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:      Welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Audrey:           All right. I'm going to read my question. "Hi, Jessica. I'm reaching out because I'm in my 40s and back in a place I said I would never return: living with my parents. I'm here due to an ecliptic event that occurred April of last year. While I am so grateful for my parents' support, now that I've moved past the numbness, the feelings of oppression that I had as a teen are resurfacing. I feel like a middle-aged teen. How can I navigate my current living situation without falling into old unresourceful patterns? I love and appreciate your no-BS directness."

Jessica:            Well, thank you for that, because you are a double Cancer, and not all double Cancers do appreciate my directness. So thank you. This is a really important question. And just for the people, listen. Sometimes we don't share birth information because it's private. But we will acknowledge that you were born in 1982, making you a xennial, which is to say, yeah, you're a millennial. You're a millennial, but you've got Pluto in Libra, late degrees of Libra. And those Pluto in late degrees Libra, like very early 1980s babies, you've got gen X vibes. You've got gen X culture. But also, you're a millennial. So they came up with the term "xennial." I think it does the job.

So the reason why that's relevant to the middle-aged conversation is that Pluto is the planet⁠—all the outer planets are relative to the generations, but Pluto, the slowest-moving planet, really tells a story about what generation you belong to. And so, again, that's why I say late degrees of Pluto in Libra⁠—that's a xennial.

There's so much going on for you in this. So I'm going to have you ground me a little bit more, Audrey. You lived with your parents when you were growing up. Your parents are still married and together, correct?

Audrey:      Correct.

Jessica:      And then you went off, lived your adult life, lived in a different state?

Audrey:      Yes. For part of it, yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Lived in a different state for some of the time, and then some shit went down. And when that shit went down, what was the crisis? Was it a financial crisis? Was it a mental health crisis? What happened [crosstalk 00:02:37]?

Audrey:           It was all that wrapped up. Yep, just⁠—it was a form of assault, and I—

Jessica:            I'm so sorry.

Audrey:           Yeah. Thank you. And in order to keep me from financial ruin, as I was healing and processing, you know, "Pack up all your things. Come back home, and we'll figure it out."

Jessica:            So that's what your parents said to you?

Audrey:           Yes.

Jessica:            So they invited you back home?

Audrey:           They did.

Jessica:            Okay. And when you packed up and came back home, did you have to let go of your job?

Audrey:           That was part of the process. Yes. That was prior. That was prior to. I was going to make the transition, kind of be my own independent person, and then this all happened, and it spiraled out. And so⁠—

Jessica:            Okay.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            And when you say you were going to be your own independent person, was there a breakup associated with all this?

Audrey:           No. I'm sorry. I was going to work for myself. I was going to⁠—

Jessica:            I see.

Audrey:           ⁠—kind of become⁠—yep. I was going to try to work for myself.

Jessica:            Okay. And now you're living with your parents.

Audrey:           Yes.

Jessica:            Ground me into the part of the question that would be the most helpful for me to speak to.

Audrey:           Okay. So there are no feelings of a failure, "I didn't do this well," any of that. I was fully open and receptive to this. I knew that this was for my highest good. I had already been doing a lot of work on myself, and I was also a bit numb because of everything that was happening. And so I was just kind of like, "Okay. I'm receiving help. I receive. I'm getting it. Sure. Whatever you want"⁠—going along.

                        And so now I'm getting to the point where maybe I'm on the other side of this, and I say that because now that the numbness isn't there, now that I'm not just allowing myself to, let's say, be guided or⁠—I'm more present. I think that's the key. I'm present again. I'm maybe starting to revive a little bit, and I'm starting to have wishes, desires, dreams, hopes. And I'm back in the place that I felt repressed⁠, physically⁠—physically in this space.

The environment isn't my ideal environment. It has a huge impact on me. I feel like I'm so porous. It's not just⁠—it feels like I'm in a cave, and then they're very plugged in. My family is very plugged in, meaning TV, radio, phone, all the things. And I'm on the very opposite end of the spectrum. When I had my own home, it was a very Zen place, very quiet very Zen, essential oils, plants, music with no words.

Jessica:            The opposite of your family home, almost.

Audrey:           Exactly. Exactly.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Audrey:           So now I'm in this place, and I'm having a hard time being able to tune in and ground. And I'm wanting to essentially figure my life out again. It imploded, and I'm wanting to rebuild. But it's almost like I don't have the energetic space and the physical space. And yet I'm also so grateful, and there's been a lot of healing, but of course, with that, also old wounds, old dynamic. And I don't want to be that angry teenager that just says, "F you, everybody. I'm walking away, and I'm burning this bridge."

Jessica:            Which I'm assuming you've done in the past with your parents.

Audrey:           Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Of course. "F you. I'm never coming back."

Jessica:            Right. So you have not only a Sagittarius Rising, but you have a very tight conjunction from Uranus to your Raising. So living with your parents, no matter how cool your parents are, would be hard for you. Right?

Audrey:           Yep.

Jessica:            So, before we get into anything else, do you have a job currently?

Audrey:           No.

Jessica:            Okay. And do you feel ready to work again?

Audrey:           I'm not sure. I think I'm ready, and then something happens. Something comes up, and I'm like, "Maybe I'm not ready."

Jessica:            Okay. I kind of want to start there. Let's take a look at that because there's the issue of how to engage with your family, but what I see for you is that, okay, yes, definitely, there's the issue of how to engage with your family and not do the thing that every human does, which is acting like a kid around your parents, right? We all revert back into our bullshit around our parents, especially if they haven't changed a great deal.

But I'm curious if you need to be there or if you needed to be there, and now you're actually ready to start mobilizing out, in which case the answer of what to do with your parents is going to be a different one, a little bit. Does that make sense?

Audrey:           Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, because again, this is one of the things that has been lingering in my mind, is if I'm ready, because essentially what I feel that you're getting at that I'm picking up on is the power dynamic with the financial aspects of it, which is, I think, the biggest pressure that I'm feeling. It's like, okay, yes, there is this power dynamic of I'm currently not bringing in any income, so therefore, I kind of have to maybe go along with—

Jessica:            Yeah. You're a dependent.

Audrey:           Yes. I have to be dependent.

Jessica:            You have to be dependent, which is, first of all, your nightmare in any circumstance, in any relationship, with a Uranus conjunction to the Descendant. But also, when a person is financially dependent on a parent, it inevitably, in all circumstances, creates a dynamic between all parties where the child is being a child and the parent is being the adult, even if the child is an adult, right? And that is complicated, and I don't have any value judgments in that statement.

                        It's just like, how can you have a child, parent that child through being a little toddler to being a tween to being a teen to moving out, and not continue to perceive them as a child? Of course, you do, because that's being a parent. And then this dynamic⁠—I mean, it's not different. It is different, but it's not different. And that's complicated. It's like when multiple things are true at once, we start to get confused. We start to get overwhelmed. And then we slip back into our shit.

                        So okay. Do you feel comfortable telling me what you were doing for work before, if you think you would go back to doing that?

Audrey:           I'm not sure that I would. It was in marketing. It was one of those things that was like my zone of excellence, not my zone of genius.

Jessica:            Yep. Okay.

Audrey:           And yeah.

Jessica:            You're not sure if you would want to go back into marketing. What do you want to do?

Audrey:           That's a great question, and I've been figuring that out. I have so many certifications, like health coach, yoga teacher, tarot, all kinds of things. And it's like, "Okay, do I want to create something with that?" which is, I thought initially, what I wanted to do, work and focus on that. But then I just kept getting these roadblocks and then a huge roadblock. And I'm questioning it.

I think what I do enjoy, what I do want, is to be of service in some way. I'm just at a loss as to what that looks like, and then I'm also struggling with⁠—I know the corporate world will take me back. They'll take anybody. But do I want to be there? I don't want to be in a cement building with artificial light.

Jessica:            So I got a lot of questions. The first one is, are you a consistent person? You've worked in corporate world, so you know, in terms of a workflow, what being consistent is. Do you tend to be a consistent person?

Audrey:           When I show up for work, yes. But I feel that, right now, I have been completely inconsistent, like my life is just⁠—even trying to establish a daily routine where I am, and that has been challenging, just because of the environment around me.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's layers to this, right? I'll be totally frank. I don't see you becoming consistent in your childhood home. That doesn't seem like a realistic goal because you are in such a reactive state⁠—I mean, I'm sitting here talking to you. You are calm. Your body language is so self-contained. It doesn't come across at all. But when I look at you energetically, when I look at you astrologically, holy moly. You are just like a tiger in a cage. You are fucking pacing your cage. You're like, "How do I get out of this cage? How do I attack the person who's feeding me the next time they come around? How do I get out of this cage? How do I get out of this cage?" And it's taking all your energy.

                        And so I agree with you. You are not going to find consistency in your parents' home. And so then what comes up for me is, if you need your physical environment and the energetics of that physical environment to be just so in order for you to do some⁠—let alone all⁠—of the things that would be necessary to be self-employed in the kind of woo service world, the self-help service world, then I'm going to quick, straight out the gate, tell you this: the way to get out of your parents' house is to get a job in the corporate world because then you can get money, and that will allow you to get a little studio apartment. And that little studio apartment can have music with no fucking lyrics and nice smells and calm vibes, and you can turn on a vitamin D light bulb when you need it, and you can turn off all the lights when you need that. You will have control over the vibes.

                        What I'm talking about is steps. What is the next step? Not what is the best step. What is the next step? Straight out the gate, you were letting me know that the best step is self-employment. But the next step is not, because it takes time. And in that time, you need to be right with yourself. And you're not in an environment where you can be right with yourself, let alone whatever traumas you're recovering from, let alone everything that is outside your door in this very tumultuous world.

                        So I say these words. How does it feel?

Audrey:           No, that feels so on point.

Jessica:            Good. Okay. Good.

Audrey:           [crosstalk 00:13:20].

Jessica:            Validating, like it makes sense.

Audrey:           Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, like the analogy, a caged tiger? Yes.

Jessica:            You are just like⁠—the worst part of this cage is there's literally no way out. There's just no way out. You just have to stop being a caged tiger, which is, on the one hand, literally impossible; we are what we are. And on the other hand, it's a metaphor. And it's a metaphor that matches your energy, and it matches your energy because here you are again, like you were as a fucking kid and a teenager, like, "How do I get out of this place? How do I get out of this place? How do I get out of this place? Yes, they feed me. Yes, they don't abuse me. It's fine, but I need to get the fuck out of this place." Right?

Audrey:           Yes. Yes. Yes. That's literally my internal dialogue from the moment I could put words together.

Jessica:            Yep. I see that. I see that. It's not like there aren't problems with your family. There are. But it's not like you have the worst family either. It's not abuse. It's just not a match. If you were at a party with lots of different generations of people, you probably wouldn't gravitate to talk to your family. It's just not a match, right? And so that's not a problem until everyone's in a state of regression and the family trance is activated, which⁠—it is very activated because you've been living there for a few months, right?

Audrey:           Yep.

Jessica:            So okay. In the realm of marketing, do people get remote jobs, or is it just in-person jobs these days?

Audrey:           No, there's remote. There's options. There's hybrid stuff. I mean, I've been hearing that the hybrid option is kind of going away with corporations that own buildings.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. They're wanting to put people back in boxes, which is another conversation. But I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.

Audrey:           [redacted].

Jessica:            So are you ready to get a job again after the trauma that you suffered? Not if you stay home.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            So now you're in a fucking pickle because what I'm looking at is you're not 100 percent ready to go back, but you are actually capable of going back. You're now in this pickle because if you wait until you're 100 percent ready, you're just going to trade out problems. You're just trading out problems because being in this house is its own fucking problem, and it's creating all these other fucking problems.

So, even as you're healing from this core wound that you suffered a year ago, the other shit that's happening inside of you makes it so⁠—okay. So you're a tiger in a cage at home, and then you're going to go to a corporate job? How the fuck are you going to do that? You're going to be a tiger in a cage, and then you're going to be like⁠—I don't know⁠—like a lynx in a cage.

It's like you can't be⁠—that's too much. It's too much cage. It's not a realistic goal. So it kind of looks to me like you're in a position where your best move is make a three-month plan, like a three-month plan of getting a job, just ferreting away all that cash. Just stick them in your bras, and then wait. And then get yourself the cheapest place you can get nearby. It doesn't have to be far away, because I think that's too big of a move for the part of you that's still recovering.

It would be nice for you to go over for dinner. It would be nice for you to be like, "Oh my God. They're starting to bug me. I'm going to leave now." That would be good for you because you do feel cared for and held and supported and safe with them, and also like you're in a cage. They're both, because where your parents live, it looks like there are affordable housing, eh?

Audrey:      They are. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. So you don't want to live where they are. That's obvious. I'm not encouraging you to spend a long period of time living where they are. But I am encouraging you to consider getting an apartment to rent for a finite period of time⁠—so maybe you sign a six-month lease, a one-year lease, whatever⁠—because it'll be cheap. You'll be really close to your parents.

                        So, if you move too fast and you need to kind of go back to your parents, you can rent your apartment, have all your shit there, and then go sleep at your parents' house. And it's not going to be a big deal. It's not going to feel like, "Oh God. I made all these changes, and then it didn't work." It's going to be part of the plan is you're doing a transition move. Does that feel right?

Audrey:           Yeah. I think that feels doable because I think, of course, it's like in my head, I'm like, "Okay. I'm imagining my next big house."

Jessica:            Yes. I see that. I see that. You're imagining going back to the way you were before. And I think that you right now are learning what we as a collective⁠—the Universe is trying to teach us. There's no such thing as going back. Things change us. Things change. And while you can co-create a life that is big and beautiful and matches who and what you are⁠—absolutely, you can, again.

                        What you're trying to do is be like, "Okay. I've recovered. Buh-bye. I'm going to go back." And that's⁠—it's kind of being unkind and impatient with the part of you that feels unsafe in the world and unsafe in your body and unsafe around people. And what's the best way to trigger that part of you? Oh⁠—I don't know⁠—bully it. Force it to be out in the world.

Audrey:           Right.

Jessica:            And what I'm recommending you do⁠—every tiger in a cage, the second it gets out of the cage, it fucking runs. It doesn't get another larger cage nearby. So I get that the part of you that feels trapped is like, "I gotta get the fuck out of here, guys." But what I'm saying is that this cage is not actually locked. It has never actually been locked. It's just a shitty structure for you.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm curious if you can play with the idea of looking for work, just looking for work, seeing how it goes. If your insides say no, then stop. Stop for a month. Pick it up again in a month. But unfortunately, you're in this position where it would be great for you to not live with your parents, and also, the support and stability that they're providing you⁠—you're not done drinking it in. You're not done absorbing it through your beautiful skin, which⁠—people can't see you, but you have beautiful skin.

Audrey:           Thank you.

Jessica:            Fear not the 40s, people. Fear not the 40s. So what I'm getting at is you want to leap and bound and bolt, like a good Uranus conjunction to a Sagittarius Ascendant would, right? You went to fucking get the fuck out of here. And what I want to say is, no, you really don't, actually. Part of you does, but that's the reactive teen part of you.

Audrey:           Right.

Jessica:            Adult, mature, middle-aged, xennial you knows that this is like a great privilege and support, what your family is giving you. And you're actually not done leaning into it.

Audrey:           Right. No, that sounds absolutely⁠—that really hits.

Jessica:            So they're both true at once. The recommendation, therefore, is don't leave/get the fuck out of there. It's both. It's to get a job. Get yourself a sweet little apartment. You're not going to stay in this place. This is where you're getting your land legs again. Does that seem doable? It's kind of like a three- to six-month-long plan, though.

Audrey:           It does seem doable. I've had conversations with my mom about this, actually, and she's like, "Well, just wait a full year." I haven't been living with them for a full year yet, and she's like, "Wait. Wait. Go ahead and wait a full year." There's times when I feel ready and times that something will come up, and I kind of go into a state where, gosh, if I had a job interview, I wouldn't be able to show up. So that's kind of where I'm back and forth.

                        I think it is doable, and that's the goal, getting myself there. And I've even thought about, like, "Well, just become a dog walker," or something along that vein. Maybe it doesn't have to be a corporate job.

Jessica:            Yeah. So, to that, I want to say⁠—let's say you go in the direction of dog walker, which would be really happy-making for you in a lot of ways. Cultivating self-employment is a bad idea because you don't want to invest in this place. So you would have to find somebody with a dog-walking company that wants to hire you for part-time work.

                        My only problem with that⁠—it's not going to be enough money for you to move out. Your mom is not wrong to say, "Where are you going? Chill out. You do not need to go back into the world yet. You're not quite ready." She's not wrong. But that doesn't mean you stay at your mom's house, either.

                        From what I'm seeing, yeah, of course, there's days where you couldn't⁠—for sure, you couldn't do a job interview. But there's lots of days you could. If there's 30 days in a month, you'd be fine 20-something days of them⁠—

Audrey:           Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            ⁠—which is not that unusual. I mean, it's unusual for you to have those days where you wouldn't be okay. But I feel like most people listening to this who haven't undergone the same trauma that you have would be able to identify with, "I got 15 days a month," or whatever, to be fair.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            I think the key is to not look for the perfect job. It's to look for the easiest job, which is not a thing you usually do.

Audrey:           No.

Jessica:            Look for the easiest job. This is not an investment in your career in marketing. This is an investment in understanding the rental market in the town near your parents. Start looking at what rents actually cost.

Audrey:           Okay.

Jessica:            Ask your parents if they have any friends who rent places. Do a little bit of research. And if through this process of research you have panic and you're like, "This is a no," then it's a fucking no. This is about getting information so that you're empowered to have more choices, not so that you make a specific choice. Does that make sense?

Audrey:           Yes, it does.

Jessica:            So, in your family home, in your childhood, you make a decision. You stick with the decision. The decision is the decision. Am I right about that?

Audrey:           Yep.

Jessica:            Okay. So your mother is like, "You stay a year. It's not yet a year." And so you stay a year. And you, with your little rebellious birth chart, are just like, "Actually, I'm suffocating. I must run."

Audrey:           Right.

Jessica:            But you're a double Cancer, Sun and Moon. You were born on a New Moon, Sun and Moon very close to each other. What this means is there's something about the consistency and the stability and the security that your parents offer you that not only feels like love, but it is safety that you like to create and that you enjoy being the beneficiary of. It's true at the same time that you're like, "I could pull out every eyelash in my face and scream right now." They're both true at the same time.

Audrey:           Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jessica:            I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. So this is where I'm just going to say you're a bit of a manifester. I actually think you could get a cheap apartment. And maybe it's not in the center of town or whatever, but I think you can get a cheap apartment. And I do think you should have a studio. And the reason why I think you should have a studio is because there's no fucking way you're staying in a studio. Am I right, girl?

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I don't want you to get stuck here. Do not get a great apartment. That's a terrible fucking idea. This is not about investing in this place. This is about investing in you and not forcing yourself to run before you walk. That's all. It's giving yourself the gift of your parents' stability and love and consistency and watchful care while also giving yourself the gift of not living under their roof, right?

Audrey:           Right.

Jessica:            It's a little bit of both. And this is why I'm saying you know what jobs you could get. Don't get those good jobs. Get a smaller job. Work at a company that's not it. All of this is set up for you to test drive, "Am I ready yet?" And if it doesn't work out, who fucking cares? You didn't set yourself up for something you wanted to work out.

                        Also, you want to be self-employed. I think you could totally be self-employed very successfully. So this isn't the time, right? This isn't the time.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            But having a job that pays the bills while you get your shit together is the perfect setup for then, once you're like, "Okay. I'm right in myself. I'm okay in myself"⁠—then you can start building a client base alongside your day job. And this interrupts a part of you that likes to be ambitious and to achieve this because you have to prove to yourself that you can.

Audrey:           Abso-freaking-lutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. Are your parents from here?

Audrey:           No.

Jessica:            No. Are they both immigrants or just one?

Audrey:           Yes. Both.

Jessica:            Both⁠—because this has a little bit of that inherited thing, a little American dreamy, like nose to the grindstone, make it work, do it, do it well, don't question it.

Audrey:           And don't play. Yep.

Jessica:            Yep. Don't play. Exactly. And so what I'm curious about is, can you be yourself? Yeah, because this is the thing about middle age that's kind of cool because you're not done with your midlife transits, right? There's three midlife transits. You've done two, but you got one more.

Audrey:           (laughs)

Jessica:            Yeah. Uh-huh. And you definitely don't want to be at your parents' house when it happens. I can assure you of that, sir. Okay? But if you are, it's okay. The transit would just be about that. We're going to get to the "that" in a second, but okay. The midlife transits happen so that we make sure that our adult lives reflect what we've learned through our adult development, and they do not reflect our childhood. And that doesn't happen for most people. Most people, "La-la-la-la-la," cover their eyes, cover their ears, cover their heart, cover their nose⁠—whatever⁠—and just keep on doing the trauma pattern; keep on doing the habit.

                        Right now, you're living at your parents' house, and your behavior isn't the provocative behavior of teenage you. Am I right about that?

Audrey:           Absolutely right. Yeah. It's not.

Jessica:            But your feelings are.

Audrey:           Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. You've just learned how to suck it up. You've learned how to be grateful for what you get. You're a good grown-up, so good on you for that. However, there's two things I want to say about your family stuff. The first thing is you are not compatible with these people. You're just not.

Audrey:           Never.

Jessica:            Yeah. No. Never. That doesn't mean you don't love them, because you actually super do.

Audrey:           I do.

Jessica:            Yeah. The way that your personality works when you find someone to be boring or uninteresting or just not right for you⁠—you stop thinking about them, and you ice them.

Audrey:           Absolutely. [indiscernible 00:27:53] asleep while you're talking.

Jessica:            Exactly. You're like, "You're done. You're just done." It's like, "This is not happening. I'm out." But you can't do that with your parents. So what you do is you do that to yourself. You start to numb out. You start to disassociate.

Audrey:           Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. So then you lose track of yourself because you're not at a party. You're at their house 24/7. So you're disassociating a lot, and you're losing track of yourself a lot while you're trying to recover and become more yourself again. Hence the me telling you to get a studio apartment that you don't really love nearby, because at least then you'll feel your own feelings more. You'll have access to your own buzzing light of inspiration, which is dulled in your parents' house.

Audrey:           Yes.

Jessica:            But then we get to the real thing, and the real thing is⁠—sorry. Hold on. Let me ground into this because I'm looking energetically at your family dynamic. And I can unfortunately identify with what happens inside of you. You're just like⁠—it gets very fucking agitating.

Audrey:           Oh yeah.

Jessica:            And then you're just like, "Either I'm going to act out or I'm going to shut down." And it doesn't feel like there's any other option. Again, we're back to the tiger in the cage, the lion in the cage. I'll be honest. At first, I was like, "You can't get out of this. You're stuck forever," because I was identifying with you way too much. I was identifying with you way too much, and it's not per se that that's, for me, about my family. It's just like, when I feel like that, I identify. It's terrible.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.  Okay.  But this is what you do. I'm seeing there's a living room, and there's a TV, and it's always on. Is that right?

Audrey:           Oh god, yes.

Jessica:            Okay, because I'm seeing it's your trigger spot. It's like you have to sit in that living room with the people. Do you do that? You sit in the living room with the people?

Audrey:           No. No. It's the room. It's a small house. The room is directly facing⁠—the hallway opens, TV, the door to my room.

Jessica:            I see.

Audrey:           I hear all the noise, and I'm like, "Okay. So no meditating. No reading." So it's like⁠—

Jessica:            Do you have noise-canceling headphones?

Audrey:           I don't. My mom's like, "Get earbuds." And I'm like, "That's on me." I'm like, "Why should I get noise-canceling head buds? Why can't you guys just unplug?"

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. This is good. I'm really glad we're talking about this. So there's a couple of things. The first thing is that's your inner teenager. And so your adult self, your middle-aged adult self, can say, "I'm allowed to have a tantrum." Get the fucking noise-canceling headphones is my advice. Okay? Because you're literally the only person suffering just to prove a point that nobody cares about except for you. But that's behavioral. Let's talk about the energetics.

                        What happens when you get activated is you either want to lash out with tiger's paw⁠—right? Just slash, slash and lash. Or you lose track of your center. Your energy disperses. You feel disassociative, agitated, and you're back into being a teenager. Right? Does that make sense?

Audrey:           Totally ungrounded.

Jessica:            Totally ungrounded.

Audrey:           I just feel totally ungrounded. I have smelt quartz under my bed. It's like I'm trying all these things. It's like, "This has to work." And it just⁠—not enough.

Jessica:            100 percent, it's not enough. There's no stone that's going to fix this. Also, if you're looking for grounding stones, I would recommend messing with turquoise and hematite and tiger's eye. You might do well with malachite as well. This is what's just coming in, okay? They're all kind of much more "get you in your body" stones. Smoky quartz is⁠—it's a conductor. You need zero help with conducting energies. Lie. You know what I mean?

Audrey:           Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            This is not your problem. So it's really about, for you, getting back into your body, and then, when you do, again⁠—tiger in a cage. So the meditation I want you to do, and before your noise-canceling headphones come into the house, is sit in your room with your back to the door and the door closed, and allow the sounds to exist and focus your energy on that just frenetic, dynamic, weird, burning spark inside of you that is you, that is the source of both your agitation and your willingness to cut off your nose to spite your face, and also your wild and curious nature and all the best parts of you that are dynamic and willing to explore and have experiences and all this kind of stuff⁠—that part of you that's like, "I'm getting out of here," as soon as you were old enough to get out.

                        That part⁠—bring your attention and your energy to it, allowing whatever's happening outside of you to happen without your fucking attention, without your engagement. It has nothing to do with you. Are you somebody who can focus at a loud café?

Audrey:           Yes. I actually⁠—I will go out, and I will do that because to me, it's more of a buzz⁠—

Jessica:            Correct. Yes.

Audrey:           ⁠—as opposed to a direct laser right at me.

Jessica:            Totally. Yes. So here's the fun fact. Your family's energy is not a laser at you. You're the one with the laser beam. Your family are sitting around, kind of picking their noses, watching TV and talking about nothing. They're not concerned with what you're doing in the room. They're not thinking about it at all. You're thinking about them. Your laser is coming from inside of you and attaching to them. "Why aren't they different? Why aren't they better? Why don't they get it? Why can't they change?" And they're thinking about how funny that Kleenex commercial was.

Audrey:           That is so right.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Good. Yay. Exciting.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            It's freeing to know that you're the problem, in a way, right?

Audrey:           Yeah. No, it absolutely is. It absolutely is.

Jessica:            It is. It is. Every time you feel activated and you're like, "This fucking laser beam is coming through the walls at me," you can breathe into your body and feel your own light and the source of the laser beam, and just allow yourself to feel it and be present with it and to just stay with it because what's happening is you're projecting it out because I see in your chart you can totally go to a loud café and write a poem. You're good at excess noise, even though in the excess noise in that noisy café, there's lots of people with terrible energy.

It's immaterial to you because you're really good at allowing your energy to run even when you're around chaos. Now, why are you good at that? Because you were raised in a lot of excess, stupid chaos noise. So it feels familiar to you. But when you're at home, it feels personal. It feels fucking personal. It feels pointed. It's not. It's super not.

Their behavior is unchanged with you home because you're their kid, so they're just living life. And you're taking it as a personal attack. And that's the teenage you. You might have a loud upstairs neighbor, and even if you found them fucking annoying, you'd be like, "They're just living their lives. It's a bummer that I'm so annoyed. It's a bummer that they're loud." But you would be able to objectively parse that out, whereas with your parents, you're teenage you, so you're not benefiting from the wisdom of middle-aged you.

So this is a practice. There's no way you're going to be like, "Oh shit. I figured it out. Okay. It's set." That's not reality at all. So be patient with yourself. But the thing to keep in mind here is that it is a practice of acknowledging your inner teen while inviting your middle-aged adult whole self into the group chat, and have that part of you, the part that kind of knows better, be like, "I actually have skills. I have tools for bringing my energy back to me. I have a lot of experience with acknowledging external sound and keeping my center and being creative and dynamic and present."

You already know how to do this. It's not a new skill you have to develop. Hold on. Okay. So now what comes up is that you have grief that your parents aren't your besties, that you don't like them like people like them more. You love them to bits, but you really wish that they were more interesting.

Audrey:      Right.

Jessica:            And you feel sad about it. There's grief about it. And then you also feel a little guilty about it. When you're not mad at them about it, you feel guilty that you're annoyed with them about it. Correct?

Audrey:           Oh, absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay. So adult you gets to decide that you're entitled to have that mess of emotions. And your parents aren't exactly what you would prefer, but they're what you need. They're not your friends. The ways in which they are not well suited to you helps you to move on and to not get stuck. You're not going to get stuck at your parents' house. That's impossible. You will sooner make a Kool-Aid Man shape in the side of their house than get stuck there.

                        I'm not worried about that for you, whereas I will say, with your personality and with the shit you've been through and the world and late-stage capitalism as it is, you could get stuck there. It's not going to happen. And that is a gift. It's shitty packaging, but it's still a gift. Your parents love you and provide for you in a way that does make you feel anchored in this world. It makes you feel good. Am I correct about that?

Audrey:           Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. That's all you really need from them. There's lots you want. But their journey is not a healing journey. Their journey was to leave where they left, come together, and have a family and have stability and have security and have their kids have better than they had. That's literally⁠—it looks like that's their thing.

Audrey:           Oh yeah. I mean that, like⁠—oh, yeah, absolutely.

Jessica:            That's their thing. And guess what. They're really happy with what they've got.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            For them, watching TV and arguing about whether or not the dog food commercial was stupid or it was funny or⁠—that is actually like they worked hard to have the privilege to do that, to chill and just relax. And for them, it's it. And you get to love them and also be like, "But that's stupid." It's okay that they both exist at once. And the teenage part of you says it's either/or. It's this extreme idea of, "Either they're stupid, or I'm a bad kid." You don't need to feel bad that you are critical of your parents. You really don't. Tell me what's coming up.

Audrey:           I mean, just all of that resonates. I know the struggle that they had growing up⁠—my grandparents, their struggle adapting, all the things that immigrant families have to go through. And I'm grateful for it. I really am. It's like, "What first-world problem do I have?"

Jessica:            Yes, but let me interject to that because listen. Looking at your birth chart, it's very clear that your parents' immigration here was an improvement, like a big improvement, and that they lived real close to the ground in order to build something for the family. It's very clear in your birth chart. But this is the part that we don't talk about enough.

                        If somebody immigrates⁠—let's say to America⁠—to have a better life and have kids, what happens is they have American kids. And those American kids are like, "Yeah. I should have everything. Of course I should," because that's what we're told. That's the whole American dream. That's it. Right?

Audrey:           Right.

Jessica:            And so you're an American kid. I mean, again, middle-aged person human, but yeah. Very American. And it is complicated to have one culture at home and then one in the world, the world that you live in. It is complicated. It's all very complicated. And so the labor here is not to find the answer, because there's not an answer to this. It's not to be grateful for all that they've done and not want so much for yourself. That was the whole fucking point of them coming here, is they wanted you to want so much for yourself. Now, maybe they didn't really think it through. Most parents don't. Most of us were from immigrants.

                        Our parents do not in any way get us, and they're fucking annoyed by us. But that is⁠—you know, okay. But your job as a middle-aged you parenting inner teen you is to give yourself permission to be authentically grateful of your parents because you are grateful that they did all the things that they did and it worked out for them that they have the peace and ease in life that they have. It's not your version of peace. It's not your version of peace, but it's theirs.

                        And you can see it. You can validate it. You can understand how hard they worked for it. You're also allowed to be an ungrateful baby. You're allowed. You're allowed to have those feelings. Any feelings you have are fine. There's nothing wrong with your feelings. It's how you behave. So you get to be an ungrateful baby a couple hours a day, a couple days a week, if you need to be while you're living with them.

                        And then bring your intention and your attention⁠—both⁠—back to, "Eh, they're annoying because they're not my friends. They're my family, and I know they love me, and I love them. And even though I am so annoyed by so many things, I'm also grateful. If I had to do it over, I would still stay here. And also, their stability and their security is reminding me of who I am. I am a little bit of a wild child. I want to be out in the world. I want to be dynamic. I want to be having experiences. I want to not know what's going to happen later today," because they've got it mapped out. They know exactly what's going to happen.

                        Yeah. So you're allowed to have the mess, and then within the emotional experience of your very messy mixed thoughts and feelings, you make choices around how you're going to behave and which of your emotions you'll center. But this is the mistake. The mistake is what you've been trying to do is squash down your shitty emotions and your hard beliefs and feelings and all that stuff without first experiencing and accepting them. And that behavior that you've been doing is disassociation, and that disassociation makes you feel like garbage because now you don't even have you. Now you've lost access to you.

                        So what I'm recommending is that you give yourself permission to just feel what you feel because teenage you didn't have choices. Adult you does. You're choosing to be there. I don't know how much longer you should choose to be there for, but you're choosing to be there. And you're happy for the choice, even though, again, you could pluck all the eyelashes out of your face and be happy with that, too.

                        This is messy. It's complicated, but it is a choice that you're making because it's your best choice at this moment. And the best choice at this moment is to be annoyed by people who it's safe to be annoyed by. It's to want to fight with people that it's safe to fight with. That safety that you have is a blessing. It's a gift from your parents to you, from the Universe to you. While you're feeling it, it doesn't feel like a gift. It feels like being annoyed by your fucking parents.

Audrey:           Yeah. It does, and then the guilt for feeling that right on top of it. And it's like, "You should be grateful."

Jessica:            Well, you are grateful. And you're annoyed. Both things are true at once. And that's what you need to practice owning. "I am grateful. And I also want to shake them." "I am grateful, and I want them to be more like me. I am grateful, and I want them to have spent the last 20 years evolving like I've done." Okay. That's okay. They want you to sit down and stop being so intense and relax. Am I wrong? Am I right?

Audrey:           No, no, no. I know. I'm intense. I scare people.

Jessica:            Hey, listen. I don't want you to be less intense. Me, I don't at all. But they do. Of course, they do. They want you to calm down, have a seat, just enjoy the TV show, and be fine. And you want them to want more for themselves. So neither of you have fully accepted the other one. They've accepted you more than you've accepted them. That's what's making you the teenager in this situation.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            The primary problem here, luckily, is not your behavior because you're not, for the most part, acting out towards them. Is that correct?

Audrey:           That is correct.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're sucking it up.

Audrey:           Yep.

Jessica:            The primary problem is psychological and emotional, which is good because it could have psychological, emotional, and behavioral problems. You know what I mean? So okay. Good. Good. All right. So the work is, the next time you feel annoyed, say to yourself, "I am allowed to feel annoyed. I am going to stay present with feeling annoyed." And then, five minutes later, you're going to be like, "Oh, I feel guilty. Why aren't I appreciative?" And then you'll be like, "Oh, in this moment, I can appreciate all that they give me."

                        Don't go to guilt. Go to gratitude because you didn't act out. You didn't take those emotions of, "I'm so annoyed with the fact that they're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah"⁠—you just felt it. So there's nothing to feel bad about because you're allowed to have emotions. Teenage us, teenage people and a lot of adults, act on all their emotions. And that's a problem because our emotions, governed by the Moon⁠—they ebb and flow. They crash and they recede.

And if you can allow them to crash and recede, then you can come to your center that is influenced by your emotions but not exclusive to your emotions. And that is a place where you have options. And so you have the option to say to yourself, "They are driving me bananas. And I fucking love these people. They have kept me safe in this time of need, and I am so grateful for them." And that's a million times better than what you're doing, which is, "I want to murder them. I want to murder me. This is terrible. I'm terrible." Right?

Audrey:      Right.

Jessica:            There's no healing in that. You're just stuck in teenage loop. But what you can do is just practice being grateful. If my sense of this is correct that trying to get a job, seeing what happens, seeing what flows⁠—if you get a job that pays enough for a shitty apartment on purpose⁠—not unsafe, but small⁠—right? If you can do that, then you can practice still having their security and safety and also having your individual space and seeing what comes up because what may come up is that you find out, "Oh shit. There's some stuff around my safety that I still haven't worked out."

                        You also might find, "Oh shit. I'm way more fine than I thought I was because I'm not constantly battling feeling guilty." You're going to get information is what I'm saying. And with that information, you can decide to move back into your parents' house. No harm, no foul. They'd be happy to have you. Or you could decide to start to build more self-employed online service where you could be anywhere so that it doesn't matter that you're starting off in a town that you know you're not going to stay in. Or you could just lean into marketing for a minute as you continue to recover.

                        There's not a wrong answer here. There really isn't. And you know I love to tell people what the wrong answer is. I don't think there is a wrong answer here for you. I think there's just different approaches. And your habit is to do nothing or to do everything.

Audrey:           Absolutely.

Jessica:            My hope is that you do something, but not everything and not nothing, because you want change. Your relationship to fear and safety is very real. And because you're so sensitive, you've got Neptune in the first house, and it's opposite to your Sun⁠—it's an out-of-sign opposition, but it's still very much an opposition. Because these things are in your chart, you're somebody who's going to be really sensitive to what's happening in the collective.

                        So, in the collective, a lot of people are feeling really unsafe. A lot of people are really scared about what scary thing is going to happen next in terms of violence, in terms of the climate crisis, which is also a form of violence. So things that you may or may not be thinking about, the collective is thinking about and is resonating with, which overwhelms you because it matches what you're experiencing. And then you're like, "Is it me? Is it the collective? Is it both? What the fuck is happening?" And then you go back into, "I need to be insulated by my parents."

                        And the beautiful thing is your parents aren't going to stop insulating you. You can move out, and then you could say, "Mom, Dad, I want to come back for the weekend." They'd say, "Okay." They're not going to question it. They're not going to be like, "Okay, but only if you do this." They're just going to be like, "Come home."

Audrey:           You're right. Yeah.

Jessica:            Be grateful for that. Don't be guilty. You got nothing to feel guilty about. That's the people they are. You're not that people. That's fine. Do you have kids?

Audrey:           I do.

Jessica:            Okay. And so, if you moved, does that mean that the kids have to move with you into a studio?

Audrey:           No. No. It's just an adult child now.

Jessica:            Great. Okay. Good. I was like, "Did I miss something very major here?" But no. Okay. Good. Okay. Good. So the kid is not relevant to this conversation?

Audrey:           It doesn't have to be. I think I try to make it be.

Jessica:            How so?

Audrey:           Like, "Oh, but she always has to have a space with me."

Jessica:            Do you think she wants to live with you right now?

Audrey:           Oh, no.

Jessica:            Correct. She does not.

Audrey:           No. No.

Jessica:            She's your child. She's not your mom's child. She's not your dad's child. She's your child. She doesn't want to live in your house. If you lived in a mansion that had a beautiful room with all of her favorite things in it, she wouldn't visit more.

Audrey:           No.

Jessica:            So you're fine. You get to take care of you. Something that I'm just really⁠—I just keep on hearing this in my head, so I feel like I need to repeat it, is everything that you feel guilty for, you could just decide to feel grateful for instead.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            Every time you feel guilty, inject a little voice in your head to ask the question, "Can I just be grateful for this? Could I just choose to feel grateful for this instead of guilty?" And sometimes the answer will be, "Technically, yes, but no." And that's fine. Your inner teenager is fucking driving the car. Cool. You know what I mean? Just be aware of it. But your inner middle-aged adult human can say, "I know that I could feel grateful about this, but I'm going to choose to feel guilty for now." Okay. Come back around because your emotions have a right to exist.

                        Emotions are not logical. And they cannot be manifested away spiritually. We don't want to spiritually bypass ourselves. Emotions are emotions. So the ebb and they flow. They crash and they recede. And that's okay. It's bringing greater intention to it that will help. So the intention has to be sometimes, "I'm going to feel like an idiot teenager, and I'm going to make myself miserable, maybe even the other people around me miserable a little bit because they're watching me not wear noise-canceling headphones and complain about noise."

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, if this was happening in the '90s, there was no noise-canceling headphones. That wasn't a thing. Now you're just like, "Which brand? What color?" You have so many options. And it's interesting that you were like, "No. I'm going to insist on suffering in this way." Very teenagery of you.

Audrey:           Oh, absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. And again, it's great. It's great. This is a good problem for you to have because the solution is right there for you. You have other problems right now; the solution's not right there. This is very simple. You may have noise-canceling headphones sitting next to you this time next week, and your parents might be really loud, and you might be like, "I'm not going to fucking wear them. No fucking way. They need to change." And you know what? You're allowed to have a hissy fit. You're allowed to do whatever you want. You're allowed to do whatever you want because you're not doing it to other people; you're just doing it to yourself.

                        Sometimes you want to choose to be upset about something that's ultimately kind of stupid. Fine. Let yourself. I will say, at the first part of our conversation, I just kept on seeing you energetically as this huge jungle cat in a cage. And now, even though I'm teasing you about something that has actually been very serious to you for many months, you aren't having that energetic reaction of feeling trapped. And that doesn't mean you don't feel any of the emotion. You do feel some of that emotion, from what I'm seeing energetically, but it's not the same.

                        And this is where you have a lot more creative control over your own welfare, decision-making, all of that. And that means you have energy to deal with your actual problems. And right now, a big part of what I'm seeing is that you're having a self-esteem issue.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            You're scared of going back out in the world, and it's more of a self-esteem thing than a safety thing from what I'm seeing. But it's hard to tell because you also have trauma related to your safety. It's all, again, overlapping and messy. So maybe my solution or my strategy is not the right one. Maybe it needs tweaking. But I would say start with that as an idea. If you apply for a job and you get an interview and you're having a fucking day and you cannot, then you cannot. You're not applying for jobs that are what three-years-ago you wants. You're applying for short-term solutions, not long-term solutions, because it'll help you with your self-esteem and it'll help you figure out what you actually want.

                        And you can make a decision about what you want to help direct you. When you decide to look for serendipity, it shows all the way up. The only reason why it hasn't shown up yet is because it's not supposed to because you're not ready for that step. And that's okay. That's not because you are moving slow, and it's not because your mom's theory that you should wait a year. You're kind of looking for signs. Both of these are wrong because they're rigid, because they're not responsive to what's real for you right now. They're not wrong because they're wrong.

                        So then, again, the work becomes can you continue to benefit from your parents' safety and security and love and protection while also getting the fuck out of their house? Can you do that? And I think you can is the answer. And it might take a couple months. Honestly, it might take a couple weeks. If it's the right thing and you believe it's the right thing, you'll get a job quickly. You always do. Am I right?

Audrey:           You're right.

Jessica:            Yeah. The reason why it hasn't happened yet is because you haven't been ready for it yet because you've been setting yourself up for either "I stay here" or "I go far away; I get the hell out." And both of those things⁠—I don't think they're quite right. And you should still get noise-canceling headphones even if you leave tomorrow so that you hang them on a hook in a closet, so whenever you visit, you wear them.

Audrey:           Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. That's something I struggle with, like, "Go big or go home."

Jessica:            Yeah. Sure. Listen. Go back to that when you're ready, but you're not quite ready yet. And the beautiful thing is nobody is making you be ready. If you wanted to live with your parents forever, they would make it work.

Audrey:           Yeah. They would.

Jessica:            So that's great. It means it's your choice. Again, the cage was never locked. You have told yourself that you have to be grateful, and if you're not grateful, then you're guilty. And you're definitely not grateful, so you're guilty.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Next time you feel guilty, you just make the decision to be grateful and annoyed at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just get to do that. And it's interesting because you're good at that with your kid. Now that I'm looking at your kid, I see you're fine with that with her. You can love her and just think that the sun rises and sets with her and also find her to be annoying at the same time. That is not a conflict for you. Easy. Uncomplicated because you're adult you with her.

                        So, again, the good news is you already have all of the skills we're talking about. You don't need to develop new skills. It's about practicing using them in areas of your life that you're just not habituated. Part of that means giving yourself permission to fail, because you will fail at this because everybody fails at this with their parents. It's okay.

                        And if you think about if your kid was struggling to be grateful with you, you might find it annoying at times, but it would never have any effect on your love for her or your awareness that she is grateful for what you've done for her. Right?

Audrey:           Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's doubly true for your parents because they're not obsessively thinking about things the way you are. I see you. It's the you obsessively thinking about things. They're never worried when you're annoying. They're fine with it. I mean, they're annoyed, but it doesn't affect their love or their feelings of being loved. So give yourself some permission to just be their kid. You don't have to be anything else, really.

                        So, my dear, my question for you is did we answer your question, or is there anything that's left lingering?

Audrey:           That was really, really helpful because there were things that I think I was perceiving, but of course, as you⁠—my mind was just going in so many different directions. It's like, "Am I ready? Am I not ready? Do I go get a big job or just get a total shit job?" Yeah. It helped bring some structure to my thoughts.

Jessica:            Good, and also hopefully some permission to take smaller bites.

Audrey:           Yes, moderation. That is something that I can either just go without, or I want everything. And yeah. Moderation is definitely a lesson of mine.

Jessica:            Currently, you're going through a Pluto square to your natal Jupiter, and in your birth chart, you have Pluto conjunct Jupiter. So moderation is not your forte, first of all. You don't drink alcohol?

Audrey:           No, not really. Not really.

Jessica:            Is there alcoholism in the family?

Audrey:           Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. It looks like it. Yeah. So you have to be careful with alcohol. In moderation?

Audrey:           Yeah. I generally just⁠—it's rare that I⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            Good. I'm really glad. Luckily, you have that Mars/Saturn conjunction that makes you really controlling. And there's ways in your life that that's not super helpful. But in regards to managing substance abuse, it is. Okay. But anyways, coming back to this, currently, Pluto is squaring your Jupiter, which means you're going through a healing crisis. And you are healing. And it's a crisis. Right? It's both. It's all at once. This is where you are.

                        And so, because your nature is, like you said, all or nothing, "I stay or I go," nothing in between⁠—for you, growth is learning how to cut off a small piece of cake. Chew each morsel of that bite. Really chew it. Let the saliva help you digest it. You know what I mean? Do the work. And then, mmm, yummy. Sit. Think about it. Enjoy it. Have a conversation. Take another bite of the cake.

                        This is where you are. And you're not shoving the cake in your face, and you're not avoiding the cake. It's this more moderate, sustainable approach, which is not your nature at all. So it's right on time because developing these skills while you're still young but you're also very much an adult in your midlife⁠—it means that you get to use these skills for the rest of your life. Who knows how you're going to apply them? Is this period of your life and these struggles you're going through going to be exactly what you need in order to be able to be of service to other people in whatever kind of service you provide down the road?

Audrey:           Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. Absolutely will. There's no way it will be, right? And if you decide not to do that and to stay in corporate America and just go get some cash/go home, you'll find other ways to make this valuable. There's no concern about that. But be where you are now is the work. And where you are now is not all the way ready to stay and not all the way ready to go. Okay. So we're doing the small bites.

                        The last thing I'll say is that⁠—have you ever been walking up a hill, walking up the mountain, and you can't really see what's in front of you because all you can see is the climb⁠—right? And then you get to a little plateau, and then all of a sudden, you're like, "Holy shit. There's a view." But moments before you were upon the plateau, you could not see the view.

                        That's where you are right now. You're fucking climbing. You're climbing. You're like, "I have climbed this stupid fucking mountain before. It's so boring. There's nothing to see." But you are climbing, and you are very close to the plateau where you can see a view you haven't yet to see. But you cannot see it until you see it. And I feel bad for using "see" because it's kind of an ablest metaphor, but hopefully you get what I'm trying to say, which is that the clarity is not yet upon you, but the labor you're doing now will get you there.

It's repetitive. It's annoying. You've done this work before. But you're doing it in a different way, or at least you're supposed to be. So you're going to be doing it in a different way, and as you're doing it in a different way, you're going to achieve something new. And that's really beautiful. It's really beautiful.

                        So stay with this, understanding that staying with this means feeling like a petulant child sometimes, feeling feelings that you don't like feeling, and then kind of reorganizing your thinking so that you can hold them in a different way⁠—not so you can change the feelings, so you can hold them in a different way, much like you would with your kid. She's being a petulant child; you're like, "Yeah. It's a developmental experience. She's being a petulant child. No big deal."

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            Do that for you. Again, you've got the skills already, which is great. It's just practicing using them.

Audrey:           I feel compassion.

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah, using that big heart of yours for you, not just for others. I know. Easier said than done. It's so easy to put that joy and that love and that empathy on others, but yeah, it's hard for yourself. But it's a practice. And it is through the struggles that you're going through that something new will come. I don't think growth only happens through struggle, but it so happens you're struggling and you're growing.

Audrey:           Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's pretty cool. I'm so glad we did this, and I wish you the best with everything.

Audrey:           Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Jessica:            Totally my pleasure.