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:            Beverly, welcome to the podcast. What would you like your reading about?

Beverly:          Hi, Jessica. Thank you for having me. So I believe that learning to love and care for myself is the great work of my life. It's been a long and hard journey, but I feel that I finally got into a really good place with the whole self-love thing. My problem is that a lot of things to do with parents⁠—my own and others⁠—continues to be a major trigger for me, like all my work disappeared in an instant and I'm right back to being very nasty to myself and sometimes even others. So, Jessica, is there any insight that can be gleaned from my chart around moving on flash past all of the parental-based turmoil?

Jessica:            Now I remember why I chose this question. It's a great question. And I want to say before we go anywhere else with it that it is very human to be totally⁠—you work on yourself. You heal. You don't act out. You don't self-sabotage⁠—whatever it is⁠—with friends, with dates, with people on the street. And then you go home, and you fall back into what the healer Nikki Sacchi calls family trance pattern where you're just⁠—you're in this family trance pattern. All of a sudden, you're 11 years old again, and you have no tools. And their idea of you and their understanding of you becomes this reality where you feel like you have no agency⁠—

Beverly:          Exactly.

Jessica:            ⁠—a.k.a. you feel like a fucking kid, right? You feel like a kid.

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm curious, before we start unpacking⁠—you mentioned it's not just your parents; it's other people's parents. When are you engaging with other people's parents? Because I'm assuming you don't mean the people on the street that you meet who happen to be parents. You mean your friends' and your dates' parents?

Beverly:          Yes. Yes. I guess starting at romantic relationships makes the most sense in my head, and I'll go out from there. With romantic relationships, I tend to get very tense around my partner's parents, and not in the way of "I don't want to say the wrong thing." It's in the way of, "I don't trust you yet." You know what I mean? Like "You are guilty until proven innocent" sort of vibes. And so a lot of things can happen, right?

                        So I tell this story of when me and my fiancé went up to where their family lives. We got in. It was super late. We were both dead tired. And so I went down into the basement to get some rest, but I wanted to go to sleep with my fiancé. They have a really close connection with their dad, and so they spent a few hours that night just upstairs talking to their dad. But I was expecting them to come down. And that little thing⁠—I swear, Jessica, I was⁠—for a good hour, maybe, I was fuming. I was so angry downstairs.

Jessica:            Were you angry at your partner or were you angry at the dad?

Beverly:          Both.

Jessica:            Right.

Beverly:          I was angry at everyone. I was angry at myself for being angry. Yeah. And so that⁠ to them wanting to give us advice⁠—but it's not really advice. It's like, "You should do this," especially if money is attached. So there's that, and then with my friends and stuff like that, when they are telling me stories about their parents and if they've done something terrible or awful or whatnot, my go-to is always just like, "Well, you don't have to talk to them. You can cut them out. It's that easy. You could do that." And there's a part of me, a not insignificant part of me, that feels a little angry and betrayed if that doesn't happen because it's like I'm not being seen. I'm not being heard, or my choices were the wrong choices.

Jessica:            And so that gets to what I was just about to say, which is, are you not talking to either of your parents?

Beverly:          Not at the moment, no.

Jessica:            And for how long has this moment been?

Beverly:          Well, with my mom, I haven't been talking to her for maybe two years now, I want to say. Probably less. Maybe a year and a half. And with my dad, it's just been maybe a month or two.

Jessica:            And are they together, your parents?

Beverly:          No.

Jessica:            Okay.

Beverly:          They're divorced. They divorced when I was really young.

Jessica:            Okay. There's lots of layers. And I will say what surprises me in your question, which I wasn't expecting⁠—and I love being surprised, so yay. But what surprises me in your question is it's not just about you interacting with parental figures. The trigger is also around how other people interact with parental figures.

Beverly:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Are you controlling at all outside of this issue?

Beverly:          I'm working on it. I'm working on it.

Jessica:            Is that kind of like a, "Yes, but I'm working on it," or is it⁠—

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—"Not really?" Okay. It's a yes. Okay.

Beverly:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So⁠—jeez. I really like this topic. I think it's really great that you're asking this question, and there are so many layers. I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.

Beverly:          Do you want me to say my legal name or my new name?

Jessica:            I'm not asking you to dead-name yourself if that's what you're asking me, but if you still have resonance with your birth name and if it doesn't feel in any way bad, then I'm asking for all of it just because I like as much energy as I can get. But I'm not asking you to dead-name yourself if that's at all what it would be.

Beverly:          No. I'm fine. So my legal name is [redacted]. The name that I'm going by right now is [redacted].

Jessica:            Okay. So, when I look at you energetically⁠—and thank you for sharing your birth name, because that's where I got the information from⁠—is that the way that you knew how to protect yourself and to have boundaries with not just your parents but with the adult figures in your life when you were a child⁠—you had to get incredibly rigid is what it felt like to you. You had to go really rigid, like you were the adult in the room. You were the only person you could trust. You were the only consistent figure.

And that rigidity both helped you take care of yourself, but it helped you disappear when it wasn't safe to be seen. Am I clocking that correctly?

Beverly:          Yeah. Absolutely. Growing up, I either spent a lot of time alone⁠—mostly because I was a latchkey kid, so I spent a lot of time alone. So I didn't have any problem entertaining myself⁠—very imaginative. And then, when I was in front of my parents or interacting with them, it either went from laughing and having a good time to, "Oh, I need to control the situation because if I don't control the situation, I could get hurt. Someone else can get hurt physically or emotionally."

Jessica:            Yeah. And were one or both of your parents an alcoholic?

Beverly:          No, no. But alcoholism does run in my dad's side of the family.

Jessica:            It shows up in your birth chart that alcoholism runs. But the other thing that shows up is the unpredictability that is commonly seen with either alcoholism or drug addiction or mental illness stuff where it's just like, all of a sudden, it goes from⁠—like you said, everybody's laughing and having a good time to, "Things are fucking serious and scary." And so was there something in the family of either of those things going on in your family, or was it just the vibe?

Beverly:          Yeah, so my mom⁠—she had lupus, and she was diagnosed when I was very little. And she's the type of person that will say⁠—my whole family, they're going to say the thing that is on their mind, and they're going to say it loudly. And so that's what my mom was a lot of the time. And I believe that she probably came into the relationship that she had with me and my sister based off of the trauma that she had with her parents and maybe some mental illness difficulties. No one goes to therapy, so I don't know for sure.

                        And so, yeah, my mom would go from, "We're the three musketeers"⁠—me, her, and my sister⁠—"It's us against the world" type vibes to, "Get the fuck out of my house if you want to live with your dad so bad."

Jessica:            I see.

Beverly:          Stuff like that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mm-hmm. First of all, I'm sorry because that sucks. And the other thing I want to say, because you're now⁠—you're pre-Christ year, post-Saturn Return, a.k.a. you are not yet 33. And I know that it might not feel this way, but I want to say you are very young, and that trauma was very recent. Because of that, I just want to hold that space as we kind of embark into this conversation because it would be very easy for anyone, but in particular for you, to be like, "I dealt with it. It happened. I have tools. I should move the fuck on. I should be able to move the fuck on."

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            The truth is, in our 20s, when we do self-care and healing work, a lot of it's dramatically emotional. A lot of it is behavioral. But the truth of it is most of it's mental because you learn things about other people and the world and yourself, and you start to make these cognitive connections. You start to understand. And then the fucking Saturn Return comes, kicks you in the gut, and you start to realize how much is emotionally unintegrated about what you know⁠. In other words, you know better, but in the heat of the moment, it's hard to do different, let alone do better.

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            And this is not⁠—I want you, again, to hold space for I am not just talking about you. I'm not like, "This is what you've done." I'm saying this is how astrology tells us the story of how we come into adulthood and how we traverse the space between probability, which is how we were raised to be, and possibility, which is what we can choose to work to become, right?

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            The tool that you used to survive your childhood was Saturn⁠—blunt-force object, right? You've got Saturn sitting right on top of your Descendant and opposite your Ascendant. It squares your Midheaven. It squares Pluto. It opposes Chiron. You got a very strong Saturn, okay? So you've got this blunt-force object. "I will shut it down. I will turn it on. I will do the right thing. That was the wrong thing." That's Saturn's way.

                        The truth of the matter is, in the world we live in, Saturn is such a useful tool. It really is. You, I am guessing, are a high-functioning adult. You laugh.

Beverly:          I don't know if I would say that, Jessica. I feel like I struggle a lot. But I will say that I left home⁠—I was living with my dad at the time, and me and my dad, we always butted heads because⁠—I don't know⁠—he saw me as this boy, this young man that wasn't living up to being a young man or whatever. I don't know what his reasoning was. But he would do things like pretend to fight me and stuff like that.

Jessica:            Jesus.

Beverly:          But he was also like my best friend. You know what I mean? He taught me how to laugh and think and all these sorts of things, and talk and debate. But I left right after high school in the middle of the night. I convinced my sister to take me to the bus stop, to the Greyhound. And I left, and I went to Chicago. And that's what I did. And I was on my own since. And so I know how to take care of myself. I know how to go out there and get money. I can find a place to live. I can do all those sorts of things. But when I'm not going, I am off.

Jessica:            Two things. The first thing is, in a patriarchal, capitalistic system, that's called a high-functioning adult. I mean, I didn't say healthy and well adjusted. I said high-functioning adult. There is a difference. Am I right?

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Again, when we use astrology as a tool for understanding the world and ourselves, Saturn is associated with the tenth-house cusp. It is associated with career and, again, fitting into a system and an order. And you are good at that. You are like, "Okay. What are the rules? I can live within the rules. I can navigate the rules as a way to keep myself safe and keep the things or the people around me safe." You're really good at that. I mean, I'm not saying you enjoy it or that it's easy. But again, I'm guessing your friends would say you're a high-functioning adult.

Beverly:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm sorry to double down on that point, but I feel like it's really important, partially because it is often that our strongest coping mechanism is also the tool that we use to keep ourselves locked into probability, into place. And so the way that you have, as an adult, navigated your safety⁠—so not as a kid, but as an adult⁠—it's the same way you did as a kid. It's hide yourself, your true self, whenever there's any doubt. And figure out the rules, and make sure that you're playing just enough inside of them so that you can be safe.

                        These are really valuable tools. Again, I do not want to throw away the tools. The tools are good. It's just that, as you're experiencing very painfully, is that they're rigid and they don't work in all situations. If you don't have other tools that are equally accessible to you, like in your internal landscape, what happens is you use them even when you know technically they're not helping you or the people around you.

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            And this is where, to be honest, most people struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle, falter, and then stop growing. It's really deeply, deeply, deeply hard to stop being the opposite of your parents, to stop being your 15-year-old-self's idea of what you should be.

Beverly:          No, yeah. You're right. You're right. The year I turned 30, I was in a rehab facility for the very first time ever. I was in residential is what it was. I was in residential, and you have to go find someone to go use the restroom⁠—stuff like that. And it was really hard, but it was also really great because I feel like it really helped me⁠—I don't know⁠—just understand that I am a person, and a whole person with a worldview and ideas. And some of them are good. You know? Things like that.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Beverly:          I say that I spent all of my 20s in therapy, and I'm just now getting to myself. I'm just now opening myself up and figuring out exactly who I am and not what I want to be to spite my parents.

Jessica:            And that is being post-Saturn Return. In other words, it's right on time. You aren't fucking around, wasting time. There's literally only so much we can do with the time we have, and I want to say you are right on time. And this is really important because you're ridiculously hard on yourself. And so, when you're struggling with something like⁠—your partner is hanging out with their dad. It's perfectly reasonable, but you're like, "No. It is an affront to my soul."

                        When you're in that moment, you may be beating yourself up and being like, "I know better. Why can't I be better/do better?" And the answer is because the only way to the other side of your shit is to go through your shit. And so it's to recognize that you're having emotions and that you are allowed to have emotions⁠—any emotion. Any emotion. All the emotions. They're fine. You're not allowed to do anything in reaction to your emotions. That's the boundary, right?

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            So your mom was allowed, when you were a kid, to be like, "Get the fuck out of my house. I hate children." Who doesn't have that feeling as a parent, right? I mean, children are annoying. I'm not saying you're annoying, but realistically⁠—she didn't have a right to say it, was where she crossed the line. She was not entitled to say it. That was abusive. She had a right to feel it. So, if she had felt it and been like, "Hey, kids, I'm going to go take care of myself because I'm in a bad mood. You go watch TV," that might have been imperfect, but it wouldn't have been fucked up in the way her behavior was. Does that make sense?

Beverly:          Yeah. It's really hard. I'm getting a little emotional because I'm just thinking about I wish that she was that. I wish that she at least did that much. It's not like my mom was cruel or anything like that. She was just very emotional or allowed her emotions to guide⁠—her emotions, to her, were fact is what it was.

Jessica:            Interrupt that a little. You're saying she wasn't cruel; she was just emotional. And what you're saying is very common for somebody who⁠—I'm going to say that that's your coping mechanism. Instead of identifying her behavior and how it affected you, you're identifying, "She's not trying to harm me. She's not the worst it could be. I can understand her motivations." So you're decentering yourself as a way to survive the heartbreak of the fact that⁠—you know what? Maybe it wouldn't have been cruel to someone else. It sure as hell was cruel to you. It hurt your feelings.

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And wouldn't you say it hurt your sister's feelings, too?

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It was cruel. It wasn't malicious, I think, is what we can agree on.

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            Your mother's behavior wasn't trying to hurt you. Lots of parents try to hurt their kids, and my guess is your mom tried to hurt your feelings at times, in her worst moments.

Beverly:          Oh. So I told you I was living with my dad in high school. I lived with my mom for most of my childhood. We moved around a whole lot, and I was tired of it. I didn't like it. I wanted to go back, and I wanted to be with my dad. And I expressed this to my mom. At the same time, I was going through a medical experience where I was in and out of the hospital. I told my mom this at some point, and she exploded at me, as usual.

                        And then, from that point on, I no longer felt like her child. She was there out of obligation. I remember one time, Jessica, I needed her to bathe me at the hospital, and she just did it silently, scowling. And eventually, this culminates into my dad coming to get me and moving with him. And then, shortly afterwards, my sister is like, "I want to move, too." And so we both leave. And then my mom didn't talk to us for the rest of my high school career, which was four years.

Jessica:            Wow.

Beverly:          I didn't hear from my mom. She just left us.

Jessica:            That's awful. I'm so sorry. And also, it's malicious and punishing. And that doesn't mean that she didn't love you. She probably did it because she was hurt, and so she was like, "If you're going to hurt me, I'm going to hurt you"⁠—

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—because of a million things that have to do with her. But I want to really stay focused on this for a moment: your ability, that high-functioning ability that you have to understand where someone else is coming from and to use that understanding to contextualize your own experience⁠—that's a great skill. But it's a survival mechanism, and it's an intellectual skill that decenters you and your feelings and your needs.

                        And the truth is your mom was punishing and hurt your feelings. And she loved you, and she wanted you. And she didn't do it because she hated you or didn't like you. And that's complicated. That's nuanced. A lot of people's parents do not like them and reject them and never wanted them. That's actually not your mom. And I think that's what fucks you up a little bit because you can feel that mixed message in everything she does and doesn't do.

                        And so your adult way of navigating it is by telling yourself, "Well, she wasn't mean. She was to the point," when you know she was fucking mean. It's just that she wasn't mean because she didn't like you; she was mean because she is her own broken adult⁠—

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            ⁠—like me and you. We just don't happen to have kids, so it's a different context, just a little bit, right? But in order to not be like her⁠—because the fucking irony⁠⁠—and I'm guessing this has already occurred to you⁠—is that when you're talking to your friend, and you're like, "You don't need to talk to your fucking parents," and then they go ahead and they call their mom and they give their mom a baked cake or whatever, and you're like, "What is wrong with that friend?"⁠—that is you being like your mom. "Here's the fucking consequence of your bad behavior." And the consequence is a hammer. It's a fist. It's like a behavioral consequence.

                        And this, to you, is, again, a survival mechanism. So, literally, your flight-or-fight mechanisms are wrapped up in this belief system or habitual way of being in the world and thinking people should be in the world. And if you were to become more nuanced and more flexible, inevitably, you would have to experience emotionally the grief you have around being neglected, being manipulated, being punished, and having the painful relationships you have with both of your parents as well as the ways that you've perpetuated those things against yourself in your own way. And it would make you sad. So I have to ask, when you say rehab, was it from substances?

Beverly:          No. Mine was behavioral, but the facility I went to was mostly like a rehab facility, I would say. There was very few just behavioral folks there. It was either a substance or eating disorder.

Jessica:            But that wasn't your story.

Beverly:          Yeah, no.

Jessica:            Okay. And whatever it was that got you in that situation, do you feel like those behaviors are still active? Was the rehab helpful? That's kind of where I'm getting at.

Beverly:          Yeah. No, it was really helpful. I really learned a lot and grew a lot. I feel like my whole life⁠—I feel like I've been mostly comparing myself to my dad because, personality-wise, we align. We talk. We like talking to each other and stuff. But with my mom⁠—I feel like because of that, I was always chasing my dad. And so it was always like this complicated relationship. With my mom, it was always like a very close⁠—her really depending on me sort of relationship.

                        And so I was always more comfortable with my mom, but I was also way more comfortable, I guess, unfortunately, probably dismissing my mom. But now I feel like I'm at a point where, as I am allowing myself to feel and I'm transitioning and the medicines and all that sort of stuff, the feelings that I'm going through right now feel closer to what I saw from my mom, where right now I am looking for a job. And my fiancé and I are lower on funds, and we're having to reach out to zir dad to give us some money.

                        Zir dad hasn't been great, and that's been tricky for me because I've just been very quick to pop off on some of these phone calls. And it happens so fast. I haven't really experienced this before because⁠—I feel like you saw it earlier⁠—I've spent a lot of time trying not to be my parents. I spent a lot of time trying to be very considerate of other people's feelings and their emotions and all that sort of stuff, at the detriment of my own.

                        And so now I'm opening up, and it's been difficult to manage these new, very quick feelings that feel like they just take over my body.

Jessica:            So there's a lot of layers here. The first one I want to address is a very, very big thing, which is I am a fan of cutting people out. I am a fan of that behavior when it's the healthiest behavior. And it's hard to tell. That's a hard thing to gauge, whether it's a friend or breaking up with a lover or a parent. It is in all cases very differently⁠—but in all cases, it is⁠—hard to gauge. Is this the end? Is that the best move?

                        When it comes to your mom⁠—I'm not going to talk about your dad right now because it's a different dynamic. But when it comes to your mom, cutting her out makes perfect sense. And also, I don't know that it makes sense forever. The true growth for you would be to have boundaries instead of rules. Rules are rigid, and boundaries are adaptable.

                        When it comes to eating other people's shit or blegh-ing your shit all over them, the healthy middle place is boundaries. So for you to experience the strong emotions you have⁠—I mean, listen. You've got Moon, Mercury, and Venus all in Aries, and you've got Jupiter opposite your Mercury and Venus. You really can say things impulsively. You have the aspects in your birth chart of a person⁠—and a Leo Rising. You can really say some shit and then be like, "Oops. Did I say that?" You know what I mean?

Beverly:          But, Jessica, that's the thing. I feel like I've been very careful about what I say in front of⁠—

Jessica:            Okay.

Beverly:          ⁠—who I say it to. But now I'm like⁠—it's hard to contain, and that's scary.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's tricky because there's multiple ways that we can and should be talking about this. And one of those is actually⁠—you gave me a very specific example. And the very specific example with your in-laws, essentially, I have one piece of advice for, which is different than the other piece of advice I want to be giving you for the general topic. So that's what's throwing me off in this moment, okay? Because when I look at the situation with your in-laws⁠—and you did pop off to them directly?

Beverly:          I got a little snippy on the phone call. I felt like I wasn't being heard, and so I was being very specific about my language in that I was using words and phrases that I knew would make them uncomfortable.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Beverly:          But I can't go anywhere afterwards. I can't run afterwards. I can't cut off afterwards.

Jessica:            Correct.

Beverly:          I have to be there and in the moment and work through it.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, which sucks. I'm so sorry. So, in that situation, you had every right to feel what you were feeling. But the way that you engaged was counter to your cause. It made you uncomfortable. It made them uncomfortable. And it means that now you have to deal with that dynamic for the rest of your relationship with these people. And so it actually was an act of self-sabotage. It was like you did this thing that you are struggling to figure out how to do, which is speak up for yourself; identify your emotions and honor them.

                        But you did it in a self-sabotaging way. You did it with people that you don't have a personal relationship with that is appropriate for that. These are people who are⁠—like you said, they're parents. They're authority figures in your life who have money that they will or will not share. Right? This is like a⁠—

Beverly:          I fucking hate that. I hate it.

Jessica:            I know. And you have every right to hate it. Hating it is perfectly reasonable. And that doesn't mean that communicating to them that you hate it in any way, on any level, serves your goals. This is a normal arc of development. It's a normal phase of development. What you're doing is the right thing in the wrong situation, the wrong context.

If you were having a power struggle with your fiancé and they were saying some shit that raised your hackles, it would be perfectly appropriate for you to be sharing what that made you feel and to express yourself in a way that communicated that you were hurt and what you needed because you have a relationship based on trust and equality. And they would be a safe person for you to be vulnerable with.

Your in-laws when you're asking them for something⁠—not safe people to be vulnerable with. Even if they were the best in-laws and super lovely and you had no issues with power figures or parental figures at all, they're not your besties. They're your partners' parents. And so⁠—I don't know⁠—my personal take with in-laws is they're the people that you interact with but you have to always center your partner's needs around because they're your partner's actual parents, right?

Beverly:     Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm guessing that whatever dynamic happened with your in-laws, in a way, put pressure on your partner to have to then deal with their parents in a different way.

Beverly:          I will say, though, that as far as my partner goes⁠—showing how safe they are, as well⁠—I've been really proud of them in this situation because⁠—or not even proud, just very thankful and grateful for them because I really feel like ze is fighting for me.

Jessica:            That's beautiful.

Beverly:          You know what I mean? And for us. And that's really important, and I feel like that hasn't really happened for me before.

Jessica:            So, first of all, congratulations. This is why you're affiancing this person, right? This is why you want to commit forever with this person. And also⁠—and this is a big "and also"⁠—this one little situation is human and normal. Every person from the dawn of time who has behaved as a survival mechanism in an extreme way, when we try to shift into a more healthy and boundaried way, we always make mistakes. It is okay and that you made a mistake. I am characterizing that particular interaction as a mistake, and that doesn't mean you're wrong. I need to be exceptionally clear because I see how strong your Saturn is.

                        Making a mistake is how you learn. The only people who heal are people who make mistakes. The only people who evolve are people who fail. There is no path through trauma and epigenetics and ancestral shit and societal shit that doesn't include making mistakes, hurting your own feelings, hurting other people's feelings. The pendulum doesn't swing from the left to the right and then stay there. It goes back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

                        And so, unfortunately, in that specific situation, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. So you snapped back, in some way, with people who aren't safe people for you to do that with. Now, your partner is a safe person for you to do that with, but they're not. And then it was in some ways justifying of your old beliefs and all of that, right?

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Just like your mom pushed you away because everyone leaves her, and then you were like, "Yeah. Okay. Fine. Okay. I'm out. I'm out." And now she's like, "I knew it. I was right to push you away." And this is how you know that this is a matrilineal, epigenetic, or ancestral pattern. It comes from your matrilineage. So sorry.

Beverly:          I'm just being hit really hard. I'm being hit really hard with a lot of stuff right now, Jessica. I never thought about that, that she was doing that because⁠—because that is true. My mom can be abrasive, to say the least. And yeah, I've seen her go through a lot of personal relationships, and I just never put it together that, "Oh, she was probably pushing people away."

Jessica:            Pushing them away and punishing them for going. She was pushing them away to prove to herself and everyone else that no one loves her enough; therefore, she's entitled to be as abrasive or as rigid as she is because everyone leaves anyways. And we all do this. And this is the thing. It is very hard to see our parents as just damaged people with their own parents, right?

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            But every human parent is a damaged human with parents. And what happened for you, for instance, in the situation with your in-laws, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And every single one of us engages in self-fulfilling prophecies. Don't beat yourself up. Be interested. "Huh. Why did I choose these people to let my feelings fly with when I could have told my friend when we were having lunch and they kind of did something to hurt my feelings? Why didn't I invest in friendship and let them know that my feelings were hurt so that the friendship could deepen? Why did I choose people that triggered me and aren't my friends and"⁠—yada, yada, yada.

Beverly:          I do have a question about that.

Jessica:            Hit me.

Beverly:          How do I know⁠—because part of the reason why I kind of popped off on that particular call was because I was doing it from a place of, like, "We need to be very clear about what we're feeling and be very plain about this because we're⁠—

Jessica:            Who's we?

Beverly:          Just everyone on the call.

Jessica:            I see.

Beverly:          It was me, my fiancé, and zir dad. And so I just felt like we all need to be on the same page, working with the same language and the same information. The way that came out was very snippy, but I did feel⁠—I knew afterwards, "Oh, this might be a mistake." But I felt good about it because it felt in line with the sort of radical community-building Queer shit that I'm into. You know what I mean?

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Beverly:          Is that like⁠—you know what I mean?

Jessica:            Okay. I'm going to interrupt that. Radical, Queer community-building, radical, Queer communication, requires consent. Consent is at the center; is it not?

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Your father-in-law was not consenting to a radical, Queer community-building conversation. And you knew it. That's not his lens. So this is again where I say it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. You chose somebody who doesn't have a radical bone in their body, who is not Queer, and who sees communication as the most perfunctory exchange of ideas and facts. Am I right about that? Am I seeing this correctly?

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And you chose that person to uphold your values with. So I met this guy once, and he was telling me about how he was in an open relationship⁠—cis, straight guy. Whatever. And he was telling me about how he was in an open relationship, and we had this whole conversation about it. And at a certain point in the conversation, I was like, "Is your wife aware that you're in an open relationship?" And he said, "Well, no, but I'm polyamorous." And I was like, "But she doesn't know you're polyamorous, so she thinks she's monogamous, and you're telling me you're poly." And he was like, "Yeah."

Beverly:          That's cheating.

Jessica:            That's bananas. That's like lying to everyone, including yourself, in a situation. But this man, boldface in my eyes, no hesitation⁠—he was like⁠—he learned the words, and he was like, "Yeah. I'm going to apply this to me." There was no consent. I share this ridiculous story, which is a true story, with you because that is essentially what you were doing. I mean, the stakes were radically different, and it's not the fucking same, but also, it is the same.

                        When we learn something and we are integrated around a thing, we can't just apply it to all the people. This is why you won't catch me⁠—professional astrologer⁠—running around talking about astrology with people who are not professional astrologers or while I'm giving a reading or whatever. Socially, I'm not walking up to people, being like, "I don't know. I think your Mercury may be Retrograde in your birth chart." That's bananas. It doesn't match, and we can't have an equal conversation.

                        So I think what you were doing was grabbing power. You were like, "You have power over me in this situation. Hell the fuck no. Not going to go with that. I'm going to show you that I have power over you in this situation." Yeah?

Beverly:          Absolutely. It drives me bananas that I can't⁠—I have⁠—it feels like a song and dance, Jessica. And I don't like it.

Jessica:            Yes. It is a song and dance. 100 percent, it's a song and dance. So you don't have to like it. Listen. I'm a Capricorn. There are other ways of holding this, but you're getting a reading with me, and so I'm going to tell you this. If you're coming to me and asking me for money but at the same time maybe being rude in ways that I completely don't understand because I do not have a Queer, radical communication context⁠—you know he didn't know where you were coming from. Cognitively, you know he had no idea where you were coming from, right?

                        If you're going to be rude to me and ask me to give you something, I'm going to feel bad about giving it to you. Of course I am. The truth is the way to have real power is to embody power, which means when you ask for help and someone gives you help, it doesn't diminish you.

Beverly:          Yeah, I know. But I grew up with the lesson that it does.

Jessica:            Of course. Of course you did. Your survival mechanisms are predicated on it. "I'm going to pull myself up by my bootstraps." How American is that? How traditional is that? It's so Saturnian. But the reason why you had to show this man, who⁠—honestly, he's utterly clueless. He's not cruel. He's not malicious. He is clueless. And he does want to give you money.

                        So the truth of the matter is it did not diminish you to hear him talk in a way that you know doesn't reflect your understanding of reality or capital, right?

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            Capitalism and capital. He was being himself, and he was being generous. And he does like and respect you and your relationship with your partner from his vantage point, from the human person that he is.

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            But there is this part of you that's like, "You are fucking diminishing me by not seeing me. You are diminishing me by helping me in ways that I can't help myself." And that triggered you. And so, when you acted, you acted out of a place of activation. And that activation is about past trauma and not about current circumstance, which does not mean in the current circumstance you wouldn't have gotten off the phone if you weren't so triggered with the father-in-law and talked to your partner and been like, "Ahhh," and shared that moment and strategized around how to handle it moving forward.

                        That would have made your life easier moving forward. It would have made your partner's life easier. And again, I am not criticizing you. I want to be really clear I'm not shitting on your⁠—this is the only way through it, is through it. You're going through it, and it's good. You didn't burn a bridge. You didn't abuse the person. It's like we're using this as a great example of you using a hammer when a feather would have been just fine, right?

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            And you have feathers. You know how to use feathers. You've used feathers before. If you are more confident in your own ability to take care of yourself, which includes loving yourself and supporting yourself, then your reaction to parents and other people's relationships to their parents would not be so extreme and knee-jerk.

Beverly:          Yeah. That makes sense.

Jessica:            And I want to just ground you into that's what the trigger is. That's the trigger. And whenever you find yourself triggered around a parental person in whatever context⁠—because it sounds like it comes up in all the fucking contexts, right? If you can try to remember, "This is about my self-worth. It's not about the parent. It's not about the control. It's not about what my friend is or isn't doing with their parent. It's none of it. It's about⁠—I have a really old wound around self-worth, and I just need to remember to choose myself, to love myself."

                        And when you're in a state of activation, which is like what you were talking about⁠—but also, do you know what I mean when I say state of activation around this issue?

Beverly:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's like a strong set of feelings. They're hard to miss.

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            When you're in a state of activation is always a good time to say nothing. The reason why it's a good time to say nothing is because that activation is never about the situation alone. It's always about the situation plus all the shit you haven't worked out from your childhood, with your mom, with your dad. And so it may be that the correct action in the situation is to say, "I can't talk to you about this. I can't keep on"⁠—maybe it's like you're talking to a friend, and your friend keeps on complaining to you about their parent but they keep on baking their mom a cake and not taking care of themselves.

                        And maybe you just want to tell them exactly what they're doing wrong and really just fucking let them know. It may be that the correct action is exactly that. It's to tell them what the fuck to explain it to them, to mince words zero percent. But if you do that from a state of activation, then the energy and motivation with which you're doing it will make you feel like shit, and it'll come off as mean, whereas if you sit with yourself and you track, "Okay. This is a boundary I have with this friend. I can't keep talking about their mom. They're not doing anything different. I can't be a source of support because I'm too triggered"⁠—

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            And also, "I know I'm right. They're wrong." And that's okay. You get to be right, and they get to be wrong. That's okay. But if you can kind of give yourself permission to have some activation that's really not about the friend or what they're doing with their mom, to have some activation around, "This person's not listening to me, and I'm right and they're wrong," and to have some activation around actual concern and not being able to tolerate fucking circling the same topic over and over again⁠—right? You're "I figure it out and I do something about it" kind of person, so it's hard for you when people don't do that.

                        So, if you were able to hold that mess and then come back to your friend and say, "I can't talk to you about it," the energy would be different. You wouldn't have a shame spiral around it. You wouldn't feel bad about yourself about it because the energy would be different. So sometimes what I'm trying to get at is the best thing to do is the thing you want to do, but that doesn't mean that at any moment and with any energy, that thing is the best thing.

Beverly:          Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I don't know. I just feel like that's a thing that I can and have done with friends, especially recently, especially as coming into myself and all that sort of stuff. I've always been very empathetic and all that sort of stuff, but I've been able to do a lot more a lot easier. But the thing that I am struggling with is when it's not a friend, when it's not a person in between me and the⁠—you know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yeah.

Beverly:          In this situation, I will⁠—

Jessica:            Wait. In this situation, like with the father-in-law?

Beverly:          Yeah. With my in-laws, I will just be on the call like⁠—you know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yes.

Beverly:          And in my head, I'm saying to myself, essentially, "I need to fight or I need to run."

Jessica:            Fight or flight. That's right. That's how you know.

Beverly:          So staying in it feels impossible.

Jessica:            Okay. I have an idea. And this might not be possible, and it might not be appropriate. Can you make the decision that dealing with your in-laws is not about you, but instead, it's about supporting your partner and your fiancé? Is that realistic? Is that possible, given the situation?

Beverly:          It's definitely possible. I mean, it was the way I handled things before. Again, it's hard to understand what is a good sharing of my emotions and what is a bad⁠—I'm still figuring that out. You know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yeah. Will you say your partner's full name?

Beverly:          [redacted].

Jessica:            Are they young?

Beverly:          No, just a year younger than me, '94.

Jessica:            Okay. Does their family have quite a bit of money?

Beverly:          Better off than I grew up, for sure, but I wouldn't say rich, necessarily. Strong middle-class, strong⁠—maybe even upper, but not quite.

Jessica:            Right. It looks like their family has the kind of money and also the kind of values where they saved money for their kids.

Beverly:          Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay. That's why it looks like a lot of money to me, because there's money bookmarked.

Beverly:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            This is what I'm going to say. When it comes time, should that time arise, which⁠—honestly, I think this is the time, but it's your call; there's not a right or a wrong here⁠—that you talk to your mother again or your father again, you're going to need your partner to center your needs whenever it is that you engage with your parents because even though it's their in-laws, it's your parents.

                        I will say that your partner does not look harmed or upset by the way you've handled things. But you've harmed you. You've upset you in the way you've handled things with your in-laws because the people you should be fighting with are your parents. The truth is these people are not your people. I mean, there's no world in which you would have a conversation with these people outside of them being your in-laws. Am I seeing this correctly?

Beverly:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you actually are very good at deciding to just be like, "Okay. These are adults, and I'm going to negotiate the world of adults in their terms." That's a skill you have, and it's a good skill. And if you decided that you were going to center your partner's needs and take the back seat and only doing what they need you to do, things will move slower, which will drive you bananas. But your relationship with them will become easier because you will not have transferred a lot of your own shit with your parents onto this relationship that is actually⁠—I mean, it's very like eggshell walls. Does it make sense?

Beverly:          Yeah. No, they don't talk about a lot.

Jessica:            There's nothing spicy here. There's nothing complicated. You know what I mean? This could be an easy relationship for you if you would just let it be. And I think that the fight that you're ready to have is with your mom. And I don't mean call your mom, to be clear. I mean in therapy, with your dear diary, talking with your friends, struggling with that, because when I said your mom was mean, you were like, "Oh, my mom wasn't mean. She was just to the point." Beg to differ. Right?

                        Meanwhile, when you're on the phone with the in-laws, you're like, "Well, that was mean. I'm going to let you know that that was mean." And it was barely anything.

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            You're ready to start really acknowledging your own experience with your mom, how it affected you regardless of what her motivation was, regardless of your ability to understand where she comes from. How did it affect you? How do you feel? How did you feel? Because whether or not you end up having a relationship long term with your mom, not being able to engage with her with self-worth and with centering your own lived experience and with boundaries doesn't serve you.

                        So you might do those things, and because of who she is, it might go nowhere. It might end up being abusive or really just heartbreaking or bad or whatever. And then you make a choice based on that. But you know how everybody's like, "Am I the drama? Am I the drama? Am I the drama?" You know what? A relationship between two people⁠—both people can be the drama. Both people can be the problem. And you don't get to control, nor should you try, the way in which she is the drama and she is the problem.

                        Your only responsibility is to heal your part for yourself. And that is a lifelong project. It is not like, "Tick tock. Get it done. You're almost 32," or something. You know what I mean? It is a you thing. The truth of the matter is the way that you advocated for yourself would have been much more appropriate with your mom than it was with these people because it didn't matter, really. I know it mattered, but it also really didn't matter. It's both. Does that align with what you know?

Beverly:          Yeah. No, absolutely.

Jessica:            And so⁠—okay. Let me just ground this. Hold on. Say your mom's full name out loud.

Beverly:          [redacted].

Jessica:            Right. And does your sister still talk to her?

Beverly:          Probably. I don't talk to my sister.

Jessica:            Okay. Are you out to your mom?

Beverly:          Painfully so.

Jessica:            Okay. And so is she not cool?

Beverly:          She's one of those people that says she's trying but is not. There's no follow-through.

Jessica:            There's no evidence of the actual effort.

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. The part of you that deals with the matrilineal pattern of, "You're for me or you're against me. You're in or you're out of my life"⁠—that part of you says, "She can't be in my life because she's not a safe person." And I do not disagree that is correct. And also⁠—and you know me and an "and also," right? And also, if you had boundaries, if you were able to titrate your emotions, who knows what would happen with your mother? If you were able to hold empathy for yourself in equal parts to her, who knows what would be different?

                        Nobody in the mother-to-child line on your matrilineage has done that, from what I'm seeing. Nobody. There's never been healthy boundaries, self-worth in balance. Nowhere. So what would happen? It is impossible to know. That's where possibility lives. It is possible that your mom would change, not magically and overnight, obviously, but change. And it's possible she wouldn't. But it's not your responsibility to change your mom. It's not even your right to change your mom.

                        But it is your right to change you and to be able to show up in a relationship with her where you had a conversation, and if she started to go in a direction and you said, "I don't want to talk about that," she pushed or she shut down, you could be like, "Oh, somebody rang my doorbell. I've got to run." You just had a boundary, and it wasn't punishing. It was, "I'm going to take care of myself, and I don't trust you enough to talk about it."

                        So, instead of saying, "I'm going to get off the phone with you right now because you're hurting my feelings," which she would turn into a victim story for herself, being able to be like, "Oh shit. I just got an email from work. Gotta go. Bye"⁠—something that she can't personalize. I mean, she can personalize whatever she wants, right? But something that she can't really personalize would eventually be a strategy that could work for you with her. And again, I am not suggesting that you keep her in your life or keep her close. I am saying that it's a possibility.

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            And that possibility only exists if you do these things that I'm naming. Hold self-worth. Hold empathy while recognizing her value and her emotional complexities and shit. It doesn't have to be either/or, either/or, "It's me or you. One of us survives this interaction. One of us gets dignity in this interaction." Both get to have dignity. And the trauma pattern in your matrilineage is one person survives each interaction. And so, even in those moments when your mom was really awesome and fun, it was because you were getting along with her, right?

Beverly:          Right.

Jessica:            It wasn't an exchange. It was that you were doing what she wanted, and what she happened to have wanted was possible for you to do as a kid in that moment. But all of this requires that you tolerate grief, and that's just awful and hard. And there's so much grief that you hold not just for yourself, but because you were kind of this waste bin for your mom and all of her grief. She just dumped, dumped, dumped, dumped, dumped on you⁠—and your sister, but you're different people, so it landed differently for the two of you.

                        And she didn't do it because she was trying to harm you. She did it because she was broken in her own complicated way. That doesn't mean it was okay, and it doesn't mean it wasn't cruel. It's complicated. One of the things I want to give you advice around is this. And do you go woo? Are you woo-woo? Do you go witchy?

Beverly:          Eh, yeah.

Jessica:            Ish. Ish. Okay. Do you do any visualization stuff?

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Visualization works for you. Okay. Great. So we're going to work with visualization. When you experience grief⁠—you know what I'm talking about, like when you get overwhelmed with emotions and you struggle to make sense of them? What I want to encourage you to do⁠—say your full name out loud⁠—in your head or out loud, period⁠—three times.

                        Step one is recognize you're in the feelings. Step two, say your name three times out loud⁠—in your head or out loud out loud. And then step three⁠—it's a three-step process. Step three is to visualize whatever works for you. It could be the galaxy. It could be the depths of the ocean. It could be the depths of a volcano, magma⁠—whatever just inconceivably large and powerful, material force you want to see. And visualize whatever you're experiencing that isn't yours, that you're holding on to for others, whether it's your mom, your dad, fucking broken planet, whatever it is. Doesn't matter.

                        Whatever it is that you're holding on to that isn't yours, release it into the magma. Release it into the stars. Release it into the depths of the ocean. And ask that the natural world repurpose that energy⁠—compost. It's not going to harm anything or anyone. Energy is energy is energy. And if the energy you're experiencing isn't yours, release it so that it can be used instead of whatever it is that's happening with you which is not helping.

                        Even as I'm describing this, you're doing it, you damn weird weirdo. I'm just saying you say you're not woo. I say, well, I don't know. You just did it, so⁠—and could you feel the beginnings of levity in your system?

Beverly:          Yeah.

Jessica:            You're a natural. Good on you. So this is a practice you can do 70 million times a day. What is not yours can be released. Then you will find that your grief has a different texture than most of the grief you experience because most of the grief you experience is in your matrilineage. It's your mom's, or it's other people's. Your grief is terrible because everybody's grief is terrible because grief is the fucking worst.

                        And also, you can manage it. You can totally manage it. The thing I see for you is that you're incredibly capable of working towards self-love and staying with the path of loving others, of living a joyous, abundant, successful, healthy life. And in many ways, you already have that, as the young person that you are. And I see that growing for you. I mean, from my mouth to God's ears, knocking on wood, because let's not jinx a thing by saying it. But I do see that for you, and you deserve it.

Beverly:          I hope, Jessica⁠—I mean, I'm trying. I really am. I think the biggest thing that the program I was in gave me was that appreciation that this is a lifelong⁠—that I am tending to myself for the rest of my life and⁠—beautiful.

Jessica:            It is beautiful. And I would encourage you to research the law of reversed effort. Sometimes the greatest effort we must engage in, especially those of us who are very Saturnian⁠—as you are, I hope you've learned from this conversation⁠—is that doing less is the work. Your way of handling things is to do, do, do, do, do, work, work, work, work, work. And what I'm trying to say to you is you get to simply be present sometimes.

For instance, in conversations with your in-laws, you can actually just be present. Check in with your partner before the conversation: "Is there anything you need from me? I'm going to take a back seat, unless you want me to drive. And if you want me to drive, I'll fucking drive. I know how to drive the autobahn. I can go." You just ask. Just ask. And if they say you don't need you to do anything during the conversation, doing less sometimes is doing more.

Tolerating your emotions as they emerge, taking notes, maybe, during the conversation so you can be like, "I'm going to tell you this. I'm going to tell you that"⁠—but don't actually say it to them. Say it to your partner or say it to your dear diary or whatever is appropriate in the moment. Doing less sometimes is doing more.

So the labor of life and working towards being embodied and healthy sometimes is like fucking Sisyphus's ball. You're just pushing the ball up the hill, and then it rolls back down. You keep on pushing the ball up the hill. Sometimes it's Everest. You're just dehydrated and spent too much money to go up the stupid hill. Why did you do it? Right? That's my take on Everest, anyways.

And then sometimes it's sleeping and waking up restored. It's daydreaming and allowing your subconscious and your conscious to communicate with each other without your intervention so that possibilities can emerge. Sometimes it's allowing other people to be as fucked up as you are, just letting it be, letting it be, letting it be.

I will say that what is coming up for me is that you are breaking these matrilineal patterns. And that's really painful, and it's really hard, and it's gorgeous. And what exists on the other side cannot be known to you from where you are. And that's kind of fucking beautiful and cool. So I just want to say you're traveling this road on this mountain, and it's like you're before the turn. You can't see what's on the other side of the turn. You don't know what the view is going to be on the other side of the fucking mountain because you've not been there before.

And from an ancestral perspective, none of your ancestors have been there before. So it's going to feel wild to you, like a crazy set of risks, because it is, on an energetic level. On a material level, it's not a dramatic set of changes. On a spiritual level/emotional level, it is dramatic. So, on the outside, it doesn't look that different. On the inside, it is fucking leagues of difference.

Beverly:     That makes sense.

Jessica:            So that is actually what I want to leave you with. And I don't often or always see something like that, but I do see it for you. And yeah, I don't know if that's helpful, but that is what I'm seeing.

Beverly:          No, it's really helpful, and it's really affirming.

Jessica:            Good. I'm really glad to hear that. So your question ended up being a little different than what I thought it was, but did I answer the question? Did you get the tools you need? Do you have anything lingering?

Beverly:          No. I mean, it's just such a big thing. It looms large in my life, so it's hard to know⁠—I know I can't do it all at once. I have to do it piece by piece.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Beverly:          But the piece that I got here was, yeah, really helpful.

Jessica:            I'm glad I got to meet you and that we got to do this reading. And I know that this shit is hard, but also, I really do feel like you're on the path. It's not like a manicured path, but it's the path, which is great.

Beverly:          Right. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica.

Jessica:            It was my pleasure.