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.

This week I have a question from Instashame, and she says, “I love your podcast and your Instagram, and that is why I turn to you for advice on my severe case of instashame. Almost every time I’m on the platform, I see a friend’s business skyrocket. In the past months, I was taken by surprise by the pain her posts trigger, every single time I come across them. I’m talking violent bouts of red-hot jealousy, self-doubt, and even complete despair about my own professional and financial possibilities. It can take me days to muster up the clarity and courage to put myself out there again. I used to love my friends, my work, and The Gram. Now my once respected friend is my secret frenemy. I feel like a pathetic loser, and just thinking of The Gram is icky. 

I have prayed. I have listened within. I have confronted my inner child. I’ve upped my business game, and, boy, have I saged myself with European sage from my garden, of course, because I listen to you. I even started decreasing contact with her and our circle of friends and The Gram in hopes of getting a grip on my bruised ego, my toxicity, and my miserly attitude. But the shame lingers. I feel defeated and silenced and passive aggressive. 

I’m right here feeling my feels, willingly and in copious amounts, but is there something more I can do? Does my horoscope perhaps point to where I can begin to feed my work and my self-image, so The Gram doesn’t send me in into crippling instapain anymore? With much gratitude for your insights and all the things I’ve already learned from you, Red Hot Instashame. P.S. please don’t share my birth info. Thanks.”

So Instashame, I feel your instapain. I think most of us do. Pretty much anyone who’s on social media has experienced some version to some extent of something like this. You know, social media, in particular any platform that tracks likes and reports how many people liked or engaged with a post, is set up to have us compare ourselves to others. It is a curated performance putting ourselves out there on social media. 

You’re not alone. I mean, I think you know you’re not alone, Instashame, and I think you’re doing all the rights things—I mean, you’re literally doing all the right things. You’re doing the work, and that is wonderful. 

I'm going to break it down in the context of your birth chart, but what you can do, what anyone can do is every week, take 48 hours off or 24 hours off—just schedule it. Eventually, if you do have a business or you do have social contacts, people will know that oh, she’s just not on it on the weekend, or oh, Wednesdays I never really hear from this person, or they don’t respond to my DMs yet because they haven’t seen them. So you have some agency with how much you engage with social media. 

Part of what’s happening right now, because you’re so activated about this topic, is you don’t feel, from what I’m reading, like you have a clear choice that is coming from a self-care standpoint. It’s more like you’re doing triage. You’re on an emergency run trying to kind of make sure that you don’t bleed out with shame and resentment and all kinds of ugly, fucked up feelings. You’re very self-aware that your feelings are toxic, and they’re passive aggressive, and it’s not how you want to be. And I’m very pleased to hear that. 

But let’s get into the astrology of why this is happening. Now, I’ll let you know whenever I hear a question that involves the word shame or resentment, I know we’re looking at Pluto. I want to just start with that because Pluto does govern shame and resentment. So I want to encourage you, as much as possible, to really track the tone you use when talking to yourself. 

In a previous episode I talked about the puppy talk rule, so I’m going to institute puppy talk rules to you, my friend, before we get into your birth chart. Think about the cutest puppy you can think of. If you’re a cat person, think about the cutest cat you can think of. If you don’t like animals, but you love human babies, think about the sweetest little baby face. And only talk to yourself in the same tone of voice and with the same language that you would talk to that adorable puppy/kitten/baby. Okay. 

This is not a way to be like baby talking yourself. This is a way to recognize that in your self-talk you are creating the foundation for your attitudes, feelings, and actions. If you can find ways of engaging with your thoughts and feelings kindly and generously and responsibly, then it becomes easier to engage with your Instagram habits or with your friends or with your business and your goals in that same way as well. So it’s a gift that keeps on giving. It’s a growth thing, my friend. It’s a growth thing. 

Let’s get astrological. So, of course, I look for Pluto, and low and behold you are going through a really difficult Pluto transit right now. You are currently going through something called Saturn square to Pluto. Now, everybody goes through Saturn square to Pluto twice every 29 years, as all Saturn squares happen twice every 29 years, just FYI. 

Saturn is squaring Pluto now, but it is also opposing your Midheaven. And in your birth chart you have a Pluto square to your Midheaven. So what this means is this tendency that you have to value your external success and markers of external success disproportionately highly in ways that actually don’t serve you—this is part of your nature. Pluto square the Midheaven in the birth chart does that. 

Just a few short years ago and for all of time before that, that would be between you and the people who are directly impacted by your career, maybe social conservations. But now, because of social media, it’s kind of wrapped up—your brand is like a whole thing now. It’s a whole Goddamned thing. 

The good news is the situation is triggering the opportunity to heal something that has been within you your whole life. That is from either something you experienced as a kid or from something you witnessed in your parents as a kid, and it’s time for it to go. It’s time for it to transform. 

And so, when we have Pluto, we have shame. And when we have Saturn, and again, Saturn is the transiting planet, we have the opportunity to step into responsibility with humility or to feel guilty and to double down. Happily, you are striving to have humility and take responsibility instead of doubling down, although I imagine you are also doing that as well. 

The bad news is Saturn will be fucking with you through all of 2020, okay. And it’s not an easy couple of transits you’re going through. Saturn opposite the Midheaven, Saturn square Pluto—they’re both difficult transits because they force you to really look at your own psychology, your own attitudes, and how it relates to your identity and your career. 

And on top of that, Saturn governs scarcity. It governs this feeling that there’s not enough for me. So if there’s not enough for me, and you’re thriving, then you’re taking from me. But it’s not true. There’s enough for all of us. Your friend’s failure, your friend’s success has nothing to do with your success or your failure. Whether or not you thought you were successful until you saw her business skyrocket, it doesn’t mean you’re less successful just because she’s more successful than you right now, in objective terms. 

We don’t want to compare ourselves to others because it will always invite misery but also, because all things ebb and flow. None of her life path means anything about your life path, unless you choose to make it about that. When we look sideways and we lose energy comparing ourselves to others, it causes us a great deal of pain, and it does nothing to advance our cause. It does not take anything from anyone else; it just screws up the flow of your own life. 

Now, again, I think you know all this stuff. You’re doing all the right things. You’re taking all the right steps, and you’re probably not seeing a whole lot of development or growth with this because Saturn is slow. You plant a seed, and then nothing happens. You water the part of the ground where you planted the seed, and nothing happens. And then, eventually, tiny little nothing green thing comes through. What is that? Can’t eat that. That’s not a plant. That’s not a tree. Takes for damn ever for something to grow. 

I live in California, and five years ago I planted a pomegranate tree—that’s right. And it was not until last year that I had my first glorious pomegranate that I could pluck from the tree. It was amazing. And I cut it open, joy in my heart, lightness in my step, and it tasted like garbage. It was a garbage pomegranate, okay. But it will take a couple of years for the fruit to be sweet. 

Growth takes time. To grow, to develop, it takes time. And these Saturn transits are going to take a year. And it’s off and on throughout the year, but it’s a year. And so, the opportunity here is for you to take steps and to give yourself permission to be in struggle with it. I’m sorry. 

Additionally, starting in January of 2019, you entered into a very testing Pluto transit. And so, you said that this has been going on for a few months, but I can’t help but wonder if this has actually been going on for closer to a year. Because Pluto started to square your Ascendant in January of 2019. It will be over on December 26th of 2020, so you got all of this year, again, to deal with this stupid transit, and I’ll tell you what it means in a moment. 

But before I do, I’ll also say, December 29th through January 22nd, Saturn was squaring your Ascendant. So we had, in December, at the end of December, both of these planets, Saturn and Pluto, forming a difficult aspect, a square, to your Ascendant from the bottom of the chart. And so, if you weren’t feeling these kind of compulsive comparison feelings and this instashame and instapain all year in 2019, then it probably started in December when Saturn came and joined Pluto. 

Having Saturn and Pluto at the bottom of the chart, whether or not it’s forming an actual transit to anything important in your birth chart, there’s this feeling of pressure loaded up on your roots. In other words, it can manifest as issues at home, in your home life. That could be like your apartment or your house. It could be in your roommate situation or in your family, your chosen family situation—even your family of origin can bring up struggle and issues that demand to be dealt with. 

I would imagine because Saturn and Pluto are at the bottom of your chart that you are also dealing with a dynamic, either in your thoughts and feelings or in your relationship to this woman or to what she represents or to your group of friends or what they represent, that is on some level mimicking or mirroring a childhood dynamic—either something you witnessed between family members, something that your parents experienced when they were growing up, or something you experienced as a child. So that’s just Saturn and Pluto at the bottom of the chart stuff. 

Now, the transit of Pluto square the Ascendant—and I should say that your Ascendant has a Pluto conjunction to it, so while these transits aren’t specifically about your Pluto, they are hitting your Pluto at the same time. They are engaging the compulsiveness and the resentfulness and the competitiveness and the anger and the shame of Pluto. Also, the ambition and the capacity to transform and to heal of Pluto. 

What happens when Pluto forms a square to the Ascendant is deep, pervasive Plutonian issues start to come up around your identity. And because your identity, aka your Ascendant, is in Libra, it does have a lot to do with your relationships and what you feel they reflect about you, either to the world or to yourself. 

Libra Rising tends to be a bit passive aggressive simply because it’s hard for you to be assertive in a way that is unpleasant or conflictual. It’s uncomfortable for you. Now, this transit is trying to get you to step into power. Power isn’t power over. Power is the capacity to step up with responsibility. It is the capacity to be in your wholeness—to be your full self without compromise that is not unhealthy or unwarranted. 

Power is a complicated thing, and it looks different ways in different situations and for different people—different contexts. But stepping into your power is a difficult thing to do without defense, without resentment, without guilt, or without ignoring the needs of others. And this is where you are struggling to find your sweet spot—what is healthy and appropriate for you. It is important that you understand that a rising tide lifts all ships. 

Now, unfortunately, when Saturn came and squared the Ascendant what happened was you started to feel this great scarcity, like there wasn’t enough for you. Because Saturn does govern scarcity and depression. It makes you feel alone. So I’m going to give you homework, my friend. Because these transits are going to last you throughout the year, so you can’t just will for this to go away. You’re doing all the right work. You’re doing all the right work. I’m very, very proud of you. 

There’s one thing I would add to your mix: where are you going to put that anger, girl? Where are you going to put your anger? Find a place to bring your rage—not to conceptualize it. Not to make peace with it. Not to understand it, but to release it—to experience it and release it. Find something that gives you a sense of catharsis. You know, punch a heavy bag—ooph, fun. But find something that you can do where you don’t have to apologize, you don’t have to engage with other people, but you get to experience and express your rage, your anger. You get to experience and express it, like off-gassing it. 

I want to encourage you to engage that part of you because you are entitled to feel the full spectrum of your emotions, my dear. You are actually entitled to feel all forms of pain that you feel. We get into trouble when we repress or over express our emotions. Where is the line between I feel shitty feelings, and this is toxic? If it is piousness to your system, as you name it, and piousness potentially to other people’s systems, then find a way to off-gas it, to release it, to get rid of it. You can. It is possible. It is slow. It is painful, and it is a little scary, but I really urge you to do it. 

Use your body. Your body is actually part of your psyche. It’s part of your spiritual vehicle. It’s part of your heart. Use your body as a point of release for gross, awful, shameful, shitty feelings. It helps. There’s no magic bullet here, but it really helps. 

Now, my dear, I am very grateful that you wrote me this question. I hope you continue to do the work and that you’re patient with your progress. And if this ends up having you change the way that you socialize a little bit, making you maybe more of a one-on-one friend for a little while, making you a little bit more self-aware about what you share and how much you share and when you hang out, that’s actually not a bad thing. 

And it’s not just about this friend and her thriving Instagram business. It’s about your transits, and it’s about your own development, so always be curious about what you can learn from what you’re experiencing and craving in your life. You’ve got this. You’ve got this—not easily, not quickly, but you’ve got this. 

The Wet’suwet’en Nation in Northern British Colombia, Canada, need our help. We have a situation very similar to Standing Rock. The five highest ranked hereditary chiefs who represent The Nation are unanimously against the construction of a natural gas pipeline through their territory. 

Wet’suwet’en families who live in the path of construction have halted the project, however the government continues to support the pipeline construction. The Canadian government is literally breaking their own laws as well as international law protecting indigenous human rights. Coastal Gaslink is aware of the laws being broken and is counting on The Nation not being able to afford the legal costs of taking them to court for the ten to fifteen years that it will likely take. 

Our greatest strength right now is our united effort to show our support across social media and to raise awareness in our own communities. Please follow and repost Gidimten Check Point on Instagram. That’s G-I-D-I-M-T-E-N underscore checkpoint. And also, please consider donating to the legal fund or to the camp. Visit yintahaccess.com for more information. Y-I-N-T-A-H-A-C-C-E-S-S.com. Every post, every single person who speaks up on this matters. Thank you.

It's time to strap yourself in, puppies, because we have quite a week ahead of us, and I got a lot to talk about. I promised you that I would talk more about the transits that you started to feel on the Saturday, even the Friday 6th and 7th, but you’re now feeling exact on the 8th. We have a Sun conjunction to Neptune and a Venus conjunction to Uranus. 

Now, the combination of both of these transits is anxious. It’s jumpy. It can be defensive. It can be paranoid. What is likely to happen at this time is you feel really off. And the way that you feel off can trigger disassociation, anxiety—basically, Neptune brings up what you don’t know, and a lot of it is about yourself because of the Sun’s involvement. But because Uranus is involved and Venus, it’s also going to bring up relationship issues, uncertainty around how you relate and who you relate to, what you care about, what others care about. 

And so, if you find that other people are acting weird or doing things that don’t really make sense, try not to take it personally. And if you can, I would encourage you to put off dealing with it for a couple of days, until after this transit and, honestly, the Full Moon on the 9th passes. 

This is not a great time for coming to clarity about things because you and me and everyone else doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. We are all likely to respond to this energy in a way that is a little out of character or surprising or inconsistent or just weird. And so, if you can make efforts to accept that everyone’s in it, and that doesn’t mean you’re isolated, and it doesn’t mean you’re screwed; it means everyone’s in it, and nobody knows what they’re doing. If you can accept that things are not fair, they’re not always about you—even things that happen to you from other people very specifically are not even always about you. 

We all have a tendency to act in ways that are not consistent with how we mean to be when we’re scared, when we’re paranoid, when we’re anxious, when we’re restless, and those are the exact energies that are at play. And these transits are likely to impact your relationships, and not in the most awesome way of all the awesome ways in the world, I am afraid. I am so sorry. 

You may be questioning what am I even doing? Am I abandoning myself? Am I, like, actually not getting what I need at all? Or you might go in the other direction: am I asking for too much? Am I screwing something else? This question of is this too much or not enough is really compelling around this date. 

On the 9th, we have a little bit of good news because Mercury goes Station Direct. It is no longer Retrograding—yay us. Yay us. It’s been a little annoying, but the other thing that happens on the 9th is we have a Full Moon in Virgo. It’s at 19 degrees, 37 minutes. That Full Moon will be exact at 10:48 a.m., Pacific Time. 

A couple words on this on a brief, and then we get real specific. So Full Moons always happen when the Sun and Moon are exactly opposite each other. We have generally around one Full Moon per sign, per year. This one is in Virgo, just in time for the Coronavirus to be on everyone’s minds globally, really. And Virgo is the sign that governs many things, including, physical health, handwashing, and other mundane day to day self-maintenance details. 

This is really important for us to be talking about on a lot of levels for a lot of reasons, but Full Moons are always a time when emotions come to surface. It’s always a time where we are meant to confront an emotional cycle. And that emotional cycle might be in how you relate to a thought pattern. That emotional cycle might be in a relationship. It might be in a dynamic that you have or simply how you relate to yourself. It could be very subtle. It could be very deep and very external. Nobody knows. I mean, somebody knows, but we would have to look at your personal birth chart to know what’s going to happen for you. 

This damn Full Moon is being directly influenced by these other transits I was talking to you about. And the reason why that is is because while the Sun/Neptune and the Venus/Uranus transit are exact on the 8th, they are still very much active on the 9th. And this is no joke. My friends, my friends, my friends, this is no joke. 

So what this means is that Full Moon is also opposite Neptune. And Sun conjunction to Neptune with a Moon opposition to Neptune and the Sun is going to kick up paranoia. It’s going to kick up anxiety and uncertainty, ambiguity and, depending on your nature, dissociation. Some people respond by getting hyper vigilant to anxiety like this and other people respond by checking the fuck out. You know who you are. 

So what you do is going to be consistent with your nature, probably, unless Uranus really gets to you and you do something out of character. So I want to just really ground you into, first of all, this too shall pass. This is not forever. If you can cultivate a willingness to be with your emotions, to be in your feelings, that would be great. It wouldn’t be easy. It won’t be easy. It’s not easy. 

In this chart we still have four big planets in Capricorn. We have Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn in that order in Capricorn. And as you know, Capricorn is a sign related to the material world, hierarchies, the kind of structural institution of religion, the structural institution of government or corporations and the archetypes and specific people that run them, right. That’s Capricorn stuff for you on a societal level. On a personal level, it’s how you manage your life. It’s how you take responsibility for your actions or your inaction. The combination here is really material—really material. 

I want to give you a little ritual, a little something to do on the Full Moon. And if you can’t do it on the 9th, that’s cool—do it a different time if this resonates for you. And if you can do it on the 9th, it’s going to have more energy behind it with the Full Moon. 

Do not call things in on a Full Moon. Do not manifest on a Full Moon. A Full Moon is a time for endings and closure. So you want to release during this time instead of call in during this time. 

My little exercise for you to do is really simple. It’s get grounded, get present, create physical space—because this is a Full Moon in Virgo, so we want to really focus on the physical. We want physical space to have some silence—maybe you’re going to have music, something that really engages you and allows you to kind of blot out the world, because, man, does Virgo like to be alone with itself. And then, you’re going to get paper and pen. 

Me, I’m a wordsy girl, so I would use words, but you might be more of a visual processor, so you can draw. You can create images. You can collage, or whatever it is that works for you and your processing style. Set the intention that you’re going to write or name in whatever way what no longer serves you. And I want you to think of this in these following categories: what’s out of your control but you’ve been tracking. What you’re feeling paranoid about or anxious about. Where you feel weak, and what’s no longer serving you. Play with these little categories. You can write lists. I’m a Capricorn; I like a list. If you’re not into lists, you can just use these prompts as a guide. 

What this exercise is is of externalizing and naming these things, so that you can set the intent that you’re going to let go. And if you’re totally ready to let go of these things, what you might do is take, when you’re done, a black Sharpie and black it out and then tear it up to pieces. That’s a fun exercise. I love doing that on Full Moons or when I’m trying to release things in general. 

If you’re not ready to let go of those things because it doesn’t feel right—you’re just not there, that’s okay. What you can then do is stick it in a Ziplock or some sort of bag, some sort of receptacle and stick it in the freezer. Put it on ice for a month and come back to it. You can stick it on your altar, if you have one. And when you stick it on your altar, set the intention that you want to bring awareness to the ways in which you are invested in or attached to what’s no longer serving you, and that awareness will allow you to keep on checking back in and re-orienting your attachments, re-orienting your thoughts and your feelings. 

And if what I’ve just said sparks some sort of idea for you, or if you want to fuck with it, fuck with it. Do whatever helps you. The energy of this particular Full Moon really supports it. 

So again, I just want to say what is important with this Full Moon is releasing. But it’s not just releasing any old thing; it’s really looking within and releasing the thoughts, the feelings, the attachments, the compulsions, the mental and emotional habits that are inhibiting your best self or your happiness or, dare I say, your peace. 

Connected to this, absolutely, is stuff around the Coronavirus. And it’s not that I’m saying the Full Moon is directly related to the Coronavirus itself because this disease is a much larger thing than what this Full Moon will do astrologically. But how you respond to a health crisis that impacts all of us is directly connected to this Full Moon. As we see this kind of global spread of COVID-19, Coronavirus—it’s called both of those things—it is really important to not just think of your own physical health, but to consider the health of the people around you. 

I don’t just mean the people you choose to interact with, but to keep in mind there are many people who are immunocompromised, people who are sick, who are recovering. There are many older people who just don’t have strong immune systems, right. And we must think in terms of protecting the most vulnerable amongst us and not just you and me and the person you’re sitting next to that you’re like, “Oh, everyone’s fine. Everyone’s going to be fine.” Because from what we understand so far, people can catch it from touching something in public and not just from having someone spit in their mouth, right. 

It’s important to consider others on a material level. And that doesn’t mean going into hypochondria, and it doesn’t mean being paranoid or isolating yourself in a chamber. It means being considerate. And I’m going to talk more about this is a minute. But as we talk about consideration, I want to bring us to March 11th, where we have a Sun sextile to Jupiter. And this particular transit, on kind of a social level, is related to the ability to consider others, the ability to consider not just others, but other cultures—to consider things in a global context.  And that’s really important and, honestly, really wonderful. 

Whenever you hear me say that there’s going to be a sextile, you can instantly know that there is the potential for dynamic exchange and growth or expansion or creativity between the planets involved in that sextile. The sextile between the Sun and Jupiter is really lovely. And on a personal level, what you may see is simply that the connections you’re trying to make, the growth you’re trying to achieve, makes some form of progress on this day. 

So if the past several days have been really stressing you out and you’ve been not doing great—your emotional state is meh, this is a great day to expect a little bit of progress. All meaningful changes come from lots of little seemingly inconsequential changes. Do not minimize or explain away your small achievements or accomplishments. This is a time to not only grow, but to validate and to value the growth that you are achieving. And sometimes the best achievement you have is you didn’t fuck it up today, or it didn’t go sideways on you, and that’s great. Hey, that’s great. Don’t minimize your own evolution, regardless of the speed that your evolution is taking or the speed of the person’s evolution next to you is taking, right. 

Now, on the 14th, and this is the last transit of this week, we’ve got another couple of sextiles. We’ve got Mars sextile to Neptune and the Sun sextile to Pluto. This is a little tricky—let me tell you why. Because, as I just said, sextiles are dynamic. We love dynamic. We’re huge fans of dynamic. Growth? Yes, please. Thank you. May I have another? 

However, Mars and Neptune are a little bit tricky together. Mars is the ego, and Neptune is egolessness. The potential here on the negative of these two sextiles occurring exactly on the 14th is that we could see careless behavior. We could see careless behavior, in particular, from masculine or male energies or types or archetypes in power. And I say male or masculine archetypes because we’re looking at Mars and power because of Pluto. 

What we want to really be on the lookout for is if you feel good, do you act a mess? Or if someone else is having a good couple of days, do they start making proclamations that are a mess? Do you see what I’m saying? 

I have a little bit of a funny feeling about these two transits, which are on paper really lovely transits. And so, I want to really encourage you to make sure that you don’t, essentially, pull a George Costanza. If you don’t know who George Costanza is, I simply cannot help you, my friend. But don’t pull a George Costanza, where you’re either the biggest piece of poop at the bottom of a person’s shoe or arrogant and just stop listening. 

The way that these sextiles, these particular sextiles will help you to thrive the most is if you don’t only use it to advance yourself in whatever way, but you use it to listen better. And I’m not talking about listening analytically—that’s more Virgo Moon stuff. This is viscerally. It’s paying attention to the actions of others, listening to your body’s information. What is your body saying? Trusting in your ability to make connections, and if you have cultivated trust with people or situations or resources, continuing to trust them around this date. 

You want to be able to make connections, but those connections are not meant to be totally separate from whatever it was that was going on for you earlier this week. Everything is connected. Everything is connected. Bring your self-awareness and your vulnerability and your strength and your willingness to kind of move up and on and forward; you want to bring them altogether. And what that might do is kind of slow down your ability to move on, or it might silence a narrative that you’re really attached to but doesn’t serve you. You want to be open to whatever it means for you. Because in being open you have greatest potential for growth, you have the greatest potential for advancement—personal advancement or helping to advance something in the world or in a relationship or outside of you that needs to mobilize and move forward. 

Now, I want to say a few more words about the Coronavirus. But associated with that, my friends, if you are getting the bulk of your information about the virus from people like me, you know, astrologers, spiritual people, people on social media, then I want to re-direct you because this is a really valuable time to be listening to scientists. Trust science. I’m going to put in the show notes of this episode a bunch of resources that I think are really valuable. 

From an astrological perspective, the Coronavirus is going to be impactful. It is intertwined with globalism, and there is an astrology to this virus. But it is not the time to listen to astrologers on this, primarily. So I’m not going to get into the astrology of this because I don’t know how useful it is. But I do think what is useful is to think like a global citizen—consider other people and not just yourself. 

We are all in society together, and there are people who are immune compromised. We want to be really, really conscientious around this. So I want to give you some of my hot takes—really practical. Again, listen to scientists and doctors. If you are going to wear a mask, it should be N95 rated. Here’s a fun fact, though: those masks have to be fitted to your face in order to be really reliable. And if you’re not sick, you don’t need to be wearing them. That’s what the experts are saying. 

So on a practical level—and, again, my friends, trust me, this is influenced by astrology—don’t be a hoarder. There is no energetic, spiritual flow in hoarding. Don’t hoard your resources—have as much as you need, prepare. This is a good time to prepare. This is a good time to have what the experts are saying is three weeks of food and water stored—like an emergency store. And a lot of people can’t afford that or don’t have the physical space in their homes to do that—do what you can. 

If you’re the kind of person who does have the financial resources to do that or the physical space to store extra rice and beans and whatever else you might put in your emergency kits, and you can have extra, set the intention that you’re going to be willing to share. This is really important as a society that we are thinking as a community and not just about our individual needs. 

Wash your damn hands. Wash your hands—20 seconds of washing your hands. There’s videos all over the internet about the songs you can sing as you wash. It’s the happy birthday song twice. It’s the chorus to Raspberry Beret. If you’re going to be in public, and you’re going to be touching stuff, don’t touch your face. Don’t touch your mouth. Don’t touch your nose and wash your hands. And think about boosting your immune system. Think about what you can do. Vitamin C is a really simple one. Understand that your health is not just about you—if you ever leave the house, it is about the world around you as well. 

Now, I’m going to give you a spiritual take on how to relate to these things because many people, when they think about prepping, you know, like having emergency supplies, it brings up terrible fear for them. Many people when they think about engaging with something like a virus, where it’s not really clear how it’s spreading, and it’s not really clear how destructive it’s going to be for human life and for the economy, it just sparks fear and anxiety, which actually doesn’t bring out the best in us, right. 

I’m going to give you this little spiritual homework, and it is this: turn all of your routines into rituals. What that looks like is when you are washing your hands for those 20 seconds, something you can do other than the happy birthday song times two is a prayer. Find a mantra or a prayer that affirms your wellness and the wellness of others, that affirms something that you’ve been working on. Turn this into a time of spiritual reflection or more specifically, reinforcement. Reinforce spiritual concepts or spiritual values that are important to you. That might look like aligning yourself with the truth or calling something in or sending something out—whatever feels right for you. 

What I want this to be for you is a time for re-affirming your investment in your wellness, but also the wellness of others—finding your agency. If you do decide to get emergency supplies, which, honestly, I have done. I live in the Bay Area where we have earthquakes, so it’s not outside of how I was already thinking and how I already lived. If you do decide to get emergency supplies, it doesn’t have to be acting out of terror or investing in something negative. It can be an investment in your own wellness and your ability to care for others. 

Sharing is a spiritual value. Hoarding is a block to spiritual value. And I don’t mean to shame people who have hoarding behaviors or tendencies—it’s not about that. It’s about recognizing that when we have flow, things can come and go: they ebb and flow, right. But when we don’t have flow, and when we put something away and then we get more and more and more of that thing, what happens is we stop the flow. We don’t even get to kind of engage with the things we have because we’ve got too much of that thing, so it becomes too dense. 

Now, I know that these are some scary times, and I think that how we relate to each other—which is something I talk about on the podcast all the time, how we’re all in this together. This virus is a really meaningful and material opportunity to see how that is true. How democratic is this virus? Very, very democratic: anyone can get it anywhere in the world. That’s what’s happening. 

Being willing and able to engage with it, not just for yourself and your immediate family or friends, but with consideration for the world around you, that right there is so much of what we’ve been talking about on this show. So, yeah, be considerate. Stay associated. Do your best. Don’t torture yourself with the stress of what you cannot control, what you cannot know, but take pro-active action around what you do know and what you can control. That’s the move, my loves. That’s the GD move. GD—means Goddamn. 

If you want more content, I have a Patreon page, and I have a monthly Healing Helper series. Sometimes it’s Ghost of a Podcast bonus episodes, sometimes it’s videos. You can see the face; you can’t see the face. And this month I have one that I’m excited about, and I hope you would be too, so, yeah, go check it out, my friends. 

If you haven’t already, I do encourage you to subscribe to my podcast. Why wouldn’t ya, huh? Subscribe, star it, write me a review. It makes a big difference for a tiny little independent podcast like my own. 

If you have my book, Astrology For Real Relationships, and you’re enjoying it, please, again, wherever you bought it, go forth and star it. Give it five stars while you’re at it. Write a review; it is super, super helpful. 

And, I guess, just take care of yourself and others. Cough into your elbow. Don’t cough into your hand. Elbow bump with humans instead of shake hands. Do little things that are life affirming, that are positive, and also reflective of the reality we’re living in. Until next week, bye.