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

Valentine:       Thank you for having me, Jessica. I really appreciate you taking my question up. What I'm going to do is I'm going to read it out because it is quite lengthy.

Jessica:            Okay.

Valentine:       "I grew up in an environment where mental health and special needs were neither discussed nor recognized. On my father's side, who is Jamaican, I was often labeled as stubborn, feisty, and rude instead of being met with compassion and understanding. As a result, I was put into anger management classes, counseling sessions, kicked out of the house, and kept at arm's length whenever I tried to express myself and my emotions as a child and teenager. Recently, my nine-year-old son was diagnosed with autism, giftedness, and ADHD. And at the same time, I'm noticing that my two-year-old daughter is exhibiting similar mannerisms of both mine and my son's.

                        "When parenting my children, it brings back painful flashbacks of my own childhood and the disconnect with my parents. That being said, I struggle with understanding why my neurodivergence wasn't recognized, especially when my siblings were identified as having learning disabilities. I didn't feel seen and understood by my mother, who didn't advocate for me as she did my siblings. These experiences have left me with a deep wound that I don't know how to reconcile. My question to you would be, how can I address this wound, accept myself for who I am, and cultivate self-love so that I can be my vulnerable and authentic self with others, but most importantly parent without being triggered all the time?"

Jessica:            That is a great question and uncharacteristically long for a question I would pick, so good on you. Yeah. I've got some contextualizing questions because there's a lot of data in there. The first question is are you the oldest sibling?

Valentine:       I am.

Jessica:            Yeah, you are. You got the chart of an eldest sibling, girl. We're going to get there. Okay. Were you raised by your parents in separate homes, or were they together?

Valentine:       So my parents were together up until I was about nine, at which point they divorced. And then I kind of flip-flopped between my mom and my dad's until I was raised by my grandparents. So my grandparents took me in around grade 7, so I must have been around 13. And I call my grandparents my parents. My grandfather is my father to this day.

Jessica:            And is that on your mom's side or your dad's?

Valentine:       My dad's side.

Jessica:            Okay. There's a lot of data in that. We could do an hour-long reading on⁠—

Valentine:       I know.

Jessica:            ⁠—that small thing. That is a lot, right? It is a lot. So I'm just going to jump in, and I'm going to share with everyone we call you Valentine because you were born on February 14th in 1991 in Brampton, Ontario, at 8:30 a.m. You are a double Aquarius. You were born with your Sun and Moon tight, tight, tight. You were born on a New Moon, and your Moon is eclipsed by the Sun. This isn't something I've talked about a whole lot, I don't think, on the podcast. We're going to get there in a second. You've also got your Mercury and your Saturn in the twelfth house, all in Aquarius. You have got a big, old stellium in Aquarius. And it's like very important planets are in Aquarius, okay?

                        This conjunction of planets in the twelfth lets me know that you are the eldest child. "Why?" you may ask. I shall tell you: because you embody everything that your mother repressed in herself. Now, it could have been your dad. You tell me. Is it your mom?

Valentine:       Both.

Jessica:            Okay. Fun.

Valentine:       But I think it's my mom because it just feels like it's where we're both just rubbing against each other.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       And I don't know why.

Jessica:            I do. I mean, easy for me to say, but I do. Okay. So, when you were conceived, your mother felt and believed that in order to be a wife, maybe in general or a wife specifically to your dad, and in order to be a parent⁠—this is before you were born⁠—she needed to agree with everything he said, not lead with her mind anymore. She needed to let go of her friendships. You've got Venus in the twelfth house as well. It's in Pisces, but it's in the twelfth. She had to let go of her friendships. She had to stop prioritizing things that she really enjoyed about herself as a girl.

                        She decided that she needed to subvert herself, to make herself small, and to become a wife and a mother instead of stay a woman and a person. Does this make sense to you from your experience with her?

Valentine:       It really does. It does. Yeah. I even was told she went to a reading, and somebody told her at 17 weeks, within the womb, I was going to be her mother reincarnated, and I would just come and kind of trigger her the whole time.

Jessica:            So I'm angry at whoever said that to her because I don't buy that shit myself. Every single person who is a parent is the parent, period. I don't care if you're triggered that your child reminds you of your parents. You are the one with power. You are the one with age. You are the parent. You are responsible. And I stand by that, whether I'm talking to you as a parent to your own children or I'm talking to you as the daughter of your mother. So I want to just share that. And your siblings are how much younger than you? Like three years or more younger?

Valentine:       So my brother is about 14 months younger than me, and my sister is three years younger.

Jessica:            Three years. Okay. So I'm seeing your sister. Okay. So your brother and your sister are two different conversations. By the time your sister came around, your mother was different. She was already mad at your dad. She had already decided that she was going to stop trying to push herself down, right?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            When your brother was born, your brother was a boy, so all bets are off. All context is changed, right? Did your mom kind of spoil her son?

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So we got it. We got it, girl. We got it. You got real unlucky is what I'm trying to say, okay? In the context of your specific ecosystem, your family, you got unlucky.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            That said, there's a lot there. We're going to go deeper, but one sec. It is a joke that they sent you to anger management. I shouldn't start there, but of all the things in your birth chart, anger⁠—oh my God. What?

Valentine:       I know.

Jessica:            You? Anger? That makes no sense whatsoever. You have a Pisces Rising with Venus in Pisces conjunct the Ascendant from the twelfth house. All you do is obsess on other people's thoughts and feelings and whether or not you're taking up too much space, and you're just so diplomatic⁠—

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            ⁠—to the point of I want to shake you a little and be like, "Make noise. Fuck some shit up." It is such a projection onto you. It was a lot of things, and all of them had to do with your mother and her issues and your father and his issues.

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay? You don't have an anger problem. You got problems, but I don't⁠—and I'm sure you now have an anger problem, but as a kid, anger was not your problem.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            You have an Aquarius stellium, so you're a nervous-systemy person.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            You were constantly asking questions and being interested and being curious and being engaged and being dynamic, and you wanted to know and you wanted to explore. And if you were just born a decade later, they would have just given you a lot of medication to shut it down.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            And in that way, you got lucky because you didn't need any medication. But that is the culture shift that occurred. You do have so much in your chart that speaks to both your mother and your father being really, really⁠—I'm going to say something that is not diplomatic and clear evidence that I'm not a therapist, okay?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Your parents being really wrong about a lot of things⁠—your parents were wrong about a lot of things for themselves, and they projected all of it onto you. And so they may or may not have since evolved and been really different parents to your other siblings, but to you, they were just like, "I can't answer your questions. I don't know who I am. I don't know what I think. I don't know what's right. I need you to stop."

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            They were just like, "I just need you to stop. I need you to stop. I need you to not be a child," basically.

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And from what I'm seeing⁠—and please tell me if I'm wrong⁠—you don't have a learning disability.

Valentine:       No, I don't.

Jessica:            No, you don't. So when you asked that question of, "They were able to recognize the learning disabilities in my siblings," you didn't have a learning disability.

Valentine:       No.

Jessica:            You are so smart. You're the smartest person in the family of five by far, yeah?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. By far. You've got natural smarts⁠—

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—and also, when you decide you want to learn something, you do not give up. You study.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            My God, the studying.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            So you had this kind of curious, intelligent, dynamic nature. Now, you mentioned⁠—did you say that you were neurospicy in some way, that you had autism or something? Did you say something like that?

Valentine:       I think so, only because I⁠—so my son was diagnosed with autism, and I just keep seeing myself in him. In everything he does, it's like flashbacks. I'm like, "Oh boy."

Jessica:            "Here we are again."

Valentine:       [crosstalk]. Yeah.

Jessica:            So listen. In 1991, autistic diagnoses were not what they are in 2025.

Valentine:       That's true.

Jessica:            The evolution of our understanding of autism, but also, in schools and child therapists' willingness and ability to create that diagnosis⁠—you were raised in the '90s. That wasn't a thing. It was the twinklings of a thing, but it wasn't a thing. That's one thing I'm going to say. The other thing I'm going to say⁠—the only thing that bothered your parents was that you were precocious. And they would never have clocked precociousness as autistic. Now, in 2025, we might be like⁠—you know, a lot of people who experience autism might say, "I am bold, and I speak my mind," and all of these things. But that is not a context clue in the '90s.

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's throw all that aside. Your parents were not trying to help you, and that's the fucked-up thing.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            They were trying to help themselves.

Valentine:       Themselves.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       That's what I felt. Yeah.

Jessica:            You're right. No, you're right.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And it wasn't because they didn't love you.

Valentine:       No, I know.

Jessica:            You were a wanted child.

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You were a loved child. But you came out this smart, dynamic, independent little person. And they were like, "What? I⁠—what? No, wait. What?" They did not know what to do with you.

Valentine:       I know.

Jessica:            On top of it, they were not well suited to each other, as an understatement, if I may.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And your mother thought that she wanted to play a very traditional woman role with your dad, and she didn't want that at all, it turns out.

Valentine:       It turned out. Yep.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And your dad thought that being a father and a husband was going to be just like⁠—fucking⁠ walk in the park. He thought it was going to be fantastic. He did not think through any of the challenges or the realities of an interpersonal relationship.

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so here's the thing. You are what your mom might have been. And for that, she is forever triggered by you. You both watch a commercial for a cartoon, and she giggles, and you're like, "That was problematic in this way."

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            You're welcome. I see you. And then she hears what you say. Whether or not she thinks you're right, and maybe even especially if she thinks you're right, she's insulted by you. You have just somehow critiqued her when you said something critical of the cartoon commercial, right?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's because your mother is smart and weird and dynamic, but she hasn't cultivated those parts of herself. She's long since pushed them down, like long since pushed them down. So one of the core parts of your question that I'm hearing is, "How can I accept myself if, basically, my parents didn't even accept me and couldn't foundationally care for me?" Am I hearing that right?

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            The true struggle that you have with self-acceptance is ancestral. Your dad⁠—he does this very weird thing where he completely accepts himself like a man, you know what I mean? Like with the arrogance of a man. He really does accept himself, and then he's actually an emotionally tender person in many ways.

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, when he starts to tap into the actual realities of feeling things with other people, then he gets kind of insecure or emo and weird, and then he disassociates.

Valentine:       Yep.

Jessica:            For the record, this is in your chart. This is in your chart, okay? This is your Saturn in the twelfth opposite your Jupiter. There is much more to say, but on the surface, there's that. Then there's your mom is a very, very intelligent woman. And she made choices that do not reflect her potential, and she is not at peace with that. She struggles with that. So out of her you walked, practically. You were independent from the beginning. And you challenged her because you were like the parts of her that she repressed.

                        And so what she did was she said, "I don't accept myself. Therefore, I don't accept this child." If we had had this conversation before your daughter started to trigger you, then this would be a harder conversation for you to really understand. But you're starting to get triggered by your own little two-year-old daughter, eh?

Valentine:       Daughter and my son. Both of them.

Jessica:            Both of them.

Valentine:       I just see both of them in myself⁠—yeah, like, I see myself in both of them.

Jessica:            It's one thing to think about your parents and to think, "Okay. I reminded my parent of themselves, and they treated me like shit." It's a very hard thing to live with, but then having a child and being like, "I can barely stand to look at myself in the mirror, and now I have to see it in somebody I love who's literally from me"⁠—it is really triggering. It is really deeply, deeply triggering to see a part of yourself embodied in someone else, eh?

Valentine:       Yeah. For me, what I struggle with is I see how my kids are, and I'm easily able to identify it and just meet their needs. And it's not always easy to meet their needs. I have to do big, big things. You know, I gotta put my big-girl pants on.

Jessica:            Yes.

Valentine:       But I do it. And sometimes I'm wiping the tears from my face and just struggling through it, but I'm doing the work. And I just don't understand why they couldn't do the work.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's stay there. Don't think I've forgotten about your Eclipse mood. I'm coming back to that. Don't let me forget about that, okay?

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            There's layers to this. There's such important layers. Okay. We're going to focus on, first, your dad, and then your mom.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            Okay?

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            We don't want to give your dad⁠—you know, it would be too easy to let your dad off scot-free. That would be wrong. Okay? That would be wrong. So your dad⁠—did you ever see him be consistently emotionally accountable to anyone, ever in your life?

Valentine:       No. I don't⁠—what do you mean by that?

Jessica:            Okay. First, I'm going to say you know what I mean. I wouldn't say that to everyone, but I see you. You know what I mean, but emotionally accountable. Remain emotionally present even when things are tricky. Be consistently like, "I say I'm going to be there for you, and therefore, I'm there for you, not just"⁠—

Valentine:       No.

Jessica:            Okay.

Valentine:       No.

Jessica:            Boom. You knew what I meant. Okay.

Valentine:       Yeah. No.

Jessica:            So Dad⁠—why couldn't he do that for you? The answer is he can't do that, period.

Valentine:       For himself, too. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Period. Right.

Valentine:       He just can't. Yeah.

Jessica:            He can't do it for himself. He can't do it for a cat. It's not about who or how he loves. It's about his capacity as a human man. Now, your mom is more complicated because she does go through a lot of hoops and she does go through a lot of emotions to be there or to be consistent at times for people in situations.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            Am I seeing that correctly? Yeah.

Valentine:       Yep. Yep.

Jessica:            So you could say, "Well, she's there for my sister, but she's not there for me," or you could say, "She's there for my brother, and she's not there for me." But you know that's not true, right?

Valentine:       That's not true. No.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Valentine:       There's more to that sentence.

Jessica:            Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct. Correct.

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's all contextual.

Valentine:       It is.

Jessica:            And they have to turn themselves into different-shaped pretzels in order to receive and maintain that level of support.

Valentine:       Exactly. Yes.

Jessica:            And you are not wired to be a pretzel. You're not. All that Aquarius⁠—it's fixed energy because you're like⁠—

Valentine:       Because I'll just say, "Scratch it. I'll find my own way. You know what? Whatever. I got this."

Jessica:            Exactly. So, as you move through tears and you are both triggered and wanting to show up for your children, you are seeing things in yourself that are triggering. You're seeing things in them that you're like, "Oh God. I'm the responsible party. I gotta handle this." Whatever it is, as those things happen, you are doing a number of things. You're breaking through ancestral patterns, which is why it feels like it's like you're walking against the wind, right?

Valentine:       Yeah, it does.

Jessica:            It does. Yeah. Parenting is also insanely difficult, and anyone who says it's not does not care that much. It is very hard to parent. I shouldn't say that. I don't fucking know. I'm sure some people have an easy, breezy time of parenting. But I think parenting is exceptionally hard.

There's something else here, which is that because of your childhood, because your parents, in very different ways from each other, both disassociated from you and told themselves stories about themselves and about you to empower themselves to do whatever the fuck they wanted and to not actually show up as the responsible adult party for you⁠—right? Because all that shit happened, you promised yourself from before puberty⁠—from a very young age, you promised yourself you would never do that to anyone.

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you haven't. True or false?

Valentine:       I don't know. Of course, I dissociate all the time, but I try not to dissociate with the people that⁠—I try to show up for the people I love.

Jessica:            Try to show up. I'm not trying to say you're perfect and that you haven't made errors. Of course, you have. I'm sure you've been someone's bad guy and fucked things up and all the things. But you made a commitment to yourself before you even considered anything that would have led to your human children, right?

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You made a commitment, and that commitment you have lived with.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And so this is where our trauma doesn't just shape our suffering; it shapes our motivation, our dedication, and our willingness to do hard things. And what you're seeing is that it is hard to parent a child, period, and it's hard to parent a child who's going through something that you don't understand because they can't explain it to you because they're children. And then to also⁠—I don't know⁠—be living through a world where things happen more than once a day⁠—it's all really hard.

                        And so you are now experiencing your tenacity, and you have to know based on how hard it is that most people do not have the same tenacity. You do know this, yeah?

Valentine:       Yes, but I would expect everybody to do this for their kids.

Jessica:            You know what? I want to concur. Everyone who's choosing to be a parent should, yes. But you know from lived experience⁠—not just from your own childhood, but you have friends. You've seen Lifetime movies. That's not how reality works, unfortunately.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And I see looking at your chart that your parents did shitty things to you, sometimes because they're just shitty in these ways. Sometimes they did shitty things to you because they weren't paying attention. Sometimes they were genuinely trying to do good things, and they did shitty things. Sometimes they didn't do shitty things. You know? It's a little bit of a mix. But it's never like they genuinely could have easily done better and they didn't.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not like there was tons of food at the table and they just didn't let you have any, you know? And I am not saying this to make excuses for your parents. Let's not make any excuses for your parents. But let's interrupt the story that you're still telling yourself that they could have and they chose not to, because that's not actually true. They could have. I mean, sure, yes, they could have. And they could have walked from Brampton, Ontario, to⁠—I don't know⁠—Vermont. There's a million things they could have done.

                        But it's not like they felt that it was accessible or they understood that they could. And the result and the injury that this causes⁠—doesn't matter what the motive is from the impact it had on you. But it does matter for the story you tell yourself about whether you were loved and how you were or weren't cared for.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            So let's hang out here because, as I said that, I saw an anger spike come out of you. Does that make sense?

Valentine:       Yeah. No, it does make sense. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Good. Let's stay with the anger. First of all, I am a fan of anger. You may know this already about me. I'm a fan. I want to say yes to your anger. You have a right to be like, "Okay, but no. That's fucked up. Fuck that." Is that kind of what the anger spike says?

Valentine:       Kind of.

Jessica:            What does it say? Tell me more.

Valentine:       I don't know. I think I just went somewhere else as you were saying that. I literally⁠—I felt it as I was here, but I wasn't here. I don't know. I think I was mostly thinking I knew this, and⁠—I knew this. I have the ability to see their potential. It's just⁠—like, I understand everything. I can see their perspective. I see where I stood. But then having a relationship with them, I just find that it's so hard because⁠—I don't know.

Jessica:            Okay. I got so many things to say to this. The first thing is what you're doing is you're intellectualizing⁠—which makes sense. So much Aquarius⁠—also, the topic. You know? Yes, of course you can understand. I mean, you're very smart. Of course you can understand. It's not that⁠—you know. They tried their best, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Fine.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            I want to say this. Just because they tried their best doesn't mean you're not enraged. It doesn't mean that having a healthy relationship with them is not possible. All it means is they didn't harm you on purpose. They do love you. They are a product of their own trauma.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            That's all it means. But you are allowed to be like, "And fuck that." And you are allowed to be furious because as a kid, you weren't allowed to be mad. So the only way to lovingly parent yourself through this trauma so that you can move past it to find a new place inside of yourself with it⁠—we're not even thinking about a relationship with them as adults, right⁠?—is to give yourself permission to be pissed off that they failed. And they failed in a number of ways. Some of this maybe is just like your ten-year-old self shaking her fists, right?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And some of this is your adult 30-something self knowing better. And some of this is other shit, right?

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But you are allowed to understand and accept they're just flawed adults. They did their best. They did love you. And that doesn't actually have to change the way you feel. I want to be really clear about this because all this Aquarius, this Venus on the rise⁠—you have a tendency to be like, "Well, if this is the story, then I have to fall in line and feel the way they feel."

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And that is what your mother does, okay? That's a trauma pattern from your mom, is the story has to match. So she was triggered by you; then she had to say that you had an anger problem because she's creating a story to match the feelings instead of giving herself permission to just be activated by you. So, in order to truly evolve past this trauma pattern, you've gotta give yourself permission to be angry. Do not forgive.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Permission granted, okay? So I want to hang out with that, and then I want to ask, do you talk to them both? Do you see them both?

Valentine:       My mom I do see. I talk to her, but it's very surface level. It's very high level. And my father I don't talk to unless we kind of see each other at a family event or something like that.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm sorry. And also, that makes sense, with your dad, I mean.  There's only so⁠—I mean, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? And the thing is your dad⁠—when I look at him energetically⁠—he didn't remarry?

Valentine:       No, but he does have a fiancé.

Jessica:            He has a partner. Yeah.

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            He's a sad man.

Valentine:       He puts on a very big smile, but he does have a lot of emotions deep down. Yep.

Jessica:            Yeah. He's a sad man.

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And if he didn't require you to do all of the labor, I actually think you could have kind of a nice relationship where you just were quiet together.

Valentine:       Yes. We get along really well, but like you said, the labor, it⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            All of it is you.

Valentine:       [crosstalk] all of it. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's kind of stunning. He is the embodiment of a person who gets in his own way.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like he puts a lot of energy into putting obstacles in his path somehow. I mean, it's kind of wild. And then there's your mom. And does your mom provide childcare or anything you need?

Valentine:       If I needed help, she would come. I'm sure she would.

Jessica:            But she's not like a part of your weekly life or anything?

Valentine:       No.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Great. And are you partnered?

Valentine:       I am married, but we separated.

Jessica:            Okay.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And does that person co-parent well with you?

Valentine:       They do the best that they can.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay. That is a diplomatic answer.

Valentine:       Yeah. It's very much like my parents.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm going to give you advice that you're not exactly asking for with your mom. Whenever you have a feeling of anger towards your mother⁠—which may be frequently, right?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            If you can⁠—do you like writing? Is writing good for you?

Valentine:       I've been told to write. I can write. Yes.

Jessica:            But you don't enjoy it?

Valentine:       I don't know why. I think it's the whole⁠—

Jessica:            You don't have to have a why.

Valentine:       ⁠—feeling portion because I've written a master's, and that wasn't a problem. I can knock that out in a couple of hours.

Jessica:            It's the feelings.

Valentine:       It's the journaling, to sit down and do that routinely.

Jessica:            Would you talk? Would you use talk-to-type in the notes of your phone? Would that be easier than writing?

Valentine:       I could try that. Yeah.

Jessica:            Try that. Try that, okay? So what I'm going to have you do is I'm going to have you, every time you feel anger towards your mom, notice it. Rate it on a scale from one to ten. Ten is murdery. It's real fucking mad. You probably hang out between a six and an eight at your worst. So then what you're going to do is you're going to notice it. You're going to number it. And then you're just going to give yourself permission. Talk-to-type in the notes of your phone. Just speak it. You're allowed to delete it the second you're done, okay?

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            Because I know you're weird and private. You got Pluto squares. So you can delete it the second you're done. But this action is giving yourself permission to express what you're feeling, which was something that was kind of taken from you in your childhood, right? It was pathologized.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if you do this⁠—spoiler alert⁠—you will feel sad. If you express your anger, you will feel sadness.

Valentine:       So that's the thing. I feel really sad. See, when you said there was a spike of anger, it's more so sadness.

Jessica:            Okay.

Valentine:       Yeah, there is anger there, but I think the anger⁠—I express anger because it's easy. Anger⁠ people will listen to. It catches people's attention.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       Anger comes first. I feel like people will move out of your way when you're angry.

Jessica:            Absolutely.

Valentine:       When you're sad, people kind of tend to just⁠—"Oh, she's just sad."

Jessica:            Pull back or whatever⁠—yeah.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So the sadness⁠—this is where⁠—okay. So now I'm sticking with the homework here. Let's say you feel sad. Let's say you feel anger first; let's say you don't. It doesn't fucking matter. You're feeling the sadness. You're going to ask yourself, "If one of my children was feeling sad, what would I say or do for them?" And then you have to say or do it to yourself, okay?

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Easier said than done, but if you practice that, it will dramatically change something very core inside of you. And you have to do it for months to years, not days to weeks, okay?

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I know; it's easier said than done. But through this practice, you may need to take space from your mom. And you don't have to make a proclamation with her. You can just be busy and miss her call. And she might not notice, and she might notice and make a big deal of it. You just can't tell with your mom what'll happen. And again, you can be busy. You can get a phone call. You can get a knock at the door. It doesn't really serve you to process with her at this time because she's not capable of meeting you where you're at, and so it'll just be like a reinjury, right?

Valentine:       Yeah. Yep.

Jessica:            If, instead, you could eventually get to a place where you actually accept who she is, then you could talk to her. But now, you don't accept it, and that's okay. But you would just like, "If she actually loved me, she would have done x, y, and z for me. If she actually cared, she would have tried." Your mom was trying. I don't think she was trying as hard as she could have with you, but she was trying as hard as she could have with the other two. And you were just so independent, she was just like, "It'll be fine. Everything will be fine."

Valentine:       Exactly. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And as the person that happened to, that is fucking awful. But as a mom, can't you see how that could happen?

Valentine:       Yes, with my older son. And I have so much guilt. As soon as I start doing that, I'm like, "No. Uh-uh. No. He deserves to have space, and he can be a nine-year-old kid. He doesn't have to be parenting anybody, like his sibling. No, no, no." Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that's a lot easier to do with two instead of three kids. And also, feats of strength to do that, eh? It's feats of fucking strength to do that.

Valentine:       It's hard. Like I said, most times, I'm doing it with tears in my eyes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yep. Yep. It's hard. So that's not an excuse for your mom, but it is context, isn't it?

Valentine:       It is. Yeah.

Jessica:            It depersonalizes it a little bit. And also, you're allowed to be sad, and you're allowed to be mad. I want to keep that messy table, just big and messy table, in our viewfinder because the core of your question⁠—I don't want to lose track of it, which sometimes I do. Hold on. Let me come back to it⁠—is around self-acceptance and also about parenting, right?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Honestly, what's your question about parenting?

Valentine:       I just find that as I'm parenting my kids, they trigger me.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       I keep going back to my childhood.

Jessica:            Yeah. If I'm being frank, I don't really think you need parenting advice. That's not what I actually think I can help you with. I think you're set. What you're struggling with is just very human, right? All of us⁠—you're going to be in your 70s, and you'll get confronted with some part of you that is fucking eternally six years old, and you're going to be like, "Oh my God. I'm like 72, and I have this part of me that's six years old, and I've been operating for the last 72 years off of this six-year-old part." Right? That's normal to be a human. And for you, this part of you that is four years old, six years old, somewhere in there⁠—that part of you feels like if you actually cared, it wouldn't be that hard.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's exceptionally hard. Adult you is experiencing, 30-something-year-old you is experiencing, "Oh, you really fucking care," and it's tearing you apart from the inside and the outside. It's exceptionally hard. And so your survival mechanism⁠—that little five-year-old part, we'll call it⁠—it doesn't make sense with your adult life. And instead of that survival mechanism, that five-year-old part, magically changing its mind⁠—which doesn't happen⁠—you're fighting yourself. You're at war with yourself. You're like, "Oh my God. This is so hard. What is wrong with me that it's so hard?"

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            If I really⁠—because there's a part of you that believes if you truly loved your children, if you truly cared, it would not be feats of strength. It would not be torture.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            But it turns out that's not true. It turns out, if you're an adult human person living an adult human life and you have to deal with a fucking partner or an ex or a friend or fucking hard-to-deal-with parents or government or job or all these things, it's not like you can just drop all those things and dedicate yourself wholly, 100 percent of the time, to the needs and whims of the child, no?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       Yep.

Jessica:            And even if you were a full-time stay-at-home parent and everything in your life was lovely and everything in your life was easy and paid for, you're still a fucking person. You're not just a parent. You're also a person at the same time, and that's actually a good thing. But that five-year-old part of you, that survival mechanism that exists inside of you that had to push away from your parents because they weren't taking care of you the way you needed⁠—that part of you says, "No, it's not. Fuck all y'all. It's not." And if you think it's hard to do the right thing then you're not trying⁠, then you don't care enough.

                        And so that survival mechanism needs to be evolved. And I'm going to give you advice around this. Every time you struggle to show up for your kids, I'm going to give you this homework, and I'm going to be very structured. This⁠—every single time, you have to say to yourself at one point, "Self, Valentine, I'm actually trying hard, and it is hard, and it's okay that it's hard," or some version of that. Just acknowledge⁠, "Yeah."

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            It's okay. It's messy. The table's messy.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            The table's not supposed to be clean. It's okay that it's messy. Do you know what I'm saying?

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's a metaphorical table. I don't know why I'm using that as a metaphor, but does it make sense?

Valentine:       It does make sense. Yep.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. If you can practice being a kinder parent to yourself, it will be easier to live in your skin, and it will be easier to parent. And the reason why you're not magically doing it, even though you technically know it, is because you're a person and you're not a computer. If you were a computer, you would have already handled this by now. We would not be having this conversation. But being a human means that you have to sort through the emotions and the unconscious responses and the sensations and the memories, and your brain and your body is sorting through all of that data at all times, when the phone rings, when the kid is like, "But I don't like the crusts."

Valentine:       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And instead of saying to yourself what you should or shouldn't be or how you should or shouldn't feel, it's about acknowledging the messiness of reality as a human. You're currently going through Pluto sitting on top of your Saturn. You got Saturn at 1 degree of Aquarius. This is a fucking terrible transit. It is a very hard transit, okay? And a lot of people alive will never go through it; a lot of people alive will. But Saturn represents your internal structure as a human being.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Right? It's like your sense of reality. And that gets shaped in our early developmental experiences. So, before your parents divorced, that was already shaped for you, which was not greater days, really. You know what I mean?

Valentine:       No, it wasn't.

Jessica:            It was not good. It was not great. So, when Pluto comes and sits on top of your Saturn, it's like your internal structure as a human being goes through a very demanding transformational period.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            You're being forced to evolve your structure. And Saturn is related to our parents because our parents tell us what's real and what's not real, what's possible and what's not possible, what's right and what's wrong. And so now not only are you having all this shit come up from your childhood, but you have to literally tell your children how to live and what's right and what's wrong.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And you are bumping up against that you're not a great parent to yourself. You're kind of a mean, restrictive parent. Yeah.

Valentine:       I am. It's so true. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Your parents were unpredictable, and they weren't present. So you decided to parent yourself in a strict and rigorous way. And your grandparents were more strict and rigorous as well, eh?

Valentine:       Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And so your experience of structure and love and protection came from some old-school people who had old-school ideas about how to keep you safe and how to provide for you. So okay, but you have a stellium in Aquarius. So here we go. All that old-school stuff⁠—you needed that. There's a lot of good in it. And also, you're eccentric. You are not somebody who can do the same thing every single day over and over at the same time, it so turns out. And you may have one or two children who actually really require a great deal of consistency.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            Is it one or two? I can't tell.

Valentine:       My son, for sure. Routine is his best friend. My daughter, I'm not too sure yet.

Jessica:            Two⁠—it's hard to tell at two. Yeah.

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But here's the thing. The thing that your child needs to feel loved and safe is antithetical to what you need in order to be healthy and right with yourself. You need freedom. You need things to be a little bendy and loopy. And your son's like, "Okay, that's cool, except for it's 4:02. Why aren't we having a snack?" Right?

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so this, again, is where it's important to recognize that when you do things that your mother did to you to your son, or your father did to you to your son, there's a context to it. So not giving your son what he needs around snack time specifically, let's say⁠—right? In the context⁠—is that like a thing for him? Is that a trigger for him?

Valentine:       It is.

Jessica:            Yeah. I can see it very loud.

Valentine:       Ever since he was little, he's just been like, "It's 11:30. Why are you not getting up to make my lunch?"

Jessica:            Right. He's like, "This is the time that it happens." He's like a cat. And you have a Jupiter/Saturn opposition in your birth chart. Time⁠—you get a little floop-a-doop about it. Time is like sometimes you're really consistent, and sometimes you're really not.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not personal to your son. It never is. It's just you're a person, and you happen to be a different person than him.

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, when that happens, it's really important to remember the context because the context of you, let's say, not giving him snacks when he wants them is you are listening to him. You are making eye contact with him. You are paying attention to his physical needs, his emotional needs, his mental needs. You're engaging with him. You are really consistent in all manner of ways. And also, yeah, you're not going to consistently remember exactly the time of his snack all the time. Sometimes you do; sometimes you don't. And the context of that is really different than when your dad did it to you.

Valentine:       Very different. And I also⁠—I recognize myself, and I know that I cannot meet every need of his. So we find strategies. And for example, for the snack time, well, we do charcuterie boards where little healthy snacks in a good amount are set out on the counter or on the table where he can get it. He can snack all day long, but once it's gone, it's gone. And we're hitting all the food groups.

Jessica:            That's great.

Valentine:       He has what he needs, and he knows how to get them, open them. So, honestly, he doesn't have to be so dependent on me. He has some independence within himself, too.

Jessica:            Okay. So you're basically being the parent you wanted.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            That's exactly what you wanted, right?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            What you described is what little you would have loved more than anything⁠—independence but also consistency and care. So, coming back to you don't need help with parenting, the way that you feel is healthy, and it's appropriate because you're working through childhood trauma.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            Your childhood trauma is coming up in your life, and your life is your kids.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            That's it. You know what I mean? That's it. Now, the self-acceptance thing, that's another thing. That I think I can get in there a little bit more with, but I didn't want to blow past the parenting part⁠—

Valentine:       Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—because, I mean, I know it's really important. So the self-acceptance thing. Now, you didn't mention in your very long message anything about going through a separation with your partner.

Valentine:       No, I didn't.

Jessica:            You did something weird and you kept that out. Nobody knows why. I mean, I have theories, but okay. So how long were you with him? I'm assuming "him."

Valentine:       With him.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       So I have my son's father, and then I have my daughter's father.

Jessica:            Okay.

Valentine:       [crosstalk].

Jessica:            So this is your daughter's father that you're separated from.

Valentine:       Yeah. Yes. And I was with him since like 2020.

Jessica:            Okay. So you were with him 2020 for like two, three years, and then you had a kid.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            And then how quickly did things fall apart? Is it just happening now? Did it happen earlier?

Valentine:       We got married, and me being Aquarius, I didn't want anything traditional. We got married outdoors during COVID, so small wedding. And I'm more so up front, like, we love each other; we want to do this. Let's get together and do it. Why not? And I think he married for the permanent resident status card. And so he started kind of working through his trauma and whatnot, and so he ended up cheating with multiple people. I was⁠—

Jessica:            Nuh-uh.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            No.

Valentine:       And I was working and going to school and taking care of my son, and then I got pregnant with my daughter. And lockdown happened. And then, after that, I kind of gave him a chance, you know. And I wouldn't bring things up openly. I'd kind of go around it. And after a while, I just said, you know, "This is enough." And yeah. No, we tried counseling. We tried being separated. We tried getting back⁠—I just don't know⁠—I think that's a whole can of worms. I don't know where I stand with that.

Jessica:            Do you want me to look at it? Because I can say no because⁠—

Valentine:       Sure. Yeah.

Jessica:            ⁠—I will be very direct.

Valentine:       Yeah. No, that would be good because I am, like⁠—when it comes to partners, I feel like I can't be direct. And I don't know if it's because I'm scared of being seen as the angry person [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yes. That's what it is. 100 percent, that's what it is, okay? I wasn't even going to let you finish the sentence because you know exactly what it is, okay? And so giving yourself permission to be angry at your mother is a great place to start because you're starting at the root, okay?

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            If somebody cheats on you, it is okay to slash their tires⁠—not literally, although fine. You know what I'm saying?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            If somebody cheats on you, anger is a great response. There's a lot of reasons to not be okay with cheating. My primary reason why I'm mad at cheating is because it's lying. It's lying. It's lying to your face, and it's having a secret with someone else behind your back.

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            That shit pisses me off. And you hate cheating. Oh, you hate infidelity.

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So do you believe that you can trust that he will never cheat again?

Valentine:       No.

Jessica:            Agreed. Bye, boy, bye, as the saying goes. Now, it's easy for me to say because I know he's somebody who's important to you. You married him. He's the parent of your child. But at a certain point, you deserve to say to yourself, "Huh. I really love this person. I thought, with all that potential, they would choose to be a better person than they're choosing to be. They're choosing to be a person that is not compatible with the kind of person I want close to me."

Valentine:       That's exactly it. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's exactly what it is.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            You have the right to say, "No, thank you. This is not what I want. You have all kinds of things I want, but you are not leading with those things, period."

Valentine:       Exactly. Yeah.

Jessica:            It doesn't matter if he has a good reason. Fuck his reasons. It doesn't matter what his reasons are. It genuinely doesn't. All that matters is that you have the right to say, "No. That does not work for me, sir. Get the fuck out." And does he have his PR? Is he set now?

Valentine:       No, because I canceled everything. So there's a lot of [indiscernible 00:47:07] going on there.

Jessica:            Well, that's on him. If he was really invested in the marriage and he wanted to⁠—he didn't set this up as a PR marriage, right?

Valentine:       No. No.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       And at the beginning, there was talks about, "Is that just what you want? Is that needed? Is that what this is?" But no, he assured me it wasn't.

Jessica:            And for Americans who are listening, PR is permanent residency, and it is basically citizenship in the country of Canada. It's not called that, I don't think, in the States. So you have the right to divorce him because he cheated on you. Honestly, you have the right to divorce him because you fell out of love with him. You don't need a reason. I mean, it's nice to have a reason to divorce somebody that you had a kid with, but it's not like you owe him an explanation. Did he explain why he cheated, or was it just, "I don't know why I did it. I shouldn't have done it"?

Valentine:       I can see that it was something⁠—I think there was⁠—

Jessica:            What did he say?

Valentine:       I think it stemmed⁠—

Jessica:            No. What did he say? Because you're too good at this, this⁠—

Valentine:       He said many things, but the thing is that I can see it's a cultural thing, too, you know? He's Jamaican, and so a lot of the things that I experienced with him I noticed that I experienced within my parents' and my grandparents' dynamic. So, culturally, I saw a lot of repetition there, and I was like, "Why couldn't"⁠—like⁠—yeah. It just makes me so—

Jessica:            "Why did I marry my dad in all the wrong ways?" kind of thing.

Valentine:       Yeah, like⁠—yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So here's the thing. Did you tell him you expected monogamy out of a marriage?

Valentine:       Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Your bases are covered.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            I want to just say this. Your bases are covered. And whatever his reasoning is for infidelity, if you were clear with him, "For me, this is marriage and not a PR agreement. For me, I expect monogamy," and he was like, "Yes, babe. I love you. That's what I'm in it for"⁠—correct? This is what happened?

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Your hands are clean. Listen. Not knowing what to do is really different than not feeling ready to do what needs being done. Now I'm going to finally talk about that Moon eclipsed by the Sun thing. In your birth chart in the twelfth house, your Moon is at 23 degrees of Aquarius and 23 minutes. Your Sun is at 25 degrees and 21 minutes. They're very close together, right? They're like 2 degrees off. But whenever the Sun and the Moon are conjunct but the Sun is ahead of the Moon⁠—so Sun's at 25; Moon's at 23⁠—what happens is the Sun eclipses the Moon. The brightness and the light of the Sun overshadows the Moon that is already like a shadowy planet. And it's in the twelfth house, which is the house of all that is hidden.

                        So I'm going to say this in more psychological terms. For you, your identity, your will⁠—clear. You have total access to it, no problem. Your emotions, your feelings, your wants, your needs⁠—they get eclipsed by your identity. They get eclipsed by your theories because you have an air sign, a fixed air sign, right? This is where you're like, "Well, I know that x, y, and z doesn't work for me about our relationship or about him, but I also know, maybe, the cultural considerations, maybe how important marriage is, maybe how life would be better if my daughter would be growing up in this household and all those things," right?

Valentine:       Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's your identity, and that's your will. But it's eclipsing your feelings and your needs. Your feelings and your needs, my darling, are to be centered, to be cared for, to be safe, to not be abandoned. And when somebody lies to your face, that's an abandonment of your agreements. It's an abandonment of your needs and your safety. And I want to say emphatically you deserve to choose better. And I don't mean to choose a better man, although of course that'd be great⁠—you know, whatever. But I mean you deserve to say, "I can't choose you, because you broke our agreements."

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            "And either I never trust you"⁠—which turns you into your mom, which is not what you're trying to be⁠—"or I choose me, and I trust me." And of course, I'm pointing you very aggressively in one direction and not the other, right?

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Uranus is still sitting square to your Moon and your Sun. You're going to get rid of him. You're going to move him on. I hope I'm not being too insensitive the way I'm saying it.

Valentine:       No, no. No.

Jessica:            Okay. If you haven't ended it⁠—did you kick him out of the house?

Valentine:       I bought a house, and I moved away. Yeah.

Jessica:            Interesting. The way you did it is interesting. So you didn't exactly kick him out. You were like, "I'm leaving, and you can't come." Is that right?

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Here's the thing. Do you ever get mad out loud?

Valentine:       I do.

Jessica:            Do you?

Valentine:       Not as mad as⁠—I don't know. I do get mad, yes.

Jessica:            You do. So you can yell; you can tell somebody to fuck off or whatever?

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. Sometimes you're so in your head, it's hard for you to track your emotions. We're back to the eclipsed Moon issue.

Valentine:       It's what it is. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so here's the thing. There are so many ways you can tell the story of your relationship with this man, endless ways, right?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            You will drive yourself crazy in life if you center the story over the feelings all the time. And I don't need to prove it to you. You are living it currently.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            When somebody breaks your trust, it's not your fault that they did it, but it is your responsibility to yourself to give yourself the gift of you not breaking your own trust, because if I step on your foot and you're like, "Well, Jessica's nice. I don't know why she stepped on my foot. We'll just keep on hanging out," so I step on your foot again and I keep on doing it, at a certain point, there's no reason for you to have confidence in yourself. There's no reason for you to believe yourself if you keep on hanging out with me, the asshole who keeps stepping on your foot.

                        At a certain point, your responsibility to yourself is to say, "Jessica's not a safe person to be around. She hates my feet. She's stepping on my feet." And at a certain point, for me, I'm a big believer in the rule of threes, you know what I mean? Step on my foot once; shame on you. Step on my foot twice; shame on you. Step on my foot⁠—you see where I'm going. After the third time, it's just kind of like now you have a responsibility to you because the other person has proven to you who they are.

                        So when we talk about self-acceptance and self-love, the very fucking annoying thing is that you're going through two Uranus transits and a Pluto transit. So self-acceptance and self-love right now looks like taking pretty stark actions to protect your piece, to protect your heart. And some people are going to say what you're doing is wrong or too much. That's a Uranus transit for you. That's a Pluto transit for you. That's also fucking society for you.

                        You need to figure out, "Is me giving him a chance at the expense of me being a good friend or a good parent to myself?" And if the answer to either of those questions is yes, then he doesn't deserve more chances. And chances are good. You know what I mean? I don't want to say chances are bad. Chances are good. But I am looking at a long and winding path of chances with this man. Whatever you told me, it is more than what you told me. Am I correct about that?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And there's no harm, no foul if it's not⁠—if you keep on giving him chances after this conversation and you kind of know better but you do it, you're a human person. Human people have feelings. You gotta do things that you can tolerate. But something about you is that your actions articulate your self-esteem. Even when you're weeping and exhausted, your actions tell your children that you prioritize them, that you love them, that you care about them. It's your actions, yeah.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            So you know that for your two children and yet, with yourself, not so much.

Valentine:       No.

Jessica:            And so you don't have to completely feel confident. You don't have to feel completely good. The tears, they fall, and still you do the thing, the parenting thing, to take care of your children. You're allowed to feel scared, to feel sad, to feel grief, to feel bad, and still take care of yourself. You're waiting to feel perfectly clean and clear before you do the thing to take care of yourself.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's how you know you're in a survival mechanism from childhood, because that's a child's way of thinking. "Everything will be fine, and then I'll know to break up."

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            "I won't care anymore; then I can leave." You're not going to ever not care. That's not how you're wired. You care.

Valentine:       I care deeply. Yep.

Jessica:            Yeah. You care.

Valentine:       Yep.

Jessica:            You're not going to stop caring. The question is, are you going to continue to act like you care about him more than you care about you? And that's a really important question to ask yourself. And if this man is redeemable⁠—which I don't know⁠. But if he is redeemable as your partner⁠—not as a human. As your partner. Right?

Valentine:       Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            If he's somebody who could do the work and meet you in the middle, then he will. Then you taking care of you will not stop that train from chugging on the track because if you being your best and healthiest self is in conflict with how he wants to be a partner, then he's not meant to be your partner. Does that make sense?

Valentine:       It does. Yep.

Jessica:            So this is where your own coping mechanism that's like your dad comes up because you're kind of, like, floopy-doop out a little bit. Your analyzer is still here with me, but you're disassociated with it, right?

Valentine:       Yeah, I am.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay, okay, okay. I want to say that's okay. I just want to name it. Naming, "Oh, I'm disassociated," or, "This conversation is pushing past the point where  I have the ability to stay present"⁠—it's recorded. You're fine. Don't worry about it. You know what I mean?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            But being able to notice it and give yourself permission to be there is really important because your dad, as an example, is not able to identify it's happening and own that he does it. So he's perpetually confused by why relationships go the way they do, right?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. He's confused because he can't track his own participation. You have that same pattern. You get really confused in your relationships.

Valentine:       I do.

Jessica:            You do, and it's because you disassociate and you don't realize you're disassociating.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            You're allowed to have emotional caps. So you're having a conversation with me, a psychic. And I can see I've hit your cap multiple times in this conversation.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And if we had an ongoing therapeutic relationship, I would have stopped at the first cap and hung out there and explored that.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            But you got a one-shot reading with me, so, you know, I'm giving you everything I got.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, if I wasn't psychic, in no world would I have any idea that we hit your caps, okay? You give no indicators. Zero. So your coping mechanism for having the childhood you had is to prove to yourself and everyone else that you can take it.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And the problem is, if you're not dealing with a psychic in a therapeutic conversation, that means people are like, "Okay. I can keep pushing."

Valentine:       Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it is.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. This is where, again, your childhood coping mechanisms ideally need to evolve to meet the woman you've become and the life that you have so that you don't unintentionally re-create your childhood or your parents' relationship. And you can feel a little bit of both in this relationship with this man, right?

Valentine:       Both. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Both suck in the context that we're talking about. It's not like there's nothing redeemable about your childhood or whatever, but that's not what we want for you. And do you want to be married? Do you want to be partnered?

Valentine:       Not if this is what marriage is. I had a whole different idea of what marriage was. Yeah.

Jessica:            This isn't what marriage is. This is what marriage with this person is. However, word to the wise⁠—have a really long engagement next time.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            I think you love love. You have a Venus conjunction to the Ascendant in Pisces. You're romantic.

Valentine:       I am.

Jessica:            You're the least romantic person while being super romantic, right? You're both.

Valentine:       That is the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see it. I see it. So allow yourself to stay in the hangout space of romance for longer so you can get to know the reality of the person before you make it legal.

Valentine:       Right.

Jessica:            Just a really good piece of advice I'm giving.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, I don't know if you know this about me, but I am fianced with my partner. We've been fianced for 12 years. I have no intention of ever marrying. I don't want to marry. I don't like marriage myself. But the point I'm saying is it is so romantic to be fianced. Being married⁠—now you're family. Ew. I don't know why people want to be family with their partner. I think that's kind of wrong. But being fianced is just like⁠—it's promise. It's intention. That's really what marriage is supposed to be⁠—I mean, not from the perspective of patriarchy, but from the perspective of our hearts, that's what we want it to be, right?

                        Now, I want to just slow myself down. It was a long question. I don't know that I got to all the things. Did I get to the things? Did I answer the questions?

Valentine:       You did. You did.

Jessica:            Okay.

Valentine:       It was a great⁠—thank you.

Jessica:            My pleasure. My pleasure. And I will just say very, very briefly⁠—and I can't get into it just because of time⁠—your kids are good.

Valentine:       Okay. Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. Your daughter's crazy. She's just such a fun, wild toddler. I hope she keeps this. You know toddlers kind of grow out of their wildness?

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            May she keep it. She's bananas and so special and smart and precocious. And is she into acting? Does she put on plays and stuff like that?

Valentine:       Oh, she has such a personality. I was just saying to her father the other day, "I'm going to have to start either a YouTube channel or something for her," because she will⁠—as soon as the camera is on, she just puts it on for the family, you know?

Jessica:            I think she will⁠—if you do activity stuff for her, plays, any kind of theatery thing⁠—because she is really exploring human connection through acting it out.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And yeah. She's really like⁠—that's how she's figuring out people.

Valentine:       Oh. Good.

Jessica:            And she's figuring out facial expressions. Her facial expressions are weird because she's mimicking. She's mimicking what she sees adults do.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            And she doesn't understand it, really.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            She's a toddler, so she's [crosstalk]⁠—

Valentine:       Even the voice and the intonation⁠—sometimes she'll act like she's punishing her brother. She'll talk in a really⁠—"Go get your shoes on right now," as if she's the mom.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       And she knows what she's doing, but⁠—

Jessica:            But she's bananas. But she's wild.

Valentine:       She's so funny.

Jessica:            Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So she's great. Encourage her wildness. Encourage her to explore her bigness. She'll be great. She'll be fine. Good luck with her academics because she's restless and smart. You know what I mean? She's smart, but I don't know how much she's going to study. Then there's your son, and he's going through, I mean, what nine-year-olds go through, right? He is going through a lot right now, but he feels very supported.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            Does he have a relationship with his dad?

Valentine:       He does. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. It looks like it's very independent of you, like he has his own relationship with his dad.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like more of a set situation. And he's getting what he needs.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            I mean, he's going to continue to be a nine-year-old, and then he'll be ten, and then it'll get worse because he'll be 12. And you know what I mean? This is just like a period. Being a teenager, being a 'tweener is like⁠—you know, he's at a time⁠—he is contemplative, considerate, interesting smarty-pants, yeah?

Valentine:       He is. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And fostering that contemplative nature of his⁠—he's like the opposite of his sister in that he doesn't want to be acting. He wants to be writing the play. He wants to be behind the scenes and figuring out the dynamic, right?

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       Yeah. I call him an engineer. He wants to know how⁠—

Jessica:            I was just about to say that. I was just about to say he might get into coding and stuff like that.

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            He's got a real mind for that stuff. And so you don't have to⁠—oh, he grinds his teeth? He clenches or grinds his teeth?

Valentine:       Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. I just saw that. So I don't know what they do for kids with that kind of a thing, but if it's easy⁠—I'm not putting another burden on your plate, but if it's easy, you might want to just gently massage his jaws⁠—

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            ⁠—because he holds a lot of tension in there. And I think a lot of it is around school stuff. School stuff is really activating him right now, so he's clenching and grinding and clenching and grinding because he's trying to figure it out. He's your kid. He's like, "I'll figure out the problem, and then everything will be fine." So, if you're reading stories with him still, I would say try to pick stories with characters that explore the problem and don't just hero's journey to fix the problem.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            That's not going to serve him, okay?

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            But when these are the things that I can see psychically in children, you're doing good, girl.

Valentine:       Okay. Good. Thank you.

Jessica:            They're not going to be reaching out to a psychic to be like, "Why didn't my parents take care of me?" That's not these kids' story.

Valentine:       Okay. Good.

Jessica:            They have other problems, you know? There's no water and there's fires. That's their problems.

Valentine:       Good.

Jessica:            So, as hard as it is to parent your human children, your struggle is to parent yourself better.

Valentine:       Yeah. I think so⁠—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       ⁠—and being less critical and harsh and just⁠—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Treat yourself like you treat your children.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            Otherwise, you're doing it wrong.

Valentine:       Okay.

Jessica:            And you know you want to do things right.

Valentine:       I do.

Jessica:            So the way to do it right is to treat yourself like you would treat your daughter or your son. And if you're not doing that, then you need to apologize to yourself. That's what you would tell your kids, right? If you were mean, what do you do? You apologize?

Valentine:       Yeah. I apologize. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yes.

Valentine:       We take a break, and then we'll communicate afterwards. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Do as you preach, okay? This will be hard, but it's doable.

Valentine:       Yeah.

Jessica:            All right, my dear. I'm so happy we did this.

Valentine:       Thank you.

Jessica:            It was my pleasure.