Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica:      Sarah, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Sarah:              Hi. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm going to just read the question. "Hi, Jessica. I'm at a loss of what to do. I love pooping. I look forward to my lovely bidet morning deuce experience. But lately, every time I travel away from home, I get majorly constipated for days. Now I'm in the habit of taking my emergency medications with me when I leave home for the night. More than once, my partner has had to run out to get these emergency meds for me. I would consider myself a pretty dang healthy person. I'm active. I eat well and drink lots of water and generally have low stress in my day-to-day life. So this issue doesn't feel super physiological to me. It feels like an energetic holding of sorts.

"I don't know what to do to help myself. While the medication is helpful, it's not enjoyable to take. And travel stresses me out because I know this issue might come up. No amount of breathing and meditating seems to really get things moving when I need them to. So I'm turning to you to help me answer this quandary. How can I help myself poo when I'm on the go?"

Jessica:      I love this question so much. And I can share your birth data, right?

Sarah:        Please.

Jessica:            You were born February 10th, 1994, at 4:17 p.m. in LA, CA. So I got questions for your question. The first question is, how long has this been going on?

Sarah:              Great question. I would say I've always had things around this. This particular issue feels very post-COVID.

Jessica:            Okay. So since 2020.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So it was always kind of there, and then when the stress of 2020 happened, things shifted.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And let me ask you⁠—I mean, I have my association with 2020 and with the pandemic. But did you shelter in place and stay at home for a couple weeks or a whole year or half a year? What was your experience there?

Sarah:              So, normally, I live in a really big city. And I left that very large city to live with my parents during the pandemic. They had a separate space that I could stay in, and I lived with them for a year.

Jessica:            Okay. And so, in that year, were you not really going out? So this issue was not happening because you weren't having it at your parents' place?

Sarah:              Yeah. I was not leaving. My parents were very conservative about how they interacted during that time, much more conservative than I would have been had I not been staying with them. So it was very much like doing things that they were comfortable with.

Jessica:            Awesome. Okay. Good. And so, then, did you move out of your parents' place early '21?

Sarah:              Yeah, summer of '21.

Jessica:            Okay.

Sarah:              So halfway.

Jessica:            So, for about a year and a half, you were not actually leaving the house much. So this issue was not happening. But was your poop stuff happening? Was there stuff happening with your poops?

Sarah:              Not like in a holding way. I became vegan during the pandemic, so that shifted⁠—my diet changed a lot. I've always kind of played with my diet a little bit to try and fine-tune regularity for me. But I've oddly struggled with regularity in either⁠—on both ends of the spectrum.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So that part's chronic. It's either not⁠—having a hard time letting go or letting go of too much.

Sarah:              Correct.

Jessica:            Okay. So, before I say another fucking word, nothing I say constitutes medical advice. I want to be exceptionally clear about that. We are making eye contact right now, right? I want to be exceptionally clear about that. I am not a doctor. And I do think it's really important to talk to physicians, and there's lots of different kinds of medical doctors. But I should be no one's idea of a medical doctor, obvious⁠—I want that to be exceptionally obvious. I think that's just very, very, very, very important because, also, as a super woo-woo person myself, sometimes I catch myself being like, "Hmm, what's a spiritual reason behind this?" before dealing with the physiological reason.

And when we have a physical problem, it's always rooted at least to some extent in the body. And so, even if it starts off spiritually, it is a physical problem once it shows up as a physical problem. So we deal with it on the physical level in addition to the other levels. I'm giving you a lot of words because I totally see what it is in your chart. We're going to get there; I promise. But okay. So now you're vegan. Are you still vegan?

Sarah:              No. It was totally like a control thing during the pandemic. It was really, really helpful. And then, once meals with other people started happening, it became really complicated.

Jessica:            Yes, it is.

Sarah:              And I very much eat way more plants now, try way more things, and have adopted a lot of that into my diet. But yeah. It changed how I eat meat for sure, but I eat meat [crosstalk 00:05:25].

Jessica:            Okay. And you eat dairy.

Sarah:              I eat dairy.

Jessica:            Do you tend to be bloated a fair amount?

Sarah:              Used to. That doesn't feel true anymore.

Jessica:            When did that change?

Sarah:              I stopped eating dairy for several years because I was like, "I guess I'm lactose intolerant." I was figuring out what was causing the bloating. And more recently, I figured out certain types of milks and cheeses don't affect me. Certain types of amounts don't affect me. Or I'm like, "I know how this is going to affect me, and it's worth the risk; thank you very much."

Jessica:            Totally. Yes.

Sarah:        So yeah.

Jessica:            So there's a couple things I'm going to say before we get into the deep, deep problem stuff, which is you've got Neptune and Uranus conjunction, just like your generational conjunction there, but it's in the sixth house with Capricorn on the sixth-house cusp. And what this does is it gives you a tendency⁠—and again, this is not medical advice, but it does give you a tendency to a Candida body type. It can make it harder to digest cold things and dairy in general.

                        And so I think a lot of times, when people have Neptune in the sixth, there's actually an impulse towards veganism that is ideological. And it can be a little bit hard to sustain unless you are really meticulous about your meal replacements because eating cold things all the time would also create bloating. But that Neptune tends to be associated⁠—not for everyone, but⁠—with a problem with dairy. So I'm glad you've already knocked that shit off the list.

                        The other thing this placement tends to do is it gives you a bit of a nervous tummy. You have a couple things in your chart that indicate a nervous tummy. And so I'm glad that you already have a lifestyle where nervous system regulation is like a part of your daily⁠—it sounds like your daily, right? Are you a yoga teacher?

Sarah:              Absolutely. Yeah. I'm a yoga teacher. I've been teaching for several years. It is a huge part of my day-to-day life, and also, it's my profession.

Jessica:            Right. And within that comes consistently returning to the practice, which is so good for your health. Having consistent things that you do for your health is⁠—your body loves it. So this is all wonderful.

Sarah:              It's funny that you say all of those⁠—that's what my acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioners have told me is, "You cannot have anything cold."

Jessica:            Nothing. Yeah.

Sarah:              "Like no smoothies⁠, raw foods, raw vegetables. It's not for you, girl. Sorry."

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sarah:              "You gotta try something else."

Jessica:            I agree with them 100 percent, and I'm so happy that they agree with me because it's just like you have this excess of wind in your digestion is what they would call it, right?

Sarah:              Yes. Exactly.

Jessica:            And this will lead to not only bloating, but it makes it so much harder for all your organs to work when they're having to do so much to heat up your digestive system. So it creates overall fatigue and just kind of malaise feelings. And so, when you have to heat things up instead of grab and go, you have to be more intentional about what you're putting in your body.

Sarah:              It's exhausting, honestly.

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah.

Sarah:              It's so much work. It's like meal prepping⁠—I'm like, that's the thing I've been feeling, and it's been coming to a head recently right now. I really haven't been able to take care of myself well, and I'm like, "Oh, this is like a big hard stop for me."

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. And the fact that you took years off of dairy⁠—it gave your system such a break that you probably can cheat more right now. Then, if you continue to cheat for the next few years, you'll probably backslide. I mean, such is the body. But here's a little hack that you may try, and I'm sure your acupuncturists have recommended this. But drink hot water. If you want to, squeeze a little lemon in it or tea, but I wouldn't do a strong tea.

I would do basically hot water before you eat because it warms up your digestive system. So, if you know that you're just like, "I have to eat, this grab-and-go situation. I know it's kind of cold. My body doesn't do well with it," if you can have hot water or tea before you put it in your mouth, it can help your body to kind of literally warm up to do what it's got to do. Have you already been advised around this?

Sarah:              Not this. I've been told this in the morning, but before a meal is a really helpful tip.

Jessica:            Yeah. Try to⁠—

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And if it doesn't make a difference, don't do it. You know what I mean? But if it makes a difference, it's such a simple, easy thing. It doesn't have to cost any money, especially if you are willing to schlep around a⁠—whatever, a to-go container so you're not having to drink out of plastic or whatever. So that's an important starting point. And then that brings us to what⁠—I mean, the spoiler alert is the episode title. It's Pluto problems. You know it's Pluto. You titled it Poo Problems.

Sarah:              I know.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's Pluto. It's Pluto. So I'm going to say a couple things, and then we're going to get back to me questioning you. So the first thing is you have Pluto in Scorpio intercepted your fourth house, and it's conjunct your North Node. And it's square to your Sun and your Moon and your Venus and your Saturn⁠—the fuck, as they say.

Sarah:              Yeah. Everybody's hanging out in the same fucking spot.

Jessica:            Everybody. So a very common thing, like so common thing, around these squares⁠—but especially, especially, especially Moon square to Pluto⁠—is going to be digestive and poop-related things. So yeah. Pluto governs poop. To be really clear, it is exactly what you kind of named in the setup of your question. It is related to letting go. And when you say, "But I haven't been really stressed," I say, "Hmm. We're going to get into that." So I'm going to have you re-ground me into the question. What is it that you really want to know here?

Sarah:              There is a control and fear component here. And I think I really love my routine, and I have a really challenging time stepping out of that routine. I also vehemently believe every toilet should be a bidet.

Jessica:            I mean, I am with you. It is the worst⁠—what is wrong with America?

Sarah:              What are we doing?

Jessica:            I don't know.

Sarah:              What are we doing?

Jessica:            I mean, I just feel like⁠—I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's got to be big TP. You know? I mean, it's gotta be⁠—there's literally not a single reason. There's nothing defensible about not having a bidet in every toilet.

Sarah:              Literally, I'm like, we go to other countries. They get it. They get it.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah:              I'm like, "This is unacceptable." So, first thing, really hard to travel away from such a beautiful throne experience.

Jessica:            Yes.

Sarah:              And I have a hard time not knowing things, like where am I going to be? What is it going to be like? What's the access to this going to be like?

Jessica:            And is this something that you experience across the board or just around this part of your health maintenance?

Sarah:              I think I'm noticing fear in a few other places. It's been coming up as obsessive thoughts recently. And some wonderful things have happened in my life recently, and that's really kicked up some of these fearful ideas and thoughts and has almost made this issue worse with all of the good things coming into my life.

Jessica:            So, related to that⁠—I think it's going to be related to what you were just saying⁠—do you find this situation to be worse when you're dating?

Sarah:              I've traveled more when I'm dating, so yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So you associate it with traveling. And you mean like staying at your partner's place, or do you mean like getting on a train, getting on a boat?

Sarah:              Yeah. Getting on a plane, train, all the things.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. But does it get triggered when you're going to have a slumber party at your date's house?

Sarah:              Well, I am engaged, and I live with my partner.

Jessica:            Okay.

Sarah:              So yeah.

Jessica:            When did you get engaged?

Sarah:              In January.

Jessica:            Congratulations.

Sarah:              Thank you.

Jessica:            And when did you start dating?

Sarah:              We started dating in April of 2023.

Jessica:            So soon.

Sarah:              So soon.

Jessica:            What a quick engagement. Okay. I'm assuming you date guys, cis men.

Sarah:              I have dated many different types of humans.

Jessica:            What about this one?

Sarah:              This is a Queer man.

Jessica:            A Queer man. Okay. So is he cis?

Sarah:              He's cis.

Jessica:            Okay. There's a reason why I assumed he was a cis man that is directly related to your health issue, because this is⁠—you're noticing⁠—listen. Some of it's you're older. You're a little older. Everything kind of settles in the body. Let me reach around here, and hopefully this doesn't seem like a real out-of-nowhere situation. But do you want to procreate? Do you want to get pregnant and have babies?

Sarah:              Yeah. This is part of my question for you, too.

Jessica:            It's my question for you first.

Sarah:              Yeah. I do want to have human babies, and I'm like⁠, if I'm having an issue letting go of my own poop, am I going to be able to give birth and mother?

Jessica:            Interesting.

Sarah:              A lot of questions around that. But⁠—

Jessica:            Have you always wanted to procreate?

Sarah:              Oh, no. I have had many different feelings about this. Vehemently no for years.

Jessica:            Yes.

Sarah:              Yeah. I have changed my opinion and been very strong-willed every time. Yeah. And it might change again.

Jessica:            So when did you decide, in the most recent incarnation of you saying, "Yes, I want to procreate and have babies"⁠—when did that decision come about?

Sarah:              In like January 2022.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm, in the same period where the poop stuff started to happen.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sarah:              Probably.

Jessica:            Yes. Definitely.

Sarah:              Definitely.

Jessica:            Definitely. Okay. Your experience of constipation or diarrhea⁠—I don't know if we're trying to avoid those words or not or if you're comfortable with me using them. But your experience of your body holding on too tight or letting go is always a barometer of deep stress, not nervous system dysregulation. That's actually a different part of your chart that manages that. And it shows up all over your fucking body. It's not like it's mysterious to you, the nervous system dysregulation.

But the Pluto in Scorpio⁠—that shit is the stuff that you're like, "I don't know if I'm ready to even acknowledge that I have to deal with that." It's your deep stuff. That's why, when it has to do with constipation or holding back, it literally is just like⁠—it's like a fist. It's like a cold, closed fist that no matter what you do, you can't open. I will say this. Yes, you have Pluto conjunct the North Node in Scorpio in the fourth house. But, my darling, it is conjoining the fifth-house cusp. And we have your fifth-house cusp at almost 4 degrees of Sadge, and we have your Pluto at 28. So we have this⁠—it's conjunct.

And I really feel, as I look at your chart, that you are experiencing both the effects of a fourth-house Pluto and fifth-house Pluto. And from that perspective, I will say unto you that that plus the fact that you're a double Aquarius⁠—Sun and Moon; you were born on a New Moon. Double Aquarius. And Pluto is squaring your Sun and Moon. I actually think this is related to the pressure that you have placed upon yourself that you are, yes, going to have children. And you're not just going to, yes, have children, but you have a cis man who could just randomly get you pregnant at any moment, calling whatever bluff this may or may not be to your system.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't have kids at this moment. We might have that conversation. But I think there are parts of you that say yes to this, but I don't think your body is one of those parts.

Sarah:        Yeah.

Jessica:            So let me just actually pause because I know that what I'm saying is intense. It might be kind of triggering. Does that bring up anything heavy? Does that feel right, wrong, maybe?

Sarah:              I mean, yeah. There's so much that I⁠—feels murky about birth. The actual idea of getting a child from my womb and out of my body feels insane.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sarah:              But it also⁠—I love children. They're wonderful. I think I would really enjoy mothering. I would love to have a family with this human. Yeah, and I know that family doesn't have to involve biological children or children at all. But it feels like such a beautiful expression of love and an evolution in a relationship. Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm going to interrupt you. A couple things. How does your tummy feel right now?

Sarah:              Nervous.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. Let's just bring awareness and bring your body into the conversation. And listen. Your stomach can be nervous. You're talking to a psychic, and I'm suggesting maybe you shouldn't have kids or you wouldn't have kids. I mean, that's going to spark fear into someone even if you don't have issues with your tummy, right? But I also think that whenever the topic of procreation or intimacy in relationships in general comes up, I think it activates your stomach, pretty much 90-something percent of the time. That's where your body holds those particular feelings and fears and all that kind of stuff. So, that said, is this the longest relationship you've ever been in?

Sarah:              I've been in a relationship that's over a year long. We haven't been together a year. So I've been in longer ones.

Jessica:            And the yearlong relationships, were they a full year, or was there some breakups or start/stops in there?

Sarah:              There was one that was like a year and a half. There were some stop/starts. And I would say⁠—it's almost April. Yeah. So it's 11 months, very consistent, no thought of us parting ways. So yeah. I would say that this is, I guess, the strongest, longest one I've been in.

Jessica:            And is he⁠—I mean, I would hope so, since you're engaged to be married forever. But is he 100 percent clear that he wants to have human babies?

Sarah:              I know he really wants kids, but also, I think he understands that things can change. He wants a life with me, and I think he would be okay with not having kids. But I know he wants them.

Jessica:            He wants to have kids.

Sarah:              He wants to have kids.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And when he says he wants to have kids, he doesn't mean in any way, shape, or form that he wants to stay at home and parent. He wants to either pay somebody to do it or for you to do that. Is that correct?

Sarah:              Yeah. I would say the nature of his work would allow him to be home a lot, but yeah. I think he thinks that at least in the beginning, I would want to be home, especially after having given birth since it's such a big toll on the human body.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So you know you did a little work-around. You knew what I was asking, and you didn't exactly answer it. You answered something else. You're aware of that?

Sarah:              No. What did I do?

Jessica:            No, it's okay. I was asking about coparenting, and you were talking about the immediacy after childbirth. They're really different topics, right? One is like you did this violent, athletic thing of creating a human out of weird cells in your body and then pushing it out some part of your body⁠—it could happen a couple different ways. Yeah, sure. Okay. There's that.

But what I'm talking about is this man who is quite certain that he wants to have a child with you, his soon-to-be wife⁠—he also has no⁠⁠—zero⁠—intention of quitting his job or doing anything to be a stay-at-home parent. His assumption is that you're going to either be the stay-at-home parent or that the two of you will earn enough money to pay somebody else to do childcare. I'm not talking about the first six months. I'm talking about at least a decade. Right?

Sarah:              Yeah. I think it's assumed that⁠—I have also been in the position where I'm like, "Maybe I would really enjoy that."

Jessica:            Okay. I'm going to keep you really focused, Aquarius, on the⁠—

Sarah:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So let me just⁠—I'm going to interrupt you and say there's a reason why you're kind of tootling in a circle when I'm asking you this question, because I'm asking you something uncomfortable and something that you haven't fully consciously thought through or talked through with this person. And that's why you're having poop problems.

Sarah:              Okay. No intention of quitting his job.

Jessica:            None. Zero percent.

Sarah:              Zero percent.

Jessica:            I say that to you as a psychic. There is no world in which this man will do anything to compromise his career and his work. So having kids with you means you're the stay-at-home mom who teaches yoga on the side, which is not bad and is not good. But I don't think you've thought that through.

Sarah:              Right.

Jessica:            Or if you have thought that through⁠—because I can feel your body getting really activated right now. Am I correct about that?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So let's just stay with the body activation, actually. Can you try to breathe into that feeling that's in your tummy and up your solar plexus, your sternum, all the way up there? Try to breathe into it. You're kind of pulling it up. But I want to encourage you to actually bring your energy down and into your intestines, actually. There you go. Can you feel the anxiety a little bit more since you've done that?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. It's human nature to want to go away from that. But I want to encourage you to take a deep breath and breathe into your intestines and the kind of fear that's swimming around in there. So, as you sit with this for a moment, what did you notice?

Sarah:              When I sat into it and it's brought it down into my hips, I felt my face get hot. Yeah. It's like a warm, tingly⁠—

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. What I saw was that you have this very Aquarian⁠—and it's probably part of your yoga practice as well⁠—this very Aquarian, like⁠—there's all this distress in your body, and so you sent all this energy into your system and flooded it up through your crown chakra. That's your process, eh?

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. So it feels better. When you do that, you feel better because what you've done is you've left the confines of your meat suit, and now you're in your energy body. And your energy body is so much more expansive. And because this anxiety is showing up as physiological, when you go into your energy body, the physiological becomes a lot smaller. The energetic becomes bigger. And you're actually a lot more confident on the energetic with this particular stressor.

                        So I want to just bring your attention to that habit and to maybe introduce into your practice, if this feels right and if you have the right kind of support to do it, practice sometimes bringing your energy up and through the portal of your crown chakra, which is really just⁠—you don't ever want to lose that practice. It's really strong and beautiful. But for instance, in this moment, it was a disassociative tool from feeling what's in your belly.

                        What I'm saying is you feel if you name something that's wrong, then you have to deal with it. So you would rather put off the risk of naming something wrong in this relationship that you cherish because you don't want to have to do anything about it because you really like the plan as it stands, and you do not want to fuck with what's working.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So I can feel the activation blooming in your belly again. So, if you could just⁠—every time you feel it start to bloom, just kind of breathe into it. So take a deep breath, and then exhale into the anxiety in your belly. So it's breathing down and into the stress. I wonder if, even as we're kind of just hanging out here, you can start to see why your body would hold back around your poops⁠—it would not let go⁠—because your primary and most effective coping mechanism is to escape the confines of the physical body. And so it's left literally holding the bag, and it's holding on fucking tight. It's holding on for life because this is scary.

                        I guess my question for you is are you comfortable talking about the relationship, but more specifically about procreation and parenting and autonomy?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay, because that's really what this is about. And you reached out about poop problems⁠⁠—bless your soul for doing so, by the way. But you reached out about that because this is the symptom that is emerging. It's not the ailment. And again, you're always going to return to your doctors and all that kind of stuff if you have a persistence of negative symptoms.

So here's the thing. I have never met somebody who is a double Aquarius, let alone somebody who has Sun, Moon, and Venus in Aquarius, who relished the idea of being financially dependent on someone. Now, that doesn't mean that you cannot be happy and that can't be the right choice for you in doing that. The resistance your system is presenting to those ideas is not you being dramatic or⁠—it's literally your nature. I mean, that makes sense. Capisce?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            One of the biggest mistakes that I see couples make⁠—and I think this comes up more with two cis⁠—you know, a cis boy and a cis girl than with anyone else. But one of the biggest mistakes I see couples make is they have these romantic life plans where they don't talk through the logistics because the reason why people get divorced is the logistics more than anything, really. It's just like the breakdown of labor, if what you do is ultimately something that you want to do or you just consented to it when you had a million assumptions and you didn't really think it through, which is very human.

                        I don't know that this is your only truth. And in truth, we can have multiple truths that contradict each other and exist at once. Astrology teaches us that, right?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But I think a truth for you that you hold deep in your fucking guts⁠—Pluto in the fucking fourth house intercepted⁠—is you are scared of being trapped, and you are scared of being dependent on anyone, but especially a man.

Sarah:              Oof. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, and that when you feel activated in any way, in any part of your life, the way that you manage it is through your independent, autonomous adult behaviors.

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So the plan of marrying this man with his complete commitment to being a stereotypical man, old-school, not much of a coparent, is you kind of stepping into a thing that you actively know that you actively don't want. Now, maybe there's other parts of you that do want it.

Sarah:              Right.

Jessica:            That is important to be grounded around, right? I know I just said something intense. I just want to pause and just see, what are you thinking? What does it feel?

Sarah:              I'm like, do I actively not want that? I'm like, yeah, I think that multiple truths is true. I think that there is a part of me that's like⁠—I see that version of my life where I never have children and what that version of my life looks like. And then I also really love the idea of having a family. But imagining the years on years⁠—I think the idea of hanging out with kids sounds fun, but it's not just like hanging out with kids and parenting them. It's like, no, no, no. That's your job for 20 years.

Jessica:            That's⁠—yeah.

Sarah:              That hasn't dropped in.

Jessica:            No. But it is your⁠—so I want to just ground you into a couple things. First is you just did this thing that all Plutonian people do. You're like, "Either I don't have kids, or I have kids in the most heterotypical way that exists. Either I don't have kids, or I do it in the way that women and men have been doing it since before women could vote and own land." Now, I want to say⁠—because Pluto goes either/or extreme. And I do want to say that there are a lot of middle grounds. There are a lot of ways that two people can decide to coparent.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, I don't think this man that you've only been with for a year⁠—to be fair, you know him really well, and you also don't know him that well yet. It's both. I mean, I'm barely looking at him energetically, and I see no give. I see rigidity around this issue. I think he fancies himself to be a feminist. I don't think he's a feminist when it comes to this topic. And so I think that it's really important to acknowledge that, okay, he's rigid around this. He is not going to yield around this.

                        However, he could, if he wanted to coparent, talk to you and come up with a plan for how you could coparent so it wouldn't just be this "no kids or you're the stay-at-home parent and you become dependent on him for so much" because the thing I see couples fall into a lot is that one person makes a lot more money than the other person, and so the person who doesn't make a lot of money has to give up their job because it costs so much to pay for childcare. And so it doesn't make sense for you to go to work if it's going to cost more to pay for childcare or if you're going to break even.

                        So I see couples make this concession over and over and over again. And it tends to be at the person who makes the less money's expense, which means it's at the expense of the relationship. Right?

Sarah:              Right.

Jessica:            That said, you don't have a kid. You're not pregnant. So you can have these conversations with this man. Right?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You and I both know how the conversation is going to go. He's going to be very nice and very supportive, and he's also going to be very rigid.

Sarah:              Well, I don't want to believe the rigidity, but I also⁠—I have felt it at times. And I'm going to sit with that. But I feel an openness with him, but I don't know if you're seeing⁠—I've experienced him being very open and very adaptable. So yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Listen. If he's open and adaptable, do not let me fuck with that. However, the conversation does need to occur in order for that to happen because I can't give you something you haven't asked me for, especially if I don't especially want to give it.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Right? And I think here's the risk. The risk is you ask him a question about this. You talk to him about it. You acknowledge that you have a fantasy about stay-at-home mom vibes, but it lasts a very short period of time, and then you quickly go to⁠—oh. Wait. As I said that⁠—because I was looking at it psychically⁠—your fantasy completely drops off. There's nothing. There's not, like⁠, then you start paying a childcare provider. You don't have a yes on that.

Sarah:              Yeah. Nothing.

Jessica:            You've got nothing there.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's how we know that it's not an embodied desire, right? That doesn't mean that the parts of the desire that are embodied are invalidated. It does not mean that. This is where we have to be able to hold complexity. What it means is that you, like so many other people, have an Instagram carousel of parenting. It's gorgeous. It's beautiful. It's natural. But it's a carousel of pictures. You haven't really sorted this out. But you are marrying this man, and he has expressed clearly to you that you want kids, and you've expressed clearly to him that you want kids. And so now both of you have said, "We're getting married, and we both want kids." And your body is freaking the fuck out about this.

Sarah:              Yeah. I'm like, where is the division of labor? What's happening?

Jessica:            Correct. Correct. Correct.

Sarah:              We're both artists, so it's like technically, maybe right now I make more. But I don't know. I haven't done income-to-income comparison.

Jessica:            I'm willing to wager that even if you make a meaningful amount more, he's not going to say, "I'll be the stay-at-home parent. I'll put my career to the side." I'm willing to wager on that one. Now, hey, listen. I hope I'm wrong. You know the bitch. I don't know the bitch. I don't even know his name. I haven't even asked you his name yet. But I'm guessing the reason why you haven't talked this through with him is because you don't want the answer in case it's the wrong answer.

Sarah:              Probably, deep down, I don't think consciously I was there. But that's the⁠—mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And this is your poop problem. So you linked it to COVID, but it actually only started after the lockdown and after the psychologically most terrorizing parts of COVID occurred. It started closer to him, actually.

Sarah:              Yeah. I was in another relationship prior to him, and I definitely had those issues then. But this is⁠—yeah. But this has been kicked up way more with him.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And with that other person, were you also kind of like, "Oh my God. This could be it," kind of like it was a very serious relationship?

Sarah:              No.

Jessica:            Okay. So it was a different situation altogether.

Sarah:              Yeah. I mean, we were potentially going to move to another state together.

Jessica:            Oh. Okay.

Sarah:              Yeah. So it was serious, but it dissolved very quickly because we couldn't make decisions together.

Jessica:            Let me just ground you into this. If your body knew that your decision maker, the brain⁠—whether or not that's really the decision maker, okay, that's a conversation to have. But your brain said, "I'm going to move away with this guy." And so your body was doing the holding pattern is what I'm suggesting.

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            Right. And I'm saying "guy" because I'm making assumption it was a cis guy as well.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I don't see⁠—like if you date Trans guys, if you date women, I don't see this issue being activated in the same way because in order to procreate, you would have to take really conscientious steps. There are so many steps of intentionality that it wouldn't trigger the same issue because people "get pregnant" as if it befalls them, even though we know where babies come from. Sometimes you fuck and you don't have a baby; sometimes you fuck and you do.

It's that out-of-control feeling that you described at the beginning of our conversation of "I don't know how to prepare for this. I don't know when it's going to happen, what's going to happen, what the conditions will be." That's how you described it. And I think that's the issue with having relations with cis men for you. And I think this narrative of "I want a child. I want to be a parent. I love kids. I want to do this" that adult you has been experiencing⁠—I think maybe your intestines are not in agreement with that. I think maybe your body is not in agreement with that.

And that, again, doesn't mean that the answer is don't have kids, and it certainly doesn't mean that the answer is, oh well, push through it. I would say, instead, the answer is developing gentle self-inquiry where you first explore⁠—because you have a meditation practice, and I'm assuming meditation associated with yoga, correct?

Sarah:        Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. Because you have this practice in place, you can sit with an idea, a commitment to having kids and being a stay-at-home parent or whatever, and practice sitting with your body and exploring, like going deep inside of what are your intestines trying to tell you? If you start to feel heat every time I kind of bring us there, then what is that heat activation? Is that liver activation? Interesting. It can often⁠—when we have that flush, it could be some liver activation. I'm guessing that's what is in your chart. So okay. What's that about? Is it anger? Is it fear? Again, I'm guessing it's a little bit of both.

And here's the thing about our bodies. They are dumb machines. And the other thing about our bodies is they are infinitely, wildly wise, and they are always trying to communicate with us. They're both true. They're both true. Sometimes you get a tummy ache because tummies ache, and sometimes you get a tummy ache because your body is like, "Hey, nerd. You have been ignoring this very serious issue that you are focusing on in a high-level way but not in an embodied way." And unfortunately, this topic is just⁠—it's just triggering a lot of grief and feelings of helplessness. Are you experiencing that at this moment?

Sarah:        Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm sorry. I mean, I'm feeling that come up. And it's understandable why you feel like it's either have kids or don't have kids; it's either the most traditional way or don't do it at all. But if I may, as your astrologer—and if you're an astrology student, then you as an astrologer should know this⁠—nothing in your chart says you would do well feeling trapped.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            There's a reason why you haven't had a ton of long-term relationships. You do not like being trapped.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You do not suffer fools well. You have a Leo Rising with a Mars opposition to Leo. You have a stellium in Aquarius. You have Uranus and Neptune conjunct in the sixth, and Pluto's squaring all your fucking Aquarius shit except for the Mars. All of these things say that when you feel trapped, you act like a caged animal. You fucking claw and fight to get the fuck out.

Sarah:              100 percent.

Jessica:            So, right now, you are doing an excellent job of submerging the ways in which your life plan traps you. And you're focusing on the love and the passion and the good parts. And I am sorry to fucking burst that bubble and bring this in, but this is actually your⁠—

Sarah:              Why I wrote to you.

Jessica:            Right. That's why you wrote to me and not a different astrologer, because who wants a PC answer and reaches out to this guy? Not paying attention in that case. So here's the thing. Your body is letting you know it's holding on tight. So what does it mean when it holds on tight? It means it's scared of letting go. Now, your body is wise. It's also a stupid machine.

Sarah:              Right.

Jessica:            I want to give you both things. Both things, right? But we're going to focus on how your body is wise. And for you, when that holding pattern⁠—that constipation⁠—happens, it's always worth investigating, "What am I doing in a broad sense in my life right now that robs me a little of agency, of having control?" because that's an important question. Let's start with that.

                        Now, the other thing is do you have any friends who are moms?

Sarah:              I have a friend who's pregnant. My sisters are moms.

Jessica:            Are they in your life, those sisters of yours?

Sarah:              We're not super close.

Jessica:            Okay. So you don't have a lot of people in your life who are moms. That's interesting. I'm guessing it's because a mom's lifestyle is super fucking different than somebody who is not a parent, right?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm not a mom. I've never been a mom. I have lots of friends who are moms. That's not⁠—or dads or whatever. It's neither here nor there, right? It doesn't have to be here nor there. But it is here or there for you. I'm trying to point at something here.

Sarah:              I don't know it intimately, like in my relationships.

Jessica:            On purpose. On purpose. On purpose is actually what I'm saying. You're a yoga teacher. You don't have access to moms? I don't believe that for an instant.

Sarah:              I have so much access to moms.

Jessica:            So much access to moms. But it's not a lifestyle that really resonates with you. And I think what happens for you when you're thinking about having a family is you're thinking about your happiest, most romantic moments with your fiancé. Am I right about that?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're not thinking about him getting ready for work and then you staying home and managing, what, groceries, diapers, managing getting to and from school, picking out schools? You're not thinking about the nitty-gritty of parenting. And honestly, I think most people don't, because who would have kids if you ever thought that, right?

Sarah:              Right.

Jessica:            I think that's fair. But the devil is in the details. You fucking hate details.

Sarah:              I do.

Jessica:            You fucking hate details. You really do. And having a life where you are managing the needs of a family and you have to wrangle the details of everyone else's welfare⁠—as I'm saying this, you can feel what's coming up for you, right? You have Scorpio intercepted the fourth house. So the worst thing you could do to you is to trap yourself in a situation that is rife with resentments. You need to be able to have agency, to have your own ambitions, and not as a hobby. Not as a hobby. Hobbies are great, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm talking about your own ambitions as a unique individual because you're a double Aquarius. And as a double Aquarius, you're not going to become a mom and stop being highly individualistic. That's not a true fact that happens. And I'm not trying to talk⁠—it sounds like I'm trying to talk you out of having kids, and I apologize because I'm actually not.

Sarah:              No. It feels like you're encouraging me to have a conversation and get into the things that I really have been avoiding. You're like, "You need to focus on these details."

Jessica:            The reality. The day-to-day reality.

Sarah:              Yeah. "You're in a fantasy right now, which is cute."

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. But your body is mad. Your body's mad at you.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            The fact that you're engaged⁠—because you said, "Oh, you know, things aren't bad for me. They're good for me. Why is it worse for me when it's good for me?" And I was like, "Oh, I know why," because you are telling your body, "Shut up. I'm going to take over." So your head is taking over the body, and your head is saying, "This is going to be great. We're going to be great. It's a little scary but fine." But your body is saying, "I don't want to lose control. I don't feel safe. Will I have choices? After I make this one choice, will I no longer get to make any choices?"

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And to be honest, that's not a wrong question. It's not a wrong question. And I think in the first year of a relationship, you're still falling in love. There's only so many experiences you've had so far. And now I'm going to⁠—what's his full name?

Sarah:              [redacted].

Jessica:            And does he have family money?

Sarah:              His parents have money now, but they didn't when he was young.

Jessica:            That's a really interesting answer. It's a funny way of not saying yes but meaning yes.

Sarah:              But yes. Now they do.

Jessica:            So the man that you're engaged to⁠—his family has money.

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            I want you to notice how bad that feels. That's your shit. Don't worry about it. You can deal with that later.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But that's for you. That's for you to hold because if you don't hold it, guess who's holding it: your fucking intestines, your colon.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            If you have any amount of shame about marrying this person who has access to family wealth, deal with it before you get married to him, okay? Very, very important. Oh God, this is triggering you so much. Wow. Worse than the baby talk. That's weird. Okay. Again, good for you to sit with. If you want to know why your body is holding on, we're getting in there. Right?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Does he receive financial support at this time from his parents?

Sarah:              He works with his father because his industry was on strike.

Jessica:            That's a funny way of saying yes.

Sarah:              Yeah. I⁠—yes.

Jessica:            I'm learning about you that you loop-de-loop around a question. Okay.

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So he currently is the beneficiary of family wealth, and that's not going to change. And as, let's say, he gets married and let's say he has kids, then your father-in-law could then, let's say, promote him so that he could make more money at the family company. And there's never going to be any question about your partner's ability to pull in money. But it's all associated with your in-laws.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            That's your living nightmare. So maybe he's the perfect man for you. Maybe this is the perfect situation. I'm not saying it isn't. But let's acknowledge the reason why that triggers you is because you've seen that movie on Lifetime. You don't like that movie. Am I wrong?

Sarah:              Correct.

Jessica:            Yeah. So this is a little bit of a trap because you will have access to his family wealth through him. He will never lose his job with his dad.

Sarah:              Correct.

Jessica:            That's real. So, when I asked you earlier do you think he would stop working and stay at home, and you were like, "I don't know. We haven't really talked about it"⁠—yeah, you do. Yeah, you know. You already know that. If that's the setup, you know the answer, no?

Sarah:              Part of me really doesn't want to believe that if I asked for something different, that there wouldn't be some malleability there.

Jessica:            So the malleability would be he would leave a high-paying job with perfect, infallible job security to stay at home so you could teach yoga full time?

Sarah:              And run a business.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay. I just want⁠—

Sarah:              I have ambitions.

Jessica:            I fucking love that. But I want you to hear what I⁠—the way I said it, it was shitty, and I don't stand by it. But it's what I have seen, unfortunately, male partners say and do over and over and over and over again. Patriarchy, man. It's a patriarchy.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's interesting. This is interesting that as I'm getting more details from you, it kind of seems like you actually have a lot of answers to these questions, but you're kind of pretending to yourself that you don't.

Sarah:              Oof. I feel so called out.

Jessica:            Sorry. But does it feel wrong? Because I can be wrong about this. Does it feel like maybe I'm just seeing this wrong?

Sarah:              I mean, what he's doing with his dad is not at all what he wants to be doing. It's not like a high-paying, good job. He is doing manual labor and hates every second of it and would love to leave it. It's not the work he wants to do. So that part feels like I don't think he would want to stay in that situation. It feels like he would maybe slowly be killing himself if he did that.

Jessica:            Do you think your father-in-law-to-be, if he said he was going to have a baby, might promote him?

Sarah:              Maybe try to give him different work, yeah. Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Sarah:              And it maybe would shift in work, but maybe⁠—I don't know if it would be more money. Yeah.

Jessica:            So you think⁠—I'm just going to pull at this thread a little more. You think that your father-in-law-to-be wouldn't necessarily give him more money if he had a child on the way. Do you really think that?

Sarah:              No. I think the money would look different. It might be the money in the form of physical things. It might not⁠—

Jessica:            So buy you a house⁠—

Sarah:              Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            ⁠—get you a car, pay for school tuition.

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            I see.

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            As opposed to the write-off that your father-in-law can get from paying his son, he would do it, rather, in gifts. I'm just throwing it at you, girl. I'm just throwing it at you.

Sarah:              Yeah. I haven't thought about that.

Jessica:            Right. Okay. Good. You haven't thought about it. Your body has. Your body has because I don't know how much this relates to your parents' relationship, but based on your chart, I'm guessing it does, this feeling of being trapped and locked in and not having recourse. Your body has a built-in terror of it from your childhood.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So this is where I'm just really mindful of your activation, so I want to just kind of allow for us to be present with that. The reason why your body is so aware of what you're doing, even though your mind is not, is because your body holds⁠—what do they say? The body keeps the score. Your body is holding all of this. And when you were a little kid and you grew up around your parents' dysfunction, you promised yourself that you would never be in a trapped situation.

And so it's interesting how much you're like, "Oh, I hadn't thought this through. I hadn't played this out. We haven't had this conversation," because your body is screaming at you. Your body's like, "I'm on a strike. I'm on a strike, and I'm not going to perform until you take care of me." And the worse it feels, the more you're like, "Oh God, what's wrong with me? instead of, "What is my body saying?"

I think, in a way, we've actually addressed the tummy issue, right? We've addressed the digestion stuff. And now I want to give you really specific relationship advice, okay? And if you hear it and you don't like it, don't fucking take the advice. If you do like the advice but you're not ready, take it when you're ready. Remember agency so that when you get activated around Pluto, it's all or nothing. It's have the full conversation immediately the second we get off this phone or never talk about it again. So that's Pluto activation.

What is in your best interest to do is to recognize when you get into that all-or-nothing thinking and just sit with the feelings that are trying to push you to run out the door or bury yourself under the covers, because neither are ideal. We want to find that middle ground. So that's it. The advice I give to you is first to sit with this conversation. Sit with this reading. If you have a shrink, if you have a bestie, maybe talk it through. And I'm assuming your partner knows you're getting a reading today. Does he know?

Sarah:        Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Just say to him, "She gave me the advice to sit on it for 72 hours. So I'm sitting on it for 72 hours and keeping a promise." It's not a lie. I'm telling you to do it. Sorry, mister. You'll be fine. And then I see you have guilt about sharing this with him. Interesting. Interesting.

When you're ready to share it, share it with him from the perspective of that I pointed out that you have fears that you haven't been tending to, that you weren't even aware you were feeling, okay? Because this is about your fears. And unfortunately, the conversation you need to have with him is around chore-sharing, financial planning, and coparenting. Do you do more chores at the home than him currently? Do you guys live together? I'm assuming.

Sarah:              We do. I live here more, so yes, I do more chores.

Jessica:            That's a fun way you did that again. Interesting, interesting, interesting. I mean, I like context, but are you hearing all of these answers that you're trying to contextualize⁠—

Sarah:              Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—are all ones that you don't think sound right? So you're home more than him. What does that mean?

Sarah:              He lives part time with his parents and comes back here every week⁠, ten days or so.

Jessica:            Has he ever lived⁠ outside of his parents' home?

Sarah:              Oh yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Sarah:              We moved into his place.

Jessica:            I see. I see. Okay. So, when he's home at the same time as you, who does more of the housework?

Sarah:              Probably still me.

Jessica:            Okay. I love that you took so long to figure this out because it is, as a psychic⁠—I⁠—obviously you. Okay? I'm sorry. It's not close. Is it close? Am I seeing this wrong? It's not close. It's obviously consistently you.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. But you had to think about it.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So you can see why your body would be like, "No, I can't let go. I can't let you just go," because you're disassociating around some stuff. Right? So you do most of the chores currently. That's not sustainable unless you want to resent him. Have you ever had roommates?

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            Was chore-sharing at all the tender point?

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            I would imagine. You got Pluto in your fourth house. That is going to be a thing that you're not always going to be resilient about. Now, listen. You got Jupiter there, too. So you're like, "It's fine. I'll do it. I know how to do it." And then you're so focused on nervous system regulation, you're like, "Well, I know how long I can tolerate a dish in the sink," or, "I know how long I can tolerate these flowers in a box," or whatever. So you're like, "I'm gonna self-care." But that's a strategy for a person who lives alone.

                        There has to be a collaborative dynamic. Otherwise, what's happening is you're in the first year of a relationship with a man, and you are showing him that you are happy to do the bulk of the housework. That's not you. Am I wrong that that's not you, or am I right that that's not you?

Sarah:              That is absolutely not me.

Jessica:            It's not fucking you.

Sarah:              It needs to be balanced.

Jessica:            Yes. It needs to be balanced. You know, if I was queen of the world⁠—which everyone should be thrilled that I'm not, if we're being honest. But if I was queen of the world, I would make it illegal to get married before you've been together for two and a half years⁠—not that all partners who do are doomed or don't do well, at all, because obviously⁠—first of all, I'm not going to be queen of the world, but second of all, that's obviously not the case⁠—but because I want you to have a nice little Saturn cycle, a little Saturn cycle, so you actually know what you're getting into because in the first year, he thinks you genuinely enjoy doing most of the cleaning. And he has every right to think that. You act like that.

                        And the reality is you don't know what he's like when you expect him to be 50/50 or maybe 70/30; he does more for periods of life, right? Which you 100 percent will, if you marry him, expect him to do 70/30 sometimes. We don't know if he's willing or able. I mean, of course he's fucking able, but we don't know if he's willing. We just don't know. So I'm not saying start being resentful today. I'm saying, okay, so you haven't communicated the fullness of who you are because you're in the honeymoon phase. That's okay. But that means he hasn't communicated the fullness of who he is because you're in the honeymoon phase.

So either elongate the honeymoon⁠—you know, elongate the engagement. Do you have a wedding planned?

Sarah:        Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. Then have the conversations now. Have the conversations now because these conversations can be had at any time in a relationship, but if they happen right after you get married, it's easy to feel trapped, like, "Oh my God. What did I do?" And we know that a Mars opposition to the Ascendant from a stellium in Aquarius is not going to do well with feeling trapped in the first month of a marriage, right?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So do it while you still have agency. Do it while you still have flexibility, and it will make it a lot easier on you. Oof, your system is like floopity-doopity-doopity-doopitying. I'm so sorry. I'm really fucking triggering some shit up here. I'm so sorry. What you're going to basically do is you're going to sit him down and you're going to say, "This fucking stupid astrologer pointed out some things that I hadn't thought through and some ways that I was miscommunicating who I am to you." Start with self-ownership.

                        And that's when you're going to say, "You know how I do all the cleaning or most of the cleaning? I actually really don't like that. I really liked it while we're not living together full time and while we're in the honeymoon, but long term, I for sure don't like that. How are you about cleaning?"

Sarah:              Oh, I mean, he's great. But yes.

Jessica:            No, not how⁠—no, no, no.

Sarah:              No, how can he be?

Jessica:            Of course he's capable of cleaning. He's a grown-up man. I mean, I know a lot of them act like they can't clean, but it's not a complicated skill set. The thing about⁠—say his full name again.

Sarah:              [redacted].

Jessica:            Thank you. Here's the thing. You guys need to practice showing each other because you both say exactly what the other person wants to hear, partially because you're a great match and you actually are excited to be with each other. And if you say to him, "Hey, can you clean up after yourself?" he'll be like, "Of course I can. I'm a grown-up." He's not just going to say it; he's going to say it in a way you want to hear it, right?

Sarah:              For sure.

Jessica:            But I'm not sure that he'll do it.

Sarah:              Okay.

Jessica:            You don't want to be doing all the cleaning, but you're controlling and weird, so you do it because you're controlling and weird.

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            So for you to stop would actually be a feat of effort for you, right?

Sarah:              Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            It would be really hard on you.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the problem is that you are weird and controlling, and you're claiming to self-regulate. And then, one day, you wake up and you're like, "This motherfucker hasn't done shit."

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            "Why isn't he doing anything?"

Sarah:              Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Pluto in the fourth house. Yeah.

Sarah:              Yes. All of it.

Jessica:            Yeah. So for you to say, "Hey, you know this whole cleaning thing"⁠—you can say, "The astrologer pointed all this shit out. And so I think we should try something where, for six solid weeks of us being in the same house at the same time"⁠—so it wouldn't be six American weeks. It would be six weeks of living together, so that might happen over the course of 12 weeks or something, right?

Sarah:              Right.

Jessica:            But for six weeks, he does 80 percent of the cleaning because you've been doing 80 percent of the cleaning. And you have to sit on your fucking hands. You need to sit on your hands, and you need to let him do it his way. And he needs to stop assuming that you'll do everything like his mommy does.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Sorry, but that's real. And if the two of you have a hard time doing that, great. Have a hard time before you're married. Learn more about each other and yourselves before the wedding. So that's one thing to do. Another thing to do is talk about meat and potatoes of coparenting.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Meat and potatoes of coparenting. Like for you to be able to say, "Yes, I know I want kids, but in my fantasy life, I also am running a business. And I know that running a business is like 60 hours a week, at least for a year or two. So, if I was doing that, Mr. Me, do you imagine that we would have a full-time childcare provider? Do you imagine that you would take time off of work to stay at home with the kids? Would your dad hire you half time so you could spend the other half time at home? It will mean that I'm the primary breadwinner, but are you comfortable with that?"

                        So, if you ask him just high level, "Are you comfortable with me being the primary breadwinner?" he'll have no problem. If you ask him to work less, he's got a problem. It's my guess. I don't think that you have ever really asked him to do something he doesn't already want to do in this relationship.

Sarah:              I can think of maybe one time that that has happened.

Jessica:            What was it?

Sarah:              We, very early in our relationship, were apart from each other for over a month. And I asked for a certain type of communication during that time, and it was not what he wanted. And it was very against his own kind of⁠—what he needed, what would feel natural to him. And I was like, "Well, this is something I really need right now."

Jessica:            Did he give it to you?

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. That's beautiful. I'm really glad to hear that. I'm not saying to you I think he's bad for you or don't marry him, whatever. I am saying to you you're moving really fast with him. You've moved really fast with him, and of course, you have overlooked a bazillion details because of that. And so these conversations need to be had, and there needs to be a practice.

                        So I'm glad that you had an experience where you asked him to do something that he didn't want to do, and he showed up. But that's literally once, and it was on the phone. Okay? So it's really different than you sitting on your hands and resisting the urge to micromanage what's happening in the house and him taking the initiative and doing things consistently.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I think both of you are going to be bad at those two things⁠—

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            ⁠—which could be a recipe for problems because if my maladaptive self-care mechanisms and yours match each other too nicely, well, then we have a perfect match for something that you actually want to outgrow and you don't want to be in your marriage, right? And this is normal. This happens in all relationships, so it's not like a red flag that you should be like, "Okay. Get off the beach." But it's a red flag that you shouldn't lose sight of, right?

Sarah:              Totally.

Jessica:            And so I want to encourage you to talk about that, and I want to encourage the two of you to talk about what does coparenting actually consist of? What is coparenting? Because again, I have seen very few couples ever in my consulting practice talk about what coparenting is until before the baby comes. That's not a thing people do, which just blows my fucking mind because it is the biggest thing. Yes, you can talk about how important is education and, "What do you think of suburbs?" And there's lots of things that you can talk about that happen when the kid's a bit older, right?

Sarah:              Right.

Jessica:            But you can talk about high-level things like, "What do you think of religion or private versus public"⁠—I don't know, fucking whatever it is that people talk about with kids. Obviously, I don't have kids. But I'm really interested in you discussing the day-to-day management of a home and a family and the kind of minutia of labor and recognizing that I think one of the hardest parts of parenting a small child is you just don't have any space or time to yourself. Right?

Sarah:              Yes. That is something I would need.

Jessica:            Correct. That is profoundly dysregulating for you. You really don't do well with that.

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            And so, if you know that, why doesn't he know that? And why haven't you talked that through? If you fantasized about having a kid together, that's one thing. But I actually think you've not hard planned it, but you've planned it. So I have to ask you a question that I've been resisting asking you. Are you on birth control/having safer sex with this man?

Sarah:              Having safer sex. I am not on any kind of hormonal birth control, copper IUD, nothing. Haven't been for years as a way to reclaim my own hormonal cycle.

Jessica:            Respect. I mean, again, nothing in your chart suggests that the pill is easy on your body. Nothing.

Sarah:              No.

Jessica:            So I think that's great. And when we say safer sex, are we talking about the pull-out method or a condom?

Sarah:              Condom.

Jessica:            Bet. Okay. I'm very happy to hear that, because you have Sagittarius on the fifth-house cusp. You've got a Venus/Moon conjunction. I mean, Venus also conjuncts Saturn, but you've got a Venus/Moon conjunction. Yeah, you could just get pregnant. Have you ever been pregnant?

Sarah:              No.

Jessica:            Congratulations.

Sarah:              Yeah. I've been told I would be very fertile.

Jessica:            Yeah. You look very fertile to me. And so condoms are a very good thing. Obviously, they're not 100 percent, but they're way better than the pull-out method, so I'm glad you're doing that.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And you still like having sex with him?

Sarah:              Yes.

Jessica:            Great. Okay. I'm going to make you say your full name out loud for the first time in our reading.

Sarah:              Yeah. [redacted].

Jessica:            That's what I was looking for. Thank you. It is healthy and well advised for you to reflect on your childhood and your parents' relationship as you perceived it and experienced it in your childhood and to revisit the promises you made yourself and the concerns that you have about nuclear family and marriage from the perspective of your parents' relationship. Okay? I know that this is activating your⁠—I almost feel like you're getting bloated at this point, like⁠—

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—it's really not what you want to hear me say. It's not what you want to do. And I understand that. But again⁠—am I right? Are you feeling almost a little bloated?

Sarah:              There's a heaviness in my stomach.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Sarah:              It doesn't feel like a puffing, but a heavy.

Jessica:            Yeah, like there's just, like⁠—that makes sense. Okay. Yeah. This is very triggering, right? And the trigger, again⁠—it's not nervous system trigger, which is⁠—a lot of your triggers are. This is in your tummy, right?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so you just finished your Saturn Return. So, I mean, the exactitude of the transit's over now, but it's literally just over, like maybe a month over or something like that, super just over. And the way that our circumstances look is always really different than the way we perceive our parents' circumstances to be. But when you peel just a little bit beneath the surface, it starts to become easy, once you're post-Saturn Return or in your Saturn Return, to start to say, "Oh my God. Wait a minute. I can actually see the resonance between my current relationship where I'm engaged to be married to this fucking man and my parents' relationship."

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have agency. You have choices. You don't have the choice to marry him or not marry him. There are countless choices within those two extremes. You have a lot of choices. And if being honest with yourself and really looking into your own guts and your own heart feels like it will cost you the relationship, then let the relationship go, because anyone in your life that requires you to abandon yourself is not going to stay in your life. You will eventually run them out the house with a baseball bat⁠—some version of that⁠—because you are not well suited to being trapped.

                        So I want you to bring yourself into the awareness that you already have and stop abandoning that self-awareness because if you find there are things in this relationship that are not actually what you want them to be and that you've been willfully ignoring them or whatever, okay, maybe by actually getting present with them, you just have to confront fears, like, for instance, the intensity of your feelings around acknowledging that you're engaged to be married to a man who has generational wealth that he's going to be having access to.

That shame, that awareness⁠—that's not a reason to not marry him. But it is a pocket of you that you have abandoned yourself around. And so it runs the risk of kind of getting septic a little. That's how Pluto works. So cultivating a practice of identifying your messy, ugly emotions and sitting with them is not a practice of figuring out why you have them. It's just a practice of not abandoning yourself when your ugly emotions emerge. Sometimes they're just there because they're covering a vulnerability or a trigger. Sometimes they're there because something's wrong. And there's a lot of other reasons.

But if we recoil from pain extensively, then we never get to figure out what's actually underneath that pain, what's underneath the symptom. And so you have the bravery and the motivation to be like, "I know something's up with my system." It's not like typical constipation because it's situational, right?

Sarah:        Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But the link between the situation of "It's when I'm with my partner" didn't click for you. It's, for you, "It's when I'm away from my beloved bidet," which⁠—we are on the same page about love of bidet. But that is actually what it is. It's when you're with your partner that it gets more activated. It's not exclusively that, but it is that.

And that doesn't mean⁠—it doesn't mean that it's because he's wrong for you. I want to just say that really emphatically. It really doesn't mean that. And I don't want to brag, but I have told a lot of women to leave a lot of men over a lot of years. So it's like if I saw that, I would not be⁠—you know, I wouldn't be callous, but I would bring it up as a conversation.

Whether or not he's right for you⁠—I actually haven't even really looked at that in any kind of deep way because none of this is about making that decision. All of this is about being with yourself, right?

Sarah:        Right. It's not abandoning myself.

Jessica:            Yes, so that your body doesn't have to hold on and not let go because you're letting go of too much of yourself in this relationship so far. Your tummy's being wise. Your tummy's trying to help you.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Having all these Pluto squares in your birth chart means that when you feel sad and when you grieve, it's big and it can feel bottomless, and it's ugly. And I want to acknowledge that we have tapped in, in our session, to a lot of things that you have grief about. So, unfortunately, you may feel like garbage after our conversation.

Sarah:              I have therapy tomorrow.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I'm so glad. I'm so glad to hear that. So, if you can tonight⁠—is he in town right now?

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Because I was going to say, if you can tonight, just be alone and be sad. Be alone and be sad. And notice that part of you that's saying to yourself that you can't keep any of this private because you owe him the truth⁠—because I'm seeing this, like⁠—it's really hard for you to process. You're so smart. You can process information really quick. But I'm not talking about high-level information. I'm talking about all this root stuff that needs privacy to be sorted through. It just needs privacy, and it's not about a secret. It's not about him at all.

                        There is no human on the planet that you could be dating that I wouldn't say don't talk to them about this reading, none, because you need to give yourself the gift of feeling uncomfortable and feeling what you feel without having to turn it into something intelligent.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if you can, when we get off the phone, which is going to be soon⁠—do you have a bathtub?

Sarah:              I do.

Jessica:            Okay.

Sarah:              I was going to take one tonight.

Jessica:            That's exactly the move. So what you're going to tell him is how much you love him and how wonderful it is that he is here and that you have strict instructions from your astrologer that you need to take a 12-hour bath⁠—okay, I'm exaggerating, but you need to take a bells-and-whistles bath, like a serious bells-and-whistles bath, and spend as much time alone in the emotions that got triggered, and that you'll talk to him about it⁠—that I gave you strict instructions⁠—72 hours. That feels terrible to you, so you don't have to do it if you don't want to. But that is my advice, okay?

                        And whether you take the advice or not, whether it feels right to you or not, it is not important to me. What's important to me is that you don't abandon yourself emotionally as you assess your options and make a choice. Okay? So, if you feel guilty not sharing everything with him, be interested in why. Sit with the feelings around why. If you share with them and then you're like, "Now I wish I hadn't," okay, just stay with the feelings. I don't let it get too up there in the head. Keep on bringing it back to the guts because your guts brought you here.

Sarah:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Stay with your guts. Your guts need you. I know that this was a very vulnerable question that you asked with the perfect title to it, so I want to thank you because I know⁠—I mean, everybody poops, but not everybody talks about it.

Sarah:              Totally.

Jessica:            So I'm happy we did.

Sarah:              Me, too. Thank you.

Jessica:            Thank you.