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

Jacqueline:      Hi, Jessica. I'm so excited to talk to you. I have listened to you for years, and everything that you talk about resonates with me so strongly. And so my primary identity, the thing that makes me happiest in life, is that I'm a mom, but it's also really fucking hard these days because of all the things. And one of the things that troubles me is that I am simultaneously trying to provide a safe, happy, stable childhood for my kids and also trying not to freak the fuck out about the world around us, about how dangerous it is for children in general, existentialist fears around climate change, and then just constantly questioning whether I'm up to the task.

                        I have lots of questions around my own parenting. Am I doing a good job? Am I the right mom for these kids? Am I doing well enough to protect them from everything around them and give them these happy memories? I didn't have the most stable childhood to begin with, so it's always been my overriding goal that if I was going to be a mom, that I wanted to be able to give them a lot of what I didn't have.

Jessica:            Okay. This is, of course, so fucking real, and I feel like probably every parent struggles with this, especially now. I have follow-up questions, and then we dive, okay?

Jacqueline:      Sure.

Jessica:            And I will say you were born May 14th, 1977, in Bogotá, Colombia, at 6:20 p.m. local time.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. So questions⁠—how old are your human children?

Jacqueline:      I have an almost eight-year-old son, and he's autistic. So that presents certain challenges. And I have a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

Jessica:            Congratulations. And you're with your partner long term, happy, supportive, all that kind of good stuff?

Jacqueline:      He's the best.

Jessica:            That wasn't in your question. Okay. Great.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            So I want to ground these questions because on the one hand, can you prepare for something as existential as, oh, I don't know, a climate crisis?

Jacqueline:      It's more than that, though. It's climate. It's shooting in schools. It's the fact that we're Hispanic. So is this world⁠—I mean, this world is not safe for Brown kids, for Black kids, for LGBTQ kids, for girls, for boys. I mean, there's a lot.

Jessica:            It goes on and on. It's terrifying. It's true. So I want to just acknowledge that even as I tap into this question with you, I experience a similar level of overwhelm. It is just like the foundations are crumbling, and the ceilings are coming in. It's this really overwhelming, endless list of risk, and it's emotionally really overwhelming, which is why I'm going to be extra Capricorn here and really try to get as organized as possible so we can sort through it because all of it is too much, and no one can do anything about any of it, except for, of course, none of that's true, but also, it's all completely true.

                        So let's get as grounded as possible. So one of the questions you verbalized that I can answer quickly and easily is, "Am I even the right mom for these children?"

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            That's an easy answer because the answer is inevitably yes, because they're your children. So, if you are willing to believe in any kind of spirituality, if you're willing to believe in astrology, it's hard to believe that someone could be born to the wrong parent.

Jacqueline:      I know. I just⁠—they are such special people. And sometimes I worry that my overwhelm is having a negative impact on them. So it's less so about, "Am I the right mom for these kids?" and more so, "Am I up to the task? Do I have the right skills and depth and all those kinds of things to be there for them in the ways that they need me?"

Jessica:            Here's a question. What if the answer is you have some of the right skills and you don't have other skills? What does that mean?

Jacqueline:      I would accept that. I'm not perfect. I'm not perfect.

Jessica:            Correct.

Jacqueline:      I'm well aware of that. But I have this really annoying perfectionist streak in me that I—I do battle with it, Jessica. I do battle with it every day. Every day.

Jessica:            Yeah. So listen. You've got a stellium in Aries. You've got Mars, Venus, Moon, and your South Node all in Aries, all in the fifth house. And you've got Pluto opposite your Mars and Venus and more widely opposite the Moon⁠—typically wouldn't actually count because it's a little off, but because your Moon is conjoined that Venus/Mars, it kind of pulls it into the opposition.

                        And then your Mars and your Venus and your Pluto are all square to Saturn. So to say that you're perfectionistic is an understatement. You're not just perfectionistic; you are punishing and controlling as a way to cope with your perceived or real misgivings or struggles in life. You're really a dick to yourself is the simple way of saying it.

Jacqueline:      I am such a dick to myself.

Jessica:            You are such a dick to yourself. Yes.

Jacqueline:      Fuck you, Saturn. Fuck you.

Jessica:            Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And how did this come about? The most succinct way for me to say it is when human children have chaotic, abusive, or under-parenting, what we tend to do is either really descend into that or become our own structure. And whenever children have to become adults, we tend to become dicks. That's a normal thing. So you developed self-parenting skills when you were way too young to have them.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            And you're still using a lot of those.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            So there's lots of layers to this, and we could easily spend hours talking about this as a parent/as not a parent. But before we do any of that, I want to just acknowledge that the question of, "Am I good enough to parent these kids? Am I a good enough person to even navigate these fucking things? Am I capable? Am I failing?"⁠—these are the questions you ask about everything you care about even a little bit. And the question itself is not evidence of a problem, even though you tell yourself that the question is evidence of a problem. Does this make sense?

Jacqueline:      It does. And I just⁠—I feel like I took the same rod that I beat myself up in my previous career and transferred it to parenting. And I don't want to do this to myself anymore.

Jessica:            Yeah. So okay. First of all, good on you to notice it. The joy of 40s, as you really used to⁠—it clicks. It fucking clicks, right?

Jacqueline:      It does.

Jessica:            It's like joy and misery all in one. But whatever. So, everywhere you go, there you are. That's what this expression means, right?

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Like, okay, so at a certain point of your life, all of this intensity and fixation was oriented around career. And now it's around kids. What do these two things have in common other than you? They're important to you.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So, every time that pressing question of, "Am I failing? Am I failing? Am I failing?"⁠—there's lots of ways you ask that question. But anyone who has a Saturn as a focal planet to a T-square⁠—it always comes back to, "Am I failing? Am I a failure? Am I failing? Am I a failure?" That's the question in lots of costumes.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            Whenever you find yourself asking that question, the answer to give yourself is, "I am activated right now."

Jacqueline:      Hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. Write that down. You're taking notes, right?

Jacqueline:      I am. I'm a notetaker.

Jessica:            Yeah. Child of Saturn. You have to. It's a compulsion, and I respect it as a Capricorn. I appreciate it. So the answer is, "I am activated right now. I am in my trauma trance pattern right now." There's no possible way for you to find the answer to that question because it's the wrong question.

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            If you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, you have probably heard me say more than once what is hard for you is not what's wrong with you.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            And this is like a mantra for you. It should be a mantra for you. What is hard for you is not what's wrong with you. And if we go deeper into that, what is hard for you is where you are more likely to slip into old trauma patterns. And that's when you are also more likely to act out against yourself or the people and situations you care most about.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            So, for you, acting out sometimes is going to be snapping.

Jacqueline:      Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look. Venus/Mars conjunction in Aries opposite Pluto? Yeah. I don't want to cross you. Nobody should. You can be really sharp. But the other thing is this driven perfectionism⁠—very Saturnian. Very Saturnian. So, when this gets activated, you go into fix-it mode. So we talk about savior/victim. Right? There's the savior and the victim. Is that what they call it? Yeah, savior/victim paradigm, right?

My brain is blanking. Hold on. Let me see. Why is my brain blanking? Because I've just touched on a pocket that's really hard for you, and so I'm pausing here because I'm experiencing something that happens for you, which is you're really good⁠—you're like, "I'm a good student. I'm going to fucking figure this out. I'm going to work on this. I'm going to do this." And you press yourself. Good on you. You're very ambitious, you're hardworking, and you do it.

But we hit this emotional pocket just now, and I'm not sure exactly where it was. We will come to it in a moment. But when that emotional pocket gets hit, there's something interesting that happens in your mind is that you can technically track ideas, and you can technically track plans and all that kind of stuff, but it feels really different and less clear. And in that state is when you're more likely to do the little things that need to get done.

Jacqueline:      I feel like what happens to me when I hit that state is I'm doing all the things, and then I start to lose track of what I actually need to do. And so it almost becomes like I have⁠—I've wondered all the time if I have ADHD because it feels like that is almost a trauma response to when I'm at capacity, and then all of sudden, it's like I can't just do one fucking thing. It's just like there's too many things.

Jessica:            Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not a therapist. I'm not a psychologist. I will speak to this from my perspective as both a psychic and an astrologer. It doesn't feel like ADHD to me. And it might be, because again, I don't know anything about it. But to me, it feels like a trauma response that served you really well as a kid because when things hit a certain level of chaos emotionally⁠—so it's not about what was happening externally; it's how you felt about it emotionally, which⁠—my guess is not when things were at its craziest. When things are at its craziest, you're fucking razor sharp. You're clear. You're the person I want in a crisis.

                        It's when things are real and you're present and they're touching into parts of your emotions that you don't know how to steward. You don't know if you're supposed to be aggressive or yielding. This is where you're like, "Ahh, I don't know what I'm supposed to be now."

Jacqueline:      What it's starting to make me think about is⁠—so I'm pretty open about this, but my dad was a violent alcoholic. And that's what caused my parents' divorce when I was three. And he just was very checked out with me and kind of cold and, I would say, cruel, kind of neglectful toward me. And I have been trying to earn approval for a very long time. "I'll be the best little girl. I'll get straight A's. I'll be in the play. I'll win all the awards." And I did. I did.

Later, with lots of therapy, I was able to realize that external validation is not the way to get self-worth. But I feel like I've been performing. And so I'm thinking, "What do I do next? What should I do next?" in whatever situation I'm in. Yeah. I mean, I've been doing that for a very, very long time. And then, after the divorce, my mom was depressed. And so I'd be wondering how she was.

So there was always this aura of, like, "How is she? How is she?" always trying to second-guess what everybody was doing. And I was kind of⁠—nothing was grounding me. I had one person grounding me, who was my nana. And then everything else just felt flaily.

Jessica:            Yeah. This makes sense because you've just described how you feel about parenting.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            And the good news is you've not described your circumstances as a parent or a coparent. What you've described is the psychological, emotional, embodied experiences you're having as a parent. Right?

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            In the realm of bad situations, you're best-case scenario. You know what I mean? The problem is psychological? Good. That's great because you're scared that the problem is behavioral and psychological. It's actually⁠—so far as we're seeing so far, it's not. Okay. This is good.

                        Here's the big "but." Yes, you were performing for validation and self-worth, but that's not all you were doing. You were trying to make the people around you feel better so that they were safer and more reliable parents to you.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            And your work history as a television journalist⁠—hey, this is a perfect fucking job for you.

Jacqueline:      It really was.

Jessica:            High stress. Pull it together. No room for your emotions. You're constantly on top of the story, managing many people but also getting consistent management from people whose roles are clearly defined to you and for you. That's your fucking happy place. You get to be unhappy all the time but effective and useful. Yes. It's just⁠—

Jacqueline:      And then it almost killed me.

Jessica:            Oh, I bet. Oh, I bet.

Jacqueline:      And then it almost killed me. Yeah.

Jessica:            Because, while you were doing something that was the right thing for you to do, you were again doing it in a broken family system that is set up to extract from you instead of to support you.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm sorry.

Jacqueline:      No, it's good. It's good. Yes. You tapped into that. I have a lot of shame around the way that my career ended, and that⁠—it just⁠—it made me feel like I couldn't cut it. But then my higher self, my more objective self, knows that I was in an abusive situation, and I saved myself. I took myself out of that environment and was like⁠—I'm very grateful that I reached a point where it was like, "You gotta get out," and I did. But it was really hard because so much of my identity was wrapped up in that, and then it just felt like I flamed out. And the people that I started with are huge stars. You know, it's like⁠—it doesn't matter. I shouldn't think about that. But I just, like⁠—yeah. Sorry.

Jessica:            I understand why you would think about that. First of all, you have a Leo Midheaven. It doesn't not matter to you, right? I mean, you do want to be recognized and applauded, and that is good. Also, your trauma-informed survival mechanism is to prove yourself forever and to never be proven enough. And so something like TV journalism⁠—perfect for you, if we're trying to invest in your trauma pattern, because your trauma pattern will never be enough.

                        Let's add more to that, which is working for corporations, especially in the TV journalism industry⁠—I think it's changing now, not for the better, but it's changing now. It's a reiteration of your family system, right? It's extractive.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            It's punishing and demanding, and it's inhumane. Truth be told⁠—

Jacqueline:      And you're never good enough.

Jessica:            No, no. And you're never done. And you're never done. And you can age out. What does aging out look like for a woman? We don't need to talk about it. We know what it is. It's not pretty. It's [crosstalk]⁠—

Jacqueline:      I was told that I was lucky that I had a longer shelf life because I was Latina.

Jessica:            (gasps)

Jacqueline:      Yeah. And you're just like, "Oh! Great." You take it that way at the time, and then later, you're like, "Wait. That was really fucking misogynistic."

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jacqueline:      That's awful.

Jessica:            It's all kinds of fucked up.

Jacqueline:      And that was one of the big reasons I left news in general, was I was like, "You know what? It is completely unsustainable to try and look a certain way for the rest of my life. I don't want to." I have a lot of rebellion in me around these kinds of things. I have very⁠—a lot of rage against the machine type vibes that are conflicting with my little good-girl perfectionist thing.

Jessica:            Well, again, you are a Taurus, right? Venus-ruled, but your Venus is opposite Pluto. So you will toe the line.

Jacqueline:      What does that mean?

Jessica:            Well, it means a lot of things, but one of the things it means is you will toe the line until a light switch goes off in you and you want to break the line; you want to destroy the line and make it pay.

Jacqueline:      Yeah, [crosstalk] burn everything down.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's one of the things it means. Yeah. That's one of the things it means. And when we pull back and rein it into parenting⁠—right? Because don't worry; I haven't forgotten why you've reached out. And I've gotten lots of questions that are similar to your question of, "How do you parent in a time like this?"

                        The answer is you cannot do it perfectly. You cannot extract from yourself the nature or conditions or behaviors that will shield your children from the world they live in. You cannot turn back time and pluck them from existence. And if you accept that you are a parent in a time where, in the United States, mass shootings are a thing and the climate crisis is what it is and racism and sexism and the internet and all⁠—etc., etc. All of these things⁠—they exist.

                        If you accept that they exist, which is exceedingly hard⁠—it sounds so simple. It is simple, but it is the thing that most of us don't do. We don't accept that it is what it is, and we act as if it isn't. And then we are horrified when, all of a sudden, we're like, "Oh my God. These things exist." If you were to accept that things are what they are, you could, with your nature being as it is, parent within that.

                        But I think part of your struggle is you are going to give your children a perfect childhood. You're not going to harm them. You're never going to harm them. You're only going to protect them, and that's impossible. That's literally impossible. Let me put it in astrological term that hopefully will simplify this for you. Every human has Saturn in their birth chart. Every human has Pluto in their birth chart. Therefore, they gotta get a little fucked up by something/someone, somewhere.

Jacqueline:      It's so scary to me, though. And I was thinking about this ahead of our conversation, and my first baby was five months old the night that Trump got elected. And I had a full-blown panic attack.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jacqueline:      And I told my husband, "Everything is going to change." I knew it, like so many of us knew it, right?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jacqueline:      And so I feel like this is this factor that has haunted my parenting. And then, when I was pregnant with my daughter, family separations were happening, and then the pandemic. And it's just this kind of⁠, like—what else are you going to throw at me while I'm trying to love on and nurture and raise these two beautiful little people?

And I feel sometimes like there's a hurricane, and I'm⁠—or no, actually, like a tornado. And you know how you get in the bathtub and you pull a mattress over you, and you're holding on for dear life? That's what parenting feels to me like right now, like I'm holding on for dear life, trying to shield them, trying to give them stability, trying to give them fun, trying to give them good core memories and stuff.

And then I'm also triggered because, at the same time, I'm seeing that they're getting everything I never had as a child. And the little girl in me is like, "Jesus Christ, you really kind of were fucked." You know?

Jessica:      Right. Nothing like being a parent to realize how bad your childhood was.

Jacqueline: I know.

Jessica:            Yeah. There's nothing like working with kids to start to understand what it actually means to be seven, regardless of how you were treated when you were seven, right?

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            All of this said, when you are in this state of asking the question, "How can I not fail them? How can I do this better?"⁠—when you are in that state, always, you want to bring it back to, "I'm really triggered and in my trauma trance right now"⁠—

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            ⁠—because these are valid questions and concerns, obviously. And also, when you're in the state of, "I don't want to fail. I fear I'm failing. I don't want to fail. I fear I'm failing," you will never find a new answer. You will always return to your old coping mechanisms.

Recognizing our trauma trance activation, the narrative of our trauma trance activation⁠—that is life-changing because you can start to identify it, and then some of the time⁠—not all of the time⁠—when you're identifying it, you can be like, "Okay. I'm going to pull back from that question," because there is no real answer, of course, because you cannot stop the internet from being a dangerous and radicalizing place, and you cannot fix the climate crisis, and on and on it goes.

That's not one of the things that you get to control. You do get to control the conversations you have with yourself and hopefully your besties or your therapist or your partner or whatever around the ways in which you're triggered seeing how wonderful of a childhood your kids are having and having grief over what you lost, that you didn't know you lost. I mean, maybe you defensively kind of knew you lost it, but now you really know.

Jacqueline: I think I told myself I had a happy childhood.

Jessica:      Wow.

Jacqueline:      And then, all of a sudden, I was like⁠—I just told myself, "No." I'm an optimist at heart and a positive person at heart. And I think that I was just like, "No, I'm a great"⁠—I mean, for a very long time, I had a problem with letting anybody know that I was in trouble or that I didn't have everything under control.

Jessica:            Wow.

Jacqueline:      I was holding on to that for dear life, like, "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine." And then it was very clear I was not fine.

Jessica:            Okay. There's a number of things I want to say. The first is I realized that I made an error in what I was saying. You do have a T-square that focuses on Saturn. You have a Pluto/Venus/Mars opposition. And also, your T-square is Uranus/Mercury square to Saturn. So, sorry, I made an error about that. Stand by all the words other than that.

                        Okay. The other thing I want to say⁠—yeah, you did not have a good childhood. I'm so sorry. You did not.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            And that doesn't mean that there was not any good things, because there were, actually. There were lots of great things. And also, honestly, the shitty parts of your childhood helped you to become this incredibly tenacious, driven, powerful, interesting, smart, resourceful weirdo that you are, if I may.

Jacqueline:      Thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. And this is the thing. I don't wish trauma on you or anyone else, but make no mistake: necessity is the mother of invention. Most people who sit on delightful couches, being spoon-fed delightful snacks, are not innovating new ways of⁠—I don't know⁠—whatever. That's actually not typically a thing, which is not to shit on anyone who has comfort and joy and ease. My God, enjoy it. Tap into it.

                        But let's not forget you struggled and you suffered, and you won and you grew and you relaxed. You had all the things. And you've become the person you are. And your children will, too. They will, too. And we can't predict what will come for them personally, and we can't predict what will come for them collectively. These are not things that we can or should try to predict, honestly.

                        What we can say is that your children have a resourceful, tenacious, perfectionistic mom that is really driven to make sure that they're safe. And sometimes that drive makes you overprotective.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            And sometimes that drive makes you just be like, "Go. Run to the wolves and see how you survive."

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            You flip-flop, right?

Jacqueline:      I do. Oh my gosh. It's crazy. My husband is a helicopter parent, too, and he kind of went through his own stuff. He was under-parented in many ways, and so he's⁠—I mean, he's the most incredible father. I totally think to myself all the time⁠—I tell the kids all the time, "You have the best dad. You have the best dad." And it's like they have no idea how good they have it.

                        But this is just one of the few areas in which we clash, is that he's too protective, and I'm like⁠—my son, for example, he loves being in nature. And I'll take him on two-hour hikes, and I'm just like, "Go." I put no rules on him. Just, "Go. Figure it out." And I see him in real time coming into his own, and I love seeing that in him. And then, with my daughter, sometimes it may come off like I'm hard on her, but I'm like, "You can do this, and you know it. Don't chicken out. You can do this flip under the water. You can do these things. I want you to try." And sometimes I'm like, "Am I being [indiscernible 00:26:27]?"

                        But that's something⁠—I want them to be independent. I want them to take risks. I want them to not be afraid. And sometimes I'm like, "Is this just"⁠—obviously, this is coming from me being afraid or something, but I want them to try.

Jessica:            Here's the thing. Whether or not pressing⁠—let's say in this example of your daughter, "You can do this flip under the water. Come on. Don't chicken out. Try it"⁠—whether or not that's received as supportive or being pressured is about her, in a way, right?

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—because some children⁠—she's got tons of Pisces in her chart. If she's got lots of challenging Neptune aspects, she's going to experience that as pressure.

Jacqueline:      [crosstalk]⁠ competitive kid.

Jessica:            Okay. Well, if she's more⁠—got lots of Aries like you do, or other cardinal signs, she's⁠—what is it?

Jacqueline:      Scorpio.

Jessica:            Scorpio. Okay. So she's going to be like, "Okay. I'm being pressured to tap in and find my fire." Great. So this is where we have to pay attention to the relationship. The compulsions of your birth chart say there's good and there's bad. And reality says there's good in the moment. There's good in the situation. There's good in the dynamic. And then there's bad in the moment, bad in the situation, bad in the dynamic.

                        The parenting that your five-year-old daughter is going to need is going to be different than that same child at 15. And trust, if you don't change the way you treat your child by the time they're 23, they're going to change it for you, right? So we have to evolve and be adaptive.

Jacqueline:      Oh, that hits.

Jessica:            Yeah. For you, adaptability is not one of your trauma responses. Your trauma response is to get Saturnian, right? Or Plutonian⁠—you dig in your heels. "This is how it's done."

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, when you're being adaptable⁠—so let's say you're pressuring your kid to do the flip underwater, and she starts crying. Do you pressure her to keep on going⁠?

Jacqueline:      No.

Jessica:            Or do you say, "Oh, this is too far."

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            That's adaptability, right?

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's obvious in this example we're using. There's lots of examples that are not going to be obvious. And that's why parenting is hard. And you will make mistakes. I want to just affirm, 100 percent, you will fuck up.

Jacqueline:      Oh.

Jessica:            That is part of the job.

Jacqueline:      I had a therapist tell that to me once. She was wonderful. I think she saved my life. This was in my late 20s. And I was going on and on about things that upset me about my mom, who's a wonderful person but was human and flawed, too. And finally, she just holds up a hand, and she's like, "Your mom fucked up, and her mom fucked up. And someday, you're going to fuck your kids up." And it really⁠—it was upsetting to me, but she's right. At the time, I was like, "I'm not going to fuck up my kids." And then, now, I'm like, "Oh shit." Every single day, I'm like, "What did I do?"

Jessica:            Nobody has⁠—no, that's a lie. Some people have children, and they don't give a fuck about their kids. They're not thinking about kids as people. but people who think about kids as people, people who are like, "I want to be a parent and I want to have a child," and they really think about their kids as people⁠—none of those people want to fuck their kids up. And every single one of them do, because that's life. It's life.

                        So you don't want to abuse your kids. Good. Don't abuse your children. And that is, in some ways, really obvious. There's a lot of things that we can agree are obvious things that are abusive. Don't do those things. And then there are more subtle and nuanced things. So, for some child, being ignored by a parent would be a fucking blessing. For you, it was neglect.

Jacqueline:      It was neglect.

Jessica:            Right? It was neglect, and it was abuse.

Jacqueline:      And I still⁠—I had to learn in marriage therapy with my husband he is somebody who needs to retreat and collect himself. And I'm like, "He's abandoning me."

Jessica:            Right. Yes. That's the Pluto opposition to Venus and Mars, is this being highly sensitized to abandonment because of your childhood trauma. Right?

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            That said, your children do not have that trauma.

Jacqueline:      No.

Jessica:            They have not been abandoned. Because they have not been abandoned, constantly proving to them that you're there may do the opposite of what you're expecting it to do. And this is where we see childhood patterns repeat throughout family systems because if your mom neglects you or your dad neglects you, and so then you have kids and you are constantly there, you're constantly there, you're constantly there⁠—then they're going to grow up and they're going to be really hands-off with their kids. And you see we have a pattern, right?

Jacqueline:      I see.

Jessica:            We have a pattern.

Jacqueline:      That's fascinating.

Jessica:            Humans are really fascinating. We are such fucking weird animals. And this is where, again, it comes back to being present. And being present for how your perfectionism and sometimes your desire to really kind of fix the problems of your childhood⁠—those things are you problems. They're not your children's problems until you make them your children's problems, right? They're you problems, which is great. That's what you want.

                        You don't want your children to be secretly scared that they're going to be abandoned by you. That's not their problem. That's your problem. So what then needs to happen is when they express the need for space, more structure, less structure, to be adaptive to that instead of responsive to your own trauma and your need to prove yourself for yourself.

Jacqueline:      That's such a good point, yeah, because my son's getting to the point now where he'll ask for space. And at first, I was like, what is he planning to do? Why does he need space? That was my initial assumption. But now I'm just like, "Okay," and I make sure I knock before I go in the room and all that kind of stuff. But it's a little⁠—

Jessica:            He's how old again?

Jacqueline:      He's eight. He's turning eight.

Jessica:            Oh, good for him. Good. That's great. I mean, listen. If a child has the wherewithal to say, "I need something," you're doing all right. And it's really important, when a child tells you who they are, to listen to them.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            You tried telling your parents who you were, and they weren't able to listen. They weren't able to hear it.

Jacqueline:      Yeah. No.

Jessica:            And so the way you can protect your children is by supporting them by having a relationship with them⁠—with them, not at them. And for generations and generations and generations, parents had relationships at their children because that's what happens in so many cultures⁠—not in all cultures, but in so many cultures.

                        But now⁠—now you know that you can be responsive and adaptive to your children's needs. And that doesn't speak to this kind of core panic of how to stay strong and calm when you are losing your shit because the world is falling apart. And the answer to that is it's not possible, not all the time.

Jacqueline:      That's disappointing.

Jessica:            I know. Wouldn't it just be great if you could just be perfect not care at all about the world falling apart? No, it wouldn't, actually. Let's talk about⁠—we're going to use the climate crisis because it's the easiest one to talk about, even though it's the scariest one in many ways because of⁠—it will create war and food insecurity and all these things.

                        Being scared of the climate crisis and all the things that could happen as a result of it is, in many ways, you being scared about what it means for you and for your kids. It's very much about you.

Jacqueline:      Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            It's also about the fucking planet because if it was only affecting you and your family, then it wouldn't be the climate crisis, right?

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            Fear is overwhelming. It is all-consuming. And it both makes you feel more focused and less focused at the same time, yeah?

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Jacqueline:      Yes. Yes, like laser-focused, but then also like⁠—

Jessica:            Exactly. Exactly. The mind gets focused. The heart can't tolerate it.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            So, when those feelings of fear come up⁠—and we're using this topic as an example, but there's a million examples we could use. First of all, we know you're activated, right? So that means you're not going to find the solution. But here's the second thing. You're having a strong physiological and psychological response to something that's emotional.

Jacqueline:      Oh. Say that again because that hit.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You're having a physiological and psychological response to something that's emotional because in this moment, your house is not on fire from a forest fire or drowning from a⁠—whatever. You are not, in this moment, actively being chased by a bear called climate crisis, in this moment. So it's emotional right now.

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. This means, as a parent, that you can tap into your emotions and say to yourself and then to your children, "Oh, Mom was really emotional today. I'm feeling really overwhelmed by stuff. I don't want you to worry about it, but if you're noticing I'm being a little weird, it's because I'm processing emotions that I don't know how to process."

You can just let them know without burdening them with the content, because what you're then doing is you're modeling for them adults don't have all the answers. Adults process emotions. And it's okay to have privacy while you process emotions, as long as you are being communicative that "Me being weird is not about you. It's about me." And then they can ask you questions, or they can give you space or whatever else it is.

But what you're doing here is you're not only practicing good self-care; you're also modeling for them a healthy way to be unwell in relationship and not make it the other person's problem.

Jacqueline:      It's interesting because I went back into therapy a few months ago, and the very first thing I wanted to discuss was better emotional regulation.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jacqueline:      These words were just in my head, like, "You need emotional regulation. You need emotional regulation." And I've done some work on that, and I feel like I'm better. But sometimes it really does feel like I reach capacity and I'm unable to function.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that's part of it. That's part of being a person. It's part of being a person who doesn't only have to take care of themselves but has to take care of these two vulnerable, perfect, sweet angel humans.

Jacqueline:      Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            The more you care, the worse it is.

Jacqueline:      Yeah. It is.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You care about yourself, but you know whatever you do, you'll deal with the consequences. You're an adult.

Jacqueline:      Right. Right.

Jessica:            But kids? How the fuck do you protect kids? How you protect kids? And the answer is you can't, necessarily. That's the actual answer. And that brings up emotions that are literally not possible to process in a healthy, easy way. And this is where⁠—you've heard me, probably, say this before⁠—when you touch a hot stove and it actually burns your hand, that's a healthy response. That's a healthy response.

                        So what do you do? Do you pretend to your children that your hand is not burning? No. You say, "Mama's hand is burning. I gotta go take care of things. I might be crying and screaming, but that's okay. I'm taking care of things right now." You model for them⁠—you acknowledge the mental part, the emotional part, and the physical part. But you don't have to make them know, "My hand is burning, and it's going to blister, and it's going to hurt for"⁠—you don't have to burden them with that if that is scary for them.

                        And if they want to know, then you can share it with them when you're ready. And you can say to your kids, "My hand is burning right now. I can't explain it to you right now. I will explain it to you when I don't want to scream." That's okay. You do not need to be a perfect person in order to be a good parent, because your kids are not going to be perfect. They're going to be dicks. They're going to be insecure. They're going to make mistakes because they're people.

And so, if you model for your kids that it's okay to be a non-perfect person, then it will be easier for them to go into the world and not be perfect people.

Jacqueline:      I think part of it, though, Jessica, is that the weight of what I endured as a kid had negative consequences for my adult years. I can see the connections and even some of the "aha" moments I had earlier where it's like, "Shit. I was replicating my family system."

Jessica:            Yeah, at work.

Jacqueline:      ⁠It's like because I can see how clearly those were connected, it's like I don't want to burden my children with the same. And I think what you're saying right now makes sense, just to be like, "Hey, I need a minute," or, "Mom's processing. I need to step away. I'm not feeling great right now." But I don't ever want them to have that burden where what they went through as kids is burdening them as adults, and I just⁠—

Jessica:            Why?

Jacqueline:      Because it was so heavy for me. It just felt so inescapable for me for years.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm going to interject. You're saying two different things, but you're telling yourself you're saying one thing. You don't want your kids to have anything in their childhood upset them in their adulthood. That's one thing you're saying.

Jacqueline:      [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Right. You heard it a little bit. But the other thing you're saying is because of how hard it was for you. So what you're saying is you don't want your children to have your childhood. Well, they don't.

Jacqueline:      I know, but⁠—

Jessica:            No, but⁠—I'm going to interrupt you. You don't. You cognitively know, but emotionally, you're in that same family trance pattern. You're constantly trying to prove it and get validation and validation and validation. And any parent who seeks validation is a very unhappy parent because kids are not here to give us validation. They can't. And when we seek it from them, that becomes their trauma. "A parent needed validation from me." Right?

Jacqueline:      I don't like what you're saying.

Jessica:            I know. I'm so sorry. It's terrible. It's terrible.

Jacqueline:      I don't like this.

Jessica:            It's terrible. Listen. Here's the thing. Your children will have shit from their childhood, and maybe it'll be because of how you treated them, and maybe it'll be because of some teacher, or maybe it'll be because they experienced something traumatic in the world, or maybe it'll be all the things. You don't get to control any of that. It's actually not the thing that you get to control as a parent.

                        Your children will not have your childhood, because already, they are past the age at which a lot of your core trauma happened. You're not your mom. You're not your dad. Your partner is not your dad and not your mom. They're not having your childhood. That ship has already sailed.

Jacqueline:      Right. Right. Right.

Jessica:            They're having their⁠—

Jacqueline:      A good thing.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And also, school shootings weren't a thing when you were a kid.

Jacqueline:      No.

Jessica:            And also, the upheaval of the globe⁠—I mean, you went through things, but it wasn't the same.

Jacqueline:      No.

Jessica:            It wasn't the same. And kids will have handheld devices that show them the whole entire world and expose them to radicalizing forces when they're young, whether or not you give them phones, whether or not you give them an iPad. It's a different world.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the panic and the care⁠—all of the emotion that you have around that⁠—are your psychological and emotional concerns to cope with. But within that is awareness. And you can use that awareness to give them tools and skills. You cannot use that awareness to absolve yourself of any responsibility for what hurts them or to protect them from all harm, unfortunately.

Jacqueline:      I know. I just had a feeling pop up. I just want protect them. I just want to protect them.

Jessica:            Yeah. From everything.

Jacqueline:      Everything.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's good. That's healthy. We want you to have that feeling. That's a good feeling. We do not want to get rid of that feeling. Risk did not begin now.

Jacqueline:      I know.

Jessica:            And we can talk about the relative safety and privilege of being⁠—you're in the United States, right?

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah⁠—of being in the United States, of being in the Global North. We can talk about all of the safeties and privileges that your specific children have. And those are great things to be grateful for. And also, I'm going to come back to a bear chasing you. When we talk about survival mechanisms, which⁠—we are talking about yours⁠—I like to refer back to that bear.

                        There are many bears in this forest, many bears. None of them are actively chasing you or your children at this moment. But at any moment, any or all of those bears could try to attack your children or you. That is true. And that is really scary for an adult who's aware of how dangerous bears can be to live with. You must. You live here now. You are aware, and you do have kids.

                        So you can tell yourself, "Eh, bears⁠—they don't exist," or, "Eh, bears⁠—I've never seen one. It's fine." But the truth of the matter is there are bears. They are dangerous. They are in the forest, and so are you and your kids. And they are not looking at you right now, and they are not attacking you right now. Your children are safe from those bears in this moment.

                        What do you do? You cope with the terror of bears that you have to protect your kids from and also deal with because the kids aren't the only ones who are vulnerable to the bears. You start developing tool kits to give your children that are appropriate to their nature and their circumstance. So your child with autism is going to need a different tool kit than your child who doesn't have autism, right?

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            It's also different people. Okay. So you start to think about, "What kind of tool kits can I give them for each of the dozen bears that live in this forest?" There are certain tools that you can give your children that will help to protect them from bears. There are certain tools that will help them to identify, "That's a bear."

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Right. You can give them tools. You cannot remove the bears from the forest, and you cannot remove yourself from the forest, because in my metaphor, the forest is Earth.

Jacqueline:      Right. And this all makes sense. I mean, it does. And it's funny because if you were to ask my kids, they'd be like, "What bears?"

Jessica:            Right. Well, they're little, and that's a good response. I mean, there will come a time where they'll know what bears. They will. And how they respond to that will have a lot to do with a lot of conditions that are out of your control, a lot of circumstances that are out of your control. I mean, I just knocked on wood. May they never know the fear of a school shooting, right? May it only be like a distant, theoretical threat. But we cannot control it. It's one of the bears. It's one of the bears.

                        And so how do you give them tools for coping without talking to them about, "This bear has guns"? Don't do that. They're too young for that. There will come an age where you might have to have those conversations. But at this age, it's, how do you listen to adults that are trusted in a crisis? How do you recognize your emotions and cope with them? How do give yourself permission to be dramatic when you're feeling dramatic and process it in a healthy way?

                        These are great ways of dealing with the bear called school shootings. None of them require us to talk about what the bear is or what it has in its purse. It's giving them tools to cope with things that are out of your control and theirs. And in this time, but also in all times, that's the best you can do.

Jacqueline:      I have a question for you. Is there anything⁠—maybe I'm looking for reassurance here, but is there anything in my chart that would reassure me that I have some sort of resilience or things in there? Because I just get very scared, Jessica, and I'm just like⁠—I know I have to have resilience. I have to have these skills because I've made it this far. But I'm just wondering⁠—I don't know⁠—if you see anything in there that would help my parenting.

Jessica:            Resiliency, you're asking about.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, I'm confused by this question because you're exceptionally resilient. We talked about that earlier, and you knew it was true.

Jacqueline:      Then why don't I feel like it's true?

Jessica:            I see what this is. Good. Okay. Good. I'm glad you asked this question. Here it is. You feel really, really scared and bad emotionally right now because we're talking about some pretty fucking scary bears. And you want to collapse. You just want to collapse and give up. And instead of giving yourself permission to feel what you feel and to support yourself through those emotions, your response is, "How do I fucking fix this so I don't feel bad? This is a lack of resiliency to feel vulnerability." I'm sorry.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            And that is the same extractive and cruel logic of the companies you worked for and of the worst part of the parenting you experienced.

Jacqueline:      Yes. This is exactly what I meant.

Jessica:            Yeah. So you do not need reassurance, and you do not need resiliency. You're looking to fix this problem from the motivation of, "Am I failing? I am failing." That's the activation again, and that means you're never going to get a good answer because that's a trauma response question.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. Here's the bad news, and it's fucking bad news. You gotta feel your feelings. You have to make space in your life for your own mental health, your own emotional health, but also to model for your children that it's healthy and wise to do, to feel scared, to feel like you're falling apart, and to not pair it with narratives. You feel like you're falling apart. You feel scared.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Those are kind of psychological descriptions of emotions. So what? If we go underneath that⁠—which I'm going to do very gently because you're actually not in the right state for me to do that. So I'm going to just kind of do it from a distance a little bit. I'm going to say, underneath these thoughts and feelings⁠, I mean, it's just pure terror. That's what is. It's pure terror.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            And of course, you want to do something about it. Of course, you want reassurance. Of course, you want to fix it. And you experience that pure terror, and you say, "I'm not resilient." You are resilient, and you're terrified. And I don't blame you for⁠—I mean, you obviously reached out to me, and you've listened to my⁠—I'm not going to tell you everything's going to be fine, because it's not going to be fine, obviously.

Jacqueline:      No. No, and you're the first person I felt like was actually telling the truth about how things really were, and open your eyes and be⁠—no one's coming to save us. And shit's just going to get worse. And that is like⁠—when you were⁠—I mean, this was like two years ago. I was listening to you, and I remember being like, "She's right. And it's just going to get worse."

                        And months go by, and I'm just like, "I can't believe where we are. And I know this isn't the bottom." And so, yeah, there is a lot of terror at the bottom of all of this because I'm just like⁠—the old way of raising kids just doesn't work anymore. We're up against shit that is evil, and that keeps me up at night, and it keeps my husband up at night.

Jessica:            For whatever this is worth⁠—and this is not⁠—I don't want you to hear this as a redirect, but I will say this isn't new.

Jacqueline:      I know.

Jessica:            This isn't new. So, if you were trying to raise kids during the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide or the slave trade or⁠—and I could keep going. None of it's new. None of it's new.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            Parents have had to parent through apocalyptic circumstances throughout time. And there have been countless apocalypses.

Jacqueline:      Actually reassuring.

Jessica:            Yeah. Well, it's real.

Jacqueline:      In a weird way.

Jessica:            It's grounding because it's the truth. There's something⁠—not for everybody, but for me and apparently for you, there's something really grounding about looking at the truth and accepting, "Okay. This is true."

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            You do not need to do something that's never been done. You need to do something that never should have to be done.

Jacqueline:      Yes. Yes. Exactly.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. So, again⁠—so we come back to my little stupid metaphor about the bears and the forest, right?

Jacqueline:      I'm angry. I'm fucking angry.

Jessica:            Yes.

Jacqueline:      I'm angry at all the bullshit that we're dealing with that we shouldn't have to deal with.

Jessica:            Correct.

Jacqueline:      And I feel angry⁠—I feel a lot of rage. I do.

Jessica:            Yes. That's a healthy response. What's an unhealthy response is seeking out bears and attacking them because you think that they're bad. You're not doing that. You're not doing that. A healthy response is being angry that you have to be scared of bears all the fucking time and you have to protect your kids from bears all the time. Why can't we just figure out how to get the bears out of the forest? That would be great.

                        A healthy way to process that rage, which doesn't have a clear outlet, is to find a way to process that rage, so⁠—I don't know⁠—boxing?

Jacqueline:      I used to teach kickboxing. That's crazy you said that. Yeah.

Jessica:            There we go. Get back into it.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Kickboxing. That's a great outlet because it's a place to take your very healthy and appropriate range that doesn't have a healthy and appropriate outlet.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            Good. Excellent. So, again, what we're talking about is, how do you find a way to identify what is the core emotion underneath all the mental complexes, and how can you find a healthy place to bring and process those emotions? Talk therapy is fantastic. You know I'm a huge proponent of talk therapy, but it's not sufficient. It's not it. It's not all of it. We're not just minds. We're also hearts. We're also bodies.

                        To process emotions through the body means you have to be present while you kickbox. That's all. And you can't 100 percent of the time, but as much as you can, if you can⁠—

Jacqueline:      Right. That's what I loved. That's what I loved because you can't think of anything else because you're⁠ kicking the shit out of something.

Jessica:            It's an outlet. You're in your body. Boom.

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            That's what you need to get back into. And maybe⁠—

Jacqueline:      Back into my body. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yes. Yes, and also into giving yourself permission to have rage because I want to just reflect back to you the issue of your rage came up immediately after we tapped into feeling, "I have no resiliency. I have no energy," because it's just heads and tails of the same coin. "I'm falling apart. I have nothing. I can do nothing," and, "I want to kick some ass and murder something into completion"⁠—it's the same thing. It's just heads and tails of the same complex, psychological and emotional complex.

                        It's a survival mechanism. It's fight or flight. And so listen. Sometimes you're going to feel like you're not resilient and you're failing. Sometimes you're going to feel enraged. Sometimes you're going to feel like, "I fucking know what to do. I'm giving all my⁠—I'm giving my kids all these tools to deal with this forest full of bears." And that's fucking life.

                        You will have all of these moments, and all you can do is what you can do. And you have to, at a certain point⁠—you don't have to. I want to encourage you to, at a certain point, accept that life is not fair. It is not just. It is not "Good people get good things happening to them." That is not real. That is a lie. And it is a lie that gives this illusion of order.

                        I am a huge fan of doing good things and righteous things because they're good and they're righteous and it makes you feel good within your own skin, not for the reward. And you're actually down for that. That works with your birth chart. But when you get activated, whether it's around work⁠—which was about ambition and proving things to yourself and others⁠—or about your kids⁠—which is also about ambition and proving things to others, but it's also about deep, profound, visceral love⁠—that's when you do not have an easy time accepting that the world is imperfect and unfair and that everyone fails and everyone struggles.

Jacqueline: Nailed it.

Jessica:            Yeah. And I'm sorry because it's so hard⁠—having kids is like⁠—loving someone that much is devastating. It's just awful.

Jacqueline:      Yeah. I tell people all the time it's the best, most hardest thing they'll ever do. If you want to do it right, be prepared to struggle every single day.

Jessica:            Every damn day. And this is where⁠—again, you've probably heard me say this before, but the bigger the love, the brighter the light. And the brighter the light, the deeper the shadow. All light casts shadow. You cannot have light without shadow. And if we say the shadow is bad and the light is good, then we have missed the point of life.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            The shadow of terror and fear and projection and control and all the things that come up with loving children⁠—it's an inevitable part of the love. Listen. The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference. There's no shadow to indifference. It just fucking is what it is. You are not indifferent about anything. You don't have an indifferent bone in your body.

Jacqueline:      I don't.

Jessica:            No.

Jacqueline:      It's annoying.

Jessica:            I mean, at times, I'm sure it is. But in the context of this conversation, what I want to say is when you vilify your shadow/you evade and avoid your shadow, then you are missing out on components of your capacity for love⁠—self-love, behavioral love, love of others, dealing with what happens when you love something or someone and you fail it, what happens when you love something or someone and you see them struggle and you cannot fix it.

                        That's all in the shadow, but it's a part of love. And if you can love yourself enough to tolerate your own stressful, painful emotions, your own fears that cannot be fixed, honestly⁠—if you can do that, then not only are you going to be a healthier, more whole version of yourself, but you're going to be giving your children tools by modeling them. It's like a win-win-win-win-win-win. But it's also exceptionally difficult. If it wasn't exceptionally difficult, we would not be in this world, because a lot of people just parent out of trauma.

Jacqueline:      Yeah. And I have this big fear that that's what I'm doing. And I'm trying so hard not to, but I⁠—

Jessica:            Well, trying as hard as you are is part of the trauma, right? Let's remember that. Being perfectionistic and not failing is part of the trauma. You are for sure parenting out of your trauma because you're a human. There's no way you're not parenting out of trauma, because to separate your trauma from you would require⁠—what, a lobotomy? A new spiritual life? I don't know. Of course, you're parenting out of trauma. That's okay.

Jacqueline:      It's so annoying, though, because I just saw a big, red F visualized when you said that. There I go again, just⁠—

Jessica:            Failing. Yes.

Jacqueline:      ⁠—failure. Failure.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Good. So failure. What does it mean? There's nothing wrong with failing.

Jacqueline:      I know, and one of the best lessons of my entire fucking life was when I got fired⁠—unbelievable liberation that I experienced from that because it was like I seriously had this vision that I was going to melt like the wicked witch, like I was literally going to cease to exist. And then it was like, "Oh, no, wait. I'm here, and actually, everything is sort of the same." And it was very, very liberating. And I thought I was free, and I am not. It's still there.

Jessica:            Failing at something that is not good for you is liberating.

Jacqueline:      Yes. Actually, that's the difference. Yeah.

Jessica:            It is the difference. That's why it didn't destroy you, because thank God you failed at that. Thank God you failed at that. If you had kept on succeeding at that, you would be a shell of a person right now.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is something that I think⁠—again, failure is simply not learning from a mistake or a struggle. That's actually the only thing that failure is. So, when you think about children and learning how to tie their shoe, how many times do you need to fuck up learning how to tie your shoe in order to learn how to tie a shoe? Countless times, right?

                        And if your child says, "Well, I've been trying to tie my shoe for the last three weeks, and I really can't do it on my own yet. I'm never going to fucking learn," Well, you know that's not life, right?

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            You keep on pushing and encouraging them and whatever is required so that they keep on failing. You continue to fail in order to learn. And at a certain point in our teen years, we forget that lesson. We forget that failure is the path to learning. There is no way to learn anything without failure. If you're building muscle in your body, you're literally tearing up muscle. Ew. Gross. But also, you have to tear it up to build it.

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            That's the human condition. So you will fail as a parent, and you will learn from as many of your failures as you can. And then they won't be for nothing.

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            And I feel like, again, this is such a Capricorn thing for me to say, but I want to rebrand failure. That all said, there's no way to make these changes that we're talking about without tolerating emotion.

Jacqueline:      I know. I know. So part of the problem, Jessica, is that I was too emotional for the adults in my life growing up, and I was constantly being told to tone it down. "You're too emotional."

Jessica:            "Develop a thicker skin."

Jacqueline:      "Toughen up. Don't be so loud. Don't be so demonstrative. Don't be so dramatic." And so fully feeling my feelings was made to be like a scary thing.

Jessica:            That's Pluto opposite the Mars/Venus. We get that. Yeah.

Jacqueline:      And I married somebody who's like, "Oh God. Your feelings..."

Jessica:            So here's what I'll say to that. That's the how you got here, the childhood part. And of course, we all married somebody who resonates with our trauma because otherwise they wouldn't feel like family, and they wouldn't feel like home. This is your starting point. And if you accept that you have a lot of voices and reinforcement that you should be smaller and less and that you believe those voices, 60/40⁠—

Jacqueline:      I don't. I don't.

Jessica:            Well, you do and you don't, and you do and you don't, and you do and you don't, and you do and you don't. Okay. So, if you accept that there are moments when you do⁠—because if you didn't believe it at all, you wouldn't have shared that detail with me because it would have been your past and not your present.

Jacqueline:      Yeah. That's true.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's okay. You know better mentally. Emotionally, viscerally, you don't always. That's okay. You don't need to be perfect. You get to be a product of your trauma. You get to be fucked up. You don't want to use it as an excuse.

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            And you don't want to be in denial about it, because when we're in a denial, we end up acting out against ourselves and others. The move here is to recognize sometimes you're able to recognize you have big emotions and to feel them, and sometimes you think your big emotions are a symptom of you not being resilient, of you not being strong, or of you failing.

                        Okay. When those words come up⁠—"I'm not resilient. I'm not strong. I'm failing"⁠—whatever way you dress up the concept of failure, when those things come up in your mind, get into a habit of always saying, "I'm in my activation. I'm in my trauma. I'm in my activation. And I need to deal with my emotions in this moment and come back to the content when I'm in a different mood."

Jacqueline:      Yes.

Jessica:            So that's when you write⁠—

Jacqueline:      That resonates.

Jessica:            Yeah. You just write a little note in your phone⁠—date, time, content⁠—so that you don't have to track it mentally. You just let it go, and now you just deal with whatever you're feeling right now. You feel like you're falling apart? Okay. What do you need? Maybe you need space to just be in your emotions. Take a note from your eight-year-old. Sometimes you need to be alone.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Sometimes you just need to feel what you feel. And you can't always be alone. You have kids. You have a life.

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            But that doesn't mean you can't identify your need. Sometimes you identify, "I need to be alone, and I need space, and I need quiet. And right now, there's 12 screaming children because I'm overseeing a playdate and yada, yada, yada." Okay. When your partner comes home later that day, you say, "I had a fucking day, and I have been waiting for my 20 minutes alone to be in my emotions all day. Babe, can you take the wheel?" And he'll say yes or no, and you fucking cross the road from there.

                        You can't always meet your own needs. But you can identify your needs, validate your needs, and make space for them eventually. This is not only good advice for you; you model this shit for your kids, and they'll be resilient enough to cope with whatever shit comes their way.

Jacqueline:      I love that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Being healthy and well adjusted doesn't mean being perfect. I've never met a perfect person in my life⁠—never.

Jacqueline:      I tell my daughter all the time there is no such thing as a perfect person, and then here I go.

Jessica:            I mean, the reason why you know this so well is because you struggle with this so well.

Jacqueline:      Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's good. You don't need to be perfect to have good advice and good insight. You have good advice and you have good insight because you struggle.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            Personally, I became a medical astrologer because I'm a hypochondriac. It's like the things that we're most drawn to sometimes are the things that are the hardest for us.

Jacqueline:      Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's healthy and great. Let your kids learn that sometimes your strongest emotions point you towards your greatest passions. We don't have to repress what's strongest within us. We need to work with what's strongest within us.

Jacqueline:      Yeah.

Jessica:            That's a powerful thing. And I want to acknowledge that we didn't look at your kids, right?

Jacqueline:      That's okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. It is. I think it really is, because none of this was really about them⁠—

Jacqueline:      No.

Jessica:            ⁠—because they're not aware at this moment that there are⁠—maybe they're aware there's a bear or two somewhere around the forest, but they're not experiencing what you're experiencing around the fears.

Jacqueline:      Right.

Jessica:            And they're not experiencing trauma at this time, which⁠—again, good for you to take in and take⁠—just to take in. They're not experiencing trauma at this time; you are. And some of that's because it's your fucking job; you're the parent. You're the adult. And some of that is because of your early developmental experiences, and some of it is because there's a bunch of fucked-up shit going on, and it's traumatic.

                        All of these different things that are motivating your emotions take different remediation, different care, and none of them mean you're failing, which is good news. Congratulations.

Jacqueline:      Thank you.

Jessica:            Also, it doesn't fix anything. But it is also good news. So I just want to take a pause and see, did we hit your big questions? Do you have any kind of final question?

Jacqueline:      No. It all resonated. And I think just saying out loud that I'm simultaneously terrified and angry⁠—allowing myself to just say it out loud instead of couching it in, "Oh, climate change and school shooting"⁠—no. I'm just⁠—I'm fucking⁠—I'm tired, I'm scared, and I'm angry. I think that that has helped me tremendously, and also just that reminder of instead of being afraid of the emotions and feeling them, and then that's when I blow because I've tamped it down so long, I think being like, "I'm activated right now," would be just a really great way to say, "Okay. I'm activated."

                        It's going to take a lot of practice, but I think that that'll help me because it'll give me permission to be like, "Okay. Yeah, you need a moment. You can't do all the things all the time."

Jessica:            Absolutely. So I'm going to throw one last piece of advice on you at our close, which is emojis. I would encourage you⁠—

Jacqueline:      I love them.

Jessica:            Me, too. Love them. But I want to encourage you to create a little thing⁠—again, it can be on your phone, something that's always with you⁠—where it's a happy, a sad, a mad, a glad⁠—you know, a happy⁠—and a bad emoji. And when you start to get overwhelmed and you find yourself in the failure rhetoric or whatever it is that activation is, turn to the emojis and point to the ones you're feeling.

Keep it real simple because our activation, our core survival mechanisms, are inherently our young child self. So, if you can point to those and be like, "Okay. I feel like I'm failing, failing. I'm overwhelmed," whatever it is, point. You're sad. You're mad. You're bad. Okay. Cool. And then, if your kids see you doing this, you can have them do it with you.

Jacqueline: Yeah.

Jessica:      "What are you feeling right now?"

Jacqueline: Oh, I love that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Sometimes we can't put words to our feelings. Feelings are like that. And this is where emojis are like a godsend because they're the great equalizer. And I think for children, they're so habituated to see them, they don't think of them as actually a tool. But they're a great tool. And I think that'll help your parenting. I think it'll help your children, and it will definitely help you. So it's something to play with. Put it in your tool kit.

Jacqueline:      I like that.

Jessica:            Yay. Good. And there is your reading, my darling.

Jacqueline:      Thank you.