditate for 10 minutes and you just escape this world for 30⁠—okay. Now I'm interested.

It's about giving both parts of you⁠—like airtime⁠—giving both parts of you time to play. And I think that for you, in regards to meditation, part of what meditation probably needs to be is that kind of spacing off. Think of it as⁠—if you've done Pilates, you probably didn't show up in jeans and a business top. There's all these things you do to get ready to go to the Pilates studio or whatever. Think of the daydreaming as that. It's like getting into the right clothes. It's like getting your mind and your body ready to do the work.

Lavender: I love that.

Jessica: Okay.

Lavender: I've always loved the concept of a nightgown and getting dressed up to go to sleep. I love that.

Jessica: Yes. It's a great idea. Okay. So that's exactly what we're talking about. A lot of times, people who are very Neptunian, very twelfth house, what they will experience is visual cues really help. What that might look like is, if you're an artist and you're going to a gallery and it's like that whole thing that can be so yucky about people judging your work and having to sell yourself⁠—at that time, you should just have a wardrobe of clothes, specific outfits that you only wear when you're dressing up as artist you, so that you can go and embody that part without telling yourself, "I have to be that whole thing."

So, again, what we're doing is we're working with your nature so that you don't need to abandon yourself as a way to cope with how hard it is to exist in singularity in this body in this world.

Lavender: Oh, it's so interesting you say that, because I've found I do have specific outfits to do specific things. And I've never really thought about it before, but that makes so much sense.

Jessica: You're doing what's intuitive to you. You're kind of giving yourself permission to be this part of yourself in this space. And if you bring more attention to it, more energy to it, when you bring that North Node conjunction to the Sun into the mix⁠—right? It's like, "I am choosing this. This is what I am doing. This is what works for me. This is what keeps this safe or fun"⁠—then your energy gets stronger with it.

The City of Atlanta has leased 381 acres of the Weelaunee Forest to the Atlanta Police Foundation for a police military facility funded by corporations. But we can still fight. Visit stopcopcity.city/organizewithus for ways you can help from wherever you are. And if you're registered to vote in Atlanta, Georgia, you can sign the petition, which you can find at copcityvote.com/petition. The links to both of these things are in show notes.

States across the U.S. have advanced a record number of bills attacking Transgender rights and threatening the health and safety of Trans people and their families. Whether you're Trans and looking for support or an ally wanting to help, here are three organizations to know about. There's MTUG, or Metro Trans Umbrella Group, serving Trans people directly in the St. Louis area; Transgender Education Network of Texas, which is an advocacy and resource group; and lastly, A Place for Marsha, which facilitates safe housing for Trans individuals escaping transphobic states. Check out these resources, signal boost, and support them however you can.

Are you looking to level up your skills or expand your self-knowledge with astrology? If so, explore the classes on my website, where you can gain the expertise and also perspective that you seek with various topics, from manifestation to the twelfth house to outer planets and love or exploring mental health with astrology. There are so many classes that I have on the Shop page of my website. Just visit lovelanyadoo.com/shop⁠—that's lovelanyadoo.com/shop⁠—and learn with me today.

I need to tell you about The Partnership. It's the nation's disability and disaster hub led by and for disabled people throughout disasters in the U.S. and across the world. They fill the gaps in the traditional humanitarian response for people with disabilities and is the only U.S. disability-led 501(c)(3) organization that prioritizes equity, access, disability rights, justice, and full inclusion of people with disabilities, older adults, and people with access and functional needs before, during, and after disasters and emergencies. Disability-led, inclusive emergency management is paramount for the equitable future we're aiming towards together. Learn more and give what you can at disasterstrategies.org/donate.

Jessica: All of this said, I want to just pause and bring us back to your original question. I want to make sure, are we kind of addressing it? Do you have anything lingering that you would want to ask me about this question?

Lavender: Actually, yeah. I mean, I feel like we got to the meat of the question, though it wasn't what I expected. But everything you said, it makes so much sense. I'm just curious, can you speak to that Chiron in Taurus, like that one earthy spot in my chart?

Jessica: Sure. Chiron relates to our core wounding. So you've got Chiron in Taurus, which is in part related to having a really hard time identifying, "What are my values? How do I embody my values? How do I, in my body, live my values?" And in your birth chart, it's square to Venus and your Ascendant. And so being in an embodiment of the things that you hold really dear in a way that other people can see can be really challenging. And so the coping mechanism may be to make yourself really small and really agreeable around other people so that you're essentially not taking a stand.

On the one hand, with your Pisces Moon and your twelfth-house Sun, that's not the worst thing in the world. You wouldn't be inclined to be like, "This is who I am," 100 percent of the time without this aspect. But on the other hand, there is a struggle that this Chiron placement suggests around taking up space based on who you actually are and a fear that there will be some form of persecution or abandonment if you do so.

Lavender: Yes.

Jessica: When I look at something like⁠—whether it's Neptune or Chiron in⁠—like if you had Neptune in an earth sign, I would also be like, "Well, it's only Neptune, though." Having Chiron in an earth sign, it just reaffirms, "Okay, so you could be in your body, and it's in the tenth house. So be in your body in public, but it's going to cost you." And a lot of that cost is going to be because Venus square Chiron is⁠—it's specifically challenges around feeling subjugated around gender, and in particular, Venus is related to femininity, femaleness. So some of it is around that.

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: Some of it is just around the understanding that people who are really public and proud and emphatic, very Taurean, very stuck and stayed around their values and how they take up space around their values, are both people I imagine you incredibly admire⁠—

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: ⁠—and also you see as people who are sticking out their necks all the damn time and people's⁠—you know, chop chop. You don't want to be chopped. You're not the one who's looking to deal with those kinds of consequences. So you may be in public situations where you know what you think and you know what you feel should be said, and you are not, it looks like, likely to be the one to say it unless other people are saying it first. Is that correct?

Lavender: Interesting. I'd like to think that I'm not like that, but I probably am.

Jessica: Interesting. Okay. You'd like to think that you're not like that why?

Lavender: Well, I have been in positions where I have spoken my truth, and people have reacted very angrily to it.

Jessica: When you were speaking your truth, were you defending? Were you defending yourself?

Lavender: Yes. Yes.

Jessica: Mm-hmm, 100 percent of the time, because you have Mercury conjunction to Mars in Cancer in the eleventh house and Saturn and Jupiter square. So I want to say that's very different than embodying your values and speaking those values with your actions because we're talking about Taurus, but also with what you're bringing to the conversation. That is taking a stand on a thing because the thing, whereas what you're more comfortable doing is being like, "You've crossed my line. You have harmed me, and I'm going to defend myself," because the defensiveness is easier for you⁠—and here's the real rub⁠—because when you're in the state of defending yourself, it's because you're the victim. Sorry. Sorry. Real talks, though.

Lavender: Ow.

Jessica: Yeah. I mean, sorry. But this is real. So it doesn't mean that 100 percent of the time that 100 percent of people are defending ourselves that we are in a victim stance. But a lot of the time that you have identified your own comfort taking a stand, you're doing it from a place of self-defense. Here's the problem. When we're defensive, what does it make other people feel? Defensive.

Lavender: Yeah.

Jessica: It makes them feel offended, so they get defensive. And so we have a self-fulfilling prophecy here. And you're not even fucking embodying your Chiron. Instead, what you're doing is you're kind of in this situation where you tell yourself you don't have a right to speak up for yourself. You tell yourself that no one is going to let you speak up for yourself, and, "Fuck it. I'm going to do it anyways." And then you kind of can come at things with a force that is more about you saying what you need to say and less about wanting people to hear what you're saying, which⁠—you're actually really good at diplomacy. You're really good at considering how to have your message heard except for when you get this certain level of hot under the collar.

Lavender: Oh, 100 percent. Yes.

Jessica: Yeah. And so it reaffirms this Chiron placement where it's like, "So I don't get to be in my values. I don't get to embody my values," whereas that is not⁠—I want to just say that's not true. I mean, it might be true at times because life is fucking grueling. But that is actually not true. And this is where, again, I kiss the ground that astrology walks on because it empowers us to see which part of your birth chart you're embodying at various times so that we don't have to throw out the baby and the bathwater; we can be like, "Okay. This Mercury/Mars in Cancer⁠—yeah, it's fucking defensive. It can be passive-aggressive. It can be defensive."

And that's really different than the Chiron at the top of your chart. That Chiron at the top of your chart⁠—which, by the way, is not just square to Venus; it's also opposite to Uranus. It's like your values are eccentric based on the community you live in, and they grip you. You have a physical sense of being gripped by what's right or what's wrong, how things need to be or they should not be. And it is really hard for you to express it for all the stuff we've talked about. And so, because of Uranus's involvement, what happens is your nervous system goes zing, and your nervous system gets so fucked up by this that it's hard for you to stay present. It tips into that coping mechanism of, "I don't want to be depressed. I don't want to be anxious. So I'm bouncing. I'm leaving."

Lavender: Oh yeah.

Jessica: And so this is where the notes in your phone is your best friend because the next time you start to have this sense of⁠—whatever it is, where you're like, "Okay. I can identify I have a value here"⁠—you can pull out your phone in the notes and just write a bullet-point list about what it is you're identifying is up for you in your thinking. You don't have to say anything. Just track your own lived experience. And then, if you decide you need to say or do something later, you can say or do something later.

The problem people have with boundaries is⁠—God, there's seven million problems people have with boundaries. But a big one is the first three steps are passive. They're identifying what you're experiencing, staying with what you're experiencing, being able to name what you're experiencing. This is very internal work. It's not external work. And most of us try to skip these steps and just go to feeling, action, reaction. It just doesn't work, especially for somebody like you who is so sensey, very sensey. And your brain is pushed by Jupiter and Saturn. So you're so sensey, you process things kind of slowly except for your brain. Your brain is just like, chomp, chomp, chomp, ideas, ideas, ideas, details, big picture.

So you can create a story based on just about anything. That doesn't mean it's a true story. It might be true for you, but it doesn't mean it's true. And the only way to know if it's true is by sitting with our emotions. It's sitting with your feelings. Again, when you do that, I just want to acknowledge, because it can't be said enough, that you have a very strong aversion to feeling depression and anxiety, and you're trying to protect yourself from losing yourself in depression and anxiety. And ironically, I think that your coping mechanism actually lands you into a lot more depression and anxiety. But it's kind of like a delayed reaction to the moment, and so it doesn't seem like it in the immediacy of the moment.

Okay. So let me just pause and see, did I answer that question?

Lavender: Yes, you did. Yeah.

Jessica: Yes. I love to answer a question. Do you have any other questions?

Lavender: Oh gosh. I'm just curious about that Pisces Moon. What is going on there? How is it affecting everything?

Jessica: It just means you're super sensey. You're super sensey. You're emotionally sensitive. You're energetically sensitive. And I think that on the one hand, it just adds to the soupiness that you experience and the tendency to disassociate and all this kind of stuff. On the other hand, your Moon is nicely trine to your Mars and your Mercury. And so it tells me that you have the capacity to resource your body⁠—Mars⁠—your mind⁠—Mercury⁠—to support your Moon⁠—emotions.

Lavender: Okay.

Jessica: But what's easier to do with a trine is to rest on your laurels and be able to weave a narrative that matches how you feel.

Lavender: Oh.

Jessica: Sorry.

Lavender: No.

Jessica: Yeah. Yes. And it doesn't hurt you socially to do so because it's a trine. If it was a square and opposition, it would hurt you socially. You'd be like, "Oh, this is getting in the way of my happiness." But because it's a trine, you have this very well-adjusted on the surface coping mechanism, and it works. It keeps you lonely. It keeps you isolated. It helps you not grow. But it works. And the truth is, if you're going to have real friendships⁠—and do you have real friendships?

Lavender: Yes.

Jessica: Okay. Great. Then you know sometimes you're really in contact; sometimes you're not. Sometimes it's really deep; sometimes it's not. You need that kind of ebb and flow in your intimate connections. And what's possible for you is to be a little bit more present for yourself and then to bring that to those intimate connections. I don't think you need to be more present with people. I think you need to be more present with yourself, and it will have the consequence of bringing something different to those relationships.

Lavender: Oh. Wow.

Jessica: Yeah. You're fine with being present with people. You're very good at being like, "This is how friends show up for each other. I respond to a text. I give them my attention when they're sharing a thing." You know how to be a friend. That's not the thing you need to learn. It's about being present for yourself because, again, the tricky part of that Mercury/Mars in Cancer square to Jupiter/Saturn in Libra is you can find yourself in a position where you're defending yourself or you're protecting yourself from people, even the people you trust in life, because you're trying to navigate your own welfare and you're trying to navigate your own welfare outside of yourself instead of from within yourself.

And that's back to the central thing you said about not feeling grounded. So the key is, again, let's throw away the concept of grounding and focus on the concept of centering. And then you will recognize, "Oh, I'm on the phone with my bestie," or, "I'm hanging out with my bestie"⁠—I don't know why I keep on saying on the phone. Do you talk on the phone a lot?

Lavender: Actually, I do.

Jessica: Okay. That must be why. I was like, "There must be a reason." So, "I'm on the phone or I'm in person with my bestie, and I am kind of defending myself or I'm planning what I'm going to say instead of really listening." When you catch yourself doing that, you know you're not in your center.

Lavender: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: Easy-peasy. I mean, that was a lie. It's not fucking easy. But it's simple. It's simple. So you can, from that place, try to bring your energy back to center. Do your little Pilates move, your little visualization, and you could even say, "Oh shit. I have to put you on hold for a second." Mute the phone. Do it. It won't take a full minute. I mean, it can, but it doesn't have to. It can be quick.

And then bring your energy back to yourself so that you can be present, and then you might recognize, "Oh, wow. I've been on the phone with my bestie talking about their feelings about the stranger at the coffee shop for 30 minutes, and I actually can't do it anymore. I actually can't do it anymore. I actually have a boundary here. I don't know how to express that boundary, but I have a boundary." Okay. If you can identify you have a boundary and you don't know how to express a boundary, that is mammoth progress from where you are now.

Lavender: Oh, wow. That blows my mind because I've always been a good listener.

Jessica: You're great at it.

Lavender: So a lot of people dump on me.

Jessica: Yeah. No, I see that. Yeah. And you don't realize you're dumped upon until you're like, "Oh, I feel like a trash heap, like a soppy, wet trash heap." And so, in order to be able to identify, "Oh, this is starting to feel like too much," you have to stay with yourself. And once you start to being able to identify, "Oh, this is feeling like too much," you're not going to organically just be able to be like, "And here's the boundary, and I will competently express the boundary." Don't put that shit on yourself.

The first step is identifying the boundary. And from there, depending on the relationship, you might have to say, "Oh shit. I just got a call, and I have to take it. I care about you. I'll talk to you later," because some people can't respect a boundary. Sometimes that's the best you can do. You might otherwise be able to be like, "I really love talking to you about this, but I wanted to ask you, have you seen this show?" or, "Have you done this thing?" because the thing is⁠—and this is something that is very important for you and probably for other people to hear, is that when one person, person A, is talking about themselves incessantly and talking about all their shit incessantly, and then they're like, after 45 minutes, "What's up with you?" person B usually is like, "Nothing," because it's like you've just been a receptacle for the other person's stories. It just feels like, "Now you want me to open up?" That's not always a thing that a person can do.

And lots of different people have lots of different wiring, lots of different birth charts, lots of different ways of processing and communicating. There's not a right way or wrong way. It's about staying present with yourself so that you can recognize when something is right or wrong for you, and then you can start to take responsibility for that by letting people know. Sometimes you might have some friends, if you do this, that just won't want to be your friend anymore if you stop being their free therapist.

Lavender: It's interesting because my friendships with women tend to be pretty balanced. It's mostly with men that I end up in this dynamic.

Jessica: Yeah. Well, I imagine⁠—and you date men, then, correct?

Lavender: Yes.

Jessica: My condolences. But the reason why I said that is because if you dated women, this wouldn't be the case for you because this is about⁠—now we're in your Chiron/Venus. You play the dutiful girl, the dutiful wife, with men that you don't even care about. And this comes out of your matrilineage. This is a thing your mom does. This is a thing you do. And it is linked with both of your depression, I would imagine, because⁠—

Lavender: Wow.

Jessica: ⁠—you've made a decision on some meaningful level, "I don't get to be a full person." And then there's nothing but proof when you deal with men. Right?

Lavender: Yeah. Yep.

Jessica: Right. And so the truth of the matter is do you want to be likable by a person who wants to take advantage of you, consciously or unconsciously, or do you want to like yourself?

Lavender: Well, yeah. I mean, that's why I spent the last five years totally single and celibate, because I knew that it was better for my mental health.

Jessica: Yeah. It was better for your mental health 100 percent. And also, you haven't been able to show up as yourself with men, and it inevitably makes you feel terrible. If you can practice being yourself in the presence of men, then relationships can become healthier for you. Then you will not be attracted to the same men because the men you're attracted to want you to be a shell of a person, basically.

Lavender: Yeah. Yes.

Jessica: The Chiron/Venus, right? And you're capable of being a shell of a person for a period of time⁠—months, sometimes years. But then you get fucking pissed off, and it does not last. It is not healthy to do. I'm just saying you're capable of doing it, but not for long, and it has a bite. I will name for you that you are currently going through a once-in-a-lifetime transit. Uranus is squaring your Ascendant. This transit begins for you⁠—oh, it just began. It just began mid-June.

Lavender: Ahh.

Jessica: Yeah.

Lavender: Oh no.

Jessica: It began in mid-June, and it will last a year. And this transit is excellent for changing the way that you embody yourself and show up in relationships.

Lavender: Whoa.

Jessica: So this is a great time for considering, "How do I want to embody myself in dating situations or with guys?" because it looks like it's not just in dating situations for you with men. "How can I identify the things that I want to embody, a.k.a. my values, a.k.a. Chiron in Taurus? How do I identify what my values are, and how can I identify how I want to hold them with men?" And to not just come up with this idea in reaction to an individual man, but to do it in the embodiment of the self.

And Uranus brings us the energy to change. It's fucking fantastic. Now, at the same time, I will say you've got Moon at seven degrees of Pisces. And Saturn has been sitting at seven degrees of Pisces, and it's not going to be completely gone until, I think, February of 2024. So it's off and on. But it is [indiscernible 00:50:12], and it's also perfectly on time because it is the closure of a 29-year cycle of development of how you embody your emotions. Don't you want that to close?

Lavender: Yes, I do.

Jessica: Aren't you ready for an opening? So it's about taking inventory. Saturn conjunctions⁠—they mean taking inventory. Pay attention. Where have you planted things in the garden? Are they getting light? Have you been watering them? Is the soil conducive? It's like looking through that garden, identifying where things are, and then setting the intention on what needs to be pruned and how. So it's right on time for the larger conversation we're having and certainly for the adjustment to dating.

So I, if I was giving you homework⁠—which I am⁠—would say that between now and the end of the year is a great time to do that inner work so that at the start of 2024, you can start dating.

Lavender: Wow.

Jessica: If it happens sooner, great. But that's the homework.

Lavender: [crosstalk]

Jessica: Yeah, and it's completely consistent with this larger conversation we're having about identifying the self, not abandoning the self, having boundaries, and finding ways to live that are not just in self-defense constantly but instead in embodiment, finding your center and being embodied. That, for you⁠—it's water and air. So it's going to be wooshy-booshy. You're not going to do it the same way that somebody like me who's super earthy is going to do it. You're going to do it your way.

And finding ways of embracing that North Node in Leo, of doing it in ways that you love, in ways that you can feel proud of, in ways that are a yes⁠—Leo is so good at saying yes. And North Node in Leo conjunct a Sun in Cancer⁠—I mean, that's really just finding your yes and recognizing that relationships are sometimes compromising and being like, "This person is a yes for me except for when they wear those shoes, and then they're a fucking no." Okay. Cool. We compromise certain things. But it can't be, "This person is a yes for me except for the way that they deal with consent issues around⁠"—I don't know⁠—"how we fight." That's not something we compromise in a healthy way. We can, but we don't want to start there. We don't want to start there.

So it's about, again, identifying, what are your values? How do you want to be? Through all of this, what you will be doing is cultivating a relationship with the self that you can actually rely on so that when we come back to the original question of navigating the world through fear, what you know is you have a self that you can resource. So, if you go to the party and you start to feel overwhelmed and bananas because the energy is not for you, you will just say to whoever you went with, "I gotta go. Kisses. Buh-bye, bitch," and get the fuck out.

You know that you can trust yourself to take care of yourself. If you're on the phone with a friend and they're just destroying your energy⁠—it's not working⁠—and you can't find a way to change the subject, you can always have someone show up at your front door, if you know what I'm saying. Creating a self that you can trust takes practice, takes time. You have to prove it to yourself, and I think that you can. It just is a big⁠ "you gotta decide to do it" situation.

Lavender: Yeah. Wow.

Jessica: Yay.

Lavender: You threw me some zingers there I needed to hear so bad.

Jessica: Yay. I love a zinger. I will say one last thing, which is I am holding here black tourmaline. Do you fuck with crystals?

Lavender: Oh, yes, I do.

Jessica: Okay. Do you have black tourmaline?

Lavender: I actually don't right now.

Jessica: Okay. So black tourmaline is particularly good for psychic protection. It is wise to have black tourmaline on you a lot because you are really porous. There are other stones that are really great for that, and you can do your research and figure out which ones resonate for you the most. I am a fan of the tourmaline family. You may not be. But in the tourmaline family⁠—because I am a particular fan of them⁠—I will say the brown tourmaline is really good for helping you to get in your body. Hematite is good for that. Turquoise can be good for that.

There's a bunch of stones that are really helpful for remembering you live in a meat suit and helping you to connect. And I would say, yeah, get a bunch of those bad boys. Put them in your pocket. Put them in your bra. Do what needs to be done.

Lavender: All right. Yeah.

Jessica: I do think gemstones work. And also, even if they don't, it's a reminder, and it's intention.

Lavender: Exactly.

Jessica: And that has its own power. And of course, if you're going to be buying crystals, do your best to get them ethically. Amazon is not the spot. You know how to do that, right?

Lavender: Totally.

Jessica: Yeah. I would just throw that in the mix there.

Lavender: That's really helpful. Yeah. I always thought just having something⁠—for a while, I would wear a necklace, and just touching it would kind of bring me back⁠—yeah. I need to go back to doing that, and that would be really helpful. Thank you.

Jessica: Right. My pleasure. It's like the Pisces twelfth-house stuff is just really⁠—it makes you really permeable to stones and stuff like that. And it's really helpful to get your earth energy in, right?

Lavender: Yep. Yep.

Jessica: Excellent.

Lavender: That's great. I didn't even think of that.

Jessica: Well, this has been really a pleasure. And I just⁠—the second I saw your question, I was like, "Oh yeah. We're doing this." But it also went in a different direction than I expected because it wasn't really about fear.

Lavender: Yeah. No, I had a hunch that wasn't the case; there was something under the fear. And I really feel like we really got to it.

Jessica: Yay. That makes me so happy.

Lavender: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Jessica: Oh, it is my pleasure. Thank you so much for showing up for a reading.