January 08, 2025
493: Apple Fights Tree
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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: Mom, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?
Mom: Okay. I'm just going to read my question because I think it'll be easier.
Jessica: Perfect.
Mom: So it starts with, "Longtime listener. In the past, I've led the charge embodying some unhealthy communication and interacting patterns with my son. In 2016 or so, I began moving towards healing and growth, and I had a hard-stop boundary for the types of interactions that were common in our past: lots of yelling and fighting and control. I'm finding myself disengaging and distancing myself from my son as a means to enforce my boundary. It feels like he's still in that place of interaction. There's a lot of anger on both sides. Sometimes I get triggered and I move back to the old patterns. How can I understand him better and how our charts interact? What are some ways that I can help lead the charge for more healthy interaction patterns?"
Jessica: Good question. And will you share your birth information and his birth information? Although I just want to say, for anyone listening, your adult is a grown-ass man, a young grown-ass man.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: And he has given his clear, informed consent that we look at his chart and that he not be here. And I don't look at the charts in questions like this of parents of children for a variety of reasons, but we're going to maybe look at his chart, maybe not, depending on what is called for here, what we're going to see. But are you willing to share both Mom and son's birth data?
Mom: Yes. So my birthday is February 27th, 1980. I was born in Astoria, Oregon, at 10:46 a.m. And my son was born on November 15th, 2002, in Phoenix, Arizona, and his birth time is 8:47 p.m.
Jessica: Thank you for sharing. Okay. Is your son's dad in the picture, or is there a coparent in the picture?
Mom: I would say we're parallel parenting at this point just because he's an adult. But yeah, he's in the picture. So—
Jessica: Okay. Is he your partner or is he your ex?
Mom: He's my ex.
Jessica: Okay. And is this pattern of communication, which I'm understanding is like yelling at each other, kind of getting shut down by each other, that kind of a thing—is that pattern something that your son experiences with his dad?
Mom: No. He's not.
Jessica: Say more.
Mom: His dad I would characterize as just very avoidant. One of the reasons why we didn't stay together is because we would argue more about how he didn't want to talk about something than actually the issue.
Jessica: Right.
Mom: So he's just very easy, breezy, "Sure. No problem. Let's do it. I'm going to do your dishes. You don't have to do any chores," just that type of guy.
Jessica: I see.
Mom: It's very easy with him.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mom: He has a very easy relationship with his dad.
Jessica: Okay.
Mom: But it doesn't have much depth.
Jessica: Right. So, when you and your son get along, are you very close?
Mom: Yeah. We'll talk about everything, sort of, or at least he feels comfortable sharing intimate portions of his life.
Jessica: Okay. So am I understanding that you kind of vacillate between being super close and having kind of a really cool dynamic between you and yelling at each other or icing each other and having a really kind of destructive dynamic? Is it kind of like flippity-floppity?
Mom: Not at this point. I would say that we're always sort of in that anger place at this point. Yeah.
Jessica: And for how long?
Mom: Maybe his senior year in high school, so four years.
Jessica: Four years. Okay.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And do you feel that before he started yelling and being aggressive, that you were that way towards him but he wasn't that way towards you? Was that kind of how you parented?
Mom: I don't think so. You know, where I really think it happened is I was a stay-at-home mom, and I was always with him, and we were sort of like best friends and stuff like that, always doing stuff together. And then, at a certain point, I said, "Hey, I sort of need to make a life for myself," and I decided to go to law school.
Jessica: Oh.
Mom: And so I was always doing homework, so I wasn't there anymore. And I think that just sort of made a lot of anger. And then I graduated law school, and I was ready to sort of reengage in the relationship. And he's like, "What? You pretty much abandoned me for three years. We're not having that same relationship." And it just led to abandonment for me and sort of—
Jessica: Oh, that's intense.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: I'm sorry. And so—okay. So I'm just grounding this, right? Would your son say if he were here that when you parented him and you were upset with him, that you were a yelling parent?
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: Would he say that you were?
Mom: I think at a certain point, he would, but not when he was younger.
Jessica: Okay. So, before puberty, he would not have said that, and after puberty, he would?
Mom: Yeah, or maybe after—before law school.
Jessica: Okay. So your relationship is one thing. You didn't yell at him unless it was absolutely necessary.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: You guys didn't have conflict and all that kind of stuff until law school?
Mom: I would say it was—it intensified a lot at that point. Unless there was something extreme going on—yeah, it wasn't like a lot of fighting and yelling, at least the way I remember it.
Jessica: Okay. And have you asked him how he remembers it?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And what does he say?
Mom: He does say the same.
Jessica: Okay.
Mom: He says the same.
Jessica: So it was really law school that changed everything.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. And did you prepare him before law school? Did you say to him, "This is what I'm doing. This is why I'm doing it. This is how it's going to shake down"?
Mom: No.
Jessica: Okay. First of all, good on you for being willing to have this reading with me because you know I'm very direct. You know what I mean? And I see you've got this—you are a Pisces, and you've got this tender Mercury in Pisces. So I know I'm a bull in a China shop with communication a little bit, so I wanted to just acknowledge that and be like, you know, if I'm too rough, you tell me because I can adapt. I am adaptable. So just let me know.
And your Mercury in Pisces sits opposite Saturn in the fifth house. And both of those planets form a T-square to your Neptune in the seventh, and there's a lot to say about that, okay? Now, the classic astrology books will say that having Saturn in the fifth house leads to problems with a child. I'm assuming you've read this in astrology books.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. Can be. It can be. It can also just be problems with fertility. It can be not a problem with your child, but you really want to be an artist, but it's hard to make art. Saturn is kind of restrictive. But in your case, I think it has a lot to do with your own rigidity around what you're supposed to be as a mother, what you're supposed to be as a caregiver, what you're supposed to do and be and think and feel. Does that track?
Mom: I could see that. I think that I have a lot of expectations for myself.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. And was your mom, when you were raised, also a stay-at-home parent?
Mom: No. I was sort of like the latchkey kid. She always had to work.
Jessica: And did you have siblings?
Mom: Yes. One brother, one sister, and I'm the oldest.
Jessica: You're the oldest. Okay. Great. Tracks. Okay. So the thing that's really important about this T-square is it, plus several other things in your birth chart, indicate that boundaries are not a thing that come naturally to you. Rules—Saturn opposite Mercury, great at rules. "This is the way it is; this is the way it isn't." But boundaries where you're like, "This is what I need, and this is what I can offer. And we're going to sit in the vulnerability, and we're going to negotiate the details"—that more nuanced expression is really hard with Neptune as the focal planet of a T-square between Mercury and Saturn. Does that track?
Mom: I think so in the past, but I've done a lot of work on boundaries, and I feel like I'm getting better and better at it as I'm working at it. But I think in the beginning, boundaries—"What's boundaries? I don't even know what that is."
Jessica: Yeah. I think most people have that attitude of boundaries, you know?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Now, that said, the reason why I bring this up, other than we were going to get there, is you didn't tell your son what to expect. So you didn't express the boundary of, "Hey, I love being your mom. I love having the life I have. And this is something I'm going to build for myself, and I want you to see me build it. And I want you to understand that my relationship to studiousness—I'm a really intense student." Mercury/Saturn opposition—you're not a casual law student kind of guy.
Mom: That's true.
Jessica: Yeah. You're somebody who studies, and you can't hear anything around you. The world is blotted out, I would imagine.
Mom: Yep. I graduated third in my class.
Jessica: Congratulations. That's amazing. That's amazing.
Mom: Lots of studying.
Jessica: Yeah. Tons of studying. But having not shared that with your kid when he was a kid, that's a boundary issue, right? Because not only did you not express to him, "Hey, I'm an adult. I know myself. This is who I am. This is what I'm doing. This is how I'll be. Also, this is what it isn't. This isn't me leaving you, even though I'm not going to be around"—right? So you didn't express the boundary. And it's fair that when you were all of a sudden like, "I'm back," he was like, "I'm going to express boundaries like you do. I'm not expressing boundaries. Instead, I'm punishing you for leaving me."
Mom: Agreed.
Jessica: Yeah, because in his experience, your abandonment of him—which is how he experienced it. It's not what you did. That's not your motives. That was not your intention, but that was his experience, right? That experience was like an isolation. It was like, "I'm pushing you away. Here's a consequence for you." And so he just mirrored it back to you, which is vengeful. And also, when we hold it in context of him having been a kid, it's also mirroring behavior.
Mom: Yeah. I agree 100 percent.
Jessica: Yeah. And so, when we look at what the hell happened, all of that makes sense the way I've laid it out. But you have a Venus/Pluto opposition, a very tight one, in your chart.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: And so you have this hypersensitivity to rejection from people who you like or love. The worst thing you could possibly imagine is your son saying, "I don't love you," or, "I'm pushing you away." This would be the absolute worst. And whether he said it in those words or not, it sounds like his behavior was like a push. Am I hearing that right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mom: Yeah. I agree.
Jessica: Yeah. I'm sorry. And so, unless you were in therapy 24 hours a day, it's unrealistic for you to have not gone into your flight-or-fight mechanisms and your survival mechanisms in reaction to him. So he used fire, and you were like, "Fire? I've got fire." And the two of you were just like—the apple and the tree were fighting each other, basically.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So, first of all, that is a lot. And that is why having kids is hard. That's why right there. You know what I mean? It's just like, how do you make a child that's not a product of you, the good, the bad, all of it? So have you guys talked about this topic of why you essentially left and how you left?
Mom: We have not discussed that directly, I don't—
Jessica: Okay.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So the first and most important thing I'm going to say to you is have a conversation with him that you initiate as the parent, understanding that he is not an adult you're having a conversation with, even though he's a young adult.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: You're talking to him as the kid that you left when he was 16—
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: —or 15 or whatever it was, and to acknowledge to that little 15-year-old boy, who was sweet and innocent and tender and a mama's boy—right? To say to that kid, "I did this thing for myself, and I didn't know how to do it right. And I understand now that I did it wrong for you, and that means I did it wrong for me. And I'm proud of myself that I did this thing, but I hurt you. And I understand how I hurt you, and I didn't at the time understand that I was hurting you. And I am sorry."
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Because that's true. I didn't make any of that up, did I?
Mom: It's true. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mom: It's all true.
Jessica: He has a right to be angry because you haven't apologized.
Mom: I agree.
Jessica: I think you've passive-aggressively apologized.
Mom: I don't know what—
Jessica: What would that look like?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: It would look like, "I mean, I was just trying to make my life better. I can't believe that you would hold that against me."
Mom: No.
Jessica: Okay.
Mom: If we're talking around it but not this exact thing that I did not do, it would just be like, "I needed to stand on my own two feet." And I think I have apologized, but maybe I'll be a bit more cruel about it and say, "Hey, I was doing the best that I could."
Jessica: That's literally what I'm talking about. That's actually literally—
Mom: Okay. So yes.
Jessica: That's passive-aggressive apologies.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: So let me explain why because this is really important. The reason why you're defensive, the reason why you haven't properly apologized to this child that you love like he's the inside of your heart—in this context, your behavior does not suggest that, and it's because you feel defensive. There's a part of you that feels like you didn't have a right to prioritize yourself and to better your life and to do this thing you wanted. And because you have your own insecurities and your own shit around it, you're reacting to the young man who's telling you you did something wrong because he's echoing a voice inside of you that is saying that you did something wrong.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And this is, again, why it's so hard to be a parent. As hard as it is to have a toddler or a cute little baby, I mean, it's got nothing on parenting a teen. You know what I mean? That's when things get really complicated because he's like a little adult mirroring your issues, right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: That's parenting for you. And so, when, as a parent, you apologize, contextualize, or explain why you did something that negatively impacted the child and you use too many "I" statements—"I was just trying to better my life. I was just doing this"—then you're not parenting; you're talking to that person like they're an adult that you weren't the parent of. It's a fine but important line.
And the truth is all of us adults who do healing work—we're like we know we have an inner child and that there's ways in which, in our own childhood, parts of us kind of stopped developing because we got traumatized, because we got fucked up in some way. And you have this unique experience and perspective to both be aware of that part of yourself and to be able to talk to your son's inner child where he experienced an abandonment.
I encourage you, with me, with your friends, with your therapist, to talk about it from your perspective, but when you talk to him, to center his perspective. It's the only time, it's the only relationship, where I'm going to encourage you to do that, but to acknowledge, "If I completely don't consider where I was coming from and all my adult considerations and I only think about it from your perspective, I was there every day all day long, and then I wasn't. And I didn't prepare you, and I didn't explain it."
Mom: True.
Jessica: Yeah. And you didn't do that out of malice or a lack of love. You did it out of insecurity, and you were just like, "If I don't do it all at once and right now, then I'll never do it, so I'm just going to dive in." And you're a person. It was an oversight, and it was a really meaningful one for him.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And owning that doesn't mean you're a bad mom. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. And it doesn't mean he can be abusive towards you in the way he talks to you, but it does—if you want your child to develop a new way of engaging with you, then you have to lead the way of engaging in a new way.
Mom: I agree.
Jessica: Yeah. So, when the two of you yell or bark at each other, whatever it is, is there a particular topic that this happens around?
Mom: I guess maybe when he was younger, before he went off to college, on my part, it might be if he's not turning in his homework or he's sort of not doing the things that I feel like he should be doing—you know, things like that. And now—I guess I could maybe just give you an example.
Jessica: Yeah. [crosstalk].
Mom: And I guess maybe this is around what I feel like he should be doing, too, which is a little bit controlling. So we were planning for Thanksgiving dinner, and we're sort of like a blended family, so we have two potential Thanksgivings for him to go to. And so I said, "Hey, can you just proactively get with your dad? Figure out what time the other one is, and just proactively reach out to me. Let me know what your plan is and what you would like to do," you know, just so I could plan and make it.
And he wrote me a text that said that Thanksgiving's at 11:30 at his grandma's and just didn't say anything else. So I just figured, well, it's really close to the other time, so you're not going to be doing it. And so I was like, "Okay. Well, do you want to do this instead? Do you want to go on this hike and have biscuits and gravy on the top of the mountain instead?" And he just didn't proactively let me know what his plan was. His plan was he wanted to do both, and he wanted me to pick him up, but he didn't talk about it.
Jessica: He didn't ask you. Okay.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: He didn't ask. He didn't ask for what he needed, and then he was heartbroken when you didn't give him what he wanted.
Mom: Exactly.
Jessica: Okay. Good news is he's your child. No confusion there, because that's basically what you did with the whole going to law school part, right?
Mom: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: You expected him to understand without giving him any information.
Mom: True.
Jessica: Okay. Cool story. You have the identical problem as your son.
Mom: Oh. We are very—I agree.
Jessica: Obviously. You guys are like—you know. I mean, again, apple yelling at the tree, you know, "Okay. Who's at fault here?" So I have really annoying advice.
Mom: Oh gosh.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. It's a good reaction to me. Yes. You're the adult in this situation.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Now, I could say this differently if he was a different age. But at this age, he's barely not a teenager, right? Is he a teenager? How old is he? Do me my maths.
Mom: He's 22.
Jessica: Yeah. Okay. So he's barely not a teenager. Okay.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So I'm going to give you the annoying advice—and this is going to be very hard because you have the same problem as him, right? So it's like, unfortunately, you can't magically become a different person in this regard. Also, listen to the advice. Okay. The next time you ask him to do something and he is vague in his communication—which will be literally the next time you ask him to be clear about something.
Mom: It will be. It will.
Jessica: Yes. Yes, because this is how he communicates. Right?
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: So, if you accept it, then you say—use the sandwich method. You say something loving. "I love you. I can't wait to see you. Do you want me to be pushy and pick the time and place, or do you"—something direct, something like, "I need you to be clear," but not asking him to be clear. You're leading him to clarity, and then the other piece of bread. So the bread is something positive. The meat is kind of critical or it's kind of directive. It's kind of like, "Come on now, kid." And then the piece of bread is, "Let me know. Love you."
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: Positive, critical, positive. Okay?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mom: You know how he's going to—he'll say to me, "Mom, I don't appreciate you talking to me like that."
Jessica: Like what? Which part?
Mom: If I say anything even—I will try. I want to take your advice.
Jessica: Even if it's positive, you think he'll say that?
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: So here's a fun fact. You don't need to control him. You don't get to control him; you don't need to control him. You can control your own behavior.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: So, if you accept that your son is not direct—he doesn't tell you what he needs, right?
Mom: Agreed.
Jessica: If you accept that—okay. So, if you accept that, you've got a couple of options. You can keep on doing what you're doing, which is being like, "That's a wall. I'm going to walk into it until it becomes a door"—right? That's what you guys are doing with each other. But again, you're the parent, so it's different for you than it is for him.
Mom: Agreed.
Jessica: Okay. So you can walk into the wall until it becomes a door. You can change your expectations and your behavior. Expect him to be impossible to communicate with. Understand that he does it because he has abandonment and rejection issues—
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: —and because he's maybe a dumb boy. We'll give him that, too. But we're going to focus on the deep and intense personal part, the abandonment issues. He's constantly waiting for you to leave him, so he's setting you up. And you're walking right into it every time.
Mom: I agree.
Jessica: Every time, you're like, "You're not clear with me? Fine. I'm not clear with you." Right? You guys are just apple, tree, apple, tree. Then you adapt your behavior, so saying to him, "I want to see you. And I'm assuming right now"—tell him whatever it is you're assuming. "I'm understanding that you don't really want me to hang out. Is that a correct assumption? Do you want to hang out? I would love to hang out with you."
You need to get into the habit of—and he can be like, "Mom, what's wrong with you?" Fine. Let him do it. Let him reject you. He has to reject you. He has to reject you because he feels rejected. So let him get it out of his system—not being abusive. Not acceptable, right? But him being like, "Mom," or taking too long to text even though you know he saw the text or whatever—let him do stupid, silly things like this because he's a child acting out with his mom.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And instead, say, "I'm understanding that you don't really want to hang out with me because you've got these other plans with your family, and so I'm going to suggest other things. But if you want to see me, that's my first preference."
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: It's about being really honest. And again, Mercury in Pisces square to Neptune opposite Saturn—this is not your preferred mode of communication, what I'm recommending. But because you and your son have the identical problem here and you're lock-horn locked, one of you has got to change. And you're the one getting the reading, so I'm going to say it's you. And also, you're the mom. Right?
Mom: Yeah. And I'm the mom, so I should definitely do it. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This brings me to something else. You've got this beautiful Mars conjunction to Jupiter in Virgo, and there are so many good things about this aspect. It's a very enviable placement to have in your birth chart, lawyer, right? There's a lot of good things about this. But the thing that's really hard about it is impulse control. So, when somebody annoys you or offends you, you have a very hard time not being like, "Rrr." Right? It's in there.
Mom: Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely comfortable with the anger part of life for sure.
Jessica: Yes. Yes. And experiencing your anger—you know I'm a fan, girl. I'm never going to—experiencing your anger, yes. The issue that I think is getting in your way with your son is the impulse control part. It's experiencing your anger and understanding that you're not just angry with your son in that moment or irritated with your son in that moment; you're angry with yourself. And you're not just angry with yourself; you're frustrated every fucking time you just try to do the right thing and there's 20 steps in front of you and you're just trying to get—like, whoop. You just want to chutes and ladders the situation. That Mars/Jupiter conjunction is very impatient. You just want to chutes and ladders.
And your son is like, "You must have 12 texts." Or some person in front of you is just taking too long to order their coffee. There is just this part of you that's like, "Can we not get to the next step?" And so that part, the impulse control part that gets under your skin—and of course, you and I are having this conversation during a Mars Retrograde, so this is right on time. You and I actually tried to schedule months ago, and it didn't work. It's because you needed this conversation during the damn Mars Retrograde, right?
So it's about how you allow yourself to experience that anger. What happens is because of the way it kind of—it looks like—if I can describe it visually, it looks like the anger rushes into your head, and it fills you up into your solar plexus, head to solar plexus. And then it becomes intolerable, and you shoot it out. You make a noise. You say something. You do something impulsive. Does that feel right?
Mom: Sometimes. I think, in the past, it was a lot more. And as I've started to meditate and do all those things, it's a lot easier to not shoot it out. But I definitely still have the feeling.
Jessica: And that's the thing about astrology that's so awesome, is that you see how the energy is at its peak and at its point of release, and it's still the same energy, but it's different.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. But am I correct in seeing that with your Sun, it's more triggering than it is in other parts of your life?
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: Yeah, because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about your Sun here, okay?
Mom: Yeah. I would agree.
Jessica: Yeah. So when he—let's say with this Thanksgiving example because this was kind of recent, there's 12 texts necessary that with someone else could be two texts, and you're pulling teeth to try to get the information.
Mom: Yeah, just pulling teeth.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pulling teeth. Yeah. Okay. I see it. I see it. So you're authentically having to pull teeth. He's authentically dragging his feet as a kind of immature coping mechanism with you. He's pushing you away. He's doing something that triggers you. He's not doing it on purpose, and he is doing it on purpose. They're both true at once.
Mom: I agree.
Jessica: Yeah. And that part of you that has a hard time with impulse control and it boils up is like, "I know he's fucking doing it on purpose. I know he could just tell me." That part of you—because you've been in an intimate relationship with this person for 22 years and this person reflects you so intensely, it is much more hard for you to keep your energy flowing. And so I'm going to give you weird advice, but fuck with it. Play with it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Do you have any mobility issues in your body, like in your legs, your hips, your feet?
Mom: No.
Jessica: Great. Okay. I'm going to give you really weird advice that I've never given anyone else, but this is what I'm seeing. You know how horses kind of stomp their feet?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Do that a bunch, every time your son annoys you. You can try this with other people, too, but we're talking about this relationship. So what I'm talking about is pulling that anger, that agitation energy, from your head all the way through, down past your solar plexus, in—let it flood your body so that it doesn't have to be expressed; instead, you get to wash your body in the power and intensity of it and then kick it out through your feet, through your heels. Jupiter/Mars conjunction. Can you see that horsey fucking energies to it?
Running anger and agitation through the body may seem counterintuitive because it feels like, "Okay, well, I'm bringing it in deeper?" It's not about bringing it in deeper. It's letting it flow all the way through and out instead of needing to slip into an old pattern that is so familiar to you of either saying something that is kind of annoyed, or maybe you don't say it because it's a text exchange, and so you don't say the thing, but your energy is like, "Fuck. This guy—can't he just do something nice because I'm doing something nice?"
This is an energetic relationship. You and your son have—in your healthy, good times, you have such a strong, emotional, and energetic connection. You get each other.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: You love each other. And so it is just as strong in the negative. When you're agitated by him but you're acting like you're not, he knows. He's reacting to the energy, not the content. And ditto. He might be technically saying the right thing to you, and you're just like, "This fucking kid. Why is he fucking with me?" Even though he's not technically doing anything, you can feel the energy, right?
Mom: True.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.
Mom: We can feel each other's energy, I think.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mom: He can feel it through text, even though I'm not texting.
Jessica: Yeah. Agreed. I 100 percent agree with you, which is why I'm telling you to snort and kick like a damn horse. Just run the energy so that you can, again, own the energy. It's your irritation. It's not because of him. I mean, he might be triggering it, but it's yours, right?
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: And this practice is really good for you. It'll make your parenting dynamic easier, but also, you're modeling for him that you can change, because he doesn't feel like he can change, and he doesn't feel like you can change. When I look at him energetically, he feels like, "Well, this is who we are now. This is it." And the part that you named earlier about the kind of pushing away—I called it icing—that dynamic, is that still active between the two of you?
Mom: Yes. And I think that I do it, too, now.
Jessica: Yeah. So it started with him, and now—
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: —you feel like you do it. Okay.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: Did you have a parent who did that when you were growing up? Pushing away, punishing, icing—any of that kind of stuff?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Which one?
Mom: I think my dad did.
Jessica: Yeah. That's what it looks like. Saturn opposite Mercury, right? So his punishment was ice.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Now, you were not that kind of parent until you took actions that unintentionally created that dynamic. You weren't punishing him. You weren't mad at him. But he didn't know that.
Mom: Yeah. That's true.
Jessica: And you know the pain of this. You know the pain of this. Even as you named your dad, I could see the emotion inside of you. So, again, you don't need to feel guilty about this. It happened. It happened, and you didn't do it on purpose. You didn't realize you were doing it, and also, you didn't do it because you thought he was an annoying kid. You didn't. Again, he doesn't know that. To this day, he doesn't know that.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: And that's your job to fix, right?
Mom: I will.
Jessica: Yeah, because he was in puberty. And he was in a sticky place of puberty when this all happened, right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah, I'm seeing that. So he was going through all these changes, and then there was this consequence from his ally in the world of silence, of ice. Again, Saturn/Mercury opposition. We can see this in your chart, which is why I had named—I pulled up your relationship chart. I pulled up his chart. But I had a feeling we wouldn't need any of that because it's actually all in your chart. This pattern of there being a restrictive consequence for not being good in some way—it was a part of your childhood. It was a part of your son's childhood that wasn't what you thought was happening.
And now you're embodying it in reaction to him throwing it at you because your son does this to you, and you're like, "It's just like my dad. It is so triggering."
Mom: And I'm sort of like, "I just don't want to deal with it." I'm just done. Move on.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, except for none of that's true.
Mom: I know.
Jessica: That's a defense mechanism. You don't believe that for a fucking second. You wouldn't have written me a damn question if you were like, "I don't want to deal with this."
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: That's not the truth at all. That's the coping mechanism from your childhood.
Mom: Yeah. When I'm in it, that's what I tell myself.
Jessica: Right. Right. Right, when you're in the emotions.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And when you were in the emotions of, "Oh my God. I'm going to go to law school at this age with a kid. I'm going to do this thing," you were like, "I just can't deal with anything but this."
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: It was the same coping mechanism. And that coping mechanism will not fix this problem. And he learned it from you. It runs through your patrilineage. It runs through your family. And so you're not going to force him to fix this. You're not going to help him fix it. You're just going to be different.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: And when you're different, it will take, girl, years. Not months, not weeks, not seven texts exchanged. It will take years of you being different to win his trust.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: And that's why most parents don't do it, to be honest, right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Because it's really hard to receive the rejection that you're likely to experience when you're being vulnerable and trying something that is like your own childhood shit, your own trigger. And that's exactly what I'm encouraging you to do because children reject their parents as a part of growing. And his experience is he got rejected, and then any time he looks at you sideways, you reject him again. That's his story.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: I'm guessing if he was getting a reading from me, that's what he would tell me. So he needs to be able to reject you without consequences. I'm not talking about being abusive towards you. I'm not talking about calling you names and yelling at you and stealing your car. I'm talking about—he gets to be vague and impossible to deal with, and you still tell him you love him, and you still say, "I want to hang out with you," and you still say, "Hey, I'm going to keep my Thanksgiving open until seven days before. And then, if you don't tell me what you want, I don't want to be alone on Thanksgiving, so I'm going to figure something else out."
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Again, you always lead with, "I love you. I choose you. I love you. I choose you." And if I didn't think it was true, I would be giving you different advice.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: But when I look at your chart and when I look at you energetically, you love this kid like a heart attack. You love him like crazy. And he knows it, but he doesn't. It's both. Yeah. I'm sorry. You know he feels the same towards you, eh?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: You do? Good. But you guys gotta fix this. You gotta fix this because you're both miserable. This is not working. But also, we need your son to be a man in the world who has the capacity to get his feelings hurt by a woman and not become a dick, like not be a yelling mess. Does he date women?
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Then we super-duper need that. We super need him to have this skill set for a woman to forget that they had plans and for him to not go on a tirade, right? We want that for all the women of the world and for him.
Mom: Yeah. When he's on a tirade, any advice to say, "We're not doing this, but I still love you," and help him not feel rejected?
Jessica: Yeah. When he's on a tirade is the smallest percentile of when you need to make him not feel rejected because if his tirade is truly a tirade, if he's being abusive—it sounds like his—when I look at it energetically, his tirades are not abusive, but they're right on the verge. He's mean, but he's not super mean. Am I seeing that correctly?
Mom: Most times, it's on the verge, but there'll be name-calling, which—I definitely think that's inappropriate.
Jessica: Agreed. Agreed.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So, when he starts yelling at you, not being emphatic and intense about his emotions—and this is a hard place for you to identify the difference between. There is a way that when somebody starts being critical of you, your hackles go up, and you're, like, mean, or, "No," or, "I don't want to deal"—so this is really a hard place for you to be, right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Let's just start with giving yourself permission to be a person with your own shit, right? You're a person. So, when he starts getting intense, step number one—you say to yourself, "He's getting intense. Scale from one to ten, how intense is he?" Okay? If you feel he's at a six, you're not able to hear him anymore.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: If you feel he's at a four, you can barely hear him. You're sensitive. You have intense sensitivity to rejection, right? So does he. And I'm guessing if I was giving him a reading that he would say that before he starts yelling, he's asked you for something he needs and you haven't heard him.
Mom: I do feel like he doesn't feel heard.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Yep. So he feels that the only way to get your attention is to be big like a bear. You know what I mean? That's his attitude because he does get your attention. He gets bad attention, but bad attention is better than no attention. Latchkey kid to latchkey kid, that's our move. We invented that, right? But they have perfected it.
So, when you recognize, "Okay. I'm at a four. I'm starting to lose my ability to listen," you interrupt him and you say, "Beloved son"—you don't call him beloved son. Call him by his name. But we're not saying his name. "Beloved son, the way you're talking to me, I'm not hearing you anymore. I'm starting to see red."
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: "So I want to give you two choices. Either we get off the phone—we stop talking." If it's in person, "We stop talking. We get off the phone. And you write it to me, or you say it to me a little later when we're both a little cooler because I want to hear what you have to say." You gotta say that. "I want to hear what you have to say, but I can't hear it when you're talking to me like that."
Mom: Okay. That sounds good.
Jessica: Yeah. He's your son. He's not going to respect it. He's not going to listen to it. He doesn't have impulse control. Okay? He's not going to listen to it. He's not going to respect it. That doesn't mean you don't do it, because you're the adult and all you can do is keep your side of the road clean. And then, when he pushes, you say, "No, I'm really serious because I'm trying to be different. I'm trying to be a better parent to you. And I can't do that when you're yelling at me." And then he does it, and for a third time, he will break your boundary.
And that's when you get yourself up, and you say, "I'm going to go to the bathroom, and I'm going to just be in there for a minute." Or if you're on the phone, you say, "I genuinely love you. I really desperately want our relationship to be better, and that's why I'm getting off the phone. I know you're mad at me right now. I want to hear what you have to say. I cannot hear you when you speak to me like this." And that's the golden sentence. "I love you. I can't hear you when you speak to me like this. I want to hear what you have to say. Therefore, we end."
Do not say anything else, ever, to him when he's like this because you have a tendency, because Mercury is square to Neptune, to defend and justify and defend and justify and defend and justify. And now you've made things very confusing for the other person, and you're talking about yourself when the other person wants you to hear them with what they're saying.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Right? And then that Mercury opposite Saturn, in total contrast, is like, "I'm not going to say anything. I don't need to say a damn word." And so you have a tendency to either/or, right?
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: And they're both received as rejection and a centering of the self by your child. I've given you a golden sentence. You can go get a transcript and everything. You can write it down. And you just practice saying the same thing for years.
Mom: Years. I know.
Jessica: Years.
Mom: It took years to happen, so—
Jessica: Correct. That's how it goes. That's how it goes. And understand that when he is his biggest jerk self, he still loves you. And when you ice him or are mean to him, you still love him. I mean, you know the second part. So you gotta trust the first.
Mom: I do know that he loves me.
Jessica: Good.
Mom: He wants it to be better, too.
Jessica: He does, and he feels stuck. He feels really stuck.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And I will also say this dynamic will fuck up his life, you know, not his dynamic with you, but this lack of tools makes him feel lonely and isolated and like he's on the verge of being left all the time by everything and everyone. And so he does this self-sabotage. I'm sure you've seen it in his young life. And this self-sabotage—you can identify with it. You may have done your own version at his age.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. So this is—when we talk about inherited or ancestral issues, you can't heal your son's issues. All you can heal is yours. And when you heal yours, then you loosen the cement around the brick of his issue. The brick of his issue is his to heal. The cement around it you can actually loosen up by handling your own shit.
Mom: True.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mom: I agree.
Jessica: And so here's the thing. You're an astrologer as well. Or do you identify as an astrologer, astrology student?
Mom: Astrology student.
Jessica: Okay. You are a student of astrology, so you know your Moon is at four degrees of Leo.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: And that means, my dear dear, that in March of 2025, Pluto sits in your ninth house and opposes your third-house Moon for two years because that's a two-year-long transit. Have you looked at this yet?
Mom: No.
Jessica: I'm sorry to ruin your life. So okay. So, as I was prepping for our conversation, I noticed that. And I was like, okay, so now we have a good understanding of what this transit is going to be about. Moon in the third house in Leo—it's about communication as much as it's about emotion, right? And the pattern of, when you feel hurt or rejected, using too many "I" statements or explaining yourself, defensing yourself—very Moon in Leo in the third house, right? That pattern makes sense from inside of you. It is perfectly reasonable from inside of you because of your own insecurities, but it has the function of bringing everything back to you when the person is trying to be heard or when you're trying to actually break through your reasons why.
Mom: Yes. I do not like when people do that to me when I'm trying to talk to them, and they are able to hear me and they bring it back around to themselves. I do not like that at all.
Jessica: Nobody does.
Mom: I'm like, "Where's the space for me?"
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Then you have to fight for space, right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So you do that, right? You do that, and there's a few things in your chart that kind of point to how and why that happens. But I'm only focusing on that Moon in Leo because Pluto is coming for it—tick tock, very quick, right? Yeah. And also, how liberatory is that? Because if you actually want to change the pattern that marked your childhood with your father and that somehow, in a completely radically different way, marked your beloved son's childhood—if you were to break that pattern, you need Pluto. This is not a job for Venus. This is not a job for Saturn. This is not a job for anybody but Pluto.
And so the power of being able to heal a deep emotional wound like this is coming for you. And some of that's like, "It's coming for you," and then some of that's like, "Oh, girl, this is good," because oppositions, oppositional transits, get expressed through relationships. And so, when you feel powerless, you explain and defend and use "I" statements. And Pluto is going to make you feel powerless. That's what Pluto does. It brings up power struggles.
But as a parent, you are the power. It doesn't feel like that. I've never met a parent in the world who feels powerful with their child in that way unless they're an intense disciplinarian and they don't have a great deal of empathy, because your heart is in this person's hands. He just walks around with your heart just tacked to him, and you have no control about where he goes and what he does with it. It is very intense.
But now is going to be the time for you to let him be himself, to practice communicating your empathy and listening when you feel like you need to defend yourself.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: Yeah. And it's going to be really fucking hard. I'm not going to lie to you. If this was something that was in any way natural to you, you would have been doing it already.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: You'd have a completely different childhood if this was natural to you. It's going to be a thing. It's going to be a thing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Mom: Hopefully it'll get easier with time and practice.
Jessica: Or not. It's okay if not. This is, again, why I prepared you for two years. You've gone through Pluto transits before, right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: You've gone through Pluto transits before?
Mom: I'm going through a Uranus opposite Uranus, so I know a little bit about transitions at this point.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So the Uranus opposition to Uranus is a really important one, and there's a lot to talk about with that. But it's a generational transit. It's one of the midlife crisis transits, so it happens to everyone in the midlife. And that is like—earth-shattering, life-changing transit. But when we go through an outer planet transit to one of the inner—so the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars—it is singularly powerful.
So let me just take a pause here, and I'm going to look at what the fuck—okay. Okay, girl. Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to find something, and we're going to talk about it for a second here. So, 1998 through 2000, what was going on then? Because Pluto was squaring your Sun.
Mom: Oh, I graduated from high school, and then I moved from my hometown to Arizona to go to college.
Jessica: Was it hard?
Mom: I think it was not that hard to leave because it was a small town, and if you're rebellious or independent in a small town, that just sort of follows you, and it's hard for you to discover who you really are without all this other stuff being in there. So I think I was excited to leave. But during that time and in high school, I used alcohol a lot as a coping mechanism. So it was a lot of partying during that period.
Jessica: Okay. Okay.
Mom: A lot of unhealthy partying. And I didn't really talk to my family or anything. It was just [crosstalk].
Jessica: Okay. Good. Okay. Good. Okay. So that period, 1998 through 2000, you went through a Pluto square to the Sun—radically different transit than a Pluto opposite the Moon. But you can see why I would bring up a Pluto square to the Sun, right? Because it's a very intense, transformational transit. And there are some really hard parts, and there are some really good parts. And you know how it is when you're at that age—which is not much younger than he is now, right—
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: —where you are realizing all the injustices in the world, realizing both what's available to you and what is not available to you. The world is kind of like—it is a whole other thing. And it's a lot of intense behaviors. It's a lot of intense behaviors. So that happens at that age, but it also happened because of your Pluto square.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: And so it's not all bad, right? You don't look back at that time and be like, "Oh, I was tortured." But you do look back at that time and you're like, "Oh. I was acting out, and some of it was"—
Mom: I was numbing a lot.
Jessica: Yep.
Mom: Not feeling that intensity, probably.
Jessica: So this is really important. The pattern of numbing has come up in different words in a lot of ways both in you describing yourself and your son.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So watch your drinking during the Pluto opposition to your Moon.
Mom: I don't drink, so that's great.
Jessica: Good for you. Watch your disassociative habits. So your 2025 version might be scrolling. It might be watching shitty reality TV. It might be—oh, was that it?
Mom: Mood.
Jessica: Mood. Great. Okay. Whatever it is that you numb out with, be on the lookout for it. When you catch yourself a week or a couple weeks into a numbing-out behavior—or a day if you can catch it, but it's more likely to take a minute to realize you're doing it—you can be like, "Oh. I'm doing something that I know is associated with numbing out. I'm curious what I'm numbing out about. And have I checked in with my son? Have I listened to him recently?" because that's the pattern you want to actively heal through this transit.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: If the Band-Aid is coming off and it's pulling out hair, you might as well have it be hair you don't want. You know what I mean?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: In other words, Pluto opposite the Moon is going to hurt. It's going to be hard. You might as well do hard work that is good for you.
Mom: I agree.
Jessica: Okay. Good. Yes. So okay.
Mom: I'm glad that I had the heads-up, and this conversation is sort of a great, like, "Okay. What's going on right now?"
Jessica: Focus up. Exactly.
Mom: Yeah. Exactly.
Jessica: Exactly. Exactly. And then the other thing that is coming up is that next year, March and April of 2025 and then October through late December of 2025, you're going to go through your Saturn opposition. So the Saturn opposition is—you've gone through it once before. That was at around 14, 15 years old. This is the high-water mark of your Saturn Return cycle. So you're at the midpoint in 2025 between both of your Saturn Returns, your 30 and your 60.
So the Saturn opposition is a big fucking deal, and it calls into question whatever you were doing about 15 years ago, 15 years before 2025. Related to that is parenting for you because your Saturn is in the fifth house, which can be related to a lot of things, but parenting is what's activated. Parenting is in the chart. Bada-bing, bada-boom.
Mom: Same with Pluto, fifth house.
Jessica: Yeah.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Yep. When we look—although your birth chart Pluto, your natal Pluto—nothing is happening to it at this time, happily. But your transiting Pluto is going to be busy. So all to say your birth chart is screaming a theme. And every time you find yourself feeling resentful, like, "Why am I the one who has to do all this work when he's not meeting me halfway?" or hurt and heartbroken because of any number of things, know that for whatever reason, your chart is written in such a way that at this time in your development, these are the themes. This is what you're learning.
And that means you're not being punished. You have the opportunity to break through ancestral patterns. Again, I want to define what I'm referring to as an ancestral pattern is—I haven't looked at why your father behaved the way he did, but I'm guessing it's low-hanging fruit from his childhood. Your father behaved the way he did towards you. It had the effects it had on you. And then you ended up having that same effect on your son.
This is an ancestral pattern. And you have the opportunity to heal it consciously. And fighting with your son is better than not having access to your son. I'm not encouraging you to fight. You know what I'm saying? But I'm saying you're at the part of your relationship with your son where he still would rather fight with you than lose you.
Mom: Agreed.
Jessica: And you know from your own childhood that that's a limited-time offer with how you felt towards your parents, eh?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. It is for most people. And so—
Mom: They changed, so that was good.
Jessica: Yeah. Everybody changed. I'm seeing you changed. They changed.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Everybody changed. Also, not living together helped in the case of your childhood. That was like a big point of contention. This is your time for healing this stuff. Within that, you're going to be confronted. Pluto, Saturn—very confronting planets. Your Uranus opposition will, for the most part, be over, I believe. I don't remember. Do you know how long that one is going on for?
Mom: It's been going on for a while. It's in a separating stage right now, so—
Jessica: Yeah. I thought it was separating. Let me take a peeky-peek. So that'll be over by May, so there will be a couple months of overlap, nothing too long. So you got a busy year. You got an intense year, and it's a confronting time. And it's begging you to change, begging you to change. So the old coping mechanisms that you've used have brought you to where you are. We're not putting value judgments on them. It's just time to develop new ones.
You are smart enough, well resourced enough, to know you have access to lots of tools. The thing that everyone underestimates is how fucking hard it is to actually choose the tools in the moments you need them. That's why healing is so hard. That's why so many of us are like healing junkies, where we collect a lot of ideas and theories and memes, but we're not actually practicing it when we get activated. It's so hard.
And so this is a period of your life where I will say it's like the Universe is metaphorically waxing your legs. It's going to hurt, and also, it gives you a new, smooth surface to work with. I don't know why that's the metaphor, but that is the metaphor that I keep on coming to. I apologize. I apologize. It's aggressive.
Mom: It's aggressive. Yeah. I agree. It's very aggressive.
Jessica: It hurts. It hurts.
Mom: Yeah. But if I choose it, it makes it less painful, I guess, a little bit.
Jessica: It does. It does. And so choose the Saturn opposition. Choose the Pluto opposition to the Moon. Do you have a book about transits in your library?
Mom: Yes. I do have a book about—
Jessica: Which one do you have?
Mom: I have—it's right here, I think.
Jessica: Planets in Transit by who? Is that by Robert Hand?
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: Okay. That's the one to have. So, when you're going through his book, what you're going to do is first you're going to look at the transit of—let's say we're talking about Saturn. So Saturn is transiting your eleventh house, so you're going to look at Saturn transiting the eleventh house. Then you're going to open the book to Saturn opposite Saturn.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: And he has a little chapter on each, okay? You're going to do the same thing with the Pluto. Pluto is transiting through your ninth house, and then it's opposing your Moon.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Bada-bing, bada-boom. You might as well do the same thing with the Uranus. That's a great book. It's a great resource. So use it.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: It was right at your fingertips, so—
Mom: It was right there. It's in my office. Yeah.
Jessica: It was right there. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. So use it is the work. It's to use it. So okay. Before we wrap up, I just want to pause and see, have I answered your question? Do you have any other—did we nail it? What's going on?
Mom: I feel like I have some good things. So, one, I definitely need to have the conversation saying, like, "Hey, I'm sorry I made you feel abandoned."
Jessica: No. Wait. Do not say, "I'm sorry I made you feel."
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: Let's play this through, okay?
Mom: It's the "I" part?
Jessica: First of all, you're using an "I."
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: The other thing is "I'm sorry I made you feel" is a great way to distance yourself from accountability. So you're going to acknowledge the harm you caused.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: "I went to law school. I didn't prepare you. I chose to do something that I knew would take me from you, and I'm sorry because I know that hurt you."
Mom: Okay. I like that a lot better.
Jessica: So there's "I" statements in that, but they're all owning what you did.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: You don't say, "I'm sorry you hurt. You were hurt because I was focusing on my career." That's not an apology.
Mom: That's true.
Jessica: That's self-defense. That's self-defense.
Mom: Okay. Okay.
Jessica: You don't need to defend yourself against a kid.
Mom: Yes. I agree.
Jessica: Yeah, although I've been around kids enough to know it feels like you do. But you don't. You don't.
Mom: No, I don't want to.
Jessica: Yes.
Mom: I definitely want to break that habit.
Jessica: Good. So you're going to just own it. "I did this, and this is how it affected you. And now that I see it, I wish I could go back and do it different"—
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: —"because I understand the harm it caused, and I understand that I was wrong."
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: That's all you need to say because you know you were wrong, and you know you weren't wrong because you were trying to harm him, but don't defend the behavior. That can happen in another conversation if he's open to it.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: Nothing makes a person feel more angry at someone than a fake apology. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Mom: That's true. Yes.
Jessica: Fake apology. Don't do it. And if you can't find the words, you can write it down on a little piece of paper.
Mom: That's what I think I'm going to do.
Jessica: And practice it. Good.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. I see your Mercury. Practice saying it out loud. You want to keep it honest. It can be succinct, as long as there are loving words in the mix.
Mom: Got it. I got that. And then, also, great resource for sort of—if things are sort of flying off the handle, just be like, "I love you. I can't hear you right now. We're going to circle back around on this if you want to, but right now, I just need to take a break," if that's where we're at.
Jessica: Yes. I would add just one more thing is that—and again, you're going to have the transcript. You can highlight the hell out of it. I see you, girl, with your highlighters. Okay.
Mom: See?
Jessica: Do you literally have them? Yeah. I had a feeling. I had a feeling. Mercury opposite Saturn—so meticulous. Okay. So you would just want to add in there, "I want to hear what you have to say, but when you talk to me like this, I can't hear it. All I see is red. I'm reacting to your tone and not your content." So practice putting that in a succinct message because you want him to know that you want to hear what he has to say because he only talks to you like that after he feels like you haven't listened.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: Now, that might not be true, but that's how he feels. That's what's happening inside of him. Right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So he's already like—he's gotten frustrated by the time he's said that. So you have to affirm, "I want to listen, but I'm not hearing you because all I'm hearing is tone"—
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: —because, honestly, your son will be a better man if he learns you can't talk to a woman like that if you want her to listen, if you want to be her—
Mom: I agree.
Jessica: Yeah. And so, again, this is getting in the way of his life because he's a sweet, nice boy. He's a nice young man.
Mom: He is. He's a great kid.
Jessica: But he doesn't always act like it when he gets frustrated, when he feels hurt, when he feels threatened, just like you. We're imperfect. So, again, you having this boundary with him is going to annoy him. It's not going to go well. And it's going to help him.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: It's like great parenting for yourself and great parenting for you. You're parenting that inner child that didn't get this kind of structure, and you're parenting him. So it's like a win-win-win-win-win.
Mom: So—and I guess maybe the other thing is I feel worried that he is very, very, super unhappy. And will he find happiness, I guess?
Jessica: You don't get to make that your business unless he asks you to make it his business.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: His willingness and ability to experience happiness is his to steward at the age of 22. And when he turns to you and says, "Mom, will you help me with this?" girl, jump in headfirst. Help him.
Mom: Okay.
Jessica: But 100 percent of the time, when he doesn't ask for help, he doesn't want the help. And in fact, he's struggling with you. So you want to help him overcome something; do the stuff we're talking about.
Mom: Yeah. Okay.
Jessica: That's the thing. And the truth of the matter is—and this is something I've said to many parents over the course of many years—he of course will not be happy, and he will of course be happy. He will be miserable. He will be ecstatic. He will have a terrible life and a wonderful life because he's a person. So all you can do is give him tools. You can't give him happiness.
Mom: That's true.
Jessica: You can't save him from terrible presidents and environmental disaster. All you can do is give him tools.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And that's what we've been talking about this whole time, is giving him tools. And so don't worry about the eventuality of his joy. His capacity for joy—you know it exists. You know he's a tender, sweet lover, right? I don't mean that in a gross way. I mean he's like a—when he was young, he was such a loving boy, right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: He's like a tender, sweet kid.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: But he's not a kid. So he's going through what you, me, and most everyone else goes through in their early 20s. "This is the world? These are my parents? What?" It's the doorway. We all walk through it.
Mom: Yes.
Jessica: The fact that the two of you are fighting with each other is a good sign because you're doing something together. Now, again, I don't encourage you to stick here. Let this be a doorway and not a room. But I do think you guys are going to be able to get through this, and again, I think it's slow. Again, I don't want to overpromise here. With the transits you've got going on, give it two years, three years. Don't expect it to be less than that. Set the intention that it'll take five years, and then you'll be so happy if it happens in four. Okay? Give it time because this is a deep, deep pattern for both of you.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: And it's triggering. One of you gets activated, and the other one's like, "Why, I oughta"—and you fall back into your pattern. So it's like one of you does well on Monday, and the other one's having a hard day on Monday. And then it's like you're screwed for a month, right?
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So there's going to be setbacks. And that doesn't mean you're not trying, and it doesn't mean you don't stick with it.
Mom: Yeah. I agree. We're sticking with it.
Jessica: You're sticking with it.
Mom: We're sticking with it.
Jessica: That's what I wanted to hear. That's great.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: Great. And I'll just say, astrologer to astrology student, there would have been great value in looking at his chart in many ways or looking at your relationship chart. And if you've listened to me for a long time, you know that I often say that you don't need to look at the other person's chart, whether it's the person you're dating or your child, in order to get the data because it's all in your chart. Some of what I did was psychic. Some of what I was able to see about you and about him was psychic, but most of it was actually astrological.
And for whatever it's worth, I want to just kind of double down on my belief as an astrologer that when we focus on the you in the situation, it actually empowers you to focus on what's in your control because 100 percent of his birth chart is outside of your control at this age. He's not your little kid. You don't get to control. And associated with that, I think that what happens when we struggle with someone is that we have this idea—whether it's like the struggle is, "I want you to love me more," "I want you to back off," or whatever it is, we have this idea that if we understand them better, then we can advocate for our own needs better.
The truth is if you navigate your own needs and your own boundaries in a healthy way, then the other person can be whoever the fuck they are. It doesn't change you, right? And so this is, again, why I really wanted to focus on your chart, and I was open to looking at his, but I'm glad we didn't have to because I think we got to the part that's yours, and that's really all it's—that's the helpful part.
Mom: Yeah.
Jessica: So, my dear, I am so grateful we finally got to do this reading. It was a long time coming, and I really hope it helps with your journey with your sweet little man-son.
Mom: I think it will be helpful, for sure, and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Jessica: It is so my pleasure.