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:            All right. Raccoon, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Raccoon:         Thanks, Jessica. I'm so excited to be here. My question is I'm wondering if you have insights about why I'm struggling so deeply with feeling securely attached with my son. My son is 15 months, and ever since he's been born, I've been dealing with deep, old issues around feeling rejected and projecting them onto my son and our connection. I do work with a therapist on this, and I know our connection is so deep, but I feel like this is a constant battle within myself to truly feel loved and a part of my family.

Jessica:            I'm really sorry you're feeling that way. Let's just start there. That sucks. And is this your first child?

Raccoon:         Yeah, this is our first child. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And "our," so that answers my second question.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            You're coparenting with someone.

Raccoon:         Yes. I'm coparenting with my wife, and we made an active decision—very long, active decision—to have our beautiful son. Yeah.

Jessica:            And the struggle that you named of feeling securely attached and feeling loved by your family—are you referring to your wife and your child? Are you referring to your family of origin and now your child?

Raccoon:         Well, so I made a big journey to come here to be a parent. It was not something that I've ever thought about for myself. You know, I've just been like a Queer, punk weirdo living my life. And I met my partner; we fell in love. And this was—

Jessica:            When?

Raccoon:         We fell in love in 2020.

Jessica:            Okay, so a while ago and recently—both.

Raccoon:         Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Raccoon:         We fell in love, yeah, 2020. And this was on the table for her, and I had to really do a lot of work to get on board. And then I was very excited, but I realized there was some things that were coming up around postpartum that I was scared about. And then we had a really hard postpartum together as a team. And I mean—

Jessica:            Did you birth or did your wife birth?

Raccoon:         Yes, that's a great question.

Jessica:            Thank you.

Raccoon:         My wife birthed. I am never and will never be interested in carrying. We did IVF. We did a sperm donor, but I didn't want to be the person with my biology, which is funny because I'm having weird feelings about that now. So—

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. I can totally speak to all of this. Totally. Yes.

Raccoon:         Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yes. I want to affirm this makes more sense than what I thought you were going to tell me.

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            So yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Raccoon:         Yeah. So, once my kid stopped being like a little, cute grub and things settled and we started eating and sleeping normally—

Jessica:            Which I'm guessing was recently, like—

Raccoon:         I would say like six months after.

Jessica:            Six months. Yeah.

Raccoon:         Yeah. He's been—

Jessica:            Oh, six months after?

Raccoon:         After he was born.

Jessica:            Okay. So you've had kind of an easy time of sleep, then.

Raccoon:         Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Raccoon:         Yeah. He's been a trooper, and we've worked together. But then just noticing how much I am feeling, you know, he's preferring one over the other, which is just normal toddler behavior—

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Raccoon:         —and how much it's like the mind and the body here are so disconnected. I know in my heart that biology doesn't matter, and chosen family has just been my path forward forever. And I love my biology family. It's just a little bit more complicated. But now, in this soup of things, really feeling like I know where it's from—I can acknowledge it, but it's just—it just feels like a huge hurdle.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, for real. Okay. Let me pull up your chart, okay, because—

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            —to say that I have a lot to say is an understatement. Okay. So we are not sharing your birth data, but anyone watching the video version can see your birth chart if they want to look along. Okay. So I read your question, and I knew it was about this topic of feeling rejected by your toddler and feeling mixed and complicated about that, and you're working on it. And so I pulled up your chart, and I was like, "Wow. I'm surprised you gave birth. I'm surprised you made that choice. That seems bananas." Okay. So the fact that you didn't—I'm so happy for you—

Raccoon:         Thank you.

Jessica:            —because that's a reflection of knowing yourself and clear boundaries, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And there's mental health and addiction in your family of origin?

Raccoon:         Mental health. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Not addiction, just mental health stuff?

Raccoon:         Yeah, I would say, at least not that I know of. Yep.

Jessica:            I mean, yeah, with a Pluto opposition to your Sun/Jupiter conjunction T-squaring your Mars, it's going to be one or the other, right?

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            It's not both. You could do both, but one or the other.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's that. There's also—this T-square in your birth chart, amongst many other things—and there are many things to say about it—it does give you such an incredible sensitivity to being chosen, being rejected, being abandoned, and there not being space for you. And on top of it, holy shit, are your hormones sensitive.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And you're how old now?

Raccoon:         I'm 37. '88. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yep. Yep. 37. So you may or may not be starting to go through your own hormonal journeys totally separate from this whole topic, right—

Raccoon:         Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Which—you know, some people go through it in their late 30s. Some people go through it in their mid-40s. You know what I mean?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But it happens. So I want to just kind of name a couple things in your chart, and then I'm going to go back to asking you questions. Okay. Listen. You're a Taurus, and you got a Libra Rising.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You want to be liked so badly.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You want to be liked, and you want it to be easy. And honestly, people often like you. It often is easy for you. Your sun/Jupiter conjunction means that when the vibes aren't there, you know how to make vibes. You have the energy. Am I right about that?

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah. I'd say so.

Jessica:            Yeah. But you have a fucking Scorpio Moon, man.

Raccoon:         I know.

Jessica:            Your fucking Scorpio Moon. And that's the least of it. It's Pluto opposite your Sun opposite Jupiter T-squaring all three of those guys T-squaring to Mars. That's really a big thing for you. On top of it—and that thing—again, abandonment issues, anger issues, all these things. Complicated, complicated.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            We can talk for hours and weeks and years about your family of origin, but we're not going to, okay? We're not going to, but we could.

Raccoon:         Good. Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, on top of that, you've got your Venus/Chiron conjunction at the top of your chart, and it gives you a lot of complicated feelings about being in a traditional female role, which mom kind of is. I don't know if you identify as mom.

Raccoon:         I mean, yeah. It's been like an ongoing—just feeling in my body I'm not quite sure.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Raccoon:         But I say, in this situation, it's like kind of daddy, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, you're describing a really common dad experience, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Infants gravitate towards moms a lot or birthing parents a lot. It's not always, but a lot.

Raccoon:         Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, it's kind of your child's job. Your children have very little jobs. They should shit. They should hopefully smile, grow teeth, stuff like that. But they have very few jobs, but one of their jobs is to reject parents.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's kind of like turning over on your side is, for a toddler, kind of rejecting the adult or the parent, right?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You get that intellectually. Man, are you good intellectually. You get that.

Raccoon:         Oh, for sure.

Jessica:            You're very spacious about that.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But you've got Uranus, Saturn, and Neptune—and Neptune is kind of away from these guys, but Uranus and Saturn conjunct. Neptune is kind of—it's close to your Saturn, and then all three of those guys opposite your Midheaven. You've got Uranus opposite your Venus. All in English, what this means—the way you've handled your need to be liked and to keep things even-keeled is by having an independent and adaptable life.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm. Yes.

Jessica:            And then you had a kid.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            And I'm going to say something that might be wrong, might be right, and also, it's going to feel weird to hear, maybe. But I can't help but wonder if part of what's happening is you're actually—no, I can't say it that way. Hold on. Let me find the right words. Do you get angry in a way that other people are aware that you get angry? Do you tell people when you're pissed off? Do you feel comfortable being angry, experiencing anger?

Raccoon:         Yes. The only one who is comfortable—I'm comfortable showing my anger to is my wife. And then, otherwise, if I say, "Oh my God. I was so angry, and I was so rude," people are like, "I didn't notice a thing."

Jessica:            Right, right, right. Okay. So this is a combo platter.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Fucking Venus at the top of your chart. It's all that Venus-ruled stuff, Libra Rising, Taurus Sun. But it's also your focal Mars. And the reason why it's your focal Mars is because, in your childhood, anger was so unpredictable and so scary that you promised yourself as a little kid—like, a little kid, not even a tween; a little kid—you were never going to be mad. You were never going to be mean because it was so terrible for you.

Raccoon:         So you know what? It's funny because that's not my experience. That's my mom's experience of anger.

Jessica:            Tell me more.

Raccoon:         I mean, my house was, if anything, more on the empty side.

Jessica:            Interesting.

Raccoon:         My dad is very sarcastic, but there's no outlashing of anger. And so, when I hear my mom speak about her house and her household, it is like that's the exact feeling she's told me. She said if she's ever expressed anger, she would explode.

Jessica:            Okay. So she told you that she was explosive in her childhood?

Raccoon:         No, that she experienced such—

Jessica:            I see. I see.

Raccoon:         —scary amount of anger in her house that she holds it in so tight. So I—

Jessica:            And you didn't experience that? There was not unpredictability and anger there?

Raccoon:         There—no. I mean, unless—yeah, no. I don't—

Jessica:            You would know. You would know. But interestingly—

Raccoon:         But that's in my chart.

Jessica:            Oh yeah. But that's not—that's not completely unusual to have your mom's experience because somehow it landed you still being a person who, in your late 30s, has only got the comfort of letting their wife know that they're angry. Right?

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You're still uncomfortable with anger. So, whether it comes from your lived experience or it comes from having a parent who's so just terrified of her own anger that she models for you—anger should be avoided because it's deadly for us.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            Potato, poh-tah-to. I mean, you have a sweet potato here instead of a terrible, old, moldy potato. And we can thank Jupiter for that because you have your Sun/Jupiter conjunction, so you had the easier—quote unquote, "luckier"—version of this, right?

Raccoon:         Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But it landed you in the same shitbox a little bit, right? I'm sorry for using a gross word. I don't know why I said it.

Raccoon:         No, it's fine. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Raccoon:         Swearing's great.

Jessica:            And also, Pluto governs poop, so I couldn't help it.

Raccoon:         Absolutely.

Jessica:            So, that said, you have a pattern, and this has happened in your life—you're grown up, so you would know—with other friends, other dates, other people you've interacted with. Sometimes you hit a wall where you no longer like the person. You're annoyed with the person. You're fucking pissed at the person. And instead of being like, "Ahh, so-and-so is so annoying"—

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            —you start telling yourself that they don't like you.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You start telling yourself that you're being rejected. And it gets, like, paranoid. Thank you, Scorpio Moon.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It gets fixated. Thank you, Pluto. And then you make it literal. Thanks, Mercury in Taurus.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Raccoon:         I would say that is right on the money.

Jessica:            Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Raccoon:         Very. Yeah.

Jessica:            So now this brings me full circle to what I almost said and I didn't say, and now I will say.

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            I think you're annoyed with your toddler, and you feel bad about being annoyed with your toddler. And that is some of what is activated here. So no amount of gentle therapizing is going to touch that part—

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —because the terrible thing about being a parent—the terrible thing about being a parent—is you're confronted with your shit. You don't lie to yourself with your friends. You don't lie to yourself with your dates. It's their fault. They're adults. But with kids, Jesus. You're screwed. You have to deal with yourself.

Raccoon:         It's so amazing and—

Jessica:            Yes.

Raccoon:         —horrifying. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's all of those things and more.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so one of the most effective ways that you have of navigating your mental health, navigating your fears around your mental health, navigating the strength of your emotions and the sometimes unpredictable landscape of your needs, is by doing what you want, when you want, how you want it. No? Yes?

Raccoon:         I mean, yes, and also, that's my dad—

Jessica:            Okay.

Raccoon:         —doing what he wants when he wants it.

Jessica:            Okay. And it worked for him, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah, I guess.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's worked for you so far, hasn't it?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. And now you have a kid, and it's not working.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And the trouble with being a one-trick pony—which is not just you. Literally all of us have parts of our nature where we develop a coping mechanism, and eh, it's not great. It's not the worst; it's not the best. And then you grow, and you age, and your circumstances evolve. And then you are confronted with, "I need other tools. This one trick isn't working."

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Jessica:            And historically, you go. You tap into Mars, right?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You tap into maybe using your body, maybe having sex with a random person, just doing something.

Raccoon:         Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            And now you have a wife. You have a toddler. I'm guessing you have a job. You live in America.

Raccoon:         Yeah. I mean, we just bought a house, and yeah, I'm working towards it. I'm getting—yeah. I'm in more school.

Jessica:            Okay. So you're in a million things.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            There's no room for you to be like, "Fuck it. I'm going to burn it to the ground. Fuck it. I'm going to go out, and I'm going to do what I want." You're all of a sudden penned in by these amazing things that you want and that are valuable and that you care about.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay. So, before I even look—and I will look energetically at your child and how they feel and how you feel and your behavior and their behavior. I'll look at all that shit for you. And also, I am pretty fucking sure that this is 85 percent you not knowing how to allow yourself to be annoyed by your child.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Raccoon:         That's so interesting.

Jessica:            Yeah. And I want to ask you, do you think it makes you a—and be honest, not what you intellectually think, but what you emotionally think.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you think it makes you a bad person or a bad parent to need space from your kid, find your kid annoying, not know what to do with your kid, feel oppressed by parenting—any of that shit?

Raccoon:         Body, it's so—I mean, I think part of this is like feeling hypnotized by, am I just embodying my family of origin here? All of a sudden, I found myself in this—not all of a sudden. I created this beautiful family.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Raccoon:         And having a kid, you're kind of back in it, navigating these things, back in navigating this relationship, all these family relationships. And I feel like I just felt a lot of annoyance directed towards me and a lot of anger directed towards me, like I'm a difficult kid.

Jessica:            From who?

Raccoon:         From my mom, mostly.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's slow it down. Let's slow it down.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Your mom had a violent childhood on a couple levels.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yep.

Jessica:            And she didn't know how to experience her anger in a healthy way because she only had unhealthy models.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so she thought simmering with rage and irritation was an act of kindness—

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            —because she wasn't hitting you or leaving you in a car or whatever else.

Raccoon:         Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, in the trauma train, she said, "Toot-toot, we're good." And that's not your experience because you are not able to, nor should you have to, compare your challenges and painful experiences to hers.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Just because hers were worse doesn't mean shit.

Raccoon:         Right.

Jessica:            And it's possible her parents, your grandparents, experienced more violence—

Raccoon:         Oh yeah.

Jessica:            —and more intensity than they perpetrated against your mom. This is, unfortunately, like cycles of abuse.

Raccoon:         For sure.

Jessica:            Another way of putting it is family trauma patterns, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            I want to just ground you into this. Your mom acted the way she did because she didn't know how to experience and express anger.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's your problem, too.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay? So what you've done is you've turned to this vibrant, Queer life where you're independent and you do shit on your own fucking terms, and there's a lot of adaptability.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And then you got married and had a child without first being like, "Hmm. How am I going to handle feeling trapped? Hmm. How am I going to handle not having adaptability in my behavior because I have so many responsibilities?"

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You did not think that through.

Raccoon:         I just felt like this—I don't know. I think, in some ways, I did. But again, it's like it's the intellectual, like—

Jessica:            It's the intellectual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Raccoon:         Intellectually, I can pinpoint all of this in some level. And then, emotionally, just—those things are not connecting in a way that they've not connected before, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah. It's in your body, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            The reason why we end up parenting like our parents did, whether it's exactly the same or the complete opposite—either/or—is because all you have is your childhood. Your childhood is the only childhood you'll ever have, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            There's no amount of therapy or inspired TikTok posts that are going to change your fucking childhood, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so here you are, and you have this glorious baby and this wonderful wife and this beautiful house. And then the baby cries, and you're like, "Yeah, that's annoying. That's okay. I can take it. It's okay." And then an hour passes, and you're like, "Oh my God. The baby's crying," or, "The baby's boring." And you're like, "I love this baby."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            "But the baby's not doing anything." Right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            I see your chart. I see your chart, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So these things happen, and you're like, "The fuck is wrong with me? I shouldn't feel that way. That's a bad way to feel. I love this baby." And so the complex that occurs for you is you unconsciously shove it down, just like your mama, but then the complexity of your nature based on lived experience and a bunch of other things—now your paranoid Scorpio Moon is like, "That kid fucking hates you. That kid doesn't choose you. You're alone." And it's a subconscious way that you have employed historically in your life to get out of relationships you didn't want to be in.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            And so, instead of saying to your girlfriend—I'm not talking about your current wife. I'm saying, historically, instead of saying to your girlfriend, "I'm not sure if I'm happy anymore," you start getting offended. You start getting hurt.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And then you don't have to be the bad guy because that's the matrilineal trauma pattern.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            Don't be the bad guy, because the bad guy is the fucking worst.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Your question as you framed it, this question of, "Does my child choose me?" essentially, like, "Is my child rejecting me?"—again, 85 percent sure. This is really just like I'm 100 percent sure—I'm not 100 percent. That's a fucking lie. I am as sure as I can be that 85 percent of this is you not yet knowing how to say, "Okay. I love this kid." We're going to call this kid Baby Raccoon because you're wearing a raccoon filter, okay?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So, "Baby Raccoon is adorable. Baby Raccoon is the love of my life. I am obsessed with Baby Raccoon. And I'm so fucking bored by this child right now."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            "And I'm mad at this child right now. And I feel trapped in my beautiful, beautiful life."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            "And I can hold both."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Pluto says, "It's one or the other. He hates you, or you hate him." It's like extremes, right—

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —instead of, "These are feelings I'm feeling right now, and I don't know how to cope with these feelings. And they're just feelings I'm feeling right now," because you know that you go to extremes, right? So you're fucking annoyed, and then you're in love, and then you're patient, and then you're impatient.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's not a bad thing. Me saying these things is not me criticizing you.

Raccoon:         Yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            There's nothing wrong with this, nothing wrong with this—until you hit an emotion you don't know how to tolerate, and then you internalize it and then project it out in a paranoid way.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's when you hurt yourself and you hurt other people, and you never deal with the actual problem. And when you don't deal with the actual problem, you can never find the actual solution.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.

Raccoon:         Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Yes. Okay. And then what's Baby Raccoon's name?

Raccoon:         [redacted].

Jessica:            The kid loves you, right?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Like, objectively, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Is your wife still breastfeeding?

Raccoon:         No. No. That was a hard part of it, was not being able to stop breast—it was just really painful. We didn't get any support, and there was just a lot of dizziness around that during that postpartum period. Mm-hmm. No one can help you stop breastfeeding quick enough in a not painful way.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's rough. That sounds really rough.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But Baby Raccoon is still kind of reaching to Mom for food.

Raccoon:         Oh, for sure. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's very much like when I look at Baby Raccoon, that's one of the first things I see. I first see how much this child loves you, how they light up when they see you, and then—wait. What's the gender? He?

Raccoon:         He. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay—how he lights up when he sees you, but he turns to Mom for food, for survival, for a certain level of comfort.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. That's biological—not to depersonalize it from your wife being a great parent, but—

Raccoon:         For sure.

Jessica:            —it's biological. We know all these things, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You've covered this in therapy. You've covered this with your wife. You've covered this with your friends.

Raccoon:         No, no. But yeah, it's good to say out loud for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's good to have a stranger psychic it, right—

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you have an incredibly healthy child. You have an incredibly healthy child.

Raccoon:         Oh, he seems like just a ball of nectar.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Raccoon:         Like, he's just happy.

Jessica:            He's robust.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            That's a robust baby.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            So—and does your wife work, or is your wife staying at home full time?

Raccoon:         She just got laid off.

Jessica:            Oh. [crosstalk]—

Raccoon:         So now she's home.

Jessica:            Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. I'm going to give you such challenging homework. And I'm glad you have a therapist. Bring this whole conversation to your therapist, okay?

Raccoon:         I will. Yes.

Jessica:            Unpack it together.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            The next time you feel rejected by your child, I'm going to encourage you to (a) name it: "I'm feeling rejected by Baby Raccoon."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. On a scale from one to ten, how bad does it feel right now? So, first, you're going to identify it. Then you're going to rate it.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And then you're going to ask yourself, "Am I annoyed?" And if you find the answer is yes, ask yourself, "Is it okay that I'm annoyed?" because what you want to be able to do, ideally—and you didn't say this; I'm saying this for you, but I'm going to assume you agree. Okay. What you want to be able to do is raise your son in a way that models for him that it's okay to have feelings—any feelings—but you just don't want to hit people, and you don't want to bite people, and you don't want to be a jerk to people. Right?

Raccoon:         Yes, 100 percent.

Jessica:            Yeah. But if you're mad, it's okay to be mad, and if you're sad, it's okay to be sad, right?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            This is like peak toddler stuff. Okay.

Raccoon:         Exactly. Yep.

Jessica:            Good news is you're kind of a toddler on this very specific topic—not on all the other topics, but on this one.

Raccoon:         I figured. Yeah.

Jessica:            This is like trauma from a very young age.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Are you the firstborn child?

Raccoon:         Second.

Jessica:            Okay, because the activation that your mother had when you were little was very fucking intense.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            So maybe that was just also because she all of a sudden had two kids. I don't know.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But the way that you both take care of yourself and parent well is the same, which is lovely. Sometimes they're not the same, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But for you, they happen to be the same. It's practicing noticing when you're annoyed.

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            And when you're annoyed or feeling trapped or feeling bored—irritated, trapped, and bored are Mars's three least-favorite fucking things, okay—

Raccoon:         Uh-huh.

Jessica:            —because annoyed is related to combativeness, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And boredom is just like, "I'm wasting my time. What am I doing?" Your Mars is in Aquarius. Oh my God. You hate being bored. So, whatever feeling it is that comes up, I want to encourage you to notice it and ask yourself if it's okay to feel it. With your son, maybe 15 months is a little young for this, but soon enough, practice talking to him about emotions. What does an angry face look like? What does a sad face look like? Really talk about emotions with him.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It will help you to talk about emotions with you, okay, because there is a part of you that really struggles with this feeling that if you are mad at me—so we won't talk about your son for a moment; we're just going to talk about me—me, your Jessica. You're mad at me. You're annoyed with me. There's a part of you that's like, "I reject Jessica completely. Therefore, I don't like Jessica. Therefore, I need to burn the bridge. We need to get out of this." Right?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It goes through a very Plutonian, like, "Burn it all to the ground," kind of place.

Raccoon:         Absolutely. Yeah.

Jessica:            And of course, you don't want to do that with your wife and son.

Raccoon:         No.

Jessica:            It's not ideal.

Raccoon:         No, and I don't want to do that with so many people, you know?

Jessica:            With so many people. And so here's the magic key, okay? You let yourself feel that way, because what you're doing is you're feeling that way and you're like, "No," and you hold your breath and you pull back, or you substantiate it and then you obsess. When you hold your breath and you pull back, the only way that your psyche can navigate the intensity of feelings you're having is being like, "Well, I know I'm feeling this way. And if it's not from me, then it's got to be from them." So the projection occurs, right?

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            So your assignment is to give yourself permission to feel like, "I want to burn everything to the ground. I want to punch my friend in the throat. I want to leave and not look back." You're allowed to feel that way.

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? So practice breathing into the feelings. It's like violence. It's intensity, yeah?

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            Pluto square Mars, man. That's how it goes.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Pluto square Mars with fucking Jupiter—man, that is how it goes. Comes on hot. Comes on sharp.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But it also leaves hot and sharp, doesn't it?

Raccoon:         Exactly. Yeah. No, for sure.

Jessica:            But what's happening with your son is he is so obviously not mad at you. He is so obviously not rejecting you.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            He is so obviously not fucking with you that all of the things that your psyche does to navigate and tolerate your own irritation and your own anger don't work, so you go to the one standby that would work with a toddler: "He doesn't love me." Good news is this is all you. Your kid loves you. That's the good news. Your kid loves you. None of this is your—you know. And listen. Not all kids love their parents.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            I was fully expecting and prepared to talk to you about how it's your job as a parent to let your kid not always like you.

Raccoon:         For sure. Yeah.

Jessica:            But that's not what your problem is, actually. That's not what your problem is.

Raccoon:         Huh.

Jessica:            And I want to really name that.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            I was kind of excited to say that to a parent, you know? Your job is to let your child reject you.

Raccoon:         Absolutely.

Jessica:            But that's not your problem. See how quick you agree with me?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            That's not your problem. That's why, when you talk about this in therapy, it doesn't make sense. You just talk about it and talk about it, and you have moments where you're having realizations about yourself and your childhood, but the needle isn't moving—

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            —because when we don't—okay. If I am bleeding from a wound—my arm is cut. I am bleeding from a wound, but it's giving me a headache. And so I'm like, "Oh my God. I have a headache. I have a headache. What's wrong with my head?" and I go to therapy, and I talk about my headache. But the whole time, I'm bleeding from my wound. My headache will never improve because it's coming from loss of blood. And in the meantime, the wound is getting worse. It's not getting cleaned. It's not getting bandaged. And this is how so many of us move through the world, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            We misidentify the root of the problem, and then all the work we do—and we work, and we work, and we work—it doesn't fucking help because we're not focused on the right thing. Yours is really about anger. So I have to say—I'm not saying. I'm going to ask, what is your wife's name? We will beep it out.

Raccoon:         Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Thank you. Okay. Some of the things that really work in your marriage, that worked in your marriage before you had a child, are a little bit harder now that you have a child.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Oh yeah. For sure.

Jessica:            And is she kind of like a—does she snap? Is she a snapper?

Raccoon:         Yeah. She's spicy.

Jessica:            She'll be like, "Just go get that. I need you to do this." Right?

Raccoon:         Yeah, 100 percent. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Do you do that as well?

Raccoon:         She's taught me to.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Thank God. Thank God—

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —because the only way for you to be in a long-term, healthy, happy relationship is for you to get mad.

Raccoon:         Yeah. No, for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah, because if you can't get mad with your partner, then you can't be honest with your partner, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And everybody's annoying. With your chart, you are so irritable, but you think being irritable makes you mean or bad. And so you're repressing, repressing, and torturing yourself, and then you end up fucking shit up, and it's a mess. Right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So the good news is—

Raccoon:         Such a read. It's so true.

Jessica:            Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. It's clear as day in your chart. So the thing with your wife is that she really vacillates between wanting to support you with this and being like, "Get over it."

Raccoon:         Oh yeah. For sure.

Jessica:            I don't think that she would be able to locate all the things I've located in our conversation, but she knows that you know that your child isn't rejecting you and that your child loves you, so she doesn't understand what this is about.

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Raccoon:         Yes. She's absolutely confounded.

Jessica:            She's confounded, and here's the thing. Here's the thing, okay? You being rejected, you being despondent, you being hurt empowers you to say, "I can't help with this right now. I can't show up in this way now." And it's annoying for her because she's like—and she's not wrong. She's not wrong. It's not weaponized incompetence, but it's in the family of it. You're not doing it on purpose. You're not doing it consciously. Don't you dare feel guilty.

Raccoon:         Yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            It's more that she's picking up on something, but she doesn't know what she's picking up on. And she's not wrong. When you get, "Oh my God. My kid doesn't love me," when you get despondent, you're actually—it's your body's way—it's like it's the way you've figured out how to tell yourself you need space.

Raccoon:         Yes. Exactly.

Jessica:            That's what it is. And so, if you big-boy pants up and you just say to your beloved wife, "I'm having a hard time parenting right now. Can I run around the block? Can I go and listen to a really long, loud-sounding song in my headphones in the bathroom for a minute? Can I go do something to take care of myself and come back and help?"—

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And you know what? Half the time, she'll say, "No. I need you to fucking change the diaper," or something. Right? It's not always going to work.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But the other half of the time, she'll say, "Yeah. Go take care of yourself. Come back whole."

Raccoon:         Oh, for sure.

Jessica:            And you won't always come back whole. Sometimes you'll come back just as annoyed. But at least you're tending to the wound on your arm instead of talking about the headache.

Raccoon:         Right.

Jessica:            Something I really like about your wife a lot is that if she doesn't like something, she'll be like, "I don't like that."

Raccoon:         I know. It's so wild.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's wild. It's wild. It's exactly what you're scared of doing, but being with this woman is helping you to see that it's not mean. It's honest. You know where you stand.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You never have to be like, "Oh, she secretly doesn't like me." There's no secrets. If she didn't like you, she'd be like, "I don't like you today." You would know.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, she might not be that direct, but you know what I mean. It's not a fantasy with her. You know.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you want that medicine. You want that magic.

Raccoon:         Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            And you can have it, but in your own nature. So you're kind of like a little greyhound. You need to run out some of your energy so that you can figure out what you're actually feeling.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So are you like a Sporty Spice? Are you like an athletic person?

Raccoon:         No.

Jessica:            No.

Raccoon:         I—yeah. I used to dance a little bit, but I haven't in a bit.

Jessica:            Okay. So, if you went into the bathroom or the bedroom and you blasted music in your ears and you just danced to a song or two, would that make you feel better?

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Can you practice doing it?

Raccoon:         Yeah. I think I have to.

Jessica:            I agree.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Parenting is really hard for you.

Raccoon:         It is.

Jessica:            I'm going to just be really direct. This is like—if you had come to me and been like, "I'm thinking about being a parent," I'd be like, "You're going to have to deal with your anger, and it's going to be hard"—

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —not like you can't love. It's not that you can't create a structured environment and be a reliable parent and guardian and caretaker. All of this is like check, check, check. But man, this is a really hard topic for you. So telling your wife, "I'm going to try to do this, and if you catch me being weird and whiny about something"—or whatever else are your symptoms—ask her to say, "You need to go dance. You need to go shake your ass. You need to go use your body."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And blasting music will work. I don't know anything about this, but in the '90s, people used to talk a lot about primal scream therapy where you go in your bedroom and you scream into a pillow, or you go to your car and you scream your face off.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            That wouldn't hurt you either.

Raccoon:         No.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Raccoon:         There's been times where I've done stuff like that, and I feel a lot more grounded.

Jessica:            Yep.

Raccoon:         And it's funny you suggest that. But yeah, I think there's just the adjustment to the lifestyle of a parent, and it's like, where? Where and when? I think part of it is like you're just faced with yourself and this toddler, you know? I can't just run into the other room, you know?

Jessica:            No, you cannot. And you're faced with your moods because, so much of adult life without kids, you can be like, "I'm annoyed. I'm going to grab my phone," or, "Oh, I'm bored. I'm going to text a friend I never really hang out with."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            There are so many things you can do.

Raccoon:         Exactly. Yeah.

Jessica:            And as a parent, you really do make a decision to have—I don't know—like 20 years of your autonomy compromised, right?

Raccoon:         Absolutely.

Jessica:            To decenter a meaningful part of your autonomy.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's hard. And no parent would say, "Oh, that's chill." Nobody has an easy time of this transition, I don't think.

Raccoon:         No. Exactly.

Jessica:            I mean, I'm sure it's much easier for some people than others, but it's hard on everyone. And you have a lot of pressure that you put on yourself. And so practicing making space for your sticky, messy, Plutonian emotions is also a practice in giving your mother permission to not have been great at doing it herself—not forgiving her. It's not about that. It's about acceptance. It's about, "Okay. My mother was really bad at x, y, and z, but her parents were 700 times worse. And I can hold that that doesn't excuse the ways she hurt me, but it does contextualize it."

The feelings that come up inside of you in your, " I don't know how to deal with this. You must be hurting me. You must be hating me"—right? It's not great. You're not happy. It's not working in your relationships. But for context, in your own childhood, you saw one parent who gave everything and the other person who took everything, right?

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            You saw the repression of individuality and repression of anger, and it just—it turns out that that's your go-to. You're like, "Oh, I've seen this movie. This is how the movie goes." And you're playing out the parts you didn't like—

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —because they made an impression.

Raccoon:         Yeah, in the body, for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah, in the body. In the body. So Mars. Let's talk about Mars for a second. Mars is the focal planet of your T-square. It's about the body. Mars governs the body.

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            And Mars needs to sweat to be engaged, right?

Raccoon:         Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            So you want to be engaging your muscles—Mars governs that—also head and jaws. Are you a clencher?

Raccoon:         Oh, for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet. Pluto, right? So just when you start clenching in a situation, you're probably annoyed or bored or mad or something. Okay? And so, again, just be like, "Oh shit. Am I feeling those feelings? Okay. Okay. Is it okay for me to feel these feelings right now?" Not, "Is it okay for me to act out?" Not, "Is it okay for me to punch someone in the throat?" which is my go-to feeling myself. You don't do those things, but it's okay to feel those things because as you feel the feelings, you are not abandoning your own inner child and saying to your own inner child, "Those feelings are bad. You're not allowed to feel them. Shut up"—

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you don't want to do that to Baby Raccoon.

Raccoon:         Mm-mm.

Jessica:            You want him to figure out how to experience anger so he can move through anger, how to experience boredom so he can be curious and move through boredom, right?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so the way that you're going to model that for him is TBD.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But this is the time to figure it out. Now, I've answered your question, but I want to just slow down for a second and ask you, do you have any lingering questions about this?

Raccoon:         I mean, it's—yeah. I'm so thankful. There's parts of me that are just like—have glimpses of awareness of this, and this is just a beautiful mirror, which I really appreciate. Thank you so much, Jessica.

Jessica:            My pleasure. So my pleasure.

Raccoon:         I guess just—I don't know. This is just something that's been lingering with me, is do I—it's essentially like, do I show up in my son's chart in the sense of does he—I guess I'm just curious, does he—am I—I don't know. It's not so much like ancestor. I don't know how to—I'm trying not to fuck with ancestors—

Jessica:            I understand your question. I understand what your question is, I think.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You're asking me—but really hedging away from it—"Am I in my child's chart? Am I actually my child's parent?"

Raccoon:         Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Even if you and your wife get divorced next month, you're still in your child's chart.

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            You're locked in. For better or worse, you're locked in. You're locked in. Yes.

Raccoon:         Yeah, which I know is like a whatever question [crosstalk].

Jessica:            No, it's not. It's haunting you, this question.

Raccoon:         It is. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You have a Sun/Jupiter conjunction. Does that give you main character syndrome? A little bit. It does a little bit.

Raccoon:         Absolutely. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so part of this is like, "Oh shit. I'm in this family with these two people who are physically related, and I'm the odd man out."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            That's part of it. It's just fucking with your main character syndrome. Luckily, that is more aesthetic than substantial because you're actually a part of the family except when you say, "Oh, no, you've rejected me. I can't. I won't." That's when you're not a part of the family. That's when you end up acting like kind of your dad, kind of your mom.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You do a little bit of hybrid, right?

Raccoon:         Exactly.

Jessica:            But Baby Raccoon thinks of you as—I don't know—like Papa Raccoon. We'll call you whatever you like. And your wife sure as hell thinks of you as 50 percent of her and her life.

Raccoon:         For sure. Yeah.

Jessica:            This is all your shit, which is great news. This is your shit. Wonderful news. Also, I think it's a really normal feeling and fear.

Raccoon:         I think a lot of—air quotes—"dads" feel this way, but they're not able to articulate it.

Jessica:            Yes. Yep. Yep. I completely agree, and also stepparents and parents who don't have a blood relation for any number of reasons. It's really fair. And then there are people who don't feel that way, and look at them. They have other problems that you don't have. That's okay. That's okay.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So that feeling, though—it's a little bit your main character syndrome, which we're going to kind of be like, "Okay. It is what it is."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But there's also that fucking—you were born in the late '80s. you've got that Uranus/Saturn/Neptune in Capricorn thing. It's at your IC. It's at the bottom of your chart. So there is a part of you that, against all logic, is so weirdly fucking traditional. You're like, "I'm the dad, but am I the dad? Am I really the dad?" Right? It's like you're not traditional, but you're really traditional in this weird way that wouldn't come up unless you decided to get married and have a baby.

Raccoon:         Yeah. No, for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. You just decided to trigger yourself in all the most intense ways, you crazy raccoon.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's actually what that is.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, you will not magically change and no longer be paranoid. You have a Scorpio Moon. Come on. You're not going to magically change and be able to just name all of your emotions and be like, "I'm okay with them." That's not realistic. It's a path. It's a path that I want to encourage you to traverse, and know that part of the path is wandering from the path, forgetting the path, falling on your face, trampling on someone else. That's life.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to say really firmly to you that you will fuck up, and that doesn't make you a bad person.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And your child will be intensely annoying, and one day, he will smell terrible. And it will be puberty. And you will find it difficult. And all of these things are okay because feelings are like—okay. I don't know where you live. Don't tell me. But can you get your ass to the ocean? Can you see some waves crashing in?

Raccoon:         Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. So my advice to you is, to really hammer this home, in the next couple days, if you can, go to the ocean.

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            And notice how the intensity of the waves—they come in, and then they pull back. And then they reshape. The water in the ocean is the waves, but is the waves the ocean? The waves take different shapes at different times. This is what emotions do. They are powerful. And when a wave is coming at you, it's material. It's really solid, right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And then, in a moment, it's completely lost its shape, and it's something else. But the ocean itself, the water itself, remains. It remains. And that is the nature of your emotions. They are deeply Plutonian. They come in—holy shit—and they seem like the most real, most physical thing in the world. And then they pull back, and they take a new shape.

Raccoon:         Yeah. No, absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, over the course of life, when you fuck up, when your kid's annoying, when your wife—you're just like, "Ahh, who are you? How did I do this with you?"—whatever it is—because you will feel those feelings, because you think they're bad feelings; therefore, you'll feel them because that's fucking life. You can remember the ocean, that if this wave continues to come in at the same shape repeatedly, then it really does require your care and attention. But other times, when your waves come crashing in and smack you in the face—when that occurs, it's not evidence. It's not evidence.

                        And right now, you have a habit of saying, "Oh, that's evidence of something. I have to figure out what the evidence is." It's just really evidence that you are an intense person, and you have intense feelings. And giving yourself the kindness of experiencing your feelings and not abandoning yourself and not pathologizing yourself and not blaming yourself is the foundation to allowing other people to also be annoying and also make mistakes and also fuck up. Right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have a kid. Just because you love a kid doesn't mean you always like a kid. Kids—they wear weird clothes sometimes. When they get to choose their own clothes, you're like, "Why would you wear those clothes?" You know? Kids make weird choices. They're people who are different from you.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's so wonderful that you're dealing with this now because these are not the most triggering years.

Raccoon:         Oh yeah. I'm sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. The most triggering years are going to be more around puberty for you because I imagine that was more of a triggering time in your childhood.

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And also, the focal planet of your T-square is in the fifth house, so it's just like—the hormones. The hormones. There's going to be a little bit—because when kids are going through hormonal transitions, they themselves are more up and down. This is an age where they will often start snapping at their parents. They go from teddy bears to, "Oh, you don't know anything." Right?

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so that might be triggering for you. And it's so wonderful that you have so many years before that shit happens, so many years to be like, "Oh. Okay. I find my little teenage beloved child to be very annoying today. And I still love this child, and this child still loves me." Luckily, you have time to get there, to really get there. Now, do you have another lingering question?

Raccoon:         I had a question about guides and mine and, you know, like—

Jessica:            I can actually tell you something really important about that.

Raccoon:         Okay. Please.

Jessica:            There's a lot of different kinds of people and lots of different ways that we experience or access our guidance. Some people are super woo, super Piscean, and they're just like, "Oh, I found my guides, man." You are not that person, because you're so regimented in controlling your feelings.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so I imagine it's quite hard for you to access your guidance—not the flow of the energy. You're great at that. Flow of energy—you're somebody who's like, "Oh, I see a rainbow. I'm going to hop on and take a ride." You can do that. But there's something that sits between you and your guidance.

Raccoon:         I think—yeah. I think I know what you're—yeah. It's like I'm so open to a certain point, but internally, if it was different than how I feel, then I think I would probably feel scared about that, honestly.

Jessica:            You feel threatened. Yeah. Threatened.

Raccoon:         Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's Mars. We're back to Mars. You're threatened.

Raccoon:         Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            And so it is not possible to have healthy boundaries and not have the capacity to get angry. It's not possible.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Anger is a part of boundaries, being able to say no, right? If you think about mother bears, animals out in the wild, they express boundaries through growling and other things, right? It's like these things are connected. And for you, you understand intuitively that you are incredibly sensitive energetically. And if you start calling shit in and you don't have boundaries, that could actually be dangerous for you.

Raccoon:         Amen.

Jessica:            So you're not wrong to just be like, "Ahh." You know? I say do the work we're talking about before you get too fucking woo and worry too much about your guidance—

Raccoon:         Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you have a Sun/Jupiter conjunction anyways.

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            So Sun/Jupiter conjunction—shit just comes your way, opportunities. You get lucky. Things come together, eh?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And then you convince yourself that something's wrong because that's a coping mechanism you have. But things do come your way.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so that is its own form of guidance. It's just not the thing that we talk about a lot in woo spaces in 2025.

Raccoon:         Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But I don't think that needs to be your priority at the same time because, first, get this anger, boundaries, validating your emotions, not pathologizing or punishing your emotions—get that. Give it a couple years.

Raccoon:         Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            Three. Give it three to five years of really committing to this, and you will be a really different you—the exact same you, but actually you. And some of your friends won't make it through this because if you actually owned, "Oh shit. I find this person deeply annoying. I'm not insecure around this person; I don't enjoy this person"—some of that will happen for you. And you will hate that. And you can decide to keep your friends if you find them annoying. This doesn't make you a bad person, to have limits, needs, preferences. But that's why you have a therapist, right?

Raccoon:         Oh yeah.

Jessica:            You get a reading; it's a one-and-done situation. You have your therapist, and you do the work. Right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So that'll be like part of the process.

Raccoon:         Great.

Jessica:            But I really think you're fucking ready, man.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You are.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Thank you.

Jessica:            My pleasure. Okay. I'm going to say one last thing, and then we're done, okay?

Raccoon:         Okay.

Jessica:            Neptune squaring your Uranus, your Saturn, and opposing your Ascendant—then, quickly thereafter, it'll come for your Midheaven; it'll square your Midheaven. So you're going through a number of years of Neptune transits. Neptune governs anxiety.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Uncertainty, right?

Raccoon:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And it requires boundaries. In order to have boundaries—I will repeat this in this new context. In order to have healthy boundaries, you need to be able to experience anger and irritation and boredom because if you tell yourself that, "30 percent of my emotions are bad, and 50 percent are tolerable, and 20 percent are good," well, then you can't have boundaries, because you're lying to yourself and you're cutting yourself into pieces. Right?

Raccoon:         Sure. Yeah.

Jessica:            So this is an important period of your life for the next few years to really explore what boundaries are on an energetic level, on a woo-woo level. What are boundaries on a psychological level? What are behavioral boundaries? What kind of boundaries do you need with yourself when you slip into an old trauma pattern? What kind of boundaries do you need with your kid when you're irritated with them? What kind of boundaries do you need with your wife when you—whatever the fuck? Right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            This is not just about walls or rules. This is about accountability to yourself as a foundation to accountability to others because boundaries are yours and yours alone to hold; rules are something you enforce on other people. So this is a big part of where you're going. And as I say this, I can feel some sadness in you. And that's because you don't want to. And I want to just say hang out there, man. You don't have to want to. You can be sad about that. It's okay. And you can feel like, "I really don't want to deal with that. That sounds hard"—

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —because I can feel in your system you feel sad. You feel like, "I don't want to," and it's already, even as I'm speaking, turning into, "I can't." And that "I can't" is part of the disempowered, "My kid doesn't love me. I don't belong in my own family," thing.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's—you are a fucking powerhouse. There's very little you can't do.

Raccoon:         Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. And I mean, you hear my readings. I don't say that to everyone. Literally, there's very little that you can't do. But you need to give yourself permission to feel bad or resistant or whatever the fuck else, and right now, you don't have that permission. And no one can give it to you but you. And luckily, man, you married a woman who's like, "Permission granted. Go. Go. Feel your fucking feelings," right?

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            She's just like, "Come on. Let's go."

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So you're not going to lose your family for growing into yourself. You're going to gain more access to your family and, more importantly, maybe, more access to yourself. That's fucking breaking family trauma patterns. It's powerful.

Raccoon:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And your mom won't like it.

Raccoon:         No.

Jessica:            No. But that's okay.

Raccoon:         Not at all.

Jessica:            She doesn't have to like it. That's okay right now.

Raccoon:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Raccoon:         Thank you so much, Jessica.

Jessica:            My pleasure.