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.

Welcome back to Ghost. This week's question comes from Confusing Premonitions, and it goes like this: "I have a confession. I'm a little bit psychic, but just a little bit. I became aware of it in my mid-20s, and it's super annoying. It's been irritating with men, the gender I'm attracted to. The first time it happened, I was 26. I locked eyes with someone, and blam, love at first sight, and yet, at the same time, a big, loud no. I've been honing it. I asked for my soul mate and was given the city he lived in, and I moved there, found him, and, of course, only to find soul mates don't equal life mates. But after that, I learned to refocus. Okay, Universe, I'm done with go-nowhere relationships. Let the next one be the last one, the life partner one. Well, the next time I heard the knowing, it told me he'd be a single dad, and yes, I found him. But I don't know what to do.

"COVID hit everyone hard, and this year has been challenging for the both of us. He's literally suffering from drug and alcohol abuse and severe mental health problems, exaggerations of problems from earlier, which he took out on me and the kids. I've talked to him about treating his mental health for years now. I'm sad, mad, more than anything confused. Like, what the fuck, Universe? These psychic flashes have led me to hypnosis, spiritual studies, and, of course, astrology. I know my Descendant is taking a beating. I know Saturn is transiting his twelfth house Aquarius. But more than anything, I don't know what to do. I keep trying to figure things out for myself, but there is this giant magnet keeping me in, even if I'm not in. I know relationships aren't the most fun. Typically, one's options are stay or go, but mine feel different. How do you deal with the knowing, and how do I work with it for my highest benefit? Any way to hone it, because at this time, it's incredibly arbitrary and not necessarily useful. And, for the record, the voice has never been wrong, just annoyingly vague. Gracias, amiga—The Unpsychic."

And The Unpsychic, a.k.a. Confusing Premonitions, was born December 9th, 1981, at 8:38 p.m. in Lansdale, PA. Okay. So, first of all, welcome to being psychic. Yeah, it's annoyingly vague.  That's just how that works. Anyone who thinks that psychics are hearing the voice of Morgan Freeman in our minds and we just know things firmly and clearly—I don't know. Maybe some psychics are like that. I'm not, and I don't know anyone else who is. Being psychic is subtle. It's super, super subtle, and it often is very vague. So that's just part and parcel of the thing.

If you want to hone and develop psychic skills, then do what you would do with any other thing. Build the muscle by using the muscle. Practice, practice, practice. Study. Practice, practice. Study. Practice. That's how you learn. That's how you get stronger. But once you start strengthening your psychic skills, then they're just going to be psychic skills, and they're going to start popping up everywhere, which you may or may not want.

But your real question is not exactly about your psychicness. It's about this dude is what I'm hearing. And I want to just speak to the stickiness between these two things and the dude himself because, listen, when a person is psychic, we are not meant to abandon common sense. If our guides, if our psychic perceptions, if astrology—whatever it is, if those things lead us in a direction, and then when we arrive at that destination or we end up in that direction and it is unhealthy and it is not working, and the problems we encounter are problems that do not help us to become more whole and to heal but instead to eat shit or be in some sort of Groundhog Day loop, then we don't need our guides to come in and say it's time to bounce. We have common sense for that.

And it's hard. It's hard for most people who are psychic or intuitive or lean in that direction to do that. And in particular, in your birth chart, you've got a Mercury/Sun/Neptune conjunction in the fifth house. This really is your issue because it inclines you to be very devotional in the way you love, and it's hard for you to have healthy boundaries. When your guidance points you towards a person or you feel that it points you towards a person, you may have a picture or a vision of what that person is meant to be for you. And when you have evidence that that person is not that thing, it can be hard for you to trust the evidence over your picture.

That's not just because you've got this conjunction. It's because it's in Sagittarius. So Sagittarian energies will often want to put the cart before the horse, if you know what I mean. And that's not Sun in Sagittarius, people, specifically/necessarily. It's just a lot of

Sagittarius in the chart will do that. You get real fixated on how things are supposed to be, and when they're not that way, it can be hard to accept. So that's something that's really important to acknowledge.

Now, if you actually fell in love with this person, then the psychic flash worked. If this person is not taking active steps to manage their addictions and their mental wellness, then that doesn't mean they couldn't be your life partner; it means they are not doing the things they would need to do to be a healthy life partner.

So you say in your question that you already learned the difference between a soul mate and a partner, that you asked for a soul mate and the Universe gave you someone who might be a great soul connection but was not compatible in a real, material way for this physical life we live. And I'm so glad that you named that. I love to hear that you learned that lesson. But I'm concerned that maybe you haven't learned that lesson, because here it is playing out.

If this person isn't able to be a kind and compatible partner to you, if he's taking out his problems on you and his children and he's not taking steps to get the help he needs so that not only he's healthier but so that you get to be happier and healthier, then how is he the right choice for you? And I know it's easy for me to say. I don't mean to be flippant with your love life. But you named your Descendant, girl, and you did the right thing by naming your Descendant because Uranus is square to your Ascendant, and it will be over in the spring of 2022.  And then Saturn is opposite your Ascendant and will be over in January of 2022.

So '21 has been marked by these two transits. When the Uranus square to the Ascendant occurs, it can lead to breakups. And the reason why it leads to breakups is because when you find that you cannot be authentically yourself, that you are not free, that you cannot grow in the way that you really want to grow and be the person you are in the here and now with your partner, it becomes intolerable. It becomes so difficult. And Uranus is a planet that governs sudden breaks. It might not be so sudden for you because, again, you have a very devotional way of loving, and it's hard for you to let go, but also because Saturn is sitting on top of your Descendant—it's been doing it off and on through 2021. It'll be done mid to late January of 2022.

The Saturn opposition to the Ascendant, a.k.a. the Saturn conjunction to the Descendant, confronts you with what is not working in your intimate relationships. Sounds like you're really clear about what's not working in this relationship. And just because your guides pointed you towards this man doesn't mean that you're supposed to stay once you have evidence that it's not working. Perhaps you leaving will be the wake-up call that this person needs to get the help he needs.

Maybe this person will be your partner down the line. But I've noticed that people use the term "partner" a lot these days. I'm a fan of the word, but when do you start calling someone your partner? To be a partner—that's a big deal. Is this guy your partner? Is he really walking through life with you as a partner, as an equal? I'm not hearing that from your question.

Following our guidance, listening to our psychic perceptions, is wise if you're psychic. If you've got clear guidance coming for you, yeah, listen to it. But we're not meant to listen to it at the expense of the evidence that we have. The way that your question has smooshed the issue of psychic perception and what to do with this dude, I think, is a really important smoosh because, really, your guides aren't wrong by having pointed you towards this person. And also, if you're not happy, you gotta go, girl. You gotta go.

And if you know enough about astrology to know that both Uranus and Saturn are messing with your Ascendant, a.k.a. hitting your Descendant, then hey now, you should know that it's time to get practical. It's time to deal with what isn't working so that you can have a life that does work for you. To me, this is a stay-or-go issue. If your guides want you to stay, then maybe you'll hear it really clearly, as you heard "Choose him" really clearly. But I'm guessing that that's not what's going to happen, based on your birth chart and also based on what you've described.

Now, I'm going to say one last thing here, which is that you are also going through a Pluto square to Pluto. Now, this is a generational transit. It happens to everyone, anywhere from their mid to late 30s to even their early 40s. But it's generally somewhere in the mid to late 30s that this transit occurs, and it's a tricky, sticky one. It confronts us with childhood patterns.

Whatever is going on with this man and the family that you share or created with him is likely to be a trigger to stuff from your own childhood. And it is important that you recognize that you have choices, maybe choices that your mom or your dad or someone else in your family didn't have. But it's on you to make them. And it's really hard to let go of someone that you care about and someone that you love. But when we choose others at our own expense, and especially when those people are not trying—they're not taking care of themselves so that they can take care of you and show up for you—that is almost never well starred.

I wish I had a lighter answer for you, but keep on connecting with your guidance. Keep on being open to your guidance. And also, truth be told, that doesn't mean you're going to get clearer or more frequent psychic knowledge. It just means keep on building that muscle, and at the same time, my dear, get real practical about what is and isn't working in your love life. You deserve to be happy and to be with a partner who can be a constructive, healthy part of your life.

It is really hard to have boundaries. It is especially hard to have boundaries with someone or walk away from someone that you care about that's really suffering and struggling. And I would say that if he's having mental health issues and he's got drug and alcohol abuse issues, he's probably really suffering. But sacrificing yourself to enable someone else, it's actually not the greatest move you can make. Sometimes consequences/boundaries are the most loving and supportive thing you can do to someone—also the most difficult.

I wish you the best of luck and strength for the path ahead.

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It's time to get astrological again. But I have to issue a formal apology about last week's episode, which was Episode 227. And the show 227 was one of my favorites growing up, and I cannot believe that I let Episode 227 pass without a formal nod to Jackée and all things 227. So I'm a humble person. I'm willing to acknowledge where I've gone grossly wrong.

Okay. This week, I just want to ready you. I want to ready you because there is a lot going on. Astrologically, last week was a beautiful pause in this month of really difficult astrology. And so, before I get into the details of this week's horoscope, I want to just touch back in on something I talked about a couple weeks ago, those little puppy talk rules. Remember puppy talk rules, where you check in with your self-talk, with the tone and content of your self-talk, to make a real effort to be kind to yourself? Because when we're kind to ourselves, we have greater resiliency, and it's really much easier to be kind and graceful with others, which makes life a lot easier. It doesn't mean that assholes will show their ass to you less often. It simply means that you have your own inner resources for coping with that and that they're stronger and more flexible and easier to access.

This week, it's going to be really useful for you to understand that what other people do is a reflection of them, and what you do is a reflection of you. It's really important to understand this, to believe this. When other people treat you like shit, that's a reflection of them and not your value, even if it's a pattern. And that doesn't mean we don't want to be humble and self-reflective and to really investigate our patterns as they present themselves in life. And each and every one of us has patterns, positive and negative, easy and difficult.

It's important that we understand what we're unconsciously getting out of it, what we're consciously getting out of it, how we're engaging with it. It's important to understand our own role to play because it's kind of the most that we have control over. But, all that said, life is difficult, right? We know that. There are difficult transits. There are difficult planets. And there are difficult people and difficult situations and difficult periods in life.

It is tempting to allow our pain, our struggles, our difficulties to define us. But at the end of the day, spiritually speaking, it is how we respond to these things that defines us. It really is. And this week is going to be quite testing of our compulsions and our most powerful feelings, our triggers, because we're going to see a lot of Pluto. Because of this, it's really important to stay in contact with yourself, to not abandon yourself. This takes emotional intelligence, not just mental intelligence, and it takes staying associated enough to assess or discern what you need or what your situation needs.

Okay. Let's get fucking astrological. We're looking at the week of October 17th through the 23rd of 2021. It starts intense. It starts on the 17th with an exact square between the Sun and Pluto. You're feeling it on the 16th. You'll feel it on the 18th. It's exact on the 17th. When the Sun forms a 90-degree angle, a.k.a. a square, to Pluto, shit gets intense. We tend to feel threatened. Challenges, whether they're coming from our own inner world or from our lives or from other people, we tend to take them really personally because the Sun is to do with identity. It's the sense of self. Where the Sun is concerned, you are the center and the most important thing. Or if your self-esteem is in the trash, then you are the least important thing.

But thinking you're the best and thinking you're the worst is a similar yet opposite form of self-obsession. When we're dealing with Pluto, we're dealing with obsession proper. Pluto governs that kind of deep and roiling part of the ocean. It's the undertow. It's the stuff that can pull you under. It is the energy that if we fight, we are engaging it. And when we engage it, we're engaging something that is more powerful than us, and it wins most of the damn time.

When we're dealing with a Sun square to Pluto transit, it's important to ask yourself, do I need to just let go? Do I need to just not engage with this? Is it in my highest good to walk away from this interaction right now, whether it's with the self or with someone else? If you have addictions or self-destructive habits or dynamics in your life, this will activate them, unfortunately. And the Sun square to Pluto can be a time where you either take actions or kind of reposition yourself in some meaningful way, even if it's a subtle way, to self-destructive, compulsive, addictive habits that you may have so that it effectively evolves.

The key is—and this is so important for this transit and basically the whole week because we're going to be dealing with Pluto all week. The key is, when you're struggling with something psychological, emotional, a childhood trigger, an inherited issue, it is generally not possible to transform or heal these things without first accepting yourself and accepting them. And I've said it once; I'll say it a million times: acceptance is not consent. Acceptance is self-awareness.

So you may be confronted with something that you need to accept before you can dismantle change, heal, evolve, whatever. The act of acceptance, it's not like a big doing act. It's more of a passive act, and it can look on the outside like you're not doing anything when you're actually working really hard. You're really striving. And so, again, you may be confronted with something like this in yourself or in your life. And when I say in your life, you may be dealing with someone else who is like, "I cannot process this with you right now," because they need to take care of themselves in a different way than you do. If that's the case, if you push them, you will not like what happens.

Respect other people's boundaries and respect your own goddamn boundaries. This is hard. It's super hard. And if you're bad at it, welcome to the club. It is a well-populated club. Don't beat yourself up for being bad at boundaries. Everyone's bad at boundaries. Instead, accept, "This is the way that I'm not great with boundaries yet, and I'm going to work on it in this way at this moment to the best of my ability." That's the goddamn move. You do not need to be perfect or even good. You just want to be trying.

Now, on a social level, Sun square to Pluto—I mean, drama. Again, when we're dealing with Pluto, we're dealing with systemic issues. We're dealing with power. And so, whether we're talking about corporations, isms, governments, people with power, we may see real bad behaviors coming out around this. And people typically act out under this transit when they're frightened. They don't walk around saying, "I'm scared. I'm going to be an asshole." They say, "I'm mad, and you're to blame."

But it's important to understand that most maladjusted behaviors, even from the people you hate the most, come out of pain and fear. It is valuable to be well boundaried, to take care of yourself, to not eat shit, and also to not compromise your humanity in the process, to not say, "I have a right to be healing, to be wrong, to be struggling, but other people don't." This is hard. Again, it's spiritual. But it's also—I mean, what's the point of spirituality if it doesn't help you in your day-to-day?

So people are likely to act out and be terrible. Hopefully you're not one of those people, but hey, you know what? You might be, especially if you're real scared. If you are, be humble. Make amends. Apologies are great, but amends are the embodiment of that apology. They're doing better. So make amends if you need to, and if you're dealing with people who are being bullshitty, then do what you need to do to take care of yourself. You don't always have to be, in the words of Brené Brown—and I know this is kind of the only thing I ever quote Brené Brown on, and it's maybe not her greatest quote in the world, but you don't have to be a jackass whisperer. You get to walk away.

So that brings us to the 18th. We're still under the influence of the Sun square to Pluto, and Mars is trine to Jupiter. I love this transit. And it just so happens that Mercury goes direct today. Lovely. So all of the frustrations and the difficulties that Mercury Retrograde always yields, they will be easing meaningfully at this time. Yes, it's still going to be in its retroshade until November 2nd, but joy, joy, we are out of Mercury Retrograde. That is a wonderful thing.

Now, the Mars trine to Jupiter, great frickin' transit. This is such a great transit for fortifying your resiliency. Now, this could be around the resiliency of your body, your goals, your sexuality, or your sex drive. This can be a time for healing of your ego and your pride. It could also be a time when you act arrogant and entitled and you let that entitled arrogance overlap with the Sun/Pluto square, and you just decide that you are more worthy as a human person than other people are and you're entitled to do whatever the fuck you want. Or you may encounter other people who've taken that approach to this energy.

But the best use of the Mars trine to Jupiter is to allow Jupiter to fortify Mars in a really healing and healthy and expansive way, not so that your ego becomes stronger in a toxically individualistic way, but instead so that it becomes healthier. And the Mars trine to Jupiter can be a time where we achieve some sort of meaningful progress around how we relate to our ego, how we express it, because Jupiter is so resilient and so much about growth and expansion. Ditto goes for your sex life and your sex drive and your relationship to your sexuality in general. Ditto goes for your ambitions.

That brings us to the next transit. It's super chill if you like sarcasm. If you don't like sarcasm, then it's a very serious transit. It is a Full Moon. We have a Full Moon in Aries on October 20th at exactly 7:57 a.m. Pacific Time. There's a lot to say about it, but I will remind you now, as I love to do, if you're interested in tracking the transits so that you know what's happening at a glance all month long, subscribe to my astrologer-tested and astrologer-approved transit-tracking tool, Astrology For Days. It's a web-based app, a.k.a. go to the damn website and subscribe there, astrologyfordays.com. It's a self-guided tool through astrology.

Okay. I digress. I digress. Mercury is direct, and the Moon is full in damn Aries. So what do we know? The Sun is in Libra, and it's conjunct Mars and opposite the Moon in Aries. The tension between Libra and Aries is the tension between us and me, relationships and the self or identity. And just to throw a little complexity, Mars, the Sun, and the Moon are all forming a T-square to Pluto. That's not great news for anyone, if I'm being honest with you. This is a very difficult T-square, and it's not made any easier by the fact that we have a Chiron/Mercury opposition in this Full Moon chart.

If you do want to see the chart of this Full Moon, you can just join me on Patreon. On the first of every month, I drop your month-ahead horoscope, and I include the charts for the New Moon and the Full Moon so you have it for your own reference.

Anyways, let's start with this T-square. With this Mars conjunction to the Sun, it's in Libra, right? But it's very Arian in nature. It kicks up aggression and defensiveness and ambition and a drive to move things forward, to have progress—that's Mars's action there—and, because the Sun is there, to take things really fucking personally, whether they go really well or they don't go well at all. Everything feels like it's about you one way or another. That's the damn Sun for you.

And the Sun is related to the will, and Mars is related to the ego. And so this can really be a conjunction—we talked about it last week, but in this chart, this conjunction is very me-focused. It's very, very "what I want, what I need, what I'm experiencing" focused. And because the Moon is opposite that, the Moon is essentially creating tension here between what I feel and what I need on an emotional level and what I am or what I want or what I feel I deserve. And this tension is actually served and helped by the fact that there's this lovely mutual reception where the ruling planet to the sign Aries is Mars, and it is conjunct the Sun. So there is this lovely conversation that is tense but still really valuable around what I need versus what I have to offer, what I need versus what you need, that kind of a thing.

And this opposition is forming a 90-degree angle, so Mars and the Sun and the Moon are all forming a 90-degree angle to Pluto, making Pluto the focal planet to this T-square. Pluto wants us to heal or be destroyed. Pluto is compulsive and transformational, and it is obsessive in quality. It is deep and intense. Because of this Pluto placement, there's likely to be some sort of serious tension that we're experiencing. Now, again, on a social level, I expect some drama. I expect something pretty big to go on this week in general, and certainly on and around the Full Moon, which just happens to be in the middle of the week, right?

Tensions are going to be running high, and that includes defensiveness, unfortunately. There's going to be a lot of defensiveness in the air. People are going to want an outlet for their frustrations. It will be very tempting for people, especially people who don't have a strong relationship to their own emotions and aren't comfortable taking responsibility for themselves—people are going to want to point fingers and blame others. And Pluto is all about power struggles. So, again, on a social level, this may create a new power struggle, but it's far more likely to trigger an existing power struggle. And this can be between groups of people. This can be between individuals and corporations or individuals and governments or groups in either of those things. You get the picture, right?

So what you want to, to the best of your ability, do is engage in a way that is constructive and not just a knee-jerk reaction from your emotions because the emotions that are likely to be triggered by this Full Moon are going to come from your own internal shit, your own patterns, and not necessarily from your most objective and healed places. From a spiritual perspective, that's what we want. We want your shit to come to the surface so that you can engage with it in new ways. That's how healing occurs. And on a psychological and experiential level, it's just a fucking difficult thing. It's difficult.

I'm not going to tell you that anger is a bad thing. You know I'm a big fan of anger. This week in general, and certainly the transits that I've talked to you about so far, can lead you to what feels like really righteous anger. But the key is to express it and experience it in a constructive way because you may be righteous and also act a damn fool or self-destruct or be mean and terrible to others, right? So this is one of those moments where we want to remember that intent is not equal to impact. And these transits that we're going through, and certainly this Full Moon, is really going to be a great time for you to get to experience that. That might be an experience you have with yourself or with someone else who had maybe a not bad intention and a terrible fucking impact, or some version of that.

This transit, again, 'tis a lot, my friends. 'Tis a lot. The thing that's going to be difficult this Full Moon is to listen. It's going to be difficult to listen to others. It's going to feel difficult to communicate in an effective way because, you may remember, I named that Mercury and Chiron are opposite. And this transit preoccupies us with themes of healing in our best-case scenario, or really a fixation on what isn't working and what has never worked. This line of thinking can be exactly what we need for healing, but it can also just lead us in circles like a dog chasing its tail. Don't be the dog chasing its tail.

When you find yourself caught up in obsessive cyclical thinking, when you're fixating on things that are outside of your control like how someone else feels about you or what motivated someone else to do a damn thing, this is when you want to just acknowledge you're doing it, accept that you're doing it, accept that it's not your business or it's not possible for you to know. And I want to just pull back and say, as a professional psychic that I am, we don't get to know how other people are feeling about us all the time. We must be able to tolerate the uncertainty and whatever it triggers. That's part of being a person. It's part of being a healthy, well-adjusted person, anyways.

So you want to be able to do those things and then focus your thinking in a neutral direction. If you're caught up in really negative or self-destructive or pointless obsessions, go neutral. Don't go positive. That's not likely to work. You want to go to something neutral if you can. This can help you to deactivate yourself a little bit so that you have greater perspective, and then you can return to the topic, if that's appropriate, with a healthier approach.

This Full Moon, it's likely to bring up some ouchies. Full Moons are a great time for releasing and clearing. Now, because of Pluto's presence in this chart, this is kind of turned up. The potential, the healing potential, for releasing and letting things go is super strong this Full Moon. It's so strong that you better be fucking careful what you ask for, and you want to make sure you're not putting negative intention into the world, because there's a lot of energy behind it, and Pluto tends to function like a boomerang. What you throw out there comes back at you.

If you're doing any kind of ritual work, if you're doing any kind of release work, you don't need to do anything too intense to have a powerful result. So my recommendation is to keep it simple. Keep it fundamental and simple. Don't get too all over the damn place, because this energy is powerful, and it doesn't need a lot of pushing from you in order to yield meaningful results. Everything all at once is actually not super healthy or helpful most of the time. So, to the best of your ability, stay connected to the simple fundamentals of what you want to release.

Okay. That brings us to the next exact transit of the week, and it's on the 21st. We have the Mars square to Pluto exact. Mars square to Pluto is combative. The last time this transit was exact was December 23rd/24th of 2020, and it was at the exact same degrees. So Pluto is at just about 24 degrees, just under 24 degrees, of Capricorn. And it's at 24 degrees of Capricorn right now because Pluto moves slowly. You may want to look at what was happening that week in the world, and expect some continuation—it doesn't have to be a replay—but some sort of continuation of those themes.

Mars and Pluto squared to each other is all about power struggles and confrontations. Generally speaking, the desire to gain control or manipulate situations and people gets triggered here. And, again, I'm speaking socially for a moment. There can be acts of oppression and ruthlessness and really corrupt motivations that we see acted out. And it's acted out; it's not just behind closed doors. It's acted out because of Mars. Mars is very physical. Mars is the planet that's associated with combat. In fact, Mars and Pluto are both related to warring in different ways. Mars is like hand-to-hand combat. It's bang bang, punch punch. And Pluto is like chemical warfare and nuclear shit. Not that I'm predicting those things will happen, but again, this is the energy that we're talking about. It doesn't mean that this literally will physically happen. What we can expect is that people with power will seek to maintain their power in any way they can, and potentially seek to abuse power in any way they can.

Now, if we look at this more on a personal—whatever was going on in your life and in yourself in that week of December, you can expect some sort of meaningful continuation of those themes. How much have you grown? What have you done in this period? You're going to have to, in some meaningful way, deal with it, especially if you have any planets or important points in your birth chart in a Cardinal sign at around 24 degrees. And a Cardinal sign is Aries, Libra, Cancer, or Capricorn. Those are the Cardinal babies.

Okay. So we already know that the Sun was square to Pluto. Last week, we had that Sun/Mars conjunction. We've had this Full Moon that is pointing to Pluto. And now we've got this Mars square to Pluto. This energy is intense, and what we can expect is to feel triggered or threatened or incredibly fucking irritated and really harmed. And I want to remind you here that while this transit can trigger actual harm for sure—that you cause or someone else causes—it is important to remember that triggers and traumas are different things and that pain and trauma can be different things. And it's not more or less valid, but it is important to understand the difference between these things so that we can remediate in the healthiest way, the most effective way possible. And remediate is an astrology word I just heard myself use. It just basically means cope with it in as healthy a way and as effective a way as possible.

There's so much talk in the world about trauma responses. And on the one hand, I'm really glad that we're talking about trauma and we're talking about trauma responses so much. On the other hand, once a concept spreads through the internet, it's a little uncontrolled. And I want to just acknowledge that you may have trauma and coping mechanisms, not trauma responses. And those coping mechanisms may or may not be effective and healthy.

As your past traumas get triggered by situations or dynamics that are not actually traumatizing you but more accurately pressing on past traumas and kind of revitalizing them in your system, it is valuable to be able to acknowledge, "Oh, wow. This is my coping mechanism for these feelings, for these thoughts, for this shit in my body, in my soul. And are these coping mechanisms working for me?" because if they're not working for you, that awareness that you can kind of only achieve when you get triggered—that awareness is the foundation upon which you can build new, better informed, more effective, healthier, easier-to-bear coping mechanisms.

That right there, that's—again, that's healing. And I know I keep on saying, "That's healing," but Pluto transits occur as a major facilitator for healing. And Pluto doesn't give a fuck if you get healed or destroyed because, either way, it's healing from a really broad-minded, spiritual perspective. Not from a human one, but from a broad one. And so this Mars square to Pluto is fucking difficult. It's a stressful transit. It can be a really traumatizing or triggering transit, especially in concert with all the other transits we're going through.

However, the potential for healing, for cultivating greater self-awareness, for moving beyond something you've been stuck around—these things are really great with these transits. Everybody has their issues. I've never seen a birth chart of an individual person, a situation, a corporation, a government, whatever it is—I have never seen a chart that is perfect. It doesn't exist. We're not supposed to be perfect. That's not the goal. I mean, if it's your goal, shit. That's rough. We don't get perfection in this life.

But what we do get is some measure of choice around how we're going to respond to our circumstances and our own reactions. Within that, it's really valuable to check your motivations. Is your primary motivation to avoid pain? Because if your primary motivation is to avoid pain—and that could look like avoiding drama or conflict. It could look like avoiding being wrong. It could look like avoiding being abandoned or left. If it's your primary motivation, then essentially what you're doing is fixating on that pain that you wish to avoid, whether that's a conscious fixation or an unconscious fixation.

When we get right with our motivations, when we come to a greater level of healing and healthiness with our motivations, then when these triggers occur—which they will by transit—then we tend to do a better job. And when things go sideways, as they do, we tend to be a little more resilient over time. So with that do as you will, my friends. But there is certainly a lot of fodder for journaling if you're in the market.

Okay. The last transit of the week is, on the 22nd, it's Scorpio season just in time for all this fucking heavy, intense energy. Scorpio is the zodiac sign, of course, that is ruled by the planet Pluto. There are some kinds of astrologers that would tell you it's Mars. I am not the fucking one. Pluto is definitely the ruling planet of Scorpio in the way that I work. We have all this fucking Pluto shit all week long, and then it's Scorpio season on the 22nd.

It is likely to be a pretty intense Scorpio season. What that means is a lot of things, but you know I like to focus on the healing shit, so here I go. Throughout Scorpio season, it's going to be really important that you manage your fixations, that you take responsibility for your fixations, so that you're not obsessing on things that are really unhealthy or really just having you walk into the same wall over and over and over again. This Scorpio season, I'm just going to say as a medium, if you are an empath or a medium, do not forget we're in a global pandemic. It is really important to do boundary work and to protect yourself energetically because there is a great deal of suffering and death. I mean, there always is in life and in the world, but certainly during a global pandemic. It's a lot.

So make sure to do your energy boundaries. I've dropped a bunch of episodes about energy boundaries, probably a little bit more in 2020 than this year. So feel free to use ye olde Google machine to find them, or go to my website and just scroll through past episodes, because self-care—it's a choice. When you feel like shit, ironically, is when it's the hardest to choose it. As the great healer Nikki Sacchi says, don't let fear turn you into a muggle. When you feel frightened, when you feel overwhelmed, that's when you want to remember that you are a magical fucking being and that you have tools and you have resources, and you just have to remember to use them, even if it's imperfect.

Now, my loves, if you want to get more into le deep woo, join me over on Patreon, where I talk about animal communication, mediumship, tarot. I get hella woo—and, of course, astrology, astrology, astrology. You can always find me on Patreon at patreon.com/jessicalanyadoo. It's always linked in show notes. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, please do. It makes a huge difference.

And one last little plug. If you haven't already gotten my book, Astrology for Real Relationships, you're in for a damn treat. If you buy the paper book, it's gorgeous. I love the illustrations. But, also, there's an audiobook version. So if you want to hear this old voice, I'll read you the book. I'll read it to you special, you know. And in case you don't know, Astrology for Real Relationships goes through all of the planets, and it doesn't just focus on heterotypical romantic relationships. There's a section on friendship. There's a section on early-stages dating, like hooking up and when you're not quite sure what's going on with someone, and then a section on long-term relationships. It's inclusive of so many ways of being that are human, just human, like me and you. Right? I mean, I don't know. I'm guessing there's some aliens in the mix out there, but we'll just call ourselves human to make things easy.

Okay. Thank you for joining me here on Ghost this week and every week. I know it's nerdy—I know it's nerdy, but I fucking love you guys. And I really love making this podcast. So thanks for making it possible. I'll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.