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

Abby:              All right. Okay, so I'm going to read to you the question that I sent in. "Hi, Jessica. I'm smack in the middle of some midlife transits after having Pluto square my Sun fairly recently. I'm feeling the overwhelm and confusion of whatever it is that is happening in my chart, which is also compounded by perimenopause. Would it be possible to do a check-in with the current leg of this journey and get some help with dealing with the exhaustion of it all? Thank you so much."

Jessica:            Okay. So I have so many questions.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            The first is you mentioned perimenopause; of course, I am not a doctor or a medical professional at all. But my question is how do you know you're in peri—have you talked to a doctor about it, that kind of a thing?

Abby:              Yeah. I just started to notice differences that felt like they were hormonal or connected to my cycle, and so I went to a doctor and confirmed it.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Good. Just making sure. And do you have any treatment plan?

Abby:              No, no. They suggested [indiscernible 00:01:26], but I just haven't done well with any kind of hormonal-based—

Jessica:            Totally.

Abby:              —medication. So I'm hoping to go toward Chinese medicine, traditional Chinese medicine. So that's kind of in the works.

Jessica:            And you're how old now?

Abby:              41. I just turned 41.

Jessica:            41. And then, in terms of perimenopause, are you sharing that detail just as context for your lived experience, or did you have particular questions about that? Because I know what to say about your transits, but I'm just kind of curious about that piece.

Abby:              As context, it's just kind of like, okay, I know I'm also going through this in addition to all the stuff that's also happening. And so it's just part of the chaos, I guess.

Jessica:            Totally. Okay. Let's pull up your chart. So we've got your chart up, and we're not sharing your birth data, because a woman is allowed to have secrets. But we do have your birth chart up on the video version of this episode. And there's so many things I want to say, but let's start with this. You are going through two of the midlife transits at the same time, which doesn't always happen, right? Some generations—I went through the Pluto square years separate from when I went through the Neptune square.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Do you know about the transits enough that you understand what I'm referring to?

Abby:              Uh-huh. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Good, good, good, because the thing that I think is so interesting about the midlife transits—there's three of them; there's Pluto square to Pluto, Neptune square to Neptune, and Uranus opposite Uranus—is that for different generations, they happen at really different ages. And that kind of messes with my brain a little bit because it's not as consistent as something like the Saturn Return, if that makes sense.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Now, the Pluto square to Pluto—you are wise to connect it to your Pluto square to the Sun because that transit, which is very much over, activated your natal Pluto because, in your birth chart, you've got the Sun at 20 degrees of Libra and Pluto at 2 degrees of Scorpio, a.k.a. they are sitting right on top of each other. And when something happens to one of them, you're going to feel it on the other.

                        And so my question for you, before we get into anything else, is in the last four years, have you made big changes in your life—

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —on purpose?

Abby:              Yeah, I would say so. I mean, it feels more internal and spiritual than anything else. I feel like if I was observing myself, it wouldn't—maybe not much would be different or wouldn't be apparent that way. Internally, I feel like things have really changed a lot. And towards the end of the Pluto square Sun transit, I felt like, "Oh, wow. I'm getting somewhere. I'm feeling this sense of self. I'm finding this way of getting grounded and centered," just—you know. It was something that felt like I could go back to the practice. And now, I just feel like all of that's out the window.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Abby:              It just is a lot of, like, internal chaos, a lot of my youngest, most anxious and upset and overwhelmed parts are just hijacking my body to solve that. So—

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So having a Sun/Pluto conjunction in the twelfth house—yours is out of sign, but it's very much a tight conjunction. And it's in the twelfth house, as I said. It doesn't indicate an easy childhood. Let's start there, okay? And does that track for your experience?

Abby:              It's hard for me to just say I had a hard childhood, for some reason, because—

Jessica:            Is it hard for you to say it because it doesn't feel accurate or because that feels like a betrayal of your parents?

Abby:              I mean, things were materially fine. I know I struggled personally, like with anxiety. I guess it's just a part of me that just doesn't want to be grateful, maybe, or sad. So I'm of two minds about that. It just—you know.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So let me dig at this a little bit because I'm not sharing your birth data, but you did give me a birth time that ended on something 20—it wasn't something 20, but it was like a—whenever I see something that's not to the minute, I'm always like, "Well, is that a guesstimation?" So let me actually just start with asking you a couple questions to affirm your birth time. When you were growing up, was it really hard to find your words?

Abby:              Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. And did you grow up with both of your parents?

Abby:              No, no. My dad was abroad until I was a teenager.

Jessica:            Okay. So it was just your mom.

Abby:              My mom and a lot of other people at home—

Jessica:            Like grandparents, aunts, uncles kind of thing?

Abby:              —uncles, grandparents. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay.

Abby:              Yeah, a house full of people.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's a couple things that the Sun/Pluto conjunction in the twelfth house can indicate. One thing is that one of your parents lost one of their parents, or somebody died in their life, anywhere from a year before you were born until you were about seven years old. Did that occur?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And was it both parents or just one?

Abby:              It was one. It was my maternal grandfather.

Jessica:            Okay. So it was like your primary parent, the person who was home with you, was going through that loss when you were little?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So that's one really common thing that can occur with that Sun/Pluto conjunction, and the reason why is because it puts that person, your parent, in a position that's impossible, where they have to shove their feelings away and show up for you and show you that you're safe while also going through this great loss and often feelings of abandonment from the parent that passed away. Does that track in your—okay.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

Jessica:            And so what it ends up doing is giving you, the person with the Sun/Pluto conjunction in the twelfth house, this feeling of hypersensitivity to loss, abandonment, and even intense emotions. So that could be depression. It could be fear of anxiety. It could be just a fear of losing yourself in big feelings. Does that track?

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. And are your parents still with us?

Abby:              Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. And are they okay now?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah, if they—they seem to be okay. After lots of not being okay, I think they've reached a point of okay.

Jessica:            Great. Okay. Good. So here's the thing. Okay. This placement that you have—a lot of people who have it, when I say, "Oh, you had a hard childhood," they're like, "Bitch, please. Yes, I know," like for sure, 170 percent. And then some people have more of your reaction. And so the kind of indication there is that a lot of deep emotions got buried in your family, and therefore it was modeled for you, "Sure. Be intense. But don't let anyone see it or know it."

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And so, first of all, that sucks, especially because with a Sun/Pluto conjunction, you're pretty much made of 80 percent intense emotions. So the idea that they are wrong or bad would be a source of pain for you and could, unfortunately, end up showing up as having chronic anxiety or depression or just a real timidness with your life because you're trying to avoid feeling intense, but you are intense. So you feel intense, so you kind of avoid a lot of things.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah, 100 percent—

Jessica:            Okay.

Abby:              —especially the timidness. Yeah. That really resonates.

Jessica:            And have you had astrology readings before?

Abby:              I have.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. And see, a lot of astrologers would look at your chart and they'd be like, "Okay. Scorpio Rising. But you've got Venus and Uranus in Sagittarius in the first house," and those placements can make you very social, very outgoing, very wild. But that is not—unless somebody really knows you, that's not how you are, eh?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.

Jessica:            Yeah. So that Pluto square to your Sun when Pluto was hanging out at the end of Capricorn was kind of pushing on you to give yourself more permission to be who you are, basically.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And now that Pluto is squaring Pluto—you poor thing. I apologize because this is like a torture transit for you, I would imagine.

Abby:              Yes, torture.

Jessica:            Torture. I'm so sorry—because Pluto governs a lot of things, including trauma, like the psychological, emotional, and spiritual underpinnings of your intensity and your belief that your intensity is too much, and therefore you should not experience it, it's not safe, and you should not share it with other people; it's not safe. And the way that the Pluto square to Pluto functions, which is what you're going through now, is that it confronts you with all of the shit, Plutonian shit, from your childhood that you haven't yet parsed through. And a great way to do that is by bringing up a lot of intense feelings inside of you.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm sorry. And are you partnered?

Abby:              I am. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And do you have kids?

Abby:              I do.

Jessica:            Okay. And everything okay with all those humans?

Abby:              Yeah, yeah. It's—yeah. That's why everything is so confounding, because it's usually the part of my life—my home life—that holds so much fear for me, but that's been okay.

Jessica:            Great.

Abby:  And so it's not focused on that.

Jessica:            It's you.

Abby:  Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just you. So I want to just really affirm, first of all, a lot of people go through these transits, and it is their family, or it is their career. And the fact that you can't actually point to and maybe assign blame or explain away these feelings is confounding. It sucks. But it's also a gift because the stuff that we're talking about, the feelings that you struggle to make space for—they show up inside of you in really big ways and in really small ways all the fucking time.

Abby:              Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so the gift of this not really making sense, like, "Why am I feeling this way?"—the gift in that is that you get to recognize with clarity, "This is me. These are things that I carry with me." And that empowers you to more easily—eh, "easily." That's a lie. That's a lie—but more cleanly identify your patterns and start to make new choices because, ultimately, the midlife transits—you know, these three transits; you're going through two of them—they are an opportunity to actually embody the adult that you've worked so hard to become and to kind of break through childhood patterns. And what's so demoralizing about these transits is that we all tell ourselves, "Well, I did all this work on myself in my 20s. I should have figured this out by now. I thought I figured this out." And then Pluto square Pluto comes, and you're like, "Oh. I figured out fucking nothing."

Abby:              Right.

Jessica:            Like, "This is really hard," right?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And I should ask, have you taken my class on the midlife transits?

Abby:              Uh-huh.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Okay. Good. So you have a lot of context for what I'm talking about.

Abby:              Yes.

Jessica:            Thank you. Thank you very much. Good. Okay. So I'm going to say more about Pluto square to Pluto in a moment, but let me talk about Neptune square to Neptune—this fucking transit.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            I'm sorry. It's a bummer. It's a bummer that you're going through them at the same time, but you are, and so is your whole generation, right?

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. So Neptune square Neptune is such a tricky transit because it makes you feel demoralized and kind of empty in the ways in which your life is not an authentic reflection of you. And so parts of your life that—you know, before the transit hit, so like a year and a half, two years ago, you told yourself, "Okay. Well, these are compromises I'm making." It's not a big deal. It's life. You're adulting. You're making compromises. If those compromises you've made are not in alignment for you—they're not actually your spiritual truth—then you are likely to be feeling feelings of demoralization, helplessness, anxiety during your Neptune square to Neptune. Does that track?

Abby:              Yeah. Yes. I've only really had the capacity to dive into Pluto because of all the stuff, and that just makes so much sense. I feel like it's turned existential—

Jessica:            Yes.

Abby:              —kind of starting to question myself in my work, and all this stuff is coming up, and—yeah. Yeah. That really makes sense.

Jessica:            And for you, because you have Neptune in the second house, which is the house of values—so Neptune is your ideals, and the second house governs your values. And so it would track that some of this would have to do with money or how you make money or your relationship to your resources and the compromises you do or don't make—okay. So, from your face, I'm seeing yes. Okay. The other thing is it's really about meaning. And this is why this transit is so hard, and most people ignore it because the challenge around meaning—it's something that we work around a lot in life. I remember when this transit hit me, I was really surprised by the things that all of a sudden were empty for me because they didn't seem like big compromises—

Abby:              Oh my gosh.

Jessica:            Sorry?

Abby:              I said, "Oh my God." Yeah.

Jessica:            You, too?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I didn't think they were really big compromises, and then of a sudden, the transit hit. And I was like, "Oh. I guess I haven't been listening to myself, because these compromises are feeling like an abandonment of self."

Abby:              Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like I said, everything that felt so fulfilling and so grounding during my baby years of Pluto square Sun—now I'm like, "Where did they go? Nothing works."

Jessica:            Yep.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And I should say it has to do with—okay. In your birth chart, you have a Neptune/Moon square and also that Sun/Pluto conjunction with your Sun in Libra in the twelfth. Big picture—boundaries, not your forte. Not your forte. Am I right?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Not your forte. So what you have been doing with your Pluto square to the Sun, which is over, and now your Pluto square to Pluto, is working on boundaries in relationship to the intensity of your own emotions. And that you're making progress on because you've got more years on the work. The Neptune square to Neptune is about emotional boundaries. And that is kicking your ass. Sorry. And when we add the layer of complexity that you are in perimenopause, so you're going through some sort of puberty—right?

It's like anyone who's gone through puberty, which is everybody—or most everybody, rather—we know that it's like your hormones are behaving in ways that are not what you would expect, and they're not what you experienced before. But now, unlike being a tween, you're old enough to have a lot of expectations of yourself, and other people have expectations of you. So it's adding a lot of mess to your situation because your emotional responses are physiological because they're your hormones, and also, you've got, I'm guessing, some patterns and habits for navigating your emotional welfare that center getting along easily with people over taking care of yourself. It's a lot, right? It's a lot.

Abby:  Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm going to have you say your full name out loud because I want to kind of bring it to center.

Abby:              Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Okay. So you guide me now. Tell me, what would be helpful for me to speak to? Are there issues you're struggling to cope with? Are there decisions you're struggling to make?

Abby:              I mean, the thing that always comes to mind for me is work. I'm a therapist. I've been just kind of developing my identity as a healer and kind of coming to a place of settledness with that and working with my clients. And just like you said, I've been really questioning it, and not about the actual work with my clients—it's still something that feels really good—but just about the kind of work that I do. Is this meant for me? What's next? Just so many things. And I've gotten readings, and a lot of the readings have said the same thing. And I feel like, am I not listening? [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            What have the readings said?

Abby:              Just, "The answer will come in time. Be patient, but also get out of your own way," is basically the theme of the last few years.

Jessica:            I mean, I feel like that's a theme of your life.

Abby:              Yeah, for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. But let's do better than that. Let's do better than that, okay?

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            Now, I know there's a lot of value that you derive from your work, but I want to ask, are you having fun?

Abby:              I am when I'm just working with my clients and it's a good session. I have realized that I have attachments to the outcome of the sessions and how my clients are doing, and I know that's something that I need to work on.

Jessica:            Yes.

Abby:              I don't like all the other stuff, like notes and the taxes and bookkeeping and all of that. That's just really—

Jessica:            It's a huge part of the job. It's a huge part of the job.

Abby:              —brings up a lot of stuff. Yeah.

Jessica:            So there's two things I'm going to say to that. The first is, can you hire somebody to do the bulk of the shit you don't like? We're back to money, but—

Abby:              Can.

Jessica:            Here's the reason why I'm asking. I mean, I suppose it was low-hanging fruit, and somebody could suggest that to you. But the reason why I'm asking is because your Neptune is in the second house. If you value the service but you don't value all of the admin around the service, then you can make the decision to prioritize your own wellness, which is something I'm assuming you would encourage your clients to do, and just pay somebody to do that work for you. You would have to be able to afford it. This is, again, related to money because it's the second house.

Abby:              Sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            But I want to encourage you to understand that in order to truly answer this question in this really intense time of your life, you would have to, first of all, understand that there's going to be a part of you that says, "No. I'm going to do it all myself," because that's your nature. No? Yeah?

Abby:              Yeah. It is.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So that's a compulsion. And that compulsion—hey, maybe in the end, that's the best answer for you. But whenever we have a compulsion, we want to be curious, right—

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            —because that impulse has got you where you are. You get shit done, and you figure it out. But now you want to go to another level. Part of that is because you're getting older. Part of that is because you have more expertise. And by putting yourself in a position where you have to continue to do the parts of the work that are not your calling—because Neptune is all about calling, meaning. So you're spending all this time doing shit that doesn't give you meaning, and it's kind of poisoning the well of your joy from the overall thing of your career. So that's one reason why I say I really want to challenge you to explore what it would look like to pay somebody to do even half of what you're talking about.

Abby:              Sure.

Jessica:            Maybe client notes you couldn't pay somebody to do, but everything else you could.

Abby:              Sure.

Jessica:            Okay. Challenge. Don't know if it's accepted. Challenge. Challenge offered. Now, the attachment piece. Now we're a little bit more in your Pluto square, right—

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            —because in your family—and I'm guessing it's your matrilineage—

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —the way that an individual, especially an individual woman, gets affirmed as being good is by being helpful, being of service, being able to do something for someone else. Does that track?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Abby:              Oh yeah.

Jessica:            And you're great at that. You are helpful. You love helping. It might be related to a trauma pattern in your family line, but it's also a very authentic thing you enjoy and that you're good at. True, true?

Abby:              Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. And I said "True, true?" because I said two different things. And you're agreeing with both?

Abby:              Uh-huh. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Cool. Just making sure. Just making sure. Okay. So, that said, being able to tolerate other people not understanding what you mean, being able to tolerate people not being willing or able to receive your help, being able to tolerate the authentic suffering of your clients—those things are really, really hard on you. Some of this is because there's this little kid part of you that wishes that somebody had borne greater witness to your own struggles and suffering and hadn't been so quick to let you figure it out on your own.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, especially in just kind of the personal work I've been doing.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Abby:              There's a lot of bad stuff that's been coming up.

Jessica:            Yeah, and I'm glad it's coming up because it's been in you this whole time, you know? And of course, when you're a healer and you work in the helping professions, I mean, fuck, the shit that you're working on for yourself is the stuff that you're working on with your clients, and then it keeps on reinforcing itself.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, as a person—I'm not a therapist. I want to be extra clear. But I do consult with people, and what I have personally experienced is that the less attachment I have to being right or even to helping somebody fix a problem, both the more supportive I actually am to the person because I'm giving them space to be who they are, when they are, what they are, but also, it gives me more—I get to hold my own energy more, which means I can be more helpful to the person I'm working with and the person I'm working with the next hour and the next hour.

Abby:              Mm-hmm. The stuff that's happening inside—it's been so hard to get back to that place where, before—and it's so weird to look back on Pluto square Sun with such fondness, but it's like it worked before, and it doesn't now. And I feel like I'm just swimming in it, so yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So let me speak to why. Okay. Let me speak to why. The Pluto square to your Sun was all about you. The Pluto square to Pluto, the Neptune square to Neptune, are about your inheritance and about you. They're about your family. And when we started talking, the first thing I asked you was about your childhood. And you're like, "I can't say I had a rough childhood." And it makes me wonder, do you have a hard time criticizing your parents or holding them accountable?

Abby:              At times, probably. I think I've been able to just own that they weren't the most emotionally supportive at all times. And then there's a part of me that will come up and say, "But I also know that"—you know, fill in the blank.

Jessica:            I mean, even the way you said that was very qualifying. "I can own that they weren't the most supportive at all times." There was a lot of qualifiers in that sentence.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So there is a part of you that we can look to your Moon/Neptune square that says, "If I love Jessica, I won't criticize Jessica. I won't say Jessica is wrong. If I love Jessica and Jessica says"—whatever—"and I know that Jessica is full of shit right now, I won't tell her that, because I don't want to contradict her lived experience because that's devotion." You have this devotional way of loving people.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And it sometimes requires you to adopt their delusion or adopt their perspective at the expense of your own perspective and your own feelings and your own needs. So I'm going to say—and you tell me if this feels wrong because I don't want to put words in your mouth and create something that's not there. I don't want to be really clear. I can be right about some things and wrong about others, right?

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            But when I look at your chart, I see that one parent was unpredictable in a way that was really hard for you.

Abby:              I feel like she was the unpredictable one for [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            She was the unpredictable one.

Abby:              My dad wasn't around enough for me to really have a sense of him. But—yeah.

Jessica:            So was there an elder who was then holding the bag when your mom wasn't there? Was it like a grandparent or something like that?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. I had my grandmother.

Jessica:            Okay. And so the reason astrologically why I ask about your grandparent is because you have Saturn so close to the Ascendant. It's one degree off of being a conjunction. And so that indicates the presence of a grandparent or an older person who was there in a kind of important capacity.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Part of why, my Virgo Moon friend, I am giving you so much astrology context is because I am hoping that in some way, it depersonalizes it.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm not saying your mom was a bad parent because she was unpredictable. It was hard on your grandmother that she had to kind of fill in the blanks that your mother created with her unpredictability. Okay? So I am saying those statements. I am saying those things, but I'm giving you an astrological context. So it's not just I'm criticizing your mom. It's I'm reading your chart.

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And if I had just come in here guns blazing first thing in our conversation, being like, "It looks like your childhood was hard. Your mom wasn't there"—if I had done all those things, your natural response would have been to defend your mother and to assert that it wasn't that bad and to kind of contextualize your mom's experience and the reasons why she did what she did.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And there's something really good that is easier on your brain to be like, "Oh. Because Saturn is near my Rise, that means my grandmother was involved. And because Uranus is opposite my Chiron, my mother was unpredictable." Seeing, in a way, a chart or an explanation, in a way, might help you to not rush to explain away your own lived experience by defending your mom and prioritizing her perspective.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is where things are really complicated because if we look now at your work, you know all of this in the context of your client work, right? This is a thing you do. I can see you actually really help people with boundaries and centering their own lived experience. Am I correct about this?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. This is like—have you heard the expression, "The cobbler's children run without shoes"?

Abby:              (laughs)

Jessica:            The thing that you're really working on is the thing that you're really good at helping other people to cultivate because it's on your mind, and you're working on it. You're working with it.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, that all said, I'm really sorry, but I do feel that part of this process for you is going to require you to center your lived experience. Center your perceptions without needing to prove to yourself or anyone else that you also understand your mom's perspective, and you also understand that other people had it harder, and you also understand—whatever else.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It does make sense. And I kind of feel like I was approaching that, just really tuning in to this very young, sensitive part of me and just kind of bringing her up to the surface. Then, now, I'm getting—just all this stuff happened, and I'm swimming in it [indiscernible 00:32:13].

Jessica:            Yeah. Well, I think it's really important that you validate that you did make progress. And this is how progress on a deep level works, is that you struggle through it. It works. It doesn't work. It works. It doesn't work. And then you're like, "Ah. Wait a sec. Look at me. I know how to use the tool. I know how to respond in new ways." And then the Universe is like, "Bet," and then gives you this major activation. And it can be a major drama, and it can be a minor drama. But it's a major activation.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And then you have to deal with it on a whole new level. And the only reason why you're here is because you got here. Do you know what I'm saying? Don't let this struggle invalidate how far you've come. The only reason why you're here is because you've come this far.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like if you go bushwhacking—which is not a thing I've ever done—like hiking through the forest or the bush without it being trails created for you in advance, the deeper you go, it's likely to get harder. I mean, you might here and there come upon a clearing and be like, "Ah," and everything is easy. But then you're back in the bush, and you got further to go.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And I think you've done so much work, but the work that you're being kind of pressured to do now requires you to center yourself more than you're comfortable with.

Abby:              There's this spot coming up about this—it does make sense to center myself, but where is myself these days?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Abby:              So yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so the answer to that question is found in a myriad of moments. You, as a good Saturn-on-top-of-the-Ascendant kind of person, are like, "I want the answer. And when the answer"—and I keep on doing this with my hands as though it's a big cement block or a box you can open, right? You want it to be an answer.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And you also have that Mars/Jupiter conjunction in Capricorn, right? You really—you want the answer. Okay. But the real answer, because we're dealing with Neptune and Pluto, is in your spirit and in your psyche. And so how do you meet your psyche in the moment? That's how, period. There's, of course, analysis and reflection and introspection and all of these things. But all of those things, when you're really activating, must occur in the moment because if you have a lot of theories but you don't apply them in the moment, then it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And I'm not shitting on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I love talk. But it brings you to—there's only so far it brings you to is what I'm trying to say.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you, in practice, moment by moment, have such a deep, ingrained habit of redirecting or shutting down when your emotions get to a certain level.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And the only way to evolve past this limitation, the ways in which that limits you, is to hang out at the boundaries of what you know how to tolerate in a healthy way and not try to figure it out and not be like, "Okay. Well, what do I need to change, and what do I need to do?"—which is what you do, right? It's your habit.

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            So even you being like, "Okay. Well, I want to change my career. Something needs to change with my career"—I have news for you. Would you like the news?

Abby:              Yes, please.

Jessica:            Yeah. You don't need to change your career at all. Your career is great, actually. You've got great clients. You've got a good client load. You've got a good practice. Am I wrong?

Abby:              Yeah, no, that's right. That's right.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's not what needs changing. It's how you feel about your practice. And like you said, it's not about how you feel about your clients or about being a therapist or all those things. It's your capacity to hold space without grasping the space. So that's a different way of saying not being attached to the outcomes, not being attached to the client, instead creating a container that is supportive and nurturing for the client and supportive, nurturing, and sustainable for you because what you're doing as you deepen psychologically, spiritually, and emotionally as a person—which you're doing, right? Which you are doing.

You're starting to experience the wobble, the waver that occurs when you're out of alignment. And then you say to yourself, "What's wrong? What's wrong with me? Why do I feel this way? Why do I feel off when I'm doing the thing I've always done?" And the answer is some things are not your damn business. Some things are not yours to hold. And it feels like love, and it feels like care to you to hold at a certain level, to really be like, "I'm here. I'm going to catch you. I'm going to  catch you if you fall." But that's actually not sustainable for anybody to do, and it's not even what you believe is the right thing to do.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's the thing you feel that you have to do to prove how much you care. And you're not even proving it to them because it's not even something that I imagine most of your clients would be in any way aware of.

Abby:              Right.

Jessica:            This is really just about your relationship to yourself and to devotion. And here's the fucking rub. When I ask you about your childhood, as an example, what you're telling me without really trying to is that you have more devotion to your parents than to your little girl, your inner child, because you have not said a thing from her perspective. You've only said things from your mom's perspective, or your projections or your theories about your mom's perspective. And that is a block for you because the work you're doing on yourself and you have been doing on yourself has to include the four-year-old inside of you, the seven-year-old inside of you. You know?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And right now, you're carving a lot of work-arounds. You have been your whole adult life, carving—I mean, you've done a lot of work. I'm not trying to say you haven't done any work. You have done a lot of work. But the work is never done. I mean, you're a therapist. You know that, right?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            The work is part of just being a person.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you have a therapist?

Abby:              I do.

Jessica:            And do you talk about your childhood with your therapist?

Abby:              Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Abby:              Yes, especially these—again, these young, sensitive parts of me.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And do you say things from your perspective and not from your mom's perspective and not protecting your mom?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I've really been able to tune in to her and all the overwhelm and all of that. It's a little harder outside of therapy to acknowledge that—

Jessica:            I see.

Abby:              —just, you know, in this way for whatever reason. But in—

Jessica:            I have a theory about the reason.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            And you tell me what you think of this theory.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            I think what you've done with your therapist is you've primed her and prepped her for understanding your mother's perspective before you started sharing your perspective. You feel safe with that person, and you don't feel like you're betraying your mother or any of the adults in your childhood because you've already given that therapist context and information before you gave her this more vulnerable little kid stuff. Does that track?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That does track.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So, if in your reading with some random astrologer or talking to even your partner, if you don't feel confident that they're not going to vilify your parents or the people in your family, then it's a lot harder for you to share your own personal experience because you're still in the compulsion—and I want to be really clear. I want the word to echo in your head. It's a compulsion, compulsion, compulsion. It's a compulsion to protect your parents or your mom above honor yourself.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Do you still talk with your mom?

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And is the relationship kind of a good one now?

Abby:              I'd say it's fine. Trying to depersonalize more and have better boundaries has really helped, I would say.

Jessica:            Yeah. When you said that, I could see so clearly that you have unconsciously, inadvertently re-created with your clients an element of what you have with your mom, this personalization component, right?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And this doesn't affect your clients, actually. I don't see that they would pick up on it. This is just about your innermost personal world. We're talking about Pluto in the twelfth damn house. We're talking about deep inside of you. And therefore, every time this comes up with a client, you have the opportunity to create new pathways and possibilities inside of yourself for how you cope with the initial wound, which is with your mom.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Hold on. So I just want to tell you—okay. I just used my Tarot cards, and I asked my Tarot cards—I was going to say something critical of your mother and, I think, very honest, but critical. And also, I don't fucking know. I'm an astrologer/psychic. What the fuck do I know? But also, that's what I was going to do. And I asked the cards, "Is that going to be constructive for you? Is that going to be helpful for you?" And they were like, "No. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't. Don't. No. No." And that's really interesting, right? Don't worry about what I was going to say. That's actually deeply unimportant.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            It's more that it looked like it would activate you and take you out of alignment in this way. Your reaction would be to pull out of alignment because your strongest impulse that—you've heard me talk about that a lot with Pluto. The strongest impulse, your Plutonian impulse, would be to protect her.

Abby:              It makes sense. At the same time, it's just been a theme that's popped up with my clients, of course.

Jessica:            Of course. Yeah.

Abby:              So yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, you're working out this really intense mother wound—

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —with your clients. And that's normal. For whatever it's worth, it's not just you. Whenever we go through major shit, it gets activated in other places in our lives because if you were just dealing directly with your mom all the time, it would be too much. Right?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            It would just—it would be very traumatic for you.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so my invitation to you is to consider whether or not you can practice being interested in the desire to defend people you care about because defending people you care about—great, if they're being attacked. But as a therapist, you know damn well that unpacking, exploring, speaking critically of is not the same as attacking.

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            You do, right? You know that?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you're in a damn position. You're in a rough position. But as you already stated, you actually have the tools. You just don't want to use them for this. You're scared that if you evolve in this way, you will no longer be kind. And you really, really, really want to be kind. What's your mom's name?

Abby:              [redacted].

Jessica:            What does she actually go by?

Abby:              [redacted].

Jessica:            That is it. I got her. I got her. I got her. I got her. I got her. Big personality?

Abby:              Yeah, I would say so. Bold.

Jessica:            Bold.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Kind of—can be very vibrant, very big, fun.

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Does she give you compliments?

Abby:              No.

Jessica:            Does she give other people compliments?

Abby:              I guess sometimes, maybe.

Jessica:            Strangers. She gives strangers compliments, yeah?

Abby:              Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. That's a rub, wouldn't you say?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            That's a fucking rub.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Is it possible she's a little narcissistic?

Abby:              I don't know. I've never thought about that.

Jessica:            That's interesting, therapist lady, because you know a lot about narcissism, eh?

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You have a lot of clients who have narcissistic people in their lives?

Abby:              Oh yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I know narcissists, and they don't seem—my mom doesn't seem like them. And maybe I've had just blinders on.

Jessica:            Interesting—

Abby:              And—yeah.

Jessica:            —because when I look at her energetically, I see that she does give compliments, but only to people when she's trying to get them to like her because she wants something from them.

Abby:              Hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. Wait. Slow down. Don't answer that. Do you feel that feeling in your body?

Abby:              Yes.

Jessica:            Man. Oof. Yeah. Where do you feel it in your body?

Abby:              Definitely up in my chest, neck. Yeah.

Jessica:            Can you feel it—I also lodged it in, like, the side of your stomach. Do you have stuff with your stomach, or does your mother have stuff—

Abby:              I've always had stomach stuff.

Jessica:            Okay. Yeah. Your mom energetically is in your stomach, like the organ of your stomach. So I'm not surprised you've had stomach issues, honestly. Yeah. As soon as I said that, man, you could not even assess the words because it just felt like I kicked you in the—kicked you or something, right? It felt bad.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So we're going to do something here, and I'm just going to have you—can you still feel it in your chest and your throat?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Cool. Can you bring your energy and attention closer in to your chest? Okay. Good. You're doing it. And just breathe. Just actually breathe. Does it feel the same? Does it feel different?

Abby:              It feels more spread out and lighter. I don't know if that's the right way to describe it, but—

Jessica:            That's okay. It's okay. Whatever it feels is actually okay. But I wanted to just—okay. You very easily hung out by the feeling. You were very quickly—do you already have a practice with doing that, with meeting it?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So my advice to you is, whenever this comes up with a client or with your mom—or with anyone else, but right now these are the major triggers—to practice coming in. Hang out longer than I just had you hang out. Just because of time, we didn't really dive in. But hang out there without the goal of feeling better, without the goal of figuring it out, and without the goal of doing any fucking thing at all.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Your practice that you have been taught from your mother—she taught you this very, very clearly through her reinforcement and her behavior when you were a child—is to abandon yourself when certain feelings come up. So I said something critical of your mother. You instantly had really intense emotional reaction. And so then your mind got fuzzy. So how can you ever assess the answer to the question? Because now so much is triggered inside of you that is about you, right?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Also, by the way, I'm sorry your mom never gives you compliments. Every Libra deserves to have a fucking compliment or three. Every Venus-in-the-first-house person enjoys a compliment or three. You know? Do you have friends who give you compliments?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've never even—I mean, yeah, I've never even looked at that part of me that needs compliments. I never thought about it, so—but it feels like something significant.

Jessica:            Yeah. Compliments are just like an affirmation of, "Oh, I value this about you," or, "Oh, I enjoy this about you." Right? So compliments can also be superficial, and we can become over-reliant on them. But your mother really wanted and needed you to be what I call a self-cleaning oven, take care of yourself, handle yourself; don't be too intense.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And yet she didn't give you tools for that. She was just like, "Go do it. Just handle it because I can't." I know I'm speaking critically of your mother again, and I know it's activating your system again. But I would be remiss if I didn't say this because—how many kids do you have?

Abby:              Two.

Jessica:            Okay. I was seeing two, but I was like, "Am I seeing three?" Okay. It's two. Do you give them compliments?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a lot.

Jessica:            It's an important part of how you love them, right?

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's an important part of how you affirm them. Okay. I'm just going to hang out with that information, okay? You as a parent really understand that holding space for the messiness of your kids, affirming them with words and acts of love, are two key components to how you feel good as a parent and how you show up for your children. Does that feel right?

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. We'll just hang out there because it's really interesting that you don't require that of your mom. What's the thought that you just had?

Abby:              It's just it brings to mind just these things I've been thinking about for myself, just this compulsion to just do everything on my own and to not rely on other people, and how sometimes it feels really, really good—I love it. And other times, I feel really lonely.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Abby:              And so just ping-ponging back and forth between needing people and loving solitude has been a thing, and recently the thing I've been thinking about a lot.

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, listen. You are a Libra, and you are a Sun/Pluto. You need a lot of time alone, and you need people—both. They're both true, and they can contradict each other because you're a person. But sometimes our trauma response or our trauma itself yields high-functioning skills. Workaholism, doing everything yourself, being self-reliant, being strong—these things can come out of trauma. And I know you know this theoretically, but I'm going to say it to you now. Being able to say, "I love x, y, z parts of myself, and I can also recognize that some of how I got here and some of how I continue to motivate myself is actually unkind to myself or comes from trauma"—

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. That activation happened again in your body. Did you feel it?

Abby:              Not as strongly as the first time.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            There's something that shows—and again, tell me if I'm wrong about this. But when I look at you energetically, what I just saw was this pit inside of your stomach, like this feeling—

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. There's a pit.

Jessica:            There's a pit.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's almost like because I said this thing, I was criticizing you, and then you're like, "Oh shit. I'm wrong. Oh shit. I did something wrong. Oh shit. I have to fix this." It's a different thing than your reaction to me critiquing your mom, but it's not completely different.

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you see what I'm saying?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, like it goes straight to my mind and just this checklist of things.

Jessica:            Yep. And that is your trauma response from the trauma of—and I'm calling it a trauma, and trauma exists on a spectrum; let's be realistic—but from the trauma that you experienced of not being permitted to be intense and emotional. You were not allowed to acknowledge your misgivings and your grief because your mom wasn't allowed and because your mom wouldn't allow you. And it's not that simple, and it is that simple. They're both true, right? They're both true.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you have grown up to be a person who's done some really good things with your trauma. You've become this great and caring parent. You're great at relationships in so many ways. You’re a therapist. That's a perfect use of this complexity. It's perfect. But inevitably, the midlife transits occur. And when they occur, you are meant to excavate this so that your life is more yours. And that doesn't mean you take something from your mother or you take something from your kids or your clients. It just means that you're more whole.

                        And having these really great skills, you don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, right? You keep the skills. But you excavate your motivation. I'm sure you've had clients who you see—I don't know—do things that are really healthy and well adjusted, but their motivation is self-flagellation or punishment of the self. And so it's actually—it's no longer as healthy of a behavior because the motivation comes from trauma.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So what you do with those clients is you help them to address motivation without throwing away the behavior. Right?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you ever cry?

Abby:              Yeah. I like crying.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Great. That's your Moon/Neptune square, and we love it. Do you cry for yourself?

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah. There are some things that are easier to cry about than others. Sometimes it'll just come out of nowhere, and I can't control it. And sometimes there's nothing inside, and—you know, so a little harder.

Jessica:            Okay. Let me come at this a slightly different angle. Do you scream?

Abby:              No.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm going to be annoying. I'm going to encourage you—do you have a car that's just your car?

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm going to give you homework.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            You're not going to like it, and if you do it, it'll be complicated feeling. So maybe do it before therapy if you can.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            Okay?

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            Get thee in thine car. I don't know why I went olden-daysy, but get in your damn car. Drive somewhere where you don't feel like other people are going to be looking at you. So I don't know where that could be, but just go to some random parking lot somewhere that there are no other cars or something. And then scream. It might be easiest to do this by blasting music where there's really intense screaming and pretending you're singing along, so get intense metal on or something like that, which I'm guessing is not your aesthetic musically.

Abby:              Used to be. Not so much anymore.

Jessica:            Okay. Used to be. I'm glad to hear that. Get some really intense death metal, and, quote unquote, "sing" along with it. Scream your face off.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            What it'll do is it will dislodge something that you're trying through therapy and process and intentionality to dislodge. Keep doing that. Keep doing that stuff. But also, some of this is just in your fucking body.

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            So I would encourage you, while doing that, to take your hands and rub your thighs or somehow rub your arms or something. Touch yourself in a way that is soothing and not hit yourself while you scream death metal songs, but instead just create a safe outlet for screaming your fucking face off. Okay?

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            I think it will be a good complement to the work you're doing.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            But again, I feel I should reiterate your desire to tweak your work life is because your work life is great. So you want to adapt something that's safe for you because there's other things that are not safe for you that are screaming for your attention, and you actually are giving them attention, but you're like, "Okay. But if I just fix work, if I figure out work, then those other things will be easier."

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But that's—

Abby:              That tracks.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's not it. That's not it. And so, that said, do you run groups, ever?

Abby:              Yeah, I would love to.

Jessica:            I think that's a thing you're going to move into.

Abby:              I would really love to. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's a thing you're going to move into. So do you move into it this month, in the next three months? It doesn't matter. I think you're moving into it. So you want everything else to flow so that you're not trying to put a square peg in a round hole, right?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And right now, what you're dealing with actually deserves more attention. So starting group work would actually pull focus, and also, it'll create a lot more fucking admin. So, if you don't have someone in place to help you with the admin, then you're just—your Neptune square is not going to be very happy.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, just for the record, your Neptune square is almost over. You have only a little bit of it at the end of 2026. It's totally over early January 2027, but it's mainly over in the spring of 2026. So you really don't have a lot longer of this transit.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            But that's bad news, in a way. It's great news because it's a fucking hard transit, but it's just like you said about the Pluto square to the Sun. It's like we resist the transits while they're active, and then after they pass, you can feel like, "Oh, this was such a learning opportunity. This is like a once-in-a-lifetime shift for me." And so I'm going to challenge you to take very seriously the idea of hiring somebody to do the shit you don't like during this transit.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You know what I mean? But this is not just about work. It's about the practice of saying, "Yes, I can do it all. And if I insist on doing it all, then I have less energy for the things that are my calling. And my clients actually would get more benefit from me if I had more energy to give them."

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That reframe is really important because when you do it all, which—really, I have no right to say this because I have the same fucking problem, genuinely. But when you do it all, you are robbing your clients and yourself of you being in more consistent alignment. And you're not a burglar. You don't want to be a burglar, anyways. I mean, now that I'm seeing your outfit, it actually kind of does—it gives burglar vibes, and it's adorable. But you don't want to be like that. That's not what you want to be.

Abby:              No.

Jessica:            So okay. I just want to take a pause. Take as long as you want to sit with, reflect on—did I address your question? Is there anything that we didn't get to or that you want to ask me about?

Abby:              I feel like we went in a direction that I wasn't expecting, but it really ended up answering a lot of the other stuff that was coming up, especially this resentment inside that was forming toward my spirituality, my spiritual practices, my work—all of these things.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Abby:              And so it makes sense. I'm still piecing together the puzzle a bit.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Abby:              But I feel like it did kind of touch on everything.

Jessica:            Good. Okay.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            I'll say one thing about what you just said, which is the word "resentment." This is the first time you've used that in this reading. And Pluto governs resentment. And a lot of times, humans experience resentment specifically when you are detached from your own agency, right?

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            So I resent people who do things to me and at me, circumstances that are out of my control, because when you are aligned with your agency, then you might be sad about it; you may be mad about it. But resentment—not as much. And so this does track with everything we've talked about. From your childhood, you learned this really deep and really valuable lesson: don't center yourself. Find the most intense person in the room, and center their needs. That's how you stay safe in a dangerous world. That's how you navigate the unpredictable. Track the loudest person, the most intense person in the room. If you can manage them and their needs, then you'll be safe.

                        And you know what? That's a great fucking life skill. That is a great life skill. And it makes sense, again, that you're a therapist because then you get to really do that. But it requires an abandonment of self and a decentering of self. So that's how we know it's a trauma response. You don't want to lose that skill set, but you want to have an old-school knob, like a volume knob, on it so that when you're talking to your mom about—I don't know—making plans about something, you can turn that knob all the way off. That's an appropriate time for you to center yourself.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And when you're dealing with a client or you're in an emergency situation or you're on the bus and there's somebody who's really dangerous there, okay, you turn the knob all the way on. Right?

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You're never going to get to turn that knob off. You have a Sun/Pluto conjunction. You track for danger. You do center the strongest emotion in a space. But you are completely capable of evolving in such a way that you give yourself space to experience your own feelings and your own needs and to center yourself in your own experiences. And by doing that, your resentments will diminish. You'll feel more sad. You'll feel bad. You're not going to feel, necessarily, better. But you won't feel resentful.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And the reason why that's valuable is because resentment is not an aligned emotion. It's like a scab that grows over the true emotion. And so it keeps you from yourself.

Abby:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. The last thing I'm being shown to say to you is, oh my God, be patient. Be so patient with yourself.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            It's not your forte.

Abby:              No, it's not.

Jessica:            It's not. You're so impatient with yourself it's bananas.

Abby:              Yes.

Jessica:            But be patient with yourself because this isn't supposed to happen quickly. There's a reason why there are three midlife transits. There's not one. There's not two. There's three.

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Your Uranus opposition to Uranus hasn't even come—it's nowhere close yet. You've got years before it happens. That means you have years to integrate this. You don't need to integrate this in 2025. We speak in November, right? So you don't need to do this in the next month and a half. Be patient with yourself because part of the trauma pattern is strong emotion peaks, and then you rush for the fix.

Abby:              Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            So patience is part of the process of your own evolution. And it just so happens that through perimenopause and menopause, our hormones, our adrenal—everything kind of gets activated in such a way that we do need, as part of that hormonal evolution, to figure out how to tend to the nervous system. We can't sustain the shit we did in our 20s and 30s when you hit your 40s, 50s.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just—it's part of growing. And you're so good at coaching other people to be where they're at. It's a gift you have, eh?

Abby:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. You've heard me say this before, probably, but you've got to teach your friend, girl.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You have the skill. You just need to practice using it for yourself. And I promise you—like, I promise you that it won't just make you happier and healthier. It won't just make your family life happier and healthier. It will deepen the service you provide to others because the container that we provide for our clients is only as reliable and deep as we can sustain.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the better you are at centering yourself paradoxically, the more profoundly you'll be able to help other people do that. You'll be able to be there for others more because the way in which you are there for others is more authentic; it doesn't rob you of your essential energies.

Abby:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So easier said than done. Be patient. But you are on the path.

Abby:              Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. There's your reading, my dear.

Abby:              Thank you. Thank you so much. This was just such a gift, so I'm so grateful.