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

Octavia:          My question—I have it written down.

Jessica:            Perfect.

Octavia:          I'm going to just go ahead and read it. My question is, "As I'm reaching the end of my Saturn Return, I'm beginning to recognize my patterns of self-sabotage when it comes to executing my goals both relationally and career-wise. I often feel unclear about or blocked from making better choices and often face difficult circumstances when I finally feel motivated to do so. How can I release my baggage and allow myself to shine?"

Jessica:            Okay. So many things to say about this. So, first, we're going to share that you were born September 12th, 1995, in a city in America at 8:30 a.m.

Octavia:          That is true.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Thank you. So there is a lot of things to say, but I actually want to start with your Saturn Return.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            In your birth chart, you've got Saturn at 21 degrees and 30 minutes of Pisces. And your Saturn Return lasted less than a month, February 24th through March 20th. That was the whole Saturn Return. And what I want to say before we dive into the specifics of your question is the Saturn Return is a transit, but it's also like this massive—the word "evolution" is wrong, but I'm going to use it anyways because my brain isn't finding a different one. But it's an evolutionary process of coming into the adult body and coming to a state of maturization. And for some people, sometimes, something major happens during the Saturn Return, and for some people, sometimes, it's just like this period.

                        And because of the way that your chart is written—you've got Saturn in the sixth house, and it's opposite your Sun and your Venus—

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            —you are Saturnian enough that this is like—I'm sure those several weeks were important, but this is more about the big picture of coming into a new level of accountability and responsibility to your own damn self and your body.

Octavia:          That very much resonates, very much.

Jessica:            Yeah. So Saturn in the sixth house—I mean, there's no chill place for Saturn, obvi. There's no easy place. But Saturn in the sixth house—when we have a Saturn Return, it often does confront the self with your relationship either to work or to health. And often, there's a connection, like you may be working in such a way that leads to burnout, or you may be disassociating in such a way that you're not tracking what's going on in your health or something like that. Have you noticed anything in that regard, like with your body or mental health? And you don't have to have, but just curious.

Octavia:          For sure, with both. I found out I had a six-month-long sinus infection—

Jessica:            Oh my God.

Octavia:          —even a year long, around this period of time. And I also started going to the gym more around this time.

Jessica:            Okay. Yeah.

Octavia:          I started being more physically active and sort of leaning more into my health and trying to take better care of myself. But overall, my whole life, I've always had kind of—what I describe as body horror experiences, since I was a little kid. I had really severe scoliosis by the time I was like 13 or 14 and got a full spinal surgery by the time I was 14.

Jessica:            Oh no. I'm so sorry.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            That's intense.

Octavia:          I've always had an interesting relationship to my body.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Octavia:          So yeah. I—yeah.

Jessica:            So Saturn is, of course, your bones. It's the shit that holds you up. So that's very Saturnian of you. And the thing about the Saturn Return that's related to, let's say, going to the gym is that we set patterns during Saturn transits. And the Saturn Return is kind of like the apex Saturn transit, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And so setting the intention of, "I'm going to actively, intentionally engage with my body"—that's the green-light go. That's the thing. So, for you, right now, it's the gym. And maybe next month, it'll be walking in nature. It doesn't have to be one thing.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            But that is a really great thing. And then the other thing, my Saturn in Pisces friend, is you said you had a six-month-long sinus infection. So what I am inferring from the way you said that is you were uncomfortable; you were not feeling well. But you didn't get a diagnosis, and you didn't get treatment for six whole months.

Octavia:          I actually didn't even really notice, which is crazy. I just had pretty bad symptoms, like outward symptoms. But I was like, "Oh, this is just something." And I was more focused on the symptom rather than I was on the huge cause of the thing.

Jessica:            So you did notice that something was wrong.

Octavia:          Yes. I did notice, but I didn't really know the depth of how wrong I was, I guess.

Jessica:            And did you not know the depth because you didn't ask for help?

Octavia:          Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. That's your Saturn Return, okay? I want you to really hear that, because if you don't, then the next time Saturn aspects Saturn in your mid-30s, you are going to be confronted with this lesson again, and then again with your Saturn opposition. You don't want to keep on being confronted with the lesson of, like, "Yeah, I was super sick, but it wasn't that relevant, so I didn't check it out." No, no. If something in your body feels in a state of unwellness, your duty to yourself with Saturn in the sixth house is to validate that experience and then investigate, which—I'm guessing if you were hanging out with me for six months, and for six months, I was like, "Oh, I'm in pain. Oh, I've got these symptoms," you would be like, "I love you. Please fucking go to a doctor, an herbalist, something."

Octavia:          Yeah. So the thing about this is I thought that the symptoms I was having were because I just was smoking again, like I had picked up a bad habit because I was going through a really crazy experience.

Jessica:            Cigarettes or weed?

Octavia:          Yes.

Jessica:            Cigarettes.

Octavia:          Cigarettes—well, cigarettes and weed, but I picked up cigarettes.

Jessica:            You picked them both up at the same—okay. So you had already been smoking weed.

Octavia:          Yes, for a long time.

Jessica:            You added cigarettes to the mix.

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay.

Octavia:          And it got really bad. So I thought stopping would help, but it didn't.

Jessica:            When did you stop?

Octavia:          In mid-December, January.

Jessica:            Okay. So let me just—this is really important because I'm from the province of Quebec in Canada. And there's something—I don't know if it's in all of Canada, but it's called a sin tax, like sin, like in the Bible.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And they apply those sin taxes to alcohol and tobacco, so it's like you're paying extra taxes for the sin of drinking and smoking. It's such a stupid—whatever. Forgetting the moralistic cost, the reason why I'm bringing it up is because what you just told me is that you—this is the thing about fucking Saturn, right? You're the cop in your own head. You created a sin tax. "Okay. So I did something bad. I started smoking again. And I'm not going to take care of myself. I'm not going to investigate because the consequence of me sinning against my body is this fucking terrible set of circumstances and"—okay. Do you see why I brought up the sin tax?

Octavia:          Yeah, I do see. I see that.

Jessica:            Yes. So having Saturn in the sixth house, especially Saturn in Pisces, will give, unfortunately, that—not your internal structure, because the internal structure part of you is healthy. I'm talking about the cop in your head, the mean teacher, mean patrilineal figure in your head, the inclination towards a sin tax mentality.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And so my hope is that, now that I've given you this kind of visual, that you'll be able to track it more effectively.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            I also want to say, yeah, don't fucking smoke. You've got Saturn in Pisces. You've got your Sun and Venus in the twelfth house. It gives your lungs—like, you just don't do well with smoking.

Octavia:          No, I don't.

Jessica:            You don't. No, you don't. So, even if you're going to be consuming weed or any kind of THC products—I don't know if you like eating it. I'm guessing you don't like eating it as much.

Octavia:          I don't like eating it as much, but I have been trying to do that more.

Jessica:            The problem is the buzz of eating is more of a body buzz, and you like a little more control than eating gives you. And so, if you're going to smoke, I would simply say know that it's really bad for you.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so that doesn't mean that you start imposing a sin tax on yourself.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It simply means that you are mindful that if you're going through an especially stressful time, if there are other environmental factors that are fucking with the air quality—hello, climate crisis—

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            —whatever else—if you're just like, "I've been around five people who were coughing," then pause with the smoking and maybe lean on eating or just take a break.

Octavia:          Yeah. I honestly haven't been smoking as much over the past few months, mostly because I ran out, but also because I just haven't—I haven't chosen to procure more.

Jessica:            To re-up. So did you quit smoking everything at once?

Octavia:          I stopped smoking cigarettes pretty hardcore, and then I sort of slowly tapered off of the weed.

Jessica:            Okay.

Octavia:          I do feel better for it, honestly. Just even mentally, I feel a lot more grounded and more—

Jessica:            Weed was really good for you. It's not very good for you anymore. You must have noticed.

Octavia:          Yes. I did notice.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's a bummer because, in your teens and your 20s, it probably actually was a great tool for you to kind of loosen up that Saturnian tightness that can be in your nature. But then you got older, and it actually stopped working the way it once did.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not your best friend anymore. You can be like frenemies with weed, but I don't think it's like a super good relationship anymore—

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            —for whatever that's worth.

Octavia:          That's good to know.

Jessica:            Yes. You're welcome. So what happens with your Saturn Return, now that your Saturn Return is over officially—right? You integrate. You either learn the lessons, you either integrate those lessons by simply being accountable to yourself and the world that you participate in, or you don't. And then your Christ year shall cometh, and as it cometh—which, of course, is your 33rd year on this planet, so the age of 33—that is the year of consequences. So you start all of a sudden, at the age of 33, which is a number of years from you—you're 29 or 30 now?

Octavia:          29.

Jessica:            29. Yeah. So you've got some years on this, right? Which means you don't have to obsess and get super in your head about it. You just want to stay aligned with the values—and the lessons, rather—of your Saturn Return. At 33, what happens is, all of a sudden, all the shit that was activated in your Saturn Return gets more salient, more present for you, and whatever it is you didn't deal with—it becomes a pain in your ass.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            So you learned that maybe smoking isn't great for you? Remember the lesson. You learned that you have a nature where you impose a sin tax on yourself, and you're like, "Well, I feel shitty because I was shitty. Oh well. That's life"—don't do that, or you'll have to deal with the consequences at 33. You see where I'm going with this, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So I wanted to just make sure to give you this kind of high-level view of your Saturn Return stuff before we shift away from that part of the conversation because your chart is on fire.

Octavia:          Oh. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Octavia:          Cool.

Jessica:            Saturn is also opposite your Venus. Now, this is a really important transit. It was—oh, it's active right now. It was active March 28th through April 23rd, and we're recording this in April, early April. And then it'll come back October 12th of 2025 through January 13th—

Octavia:          October 12th?

Jessica:            Yeah.

Octavia:          Huh.

Jessica:            Is that your birthday?

Octavia:          No. It's my grandmother's birthday.

Jessica:            It's not a great birthday present. I apologize on behalf of the Universe. Okay.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So it'll be October 12th of '25 through January 13th of '26. Saturn opposite Venus—it is directly related to Saturn conjunction to Venus, which happened for you 14 years ago. So 15 years old?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Anything in particular going on at 15 in your relationships?

Octavia:          I got a spinal surgery and couldn't be in school for like the first—

Jessica:            Okay. So you were really isolated.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And did you have friends who are the kind of friends who would come around when you were in—

Octavia:          I didn't have a lot of friends, and I lived sort of far away from my school. So I maybe had, like, one friend come around, but yeah, I wouldn't even really call this person exactly a friend.

Jessica:            Right.

Octavia:          But yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, most 15-year-olds are not fantastic at showing up for really intense medical procedures and stuff like that.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So this is the high-water mark of a cycle that began for you then. So your Venus in Virgo in the twelfth house was being pummeled by Saturn. And this transit is active as we speak, which is part of why you wanted to talk about relationship stuff, right? Because Saturn opposite Venus—it kicks up patterns around relationships and how you participate and what you seem to be kind of attracting.

And with Venus in the twelfth house, you can find yourself in situations where you're kind of constantly taking care of other people. You don't feel seen, and your relationships—some people with this placement are in relationships that are on the DL or just not—like, more situationships. I saw the face. What's that mean?

Octavia:          Yeah. That feels accurate. I think what feels more accurate is probably—me often being in relationship with emotionally unavailable people seems to be the large thing.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Is that what's happening currently?

Octavia:          Not currently. Currently, I'm single. I've been single for three months. But that was the pattern for the past—last year, I was in three consecutive relationships, and that was sort of the pattern of all of them.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So Saturn opposite Venus will bring up your patterns in such a way that most people either say, "Oh no. This always happens to me. Why must this happen to me? Why is life so hard?" And we slip into a depressiveness, right?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Or—of course, there's other options, but here are the big, most common two—or it's, "Oh shit. I need to work on this. I need to make changes in myself. I need to figure out what I'm getting out of this pattern."

Octavia:          Definitely feeling more of the second part these days.

Jessica:            Yeah. Good on you.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. That's a really good sign because your Saturn opposition to Venus is connected to your Saturn Return because they're like back-to-back transits. And I want to encourage you to stick with that. A big part of this transit for you does have to do with your relationship to your body and your own ability to trust your body and resource your body. It also has to do with fear around isolation.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            The thing I will say about emotionally unavailable people that is so awesome is that you know how they're going to hurt you before they hurt you.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And your Saturn/Venus opposition in your birth chart loves that. It's like your fear of the unknown is so great that the young part of you is like, "I'm just going to keep on choosing the thing that I know will hurt me in this one specific way "—

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            —"because at least then I have some modicum of control."

Octavia:          I feel very aware of that, I mean even just down to the—because both of my parents are also pretty emotionally unavailable people, and I'm currently not even in relationship to them or my family of origin right now. So I do just feel sort of isolated. I'm also in a city that I didn't grow up in. I've only been here for like a year and a half, so I don't have that many close relationships. So it's like I feel like I know all of these things but don't really know the steps to actually breaking this cycle.

Jessica:            Okay.

Octavia:          I feel very aware that my choices seem to be—I'm just doing the same pattern over and over again, but I don't know how to stop, I guess.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's talk about that. There's a lot of layers. One layer is kind of committing yourself to the process of identifying what you're getting out of it. And I don't mean this in a sin tax kind of a way, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean this more in an understanding that your coping mechanism is there for a reason, whether it's—and is one of your parents narcissistic?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, which—is that Mom or Dad?

Octavia:          It's my mom.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mom.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And when you grew up, where they married?

Octavia:          Yes. They're still married.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Growing up with a narcissistic parent teaches you to disassociate yourself from your own preferences, right?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And it teaches you to center the parent's preferences and perspective as a means of survival.

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            There are a lot of books out there about growing up being the child of a narcissist. I encourage you to read at least one of them.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah, at least one. There is so much to unlearn there because, as much as that parent may love you, it's always through this veil of self-centeredness.

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so then it's not really about you in some kind of core way. And even though you of course don't fucking want that—that's not like, "Oh yeah, that's what I want to date"—it's like the lizard brain of the human. It's like, "Well, this is my core experience of familial relationships of love, and so I'm going to keep on seeking it." It's like being aware of that pattern is really important because if you—adult you, Octavia you—can identify that inner child you who's kind of hurt and had really challenging experiences in their childhood you—if you can identify, "Oh, this part of me is actually just looking for things that are familiar because I associate—that part of me associates it with safety and love, even though adult me, Octavia me, knows different," that's how you start to shift the pattern. And I know you're a Virgo, and you do not like this advice because it is too slow.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not a big enough action, right?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you're right. It's slow, and it's not a very big action. But if you want to change a pattern, then it's about pattern recognition. It's the only way. If you want to randomly date somebody who's really different than your pattern but then have it not work and then go back to your pattern, then you make a big, bold change, right? Now, I've got good news and bad news. It is the same news. You are not going through one Pluto transit. You are going through two Pluto transits—

Octavia:          Oh.

Jessica:            —which partially explains—I'm assuming that in the last year or so is when you stopped talking to your parents.

Octavia:          It was literally a few weeks ago.

Jessica:            A few weeks ago. Okay.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Good on you. We can talk about that if that's helpful. But one of these transits started in February 2023. The other one started at the end of—the last day of January of this year.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            And you're going through a Pluto square to Mars. You've got Mars at 3 degrees of Scorpio in the first house, and then you've got a Pluto square to your Moon. Your Moon is at zero degrees of Taurus and 36 minutes. So here's the good news and the bad news of this. The bad news is fucking Pluto, right? It's intense. It's challenging. There's a lot of potential loss here.

Here's the same news that's the good news, is that if you're going through all these Saturn transits where you are taking accountability for your patterns and you are getting real and getting present and being like a good parent to yourself, being a reliable protector to yourself, then these Pluto transits are best-case scenario shit because they help you to do the deep work of pulling out chunks of unhealthy shit and releasing it. Pluto helps us to do this profound release. And that is actually what time it is, right? So, if you are like, "Oh no. That sounds so small," well, now I've given you really big. You know what I mean?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And now small didn't sound so bad all of a sudden, I'm guessing.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Sorry. Funny how humans are. We're just like, "I don't want it to be small. Wait, wait, wait. Give me small. Give me small." All to say, if I pull, like, hawk-eye view, like big picture, the big picture of what you're going through is the part of you that's impatient—you have a Mars/Moon opposition in your birth chart. Impatient is your middle name. The part of you that is quick to offense is being activated so that you release the parts within that that don't serve you.

                        So, when you ask a question about wanting to release baggage around self-sabotage and your goals, I gotta say, yeah, okay, perfect timing. I'm so happy this is what you want to work on because this is the assignment. The downside, of course, is that the only way to heal it is to feel it.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And so this is where I pause and I ask you about whether we stay with relationshipy, interpersonal stuff or we shift into your goals. What situations is all this playing out in? What can we tap into? Do you see what I'm saying?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            I think it's best to stick with relationships, and we'll come back to goal stuff.

Octavia:          The goals. Yeah. I think it's definitely playing out more—outwardly, it's definitely playing out a lot stronger in my relationships. But what I really want to know is about my goals. I feel like the relationship thing—I'm tired of it, almost. But—

Jessica:            It's kind of like those sinuses. So annoying. Let's pretend they're not there. Okay. Don't worry about it. We'll come back to your goals. I promise.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            I am a Capricorn, and I will talk about goals. But what relationship dynamics are at play in this moment that are junky? Junking up the system is what I meant.

Octavia:          I think probably the one that feels the most like fresh wound is the one with my mother.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So I'll have you say your full name and then your mom's full name.

Octavia:          Okay. [redacted], and then my mom's full name is [redacted].

Jessica:            So this is what I can see. You have tried to have boundaries with your mom. They don't go well. Is she the one who's really aggressive and a person who has a lot of anger issues, or is that your dad?

Octavia:          I would say my dad is more aggressive.

Jessica:            Okay. So did you rely more on an intimate relationship with your mom when you were a child?

Octavia:          Yes, because my dad was mostly traveling and wasn't home very much.

Jessica:            Also, your dad is too unpredictable. He just feels like a really unpredictable force. So your mom was the parent you relied on. I think you did the right thing by taking space. I really do, because there was no space for you to grow into an adult with her because she just either wants you to be what she wants you to be or locks you into being who you once were. Am I seeing this correctly?

Octavia:          Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. Meanwhile, there's your fucking dad, to be honest. And your dad put so much on your mother's plate and made your mother accountable to so much—he kind of abandoned your mom in a lot of ways—

Octavia:          Yeah, he did.

Jessica:            —that it's kind of like the pattern in their relationship and in your childhood is persisting that she gets all the blame for everything, even though he is supposed to be a 50 percent parent. And he is easier to deal with, though, because he's less needy. And so, if he upsets you, it's not like he has energy tentacles on you—

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            —whereas she does.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Are you the only child?

Octavia:          No. I have two older brothers.

Jessica:            Oh.

Octavia:          Yeah. I have really bad relationship to both of them. But they, at least from what I understand, seem to be closer to my mother at this point.

Jessica:            So I want to say this in a way—I'm not exactly sure how to articulate this. Your mother identifies you as a girl child, yes?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And your mother has a bazillion expectations based on her perception of your gender.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And they're radically different than anything that your brothers would have experienced because she identifies them as boys, and they identify as boys as well, eh?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That said, have you talked about your gender with your mother?

Octavia:          I've attempted. It doesn't really go any—yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Octavia:          It just—it feels like—I don't know, like I'm talking to a wall.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's what I'm seeing. She does not understand what the hell you're talking about and doesn't want to have the conversation, doesn't think it's important.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And this feels emblematic of your relationship with your mom.

Octavia:          Yeah, it is.

Jessica:            It is. She's like, "I want to be close to you, but I don't want to deal with any of the bullshit that you think is important. Let's focus on the things that I think are important."

Octavia:          Literally exactly. Exactly.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm sorry. And also, this makes a lot of sense with your relationship patterns, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            People who are like, "I think you're amazing. You're so great. Let's be together. Okay, okay, okay, but let's focus on that instead of this. Okay, okay, okay, but I don't really want to hear about how hard things are for you today because I want to focus on what's going on for me"—this pattern in your personal relationships mirrors this kind of core relationship you had with the, quote unquote, "safe" parent.

                        Taking a break from your mom is a really powerful way of figuring out who you are so that when you're with her, her dismissiveness of you and her wild judgment—I refer to the cop in your head and the sin tax. I mean, she is the creator of these things. She is the arbiter.

Octavia:          Yeah. She's the cop.

Jessica:            She's the cop. She's the cop. She's 100 percent your Saturn. She's the cop.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So many things about your mom you have rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected or silently rejected, right? You've done active rejection and then more internal and passive rejection, both of which are important and valid. However, you have interjected, you have taken on, her beliefs that in order to be safe, you must constantly police everything you do, that every bad action will be followed by some sort of a punishment, and that whole inner cop thing—you've interjected it. You've taken it on. It's like the thing you like about your mother the least—so you've made it your own. You've just made it your own.

                        And the truth is having a healthy Saturn is a fucking beautiful thing. We all have Saturn, so Saturn is either healthy or not healthy, honestly. And so developing a relationship with the cop in your mind where you—we're not talking about demoting. We're just talking about evolving the role that that part of you plays so it goes from a cop, which—boo, hiss—to a strict paternal figure or a strict teacher or something, and then you evolve that to a wise and reliable inner wisdom—we can evolve that kind of punishing force inside of you that you learned from your mom into something—and I say we. You. We as people can do this. You in this situation can do this—can evolve it. And that just takes years.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Sorry, Mars opposite Moon Virgo. It just takes years. There's no way around how it takes years. And this is the difference between first Saturn Return and second Saturn Return, right? If we didn't evolve, what would be the point of continuing to live?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Just to live through late-stage capitalism and climate crisis and everything else? What's the fucking point? To evolve is the point, right?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            All to say having a boundary with your mother at this time is the healthiest thing for you to do. And unfortunately—and please tell me if I'm seeing this wrong or right, but it looks like, unfortunately, because you can't actually have a boundary with her that she respects, having the ultimate boundary of, "You're out. I've completely cut you out," is the only way to have a boundary and a consequence for your mom.

Octavia:          Yeah. I haven't even told her that I have that boundary with her. I just haven't been answering her calls or her texts.

Jessica:            Okay. So you haven't had—okay. So that's what a child does. For the record, to own what I just did, I pointed my finger at you, too. I didn't just say that, but I pointed my finger at you. So, if you act like a child with your mom, then she has no motivation to evolve the way she engages with you and the way she understands you to be. So my advice is to say to her—either write her an e-mail—go to the grocery store. Buy a nice "Thinking of you" Hallmark card, and then write her a letter and put it in the snail mail. Do whatever you want to do. But say to her, "I love you.  I don't know how to be in a relationship with you because you don't respect my boundaries. I'm taking a break. Please understand and respect. Even if you don't understand, please respect. I'm not cutting you out of my life forever. I'm taking a break. Thank you very much. Have a nice day. Goodbye." Is that something you think you could do?

Octavia:          I think that's something I could do.

Jessica:            Yeah. It would be great if you could just say it to her. But what all of us do is we revert into trauma transit patterns—is a term for it—where, when we're around our parents, we act like children.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And for whatever it's worth, seven-year-olds act like children around their parents. It's not just because you're still in your 20s, although of course that makes it more intense. So, if you want to have intentional boundaries with someone, you must communicate them unless you are kicking them out of your life forever, in which case—you know. That's not actually what you're doing with your mom; am I correct about that?

Octavia:          I wasn't sure just yet. I really wasn't sure because it's so recent that I sort of chose to stop speaking with her. It was such an emotional decision that I feel like I haven't really sat with it in completion yet—

Jessica:            Okay.

Octavia:          —which is why it's great that we're talking about it.

Jessica:            Yes. It is. Okay. Word to the wise—and this doesn't go for the person you've been dating for three months. This goes for your mom or the person you've been friends with for a decade, okay?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Until you're sure you're trying to burn a bridge, don't burn the bridge, because you can't un-burn a bridge.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Saying, "I need space to figure out what I need and what I can offer"—that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say. It might piss her off. She might not respect it. You're still being the adult in the situation and taking accountability for what you're doing and also for the depth of the relationship. She's your mom, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            She's not like somebody you've been dating for three months. She's your mom. So she does deserve to know why you are not speaking to her.

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            More importantly, maybe you deserve—if you're going to have a boundary, have a boundary. Ghosting someone is not a—I mean, it's a boundary, but it's not quite the same as saying, "Are you aware that you don't respect my boundaries? Are you aware of how it makes me feel? I think you're not, but if you are and you keep on fucking with my boundaries, well, that's even worse. So I'm taking a break." You can say it as angry as you want. You can say it as immature as you want. You can see you as mature as you want. Just be honest—

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            —because she's your mom. What I'm going to say to you right now is gold, 24 karat. Have you ever seen 24 karat gold? It's bright yellow. It is delightful.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. In order for a relationship to change, you have to be different.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            Okay?

Octavia:          That was gold.

Jessica:            That was gold, 24 karat, my favorite karats.

Octavia:          24 karat.

Jessica:            You're welcome. So what you'll never know is how your relationship with, let's say, your mom could be if you don't be different. Stay in the relationship, but be different. Staying in a relationship with someone that you're not talking to is a thing. I don't want to brag, but I've not talked to many people over the course of my life for many years and still been in relationship with them.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And when it comes to your parents, listen. If this was the fifth time that this exact same thing happened and you were taking break for the fifth time, for the exact same reason, all right. Maybe she should get it by now. But I don't think you have a pattern with your mother of saying, "These are my needs. These are my boundaries. This is how you've trampled upon them. I know you love me, but this isn't functioning in a healthy way for me. Therefore, I am taking care of myself in this way."

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And then how in the world is she supposed to know that? Because you should know your mom well enough to know it would never occur to her to think in such therapy-izing language.

Octavia:          Yeah, it would not.

Jessica:            In a million years.

Octavia:          Yes.

Jessica:            And when you say those things, she won't understand you. I mean, she'll technically understand you. She's very smart. But she'll be like, "What?" She's not going to get it.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Some of it's cultural. Some of it's her personality.

Octavia:          Yeah. I think a lot of the reason why I'm not speaking to her is because of a very traumatic event that I learned about post—like, don't really have any memories about it, but one of my siblings told me about it, and it's beyond crazy ridiculous. I told her about it, that I—and then she just pretended like nothing happened, like she was just like—

Jessica:            Did she deny the reality of it?

Octavia:          She didn't deny the reality of it, but she was like, "Why do you care?"—basically was like, "Why are you so wrapped up in that? That happened in the past."

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Octavia:          So I still have this issue where I'm like, "I don't even know if this thing happened." She's not denying it.

Jessica:            Right.

Octavia:          But she's also telling me to forget about it.

Jessica:            How old is your mom?

Octavia:          God. She was born in 1966.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. That's what I was asking. I was asking what her generation was. Up until very recently, most people in cultures across the world thought if it happened to you when you were a kid—doesn't matter. You weren't there, really. A kid is like a little bubble of a human. It's nothing. No big deal. And a lot of people believed that. Do I believe that? No. It's like the centerpiece of my practice is talking about early developmental experiences. I don't believe that.

                        But there is a difference between somebody believing that what happens to a small child is really serious and then pretending to you that they don't care, and somebody believing what happens to you as a small child—like, you wouldn't be affected by it, so why would you care? I am not saying this to excuse your mom's behavior. That doesn't mean you consent to that behavior. But understanding that there is a difference between—this is, in part, your mother's narcissism. She's not fucking listening to you.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            But it's also, in part, she has a certain set of beliefs and understandings about reality.

Octavia:          That's hard for me to parse together, just because when she was young, close to the age that I experienced my same traumatic event, she experienced an extremely traumatic event, which is seeing her mother die from brain cancer.

Jessica:            Oh my God.

Octavia:          And this is the grandmother who died on my birthday—

Jessica:            Wow.

Octavia:          —but 20 years before I was born. So it's confusing to me that she—

Jessica:            And she identifies that as something that traumatized her?

Octavia:          I don't think she would use the word "traumatized," but she definitely would describe it as something that's difficult for her—

Jessica:            Okay.

Octavia:          —or that's sad for her, at the very least. So it confuses me why she asks me to throw away this deeply traumatizing thing that I don't even really have a grasp on, that feels very much floating over my head because I don't have any memory around it.

Jessica:            Right.

Octavia:          But she's just—you know, she gets to hold on to hers, though.

Jessica:            So this is really important, and I want to be really clear. If there were sides, I'd be on yours, to be exceptionally clear, okay?

Octavia:          Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's not even a "You're welcome." It's just like, obviously, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Also, in relationships, it's really important to have the ability to perceive things from other people's perspectives, not so you agree with it, but to understand where that person is coming from. When I look at your mom, it seems to me like her experience of growing up without a mom, of her mom being sick and dying, is not, in her thinking, about being present for the final moments of her mother's life. It's about the larger ongoing trauma, which she is consciously aware of and affected her. Her mom wasn't there at her wedding—those kinds of things.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Mom has not chosen to investigate her feelings or her lived experiences or her epigenetics. Your mom has struggled with things, decided what it means, decided what to do, and then kept on trying to mobilize from there. Am I seeing that correctly?

Octavia:          Yes.

Jessica:            And so the way she's going to hold the fact that—now we have a matrilineal pattern, right, that traumatic things happen at the same age to mother and child. And who knows what happened to your grandmother at that same age? And the only way to break the pattern is to hold it differently than your mom would have held it. And so, as much as that is lonely and is heartbreaking, being able to break the pattern for yourself in part requires that you recognize that she is in a radically different place in how she holds her own trauma.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not about forgiving your mom.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not about—okay, and this is a really hard thing for most every child of a narcissist. You being able to see your mom's perspective does not invalidate yours. And so you have this pattern in your childhood where you had to see things from her perspective, and that meant abandoning yourself. But what I'm recommending is recognizing that you can see things from her perspective to contextualize why, for her, it's a matter of survival. If she believes that what happened to you at that very young age was real and traumatic, it's not just about what happened to you; it's about why she didn't protect you. It's about her complacency in it. And then it's about her own fucking childhood. And her capacity to have that level of inquiry and emotional presence is just not—it's just not there.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just not there. And it's not something that she can, on a dime, fix, especially not in a phone conversation where you're upset about something.

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But she couldn't, on a dime, fix it if she was like, "I'm going to go to therapy about this," which she would never do, from what I'm seeing.

Octavia:          She would never do.

Jessica:            Never. But let's say she did. Let's say miracle upon miracle—it would take her years of therapy to work on this.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Again, none of this is to invalidate what you're feeling, what you're needing. It's more to contextualize what's realistic to get from her. And if you are different, if you say, "You don't have to agree with me, but you have to respect me enough to have this conversation. You have to listen to me," if you could do that, if you could give yourself that kind of gift, then the relationship would have to change. But for you to be able to do that will take some fucking time.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So, again, this is where I come back to taking a break is a really good idea, but you've got to tell her why so she understands that there's a depth to the importance of this, and there are consequences to her behavior. And she does respond to consequences.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Think about your mom. You've seen it, right?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            She responds to consequences.

Octavia:          Almost only to consequences.

Jessica:            Correct. Correct. This is how it is when you have a Saturn/Sun opposition in your birth chart. You have a narcissistic parent who responds to consequences. Okay.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            You respond to consequences, right? You're like, "It's not a sinus infection. It's consequences for doing something terrible like smoking."

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Again, that's the interjected perpetrator. And so there's the thing. When you found out it was a sinus infection, you were like, "Oh. Yeah. Okay. Maybe I got a sinus infection because I was smoking, but also, I have a sinus infection. I have to deal with the sinus infection. I have to take care of myself." Right? Very literal. So your mom—if you ghost her and she doesn't understand why—and I can promise you she doesn't understand why. I can promise you she doesn't understand why. You know she doesn't understand why, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So that's not a consequence. And that means she'll never respect it and respond to it in the way you want.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It has to be a consequence, right?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Which means you have to believe in your own authority over your own lived experience. You have to believe that you deserve enough. You have to be able to assert towards your parent, as an adult yourself—which is a post-Saturn Return behavior, right, and you are technically post-Saturn Return—to be able to do these things and to say, "This is what I feel. This is what I believe I deserve. This is what I'm doing to take care of myself. Here is the consequence of you not being able to respect what is real for me here." It'll change the relationship, not necessarily well, not necessarily quickly, but it will change the relationship. And that's what you need.

Octavia:          I guess my question is—this makes me feel like I can never be in a healthy relationship.

Jessica:            Why?

Octavia:          And that's really what I want.

Jessica:            Wait, wait, wait. Why? Tell me, why does this make you feel like you can never be in a healthy relationship?

Octavia:          It feels hard to articulate, but I guess it's like the Virgo perfectionist of me where I'm just like—I'm sorry. I'm having a hard time articulating this feeling, but this does feel very connected to just relational woes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Octavia:          I'm sorry.

Jessica:            No, don't be sorry. I want to stay in this moment with you because you feel, because maybe your mom's fucked up, maybe your familial relationships are problematic, that means you don't get to have a healthy love life. There's a part of you that really believes that. Am I hearing that right?

Octavia:          Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's a very heterosexual belief. It is a deeply held cultural belief, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            There's this thing that I've noticed in straight culture—and I don't know if you're straight or not. You don't have to tell me in this moment. But there's this thing I've noticed in straight culture where people say, "Oh, well, he doesn't have a good relationship with his family. I don't know if that's a good sign or not," or, "She doesn't talk to her parents." There's this thing that I noticed in straight culture which doesn't exist in the same way in Queer culture because Queers are so often excommunicated from our families, right? So not having healthy relationships is kind of very normal for Gay people. I think that there's a cultural thing that shifted within Gay relationships and that whole thing. But it is a very straight belief.

Octavia:          But I am Gay.

Jessica:            Okay. You're Gay. Great.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            That doesn't mean you didn't come from the straight world and you don't live in the straight world and you don't hold that.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Every single one of us does. It's not like, "Oh, you know, I'm a person of color; therefore, white supremacy means nothing to me. It doesn't reflect itself in any of my shit." Right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Like, of course. Of course. So—and does your mom know you're Gay?

Octavia:          Yeah, she knows, but I don't think she really knows.

Jessica:            She doesn't know, which means you haven't really told her.

Octavia:          No, I mean I've introduced her to my Gay partner. You know?

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Octavia:          I've introduced her to a longtime—

Jessica:            Okay. So she knows.

Octavia:          So she knows, but I don't think she really care—I don't know. I feel like—I don't know.

Jessica:            Her coping mechanism is to not really accept it or give it air.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            She's trying to give you a consequence, just for the record. This has worked with you in her childhood. She kind of ices something out, and then you kind of minimize it, right? That's been a thing in your childhood, so she's doing it here. It's her—she doesn't have a lot of moves. She has really strong moves, but she doesn't have a lot of moves, for whatever that's worth.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Here's the good news. You can come from incredible trauma. You can come from incredible trauma in your lived experience and in your epigenetics. You can have irreparable relationships with your parents or guardians and your siblings and grow into a person who chooses themself, works with their trauma, and has healthy, sustainable, intimate relationships. I know it through and through and through. I believe it with every part of my being. I've seen it. I've experienced it. It is possible.

                        But with your trauma, it is easier to imagine, "Oh well. I'll be isolated and alone." And in a way, that's what your mother's already chosen for herself. She's just isolated and alone in the constructs of being wife and mother because you don't get Venus in the twelfth house without Mom repressing her own social and kind of personal needs.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's a pattern. That belief is inherited through the culture, right? It's like straight damage. It's also inherited through your mom herself and your dad. I mean, my God, your dad is such a, you know, product of the patriarchy, we'll say. And it's not true. It's not true. Here's the "but." There's a big "but" here. You don't want a relationship, completely. You want a fantasy of a relationship. You want safety.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            You want to know that you're not going to be alone. But that's not the same thing as wanting a relationship.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So here we go. You're welcome. You're welcome. Okay. Here's the thing. In your birth chart, you have the North Node conjunct Mars in the first house. It's in Libra, but it's in the first house. Now, you know I'm not going to fixate too much on the nodes because you're still quite young, but there's some important things for me to tell you about this.

                        I want to be really clear. Your nodes are not planets. They're not parts of your personality. They're where your soul is journeying towards. They're evolutionary. And in your birth chart, you've come here to figure out who the fuck you are and to choose that person. That's having the North Node in the first house. Your South Node is conjunct your Moon in the seventh house. So relationships where they're basically predicated on codependency and neediness—they always lead to misery for you. Have you noticed?

Octavia:          Yes. But it's also, like, what I want, which is so strange. It seems to be what I want.

Jessica:            Okay. So the reason why it's what you want is a couple things. One is we always want our South Node because it's familiar, right? So we come into this life doing our South Node because it's what your soul remembers having done in your most recent incarnations, and it worked. You do it in this life—that's an explosion or an implosion. It just—it doesn't work, right? It's something else.

You've got that Venus opposition to Saturn. You've got this pattern of being raised by a narcissist. So codependency is what the child of a narcissist experiences with the parent who has narcissism because it's not based on actual parental structure. It's not based on them knowing you and choosing you. It's based on, "You need to take care of me so that I'm willing to take care of you. You need to agree with me so I can love you." It's inherently codependent.

                        So good for you that you can recognize that you want that, that you keep on choosing it because you want it. Also, that part of you that believes you will find yourself through intimacy with other people is wrong. Sorry.

Octavia:          Oh.

Jessica:            Sorry. So that doesn't mean you don't get intimacy. That doesn't mean you don't get close relationships. Your North Node is in Libra. Your relationships are meant to not be based on a codependent dynamic and neediness. Your relationships are meant to be based by you being a whole-ass adult, a full person who is self-directed and self-possessed, and they also are those things, and then you choose each other.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Needing someone—like, being in a dynamic where you need the other person—again, I'm sorry, but this is like heterosexual trauma.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Right? Because for patriarchy to function in any culture, a woman cannot be able to be self-sufficient, because she can't have a bank account, because—whatever the fuck it is, right? And so this idea of love and partnership being predicated on need and survival—this is a trauma pattern. True, true intimacy, true sustainable love, happens between two whole people—I mean, it can happen between trauma, right? We can trauma bond, actually, and that can last a lifetime. But ideally, what it is is that you choose yourself and they choose themselves, and then you choose each other. And then that interdependence is sometimes about being held and sometimes about being pushed.

                        And just as a hot tip, you can cosplay/roleplay codependency in bed. You know what I mean? If you need that, if that's part of your sexuality, keep it. Keep it, but keep it in the sheets and not on the streets. Do you know what I mean?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Make it be a part of how you romantically and sexually connect as opposed to a role that you must adopt that kind of requires that you're not fully yourself.

Octavia:          Yeah. This does make me think of my ex, or I guess a series of exes.

Jessica:            I bet it does.

Octavia:          Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            I bet it does.

Octavia:          I just recently broke up with an Aquarius who I feel like I was really attracted to because of how independent of a person they were, but ultimately ended my relationship with them because of the lack of consistency that I received from them. And yeah, I just—I don't know. I guess it's just the same—like what you said. It's going to take time for me to ultimately figure out who I am—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Octavia:          —and therefore feel comfortable choosing someone [crosstalk].

Jessica:            And let's add a layer of complexity which we haven't named yet, which is you have a Libra Rising; you also have Mercury and Libra in your first house. Being direct about your needs is not your forte.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Sorry.

Octavia:          It's not.

Jessica:            It's not. And so, if you're with an Aquarius who's very independent and you're not able to say, "Hey, babe, you intimated/you suggested that we were going to hang out this weekend, but I can't seem to pin you down. That makes me feel all kinds of weird. Can you just make a fucking plan with me, and then I'm not going to be obsessing on it?"—instead of saying that directly, you would probably say it indirectly, hope they get it.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, again, we have this pattern that is so important, which is, in order for your relationships to be different, you have to be different.

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so advocating for yourself, naming things, is really important. Here's what you don't want to do, though, okay? You don't want to justify your needs, your preferences, or your asks. That's called being defensive. With my fingers, did you see how I tried to write the word? Okay.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            That's called being defensive. And when I'm defensive with you, you're going to react defensively no matter what I say.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Obviously, right? And so the work is to be able to say to somebody you're dating, "I have Mercury in Libra. I'm terrible about being direct about my needs. So, if I say things in a way that comes across as defensive or something, or if I'm not being clear, I'm sorry. I'm working on it. Please talk to me about it." You could do that. You're allowed to do that. What I would recommend as a practice for you is take out the notes in your phone or a piece of paper or whatever works for your brain, and write down what your preferences are and what your needs are, and then write down how you've communicated them to your partner.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            You will often find that you have nothing to say. You have not communicated them to your partner; you just expect that they perceive things the way you perceive things, so it's obvious. And if they really cared about you, then they would see them—

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And again, this is being raised from a narcissist, in part, right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Your mother expected all of that of you, and that obviously felt fucking awful, right?

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            There's no room for you in that. So the work of this is, for you, tracking your own needs and preferences and then taking ownership of them by naming—you're a Virgo. You can name things.

Octavia:          Yeah. You know, I definitely think there were instances where I felt like I was communicating what I was needing from them, from this person that I was seeing—

Jessica:            Okay. Pause. Pause. I'm going to have you say both of your names.

Octavia:          Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Did you mainly communicate your needs when you were really upset?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So here's the thing. Have you ever had someone communicate something to you when they were really upset?

Octavia:          Yes.

Jessica:            Do you remember their words or their vibes?

Octavia:          Their vibes.

Jessica:            Correct.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's a cheat.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            You're cheating. Anyone listening should know that's a fucking cheat because if I am enraged or if I am weeping—whatever it is, it's a heightened emotion—then the emotion is what you're effectively communicating as opposed to the needs. So, if you are really emotional and you're trying to communicate something that's really important to you—and I will say this is giving 20s. This is giving 20s. It's okay. You don't have to feel bad about it.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            But it's important that—I'm not saying never communicate when you're in a heightened state of emotion, but it's about coming back to it when you're feeling more grounded and saying, "Hey, listen. I am aware that I communicated something that was really important to me in a moment when I was so emotional. I was probably not really clear, and I didn't leave room for your emotions because my emotions were all I could take at that time."

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Sorry, but that's accountability, okay? Being able to say that and say, "I do need to say, as emotional as I was in the moment, I was letting you know that I need you to be more communicative about plans"—and I'm just using this as an example—"and I want to just check in to see, first of all, did you hear that? Does that make sense? Is that something that you can work with?" I just gave you another piece of gold. Did you hear that? Did it make sense?

Octavia:          I did hear that. That did make sense.

Jessica:            "Can you work with it?" Right?

Octavia:          I—yeah.

Jessica:            You give them those three choices. You ask them those three questions. Write it down and repeat it. Yeah. That's right. Write it down and repeat it—

Octavia:          Oh gosh.

Jessica:            —because in doing so, in being accountable for your needs and asking them to hear you and respond, it means two things. One is you're having a real conversation now.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And you're having a real conversation; that means they're going to say things back to you. They may say, "I really get that it bothers you, but I am not a great planner. And I can try, but I'm never going to be great at planning." And you have to fucking deal with the reality of that.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And then the other thing is you're making them tell you who they are, and that's really powerful. You're giving them a chance to meet you. And this may turn out terribly. You may be like, "Oh my God. We're never going to get along because they're not what I want," or it may allow them to be like, "Oh shit. This person needs this thing for me, and it's not a big deal. Of course I can do it. I'm just not used to it," which you'll never know if you don't try. And you have Mercury in Libra, so this is never going to come naturally. You're never going to feel comfortable with it—not never, but it's not going to be your first-choice instinct. That's a better way of me saying it.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            You do have Mercury in the first house, so you do talk.

Octavia:          Yeah. I talk.

Jessica:            You talk. You do have the—I mean, it's Mercury in the house of Aries, even if it's in the sign of Libra.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, with that, I want to be really clear articulating your needs, your boundaries, your preferences is a practice. Everything in life is just a practice. And with every practice, you will fail. With every practice, you will have consequences that you don't like. With every practice, you will improve. And with every practice, you will forget to do it sometimes. Give yourself permission, right?

Octavia:          Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Now, I promised you to talk about your goals. So I'm going to take a sharp turn and see what your question is there.

Octavia:          Okay. Cool. So you're talking about sort of the ways that I hold myself back in romantic relationship or just relationships in general. I feel like I do the same thing creatively, and I feel like I am quite a creative person, and I do have a lot of potential. But I find myself pouring myself into something and then pivoting, like, all the time. And I want to figure out a way how to just be more committed to a practice so that I can actually become a version of myself that I want to be, like what you said.

Jessica:            Yeah. So the practice—is it around anything specific, or is it just generally with things that are important to you?

Octavia:          I think mostly with creative work and sharing my creative work.

Jessica:            Here's the thing. When in a state of codependence, sharing your work with the world is so vulnerable. It feels like you have no skin.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So why would you do that? Why would you be like, "I have no skin. I will take the subway now"? Why would you do that, right? And so the part of sharing your work with the world—I want to say, yeah, I could see why you'd want to do that, and I could see why you wouldn't want to do that. And I don't actually want to encourage you to rush yourself to share your work with the world, because if three people like it and two people don't, it might just have you crumble in on yourself. So I'm going to discourage you focusing on the sharing part because, for you, cultivating self-possession and self-acceptance is connected to motivation.

                        And that brings us to the first part of your question, which is, "I start and stop." You have a Mars/Moon opposition. Yeah, you fucking start and stop. You do it, and then you get bored, and then you get distracted, and then you do something different. Right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. That's your nature.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            If there's something you're passionate about, you will have a burst of energy. And then, like all bursts, it's over.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's actually good for you to have multiple things happening at once that are functioning at different levels of passion. So there might be this one thing that's really important to you, and it functions at a really high level of passion, which means your bursts are hot, and then they deflate really quick. So, as long as you have one or two—and that's literal, one or two—other things that you're passionate about that you're doing at the same time—so let's say you are—is there something that—like, is it painting? Is it, like—

Octavia:          It's mostly, like, poetry—

Jessica:            Poetry.

Octavia:          —and photography these days.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. So, just as an example, let's say it's poetry and you're feeling really motivated and passionate about poetry right now. Once you have a moment where you're like, "I got a line down, and that line was delicious," take your camera and go. Choose it. You know what I mean? That's not you not sticking with things. It's you giving yourself permission—again, we're back to self-possession—giving yourself permission to say, "Okay. Writing one good line in a poem means I shift the energy. I open up to the visual world in this particular way with my camera, and then maybe I do other things. Then the poetry will come back." That's just your natural cycle.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            It is not bad. It is not good. It is your natural cycle. And you can try to force yourself to sit and fucking write a whole poem. How does that work?

Octavia:          Not well. Sometimes. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not.

Jessica:            Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not. You've got a strong Saturn, right? And so your strong Saturn means you're really good at editing. And so, when you force yourself to sit for too long in an activity where the energy burst isn't sustaining itself—is then you go into editorial mode, and so you start nitpicking your work, I'm assuming.

Octavia:          Yes. That's exactly what happens.

Jessica:            Yeah. So sometimes that's great, right? Sometimes it's like it makes it more precise. And sometimes you just fucking take the magic out of your own sails.

Octavia:          Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So my advice is to experiment with different ways of being. Sometimes, when your gut instincts tell you to sit with it, sit with it. Force yourself to sit. And every other time, get up and go. You have a Mars/Moon opposition, so it's physical. So get up and dance. Mars governs dancing. Do you like kickboxing or any kind of fighty stuff?

Octavia:          I like to weight-lift a lot.

Jessica:            Okay. Have some heavy shit in your writing studio or wherever you're writing, and lift some weights in between—like, you write a line; lift some fucking weights. That's what Mars/Moon opposition wants you to do. It's engage the body.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And when you go into your Virgonian mindscape, then you will often leave the body, not just because Virgo, because your Virgo stuff is in the twelfth, and your Saturn is in Pisces. So okay. Return to the body. Then you re-up your spoons, as it were. And that's a great practice for you, but it's not a sign of you—it's not baggage. The only baggage with this is that you have baggage about it. You have a value judgment in it.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm assuming your mom is like, "Do an action until it's completed. Then choose a new action."

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            That's your mom. You don't need to interject that belief. That's not you.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. The good news is this isn't a real problem. I mean, your relationship to it needs to evolve, but there's nothing wrong with this. This is just your creative process.

Octavia:          Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Octavia:          That feels good. Thank you. Yeah.

Jessica:            You're welcome. I'm so glad that that one was not the thing we needed to talk about since we didn't really fully talk about it.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay, my dear. I know that this is just barely scratch the surface. Do you have a shrink? Do you have a therapist?

Octavia:          I do. Yes.

Jessica:            Great. These topics are great to bring to therapy. Asking a therapist to help you identify your needs in relationships and find healthy, realistic ways of communicating your boundaries with other people, your preferences with other people—that's a great topic for therapy, and a therapist can really help you to unpack that stuff. And the reason why I'm bringing up a therapist is because that Saturn in the sixth house—it is really powerful for you to have a ritualistic thing that you return to where you talk about yourself, where you don't worry about what your friend thinks or if you're talking about yourself too long; you just know it's your space to talk to someone who's supposed to be taking care of you and helping you out. So therapy is really good for you in that way.

                        Ultimately, a somatic process is probably going to be the best for you. Have you already found that?

Octavia:          Yes. That is very true for me.

Jessica:            Yeah. Body-based stuff is really powerful for you. So, if you can find a therapist who has a somatic process, amazing. It's hard enough to find a regular therapist, though. So somatic is harder and harder. But if you find somebody whose practice is not somatic, you can say to them, "I find somatic process, bringing it back to the body, is really helpful. Is that something that you can work with me on?" And they can say yes or no. Again, that's practicing asking for what you need, sir, which I recommend strongly. Okay.

Octavia:          Yes.

Jessica:            I think it's really important for you to be able to practice just owning things that are not Virgo perfect, that are—I'm a Capricorn, so I get it, right, but are not that kind of perfect. There's imperfections, mistakes, failings—whatever we want to call them—that harm people, and those really need to be managed and dealt with. And then there's those that are maybe just a little embarrassing, that are not great; they're not tidy. And those we need to accept because if you accept it, then you don't waste all the fucking time and energy spinning your wheels on some shit that doesn't matter, ultimately. Right?

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think that this is an important thing for you in your personal relationships, giving yourself permission to just be a messy person who doesn't always know. This thing that I've just shared, this thing that we're just touching on, is the—it's foundational to boundaries. Being able to say, I won't," or, "I can't," or, "No," requires a couple layers of self-acceptance that have to exist before the request occurs. Does that make sense?

Octavia:          Yes.

Jessica:            And that's why, at this time, you have not been able to effectively just cosplay emotional codependency. You just know how to do it, right? Because you haven't given yourself permission to say, "No," or, "I can't," or, "I won't," or, "I don't want to." And when you give yourself permission to say no, it gets a lot easier to have a romantic dynamic with someone where it's super intimate. You can go there without it being a trauma pattern if you are more self-possessed, if you give yourself permission to have preferences and limitations and all that kind of good stuff.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            All right, my dear. Then I guess that is your damn reading.

Octavia:          Yeah. Wow. A lot to think about.

Jessica:            A lot to think about. I mean, that's the goal, is that you have things to think about. You're doing a great job, though. I mean, honestly, with these transits, your life could be much more complicated.

Octavia:          I mean, the past five years before this were literally a shit show, like an—this is the most stable I've been in maybe five years.

Jessica:            That's honestly amazing. It means you've been doing work because there's no way that this would be the most stable period of the last five years if you weren't doing work.

Octavia:          Honestly, thanks to you. A lot of that is in a huge part because of your work and because of your podcast. When I tell you that is currently still my weekly schedule—every Sunday, I'm sitting. I'm listening. I'm journaling. You have really guided me a lot, and I'm so grateful for this reading and just being able to interface with you a little bit.

Jessica:            Yeah. Fuck yeah. Well, I really appreciate you saying it's because of me, but for the record—and this is not me being humble—it's definitely because of you, because you definitely did the work. But I will also take your words as they are intended, and I super appreciate it.

Octavia:          You opened a door that I didn't know was there.

Jessica:            That's so great. That's the greatest thing I ever heard. And also, I didn't push you through it. You know what I mean? To be clear, you did the work.

Octavia:          Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think that that's really important, right, is owning you did the work. You know what I mean? And it's good to own it. It's just good to own it.

Octavia:          Thank you.

Jessica:            It is my pleasure.