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

T.:                   Thank you so much, Jessica. Here's my question. I'm going to read it to you. "Hi, Jessica. I'm reflecting on when and how honesty is best shared. I'm recently learning that it's not always appropriate or appreciated, and I do know that honesty can be used to justify people being mean or putting people down. And that's not what I'm talking about, not me. Lately, I find myself struggling to let things go instead of saying them. Is there anything in my chart that can help me grow through this without jeopardizing my sense of authenticity and integrity? I often ask myself, 'What would Jessica say?' And I appreciate any triple Cap honesty you have to share with me. Much love. Really an honor to be here. Thank you so much, Jessica."

Jessica:            Thank you. That's very sweet and also really funny. So I got questions about your question, as I do. Okay. How to let things go—give me more words for this.

T.:                   I mean, to the extent that I am able to be honest with myself, I would like to be honest with other people and vice versa, right?

Jessica:            Verbally?

T.:                   Verbally. Yes. And it's also kind of a practical thing, too, of I don't like feeling like I'm keeping up with lies, and sometimes if things are not said, it feels kind of like I'm lying or like I'm omitting information. Even if I know that that's not necessarily true, it feels that way.

Jessica:            Yep.

T.:                   And I'm not necessarily the type of person who's unfiltered, either. I think I do choose, for the most part, to the best of my ability, when to be honest. And I do want to be honest with the people close to me. And it's something that I think I've done work to get to this point where I can talk to people, or if I want to make that decision, to do it and to talk to people about just any curiosities I have, an experience I'm having, or just something I feel like needs to be clarified. And I feel like in the past, it's definitely been discouraged or something I didn't even really have the skills to do, both because of a cultural thing and also just other elements of my life, having to do maybe even with safety.

And in the present, I'm trying to approach my relationships with curiosity, but that might also mean we have to have a conversation, or we don't necessarily have to, but it does feel like I have to put things out there sometimes. And there are recently family dynamics and events that just result in a lot of triangulation and open secrets, and I know that there is a question of if people have the capacity to receive information or to really talk about—talk through stuff. There's also concerns around safety or feeling safe. And then, when people aren't there, when people don't have the capacity or people don't necessarily have the skills or they're just really not in a place to have those conversations, I'm just kind of turning over in my head, "Do I put a pin in it? Do I let it go?"

Jessica:            That's the part where you're having a hard time letting it—putting a pin in it is what you're struggling with?

T.:                   Yeah. I just—how to move forward if not with or from the truth, right? And if we can't address it then, I know that as more time goes on, it just kind of accumulates. And I don't want to get to a point where there's resentment or there's a place where we're having to take life steps back. You know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

T.:                   Things are hard enough, so—

Jessica:            Okay. I got follow-ups, but first I'm going to share your birth data: August 25th, 1994, in Saitama, Japan, at 12:33 p.m. Okay. I have questions. So is this specifically coming up in family, or is this coming up in all kinds of relationships?

T.:                   All kinds.

Jessica:            All kinds.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. And is it coming up more in the last year or so, or is this like a chronic issue?

T.:                   In the last year or so. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm going to have more questions, but first let me share something. In your birth chart, you've got Mercury at the top of your chart, and it's in a little Chiron/Midheaven sandwich in Virgo. And so meticulously processing through ideas—very on-brand for you. You also have an Ascendant/Pluto conjunction with Pluto in Scorpio and the Ascendant in Sadge, so it's an out-of-sign conjunction. And Pluto's in your twelfth house. So ruminating deeply on what is hidden and what is true—check.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And a belief that it is on you to make things happen, with that Sadge Rising—check. Okay. One more thing I'm going to add—you've got Saturn in Pisces, so you just finished your Saturn Return, hence the last year or so, this issue has been a big deal for you. And you have Saturn opposite your Chiron, your Mercury, and your Midheaven—very, very opposite. Saturn is also square your Ascendant, and what that indicates is that you feel this very serious responsibility to identify the problems and the parameters to work within them. And if you are in a situation where the parameters are really unclear or the problems haven't been identified, it can make you feel really out of control.

T.:                   Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            So I want to just name that some of this is about the truth, and some of this is about control. And so, if you told me that you were just super chill about truth and conversations flow and, like, "Whatever, man," I would not believe you. You know what I mean? We are who we are. And also, I want to say to you there are lots of layers to truth, right?

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Like on the one hand, there's your truth. You and I can both go and meet at the café and each get our own drinks and hang out, and then we can have a weird interaction with some fucking dude, and then we hang out longer, and then we go home. And then we might retell the story of our time together in a radically different way, even though we were there together, right?

So there's your truth, and then there's the truth of what you wish to have happen as a result of communicating the truth of what happened at our time at the café. And that's a different thing, right? That's not just about the empirical truth, although Saturn loves empirical truth and Pluto doesn't mind it. It is about you navigating safety, reality, responsibility, etc. Does that track?

T.:                   Absolutely, 100 percent.

Jessica:            Okay. And so, when you're dealing with basically anything, your sense of right and wrong is really driving for you.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And if you believe that on some level you have done something wrong or they have done something wrong, it is hard for you to put down. And also, different people have different takes on what is right and wrong, and different people have different needs. So I am going to now ask you to share with me an example of where this is happening in your life at this time so we can kind of dig in and use it as an example as opposed to—like, I want to say I am clear that this is not just about a relationship. It's bigger. But let's dig into one.

T.:                   Okay. So this is kind of a big one, and I actually got some information about it at the same time as I read the email about having my question picked.

Jessica:            Awesome.

T.:                   So, recently, I mean, my parents have been—they should not have been together for a very long time, but recently my mom made the decision to finally separate and divorce. And there's another element to it where it's not just that she's separating or divorcing; it's also that she met somebody else. And until yesterday or two days ago, I knew about it. I actually knew about it for a few months now—actually, since December—but have not really felt like I can be honest with her about the fact that I know because I feel like she does not necessarily have the capacity right now to have the conversation with me versus kind of blowing up and it becoming this whole thing.

                        And I've been treading really lightly and also taking a lot of space from her because I have a lot of other stuff going on in my life. And usually, we're very close. Usually, I think we share a lot between the two of us. But lately I just don't even know how to talk to her when it's either, you know, you're going to tell me this very uncomfortable thing or you're going to lie to my face. And if I say something, things might blow up. But actually—

Jessica:            How did you find out?

T.:                   I was visiting family. We were all visiting family a while back, and my grandmother walked in on her having a conversation with a man over the phone. And then my grandmother told me.

Jessica:            So your mom's mom?

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Your mom's mom told you. Why did she tell you?

T.:                   Well, we were just talking about how my mom's behavior has kind of gotten to a point where it's kind of hard to talk to her lately, and it's actually a very big deal that we can even visit family because of immigration status and all of these different things. And over that trip, over that visit, my mom was kind of lashing out at everybody around her, including myself and including my grandma, who she doesn't really get to visit very often. So it was just something that I think we were both kind of processing, supporting each other on. It's like, "Wow. This has been such a stressful time, and we don't know what's going on with my mom. Oh, we know that she's stressed because"—

Jessica:            She's cheating.

T.:                   —"of other stuff in her life." Yeah, and she's also cheating and keeping information from people [crosstalk].

Jessica:            So I have a question.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Has knowing that your mom is cheating on your dad with someone else—has that truth helped you, or has it not helped you? Because your mom didn't tell you. Your grandma told you. Was this important information for you to have? Do you think that is the case?

T.:                   Maybe it did help in understanding a little better where her behavior is coming from, although I still really don't like to kind of make assumptions. I think it definitely helped me to make the decision to kind of step back a little bit because I tend to be the person that either of my parents kind of rely on or that—you know, I'm kind of like an emotional support person for everybody in my family. And so I knew that if I step in that direction, I'm just going to be thrown into this tornado. And knowing that information about my mom, I also didn't want to be in a position where I'm lying to my dad. You know, so in a way—

Jessica:            So it sounds like it actually has been hard for you to know that your mom is lying to you and to be put in a position where you're lying to your dad.

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. I wanted to slow this down a little bit because your grandmother did something that I would say is potentially unethical because what she did was she told you the truth, but it wasn't her truth to tell. She doesn't actually have the facts. Your mom may have fallen in love with someone and been trying to break up with him because she felt racked with guilt. We don't know because your mom didn't tell you. It wasn't your grandmother's place to tell you, and also, listen. You are now 30?

T.:                   I am 30. Yes.

Jessica:            Which is a grown-ass adult. Also, you are your mother's child. And it is perfectly reasonable that your mother's truth—and I don't know if this is the case because I'm looking at your chart, and I see your mom has very complicated issues.

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. But it is perfectly reasonable for your mother to not want to dump this on you until she was ready to take responsibility for it. Again, your grandmother told you the truth, but it wasn't her truth to tell. And then she put you in a position where you had to make decisions based on that truth that you don't know if that truth is true. You don't know. You don't know. And you then had to decide, do you tell your mother that you know because her mother told you? What do you do? And it put you in a position where you had to pull back instead of what you might have done, looking at your chart, which is to say to your mom, "You're acting really weird with me. What's going on?"

                        But instead of doing that, because you know the truth, you're like, "This lady is lying to me, and she's being mean. Fuck that." So I want to just use this—before we even get into the relationship with your mom, use this as a really great example of your grandmother telling the truth, and it was, I would say, maybe not the right thing to do. It wasn't kind to you. It wasn't kind to your dad. And it sure as hell wasn't kind to your mom. The only person your grandmother served by telling you that truth was herself so she wasn't the only one who knew and she had somebody to talk to.

T.:                   You're so right. Wow. I had not thought of it that way.

Jessica:            Well, and that makes sense because you're in this hypervigilant mode where you're like, "I have to navigate and manage this important news. I have to take care of my parents. I have to take care of myself." And you're like, "Oh my God. It's impossible to take care of myself in this situation," which may or may not be a full truth. If your grandma told you this, I'm guessing that your grandmother has a pattern with her daughter about not showing up for her daughter and not prioritizing her daughter's needs. Is that correct?

T.:                   As far as I can observe, yes. I didn't really meet my grandmother until kind of later in life. I haven't been able to spend very much time with her because we live in different countries and have not been able to visit each other. But just in my adult life, I've definitely kind of heard things from my mom and also have observed them together. Yeah. I think I can assume that my mom was not nurtured in the way that I think she needed or wanted to be growing up.

Jessica:            That's what it looks like in your chart. It looks like your grandma and your mom—it wasn't like a healthy, loving dynamic. And this is really clearly evidenced by your grandmother overhearing your daughter having an affair, theoretically—because how many times have you heard part of a conversation and misunderstood it?

T.:                   Absolutely.

Jessica:            Countless times, right?

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And then she went and reported it to her daughter's child, which could only damage the relationship between her daughter and her daughter's child. There's no benefit to you to know this information. There's no need for you to know this information. Now you've been implicated. You're lying to your dad, which is—even if you didn't really care about honesty, which you very fucking much do, is some bullshit.

                        And so I want to just slow us down and ground into what a great unconscious teacher your grandmother is being. She is showing you that the truth is not always yours to tell, and it's not objective, necessarily. We may look back and recognize that your grandmother perfectly interpreted what she heard and she was perfectly correct, but it still wasn't her fucking truth to tell, and she didn't know it was the truth. It's like I can read the title of a news story and be like, "I know what's in this story. I know exactly based on the title." But we objectively know that you actually have to read the fucking article in order to know because headline news is not always what it seems.

                        The same thing is true for overhearing people having personal conversations. So, when you evaluate communicating the truth to somebody else, a question for you to evaluate is, "Who is this serving? Is this actually mine to hold? Is this mine to narrate?" because your grandmother is teaching a really clear lesson. It wasn't her truth, and it was serving her. She didn't want to hold it alone, so she gave it to you to hold. And honestly, it looks like a pattern between them. Was your mom young when she married your dad?

T.:                   Yes. I think she was 20.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Yeah. Honestly, it looks like it. It looks like your mom was very much raised to believe that her value was in being a wife and a mom and that whole traditional thing.

T.:                   100 percent. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And she was raised by her mother to believe that her value was as a woman  in that very traditional way.

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            And your mom really, really believed it, and she also never believed it. Your mom struggles with honesty, and she struggles with honesty emotionally. And it's not because she's a liar, although lying may be a consequence. It's because she doesn't know how to sit with her own complexity and nuance because she doesn't feel that she has a right. Does that track, from what you know about her?

T.:                   Yeah. I feel like this past trip visiting family and being in the country of birth and childhood of both of my parents, I definitely observed a lot of the traditional cultural gender roles and the way that—yeah, there's just so many things that are unspoken and are not said. And yeah, it definitely made me reflect on even my own childhood with my mom and how there was a lot of the same thing where she would tell me things that I would have to keep, then, from my father.

Jessica:            Right.

T.:                   Yeah. And I definitely see her kind of—this recent period of, yeah, just her behavior changing being kind of a culmination of a lifetime of not sitting with the things and not acting in line with what you're saying about believing this thing but also not really believing it.

Jessica:            Yeah. And also, I'm guessing she's around 50, early 50s, somewhere around there?

T.:                   She is.

Jessica:            Yeah. So—

T.:                   It's her birthday today.

Jessica:            Oh. Happy birthday, Mom. She's also probably going through perimenopause or menopause, a massive hormonal transition that makes people different and irritable, often. Right?

T.:                   Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            I want to just acknowledge that this pattern of confiding the truth in a person and making that person your accomplice is not a kindness, and it's a bit of a twisted relationship to truth. This is like a really deep matrilineal inheritance for you.

T.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Your mother is saying to you, "So-and-so"—now, so-and-so might be your father, might be a sibling, might be a person at the supermarket—"actually did x." And telling you something could be gossip, could just be like sharing, right? Giving you that information, information that you cannot use in a healthy way, that actually makes you her accomplice—because now you know something you're not supposed to know, and there's a judgment implied with the data, right? This is a thing that your mom did to you a lot. Am I correct in seeing that?

T.:                   Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that's what your grandmother did to you.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so here we have an example of—yes, technically, we're talking about communicating truth, but the motivations are not about communicating truth. They're about not holding these ideas or this information alone. It's about having an accomplice. Now, both of you know that the lady at the supermarket was x, y, and z, so the next time you see her, it's going to be in your head, too, not just mine. It brings you around to the other person's way of thinking kind of passively. But of course, it's not that passive when it's a parent or a grandparent because there's an inherent power differential there, right?

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Before we go too much deeper into the family part, I just want to slow down to say, when you speak the truth to someone in your life, there's what you want to get off your chest, and then there's what you want the other person to hear. And oftentimes, with most humans in most relationships, those are slightly different things. And so your grandmother, if she was, from my perspective—and I am discerning and judging; I'm going to acknowledge that, okay? But if she was a little more in integrity here, what she might have done is said to herself, "I don't want to be the only one who knows this information. I want to let my grandchild know that they're not bananas and there's something else going on here." Your grandmother might have said, "You know, your mom's going through stuff. I think she's having a hard time, and we should give her a little space and not take it personally. Maybe we can ask her questions about what's going on for her." That would have actually been a great thing, right?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Because that's information you could use.

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Then you're not lying to your mother. You're not lying to your father. And you're not burdened with this information that, like—what the fuck are you going to do with this? And it would have theoretically given your grandmother an accomplice in that, "Now we both know that we're looking out for daughter/Mom." But instead, she didn't think about what you needed to hear. She only thought about what she wanted to say.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And technically, your grandmother spoke the damn truth, and now you have the truth. But what is the fucking point? What is the point? Now this truth has turned you into a liar. Some bullshit, right?

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, when you are in situations with other people, your drive to divulge the details is unlikely to ever go away, okay? It is just written in your chart. You want to divulge the details. But who does that serve in this situation? Is it your truth? Are these your details to tell? Your grandmother does not know that your mother was cheating. She does not know that information. She inferred it based on what she overheard. I mean, do you have different data than that?

T.:                   I do, actually. I mean, for a while, I thought, you know, she could just be being like a very traditional older—

Jessica:            Sure.

T.:                   —woman who thinks you shouldn't be talking to a man. But over time, my dad then came to me and said, "Hey, I'm suspecting your mother is cheating [crosstalk]"—

Jessica:            Why are these adults doing this with you?

T.:                   That's what I'm saying, Jessica. I'm the person I feel like a lot of people will—

Jessica:            What?

T.:                   —yeah, talk to. And then—

Jessica:            Okay. So wait. Let me slow you down.

T.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            I don't want you to forget what you were going to say, but your grandmother was right, and your father was right. But neither of them knew. That's what I'm communicating. I want to be really clear. Listen. Here's the truth. I have hot-pink glasses on. That's the truth. You can verify it by looking at my face.

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            That is the truth, right? It is a verifiable truth. Now, I have another pair of glasses sitting on my desk. I could tell you what color they are. I'm not going to show them to you. You have no way of knowing if that's the truth. You could trust me on it, but you don't know. I could guess what glasses you have sitting on your desk, and I could make an informed guess. Hey, I'm fucking psychic. Who knows, right? And I could go and tell someone else what color glasses you have on your desk. And you know what? Maybe I'm fucking right. And maybe, in the end, that other person will find out that I was telling the truth. But I don't know. I am making an informed guess. This is a theory.

                        You know I have pink glasses on, but that's all you know about glasses in this conversation. It's the only data point in this conversation about glasses that I just fabricated that is verifiable. And that's what I want to ground you into because your grandmother and your father both did something to you that is a very complicated, fucked-up relationship to truth that comes out of wanting to unburden themselves and to control the situation because both of them got you to be against your mom; did they not?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Very effective.

T.:                   Right.

Jessica:            Your mother not telling you was the best possible thing she could possibly do. I'm going to back that up. Bear with me. Do you have kids?

T.:                   I don't.

Jessica:            No. Me neither. I don't fucking want kids. It's very hard to be a parent. It's very hard to be a parent. But I can tell you this. Me and your mom are the same age, okay? If I had a fucking kid who was your age, I could very easily think to myself, "This is my child." And if I was doing something that I knew was unethical and I was struggling with, and I really wanted to be happy but I didn't know how to be happy, and I just fell into something with this person—or maybe I made it happen. Who fucking knows, right?

But let's say I knew that I was doing something that was unethical and that if I told you, it would turn you against your father or it would turn you against me, and it would make you a part of my marriage. Then the best possible thing I could do if I was fucking around with someone else is keep it to my goddamn self until I was willing to take responsibility for it and do something about it. If I told you, I would make you a part of the affair. What comes up?

T.:                   Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely reflecting on the control piece, too, because I agree with you. I think it's the best—I'm coming to this place in my relationship to everyone around me, but definitely starting with my parents, that I can't fix them even though I'm the only—I'm often, I think, the only person they can be honest to. And they have both said this to me in different ways.

                        But I think about how my mom has been treating me and the people around us lately, right? And I think that does exist separately from this choice to keep me out of the affair and the situation. But that's what's coming up for me, is I just—I've been also dealing with a lot of resentment that's come to the surface from things that I thought I'd forgiven my mom for in my upbringing. Just since all of this has started, that's been coming up for me.

Jessica:            Okay.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So how has she been treating you? Because you actually haven't shared that.

T.:                   She's been very reactive and defensive, and even if we're not necessarily talking about anything serious or anything of major consequence, at least I think it very quickly or very easily turns into her kind of yelling or throwing a tantrum or kind of exploding.

Jessica:            Have you asked her what's going on?

T.:                   I have in the past but not in this recent period. I mean, it's not really the first time this has happened. There was a very major blow-up when we were on our trip. And I think we really kind of just haven't had the opportunity to talk about it because I came back a couple months later, and the country was on fire. Everything was fucked up, and also there.

Jessica:            And does she live in the States?

T.:                   She does. She lives in the States.

Jessica:            Okay.

T.:                   She lives a couple hours away from me. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So we're having a conversation about honesty. And the truth is, as an adult, if your mother or anyone else is mean to you or takes out shit on you or is acting in ways that are not how they typically behave, the most honest thing you can say is, "I'm noticing you're behaving really differently. I'm noticing that you're being really intense. I'm not loving the way it feels. Is there something you want to talk about? Is there something you need? Because what I need is to understand where you're coming from, and what I need is to not be treated like shit."

                        Now, you wouldn't have to say it that directly.  I don't know how you talk to your mother. But that would be the truth. That would be your truth, right? And again, I have a hard time getting past what your grandmother did because I think it was so terrible, because she changed the whole conversation in your thinking.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Your truth is not that you know that your mom is cheating. Your truth is that you've heard shit about what's going on with your mom, and you know your mom is behaving in ways that are unkind and inconsistent, and it feels really bad. And because you have too much information, you're having a hard time sorting through that information to the actual important and relevant information—classic Mercury in Virgo/also your fucking situation.

T.:                   Yeah. That's how it's felt, for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And additionally, I just want to pull back to something you said a moment ago—I don't want to forget it—and point out both of your parents have said to you, "You're the only one I can really be honest with." Right? And the truth of the matter is that's because that's how they made you. They turned you into their little-kid parent where they were going to turn you into the reliable one. Right?

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And they were only able to do that with you because it's within your nature enough, right? You got Saturn at the bottom of your chart. It does all kinds of shit in your chart. But really, it's important to know—I mean, do you remember being 20?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You were a child, right? You were a little kid.

T.:                   Yeah. Uh-huh.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that's when your mom had you. Okay? So babies raising babies, right?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And she turned you into her parent, and that is a role you've played. And now you are just ever so briefly post-Saturn Return, and you are finally at the stage where you can recognize, "Huh. That's some bullshit. I don't need to be their parent."

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            "I don't need to be the one who takes care of them. I don't need to be the holder of their truths, especially when they don't have the capacity to hold mine."

T.:                   That is very true. Yeah. That is very true. I feel like I have similar conversations, kind of like the one that you modeled before where it's like, "Well, I'm noticing this, and what can you tell me about that?" But I think that's where the resentment comes up for me with my mom is that if I speak on what my experience is, what's going on, what my concerns are, it becomes this whole blown-up thing, and the capacity isn't there. And then same thing with my dad—I feel like he chronically cannot really face himself or be honest with himself, and so being honest with other people is also just—you know. It's just something that you—well, I notice from the outside looking in, but I'm not trying to do anything about it anymore.

Jessica:            So this is where—and this is such a hard lesson to learn. Your expectations of individual humans in your life, whether it's your parents or your friends or people you're dating—whatever it is—ideally are informed by experience. So you scheduled a reading with me. Your expectation, if you've been listening to the readings on my podcast long enough, could be, "Oh, she's going to be very fucking direct. She might cuss a lot." You have expectations based on experience. You probably didn't expect me to come into this reading and pussyfoot around topics, right?

T.:                   Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            That said, when it comes to our parents, most of us have a really hard time doing that. We're like, "You're my parent. You're supposed to love me in a way that feels like love. You're supposed to be strong in the way that I identify strength." And even though, over and over and over again, they tell us who they are, we have a hard time shifting our expectations. So your parents—very different people. However, something they have in common is they want you to be a receptacle to their truth whilst being basically like a really nice daddy to them: you never talk about your feelings. You don't really have any needs. You're a self-cleaning oven—Saturn conjunct the IC.

T.:                   Yeah. It tracks.

Jessica:            One way of engaging with this is trying to explain to them how that is unethical and unkind and to ask them to show up in new ways. And you know what? Why not? Why not advocate for yourself? Why not ask for what you need? Why not let them know, "Hey, you know this thing you do? I don't fucking like it"? Again, you don't have to be verbing it that way, but—

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —okay. But at a certain point, it's important that you listen to what they're telling you about themselves, not just with their words but with their actions. And at that point, the truth of your limits and needs needs to be as important, if not more important than, the truth of the dynamic, the situation, and the other people.

T.:                   That's information. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. Exactly. It's information. And so one of the things you could theoretically do with your father is say, "I have a lot of empathy that you're in a marriage where you feel like somebody's cheating on you. But what were you thinking to share that with me, your child? That's my mom. Because you told me, now I have a secret from Mom, and I am your confidant. Where do I fit into this as your child?" You have a right to say that to him.

You and I both know he's not going to respond to that well. He's not going to be able to take responsibility to that. And so, if you were to communicate that need, it would be for yourself and not for the response if you were adapting your expectations to their consistent behavior.

T.:                   Yeah. Totally. That's definitely a piece that I've been kind of reflecting on. I've heard you say on the podcast before that sometimes your first response is your trauma response, right?

Jessica:            Yeah.

T.:                   That's an honest response. And yeah, I mean, I prefer that over trying to keep up with different false—or just half-truths or trying to assume or trying to fill in the gaps or anticipate things. And so, yeah, that definitely connects back to what you were saying about wanting a sense of control over the response or the consequences of telling the truth.

Jessica:            Yeah. The consequences of telling the truth is simply that you get to see somebody else's truth in action. And in the case of your parents, the truth for them is that they are emotionally immature, and they've developed a relationship with you where they don't feel emotionally accountable to you; they feel you are emotionally accountable to them. And some of that is a result of their immaturity. Some of that is a result of the specifics of your personalities. Some of that is cultural. Sure.

                        And also, it doesn't work for you. It doesn't have to work for you. You don't have to continue to do what you've done most of your life, which is turn yourself into a fucking pretzel trying to fit into their needs. But that truth requires you to let go instead of drill down. Let go of expectations. Let go of the need to justify or defend what is true for you and why.

                        Listen. Since the dawn of time, two people who have a not-great relationship and there's children involved—or not—and one of them is cheating or one of them is mean, or both of them or mean or whatever it is—since the dawn of time, nobody's handled that well. There's no good way to handle a bad situation. And I'm not justifying your mom's behavior, but I can't vilify it either.

                        In this situation, there are so many things happening at once. And most of them actually have nothing to do with you, which is the thing I am outraged by more than anything else, is that your grandmother, your mother, and your father are all acting towards you in ways that are not considerate of what is true for you and what you need. They're all prioritizing the adults' needs. And I'm not saying you're not an adult, but the 50+ crowd's needs is getting addressed here and not the 30-year-old needs. And that's a problem.

T.:                   Yeah. I think that's another thing that I've kind of been turning over, is my resentment or even my entitlement to not feeling like I'm the adult in the room all the time and that that brings up a lot of resentment for me lately.

Jessica:            So here's the bad news. You are the adult in the room. Sorry, Charlie. I mean, that's not going to change. They're not going to become emotionally evolved because they should be. And "should" can be a bit of a dirty word, but my Saturn speaks to your Saturn, and you know what I'm talking about, right? They're not going to.

                        So, if you are the adult in the room, then that means that you are the person who has to take care of your boundaries, limits, and needs and to set more realistic expectations. If, let's say, your dad feels like an appropriate person to talk to about his suspicions of his wife's infidelity is his child—and do you have siblings?

T.:                   I do have two younger brothers.

Jessica:            And did your dad talk to the younger brothers?

T.:                   Yes. Yes. He has. I think one of my brothers is kind of in denial, honestly, about the whole thing, even though he actually also relayed to me that he has a lot of concerns about the way that my mom is behaving, why she won't let him touch his phone. She leaves and doesn't come back and night—all of these things that he's observed. And he's a lot closer to my mom on a day-to-day level. They really check in on each other, or they plan around each other's schedules and things. But I think that's drastically shifted recently. And of course, my brother is kind of in the dark as to why when it comes to what my mom is sharing, but then I think my dad has recently—very recently—kind of shared with him what he knows.

Jessica:            What he thinks or what he knows?

T.:                   What he thinks. Well, I know now that it's what he knows. I think at the time, it was what he thinks.

Jessica:            Okay.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And he told you and your brothers because—

T.:                   Because he needs therapy.

Jessica:            No. That's not a great reason. Let's get—

T.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Let's get a little more honest. He told you and your brothers because he wanted to for himself.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Because he needs therapy is your assessment based on the truth. You want to drill down on the truth. He did it for himself because it made him feel better in the short term.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's what you want to get off your chest, and there's what you need the other person to hear. And this question—"What do I need to get off my chest?" versus "What do I want the other person to hear?" is one that, in my healthiest moments, I am always asking myself.

T.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            And I want to share it with you so that you can ask yourself that question, both of yourself when you're assessing, "What truth do I tell and when?" but also, when you're dealing with your family, what is he really getting out of this? What does your dad get out of this? He gets allies.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Now you're all suspicious of your mom because your mom is doing something wrong. Cheating is wrong. And she's being mean, right? She's being inconsistent and mean.

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I'm going to take a look at your mom for a moment, if I can.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Will you say your mom's full name out loud?

T.:                   Yeah. It's [redacted].

Jessica:            Okay. Thank you. And do you know if she's going through menopause?

T.:                   Yeah. I mean, I think it would definitely make sense, and—

Jessica:            Okay.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Wait. This is really important because we're having a conversation about honesty. Do you know? Has she told you?

T.:                   No. No, I don't.

Jessica:            You're guessing because she's 50, and she's acting weird.

T.:                   Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Great information. Let's hang out here for just a second. Why not ask her? Is there a reason why you wouldn't ask her?

T.:                   I guess, recently, I honestly haven't really been talking to her very much.

Jessica:            Right.

T.:                   I think normally I would. Yeah.

Jessica:            So I don't know how much you know about perimenopause and menopause, but the biggest stereotype is that when people go through it, they start acting completely different, and they are really emotional and really reactive. Similarly, when teenagers and tweens go through puberty, they're assholes, right?

T.:                   Right.

Jessica:            Hormones make you bananas. And so that's not an excuse for your mother. I don't even know if she's fucking going through menopause. But it's worth acknowledging that this would be a fair question to ask based on her behavior and her age, when and if you talk to her again. I just want to throw it in the mix, right—

T.:                   For sure.

Jessica:            —because the family behavior around truth is really judgment and assessment. It's not really necessarily happening about communication and trust.

T.:                   Yes. 100 percent.

Jessica:            So, if the question that you've reached out to me about is really about honesty, then tracking your own process for being honest or getting at the truth is valuable because you're not only in relationships with your parents; you have relationships with friends and dates and stuff like that. So has your mom admitted to this relationship?

T.:                   Very recently. It was literally two days ago that—

Jessica:            Oh, damn.

T.:                   —yeah, she came over because it just has been long enough. I think we both kind of know there's something going on. I feel like she kind of knows that we all know or that at least I know. And I think I was kind of in anticipation, you know, thinking she's either going to come and tell me, or she's going to come and she's going to want to kind of dance around the truth. And I think both ended up happening. We basically immediately sat down to be like, "So what's been going on?" And she talked to me about her decision to divorce from my dad, which I very much support.

Jessica:            Yes.

T.:                   I've been kind of wanting and praying for it for a long time.

Jessica:            Yep.

T.:                   And it's come up several times. It's kind of even like an annual thing of, like, "Okay. Let's get ready to move Mom out of the house."

Jessica:            Yeah.

T.:                   But it's hard. Of course, it's not a simple as, you know, "I'm going to get divorced and leave the house." It's not that easy.

Jessica:            Yeah.

T.:                   And so, this time, she feels very decided about it, and she was talking to me about it. And it turned into, definitely, one of those conversations where she's talking at me about the resentment she has towards my dad and what she feels like she deserves, what she feels like she's entitled to. And somewhere in there, she slipped, "You know, and your dad thinks that I've been—you know, that I'm talking to someone else. And of course, I have guy friends," blah, blah, blah.

And I had to bring it back around. I had to be like, "Okay, Mom. I definitely support you in this decision. I know you definitely deserve better, and I want what's best for both of you and everything," and then also, "Tell me about your friends. What's going on with your guy friends?" And she reluctantly told me, "Well, yes, there is someone that I do like. And I have a lot of guilt around it. I feel a little ashamed about it. I don't really want to talk about it." And then she kind of derailed into talking about, you know, "And your father," "And this"—

Jessica:            Of course.

T.:                   —"And that," and talking about a trip she's taking to Italy. She's living her "eat, pray, love" life now.

Jessica:            Yep. Yep.

T.:                   I support it. I support it. But I had to kind of reel it back around, like, "Mom, you're going in circles around this. Who is this person?" And she said, "Well, yes, there's this man, and it just has felt nice to be treated in x, y, and z way, that someone notices me and that goes through these efforts for me and that—you know, we've only hung out in group settings."  I don't know how much I believe that, but I let it happen. So she did tell me that there is somebody. And I think, in pieces, she's telling me she's been seeing this other person.

                        Yeah. And so what I said was, "Well, Mom, I don't think it's wrong to have feelings for someone else or to feel appreciated or feel that someone is treating you in the way that you want to be treated, of course. And I just want things to be done in the right way. I don't want you to jeopardize the resources you have access to, and also, I don't know who this man is.  I don't know what his intentions are, if he knows that you're going through this situation. I know that if he really likes you, then he will want the best for you, too. And that's what I care about."

                        So I tried to kind of just navigate the conversation in a way where I'm just mindful of the fact that—well, maybe not the fact. Maybe this is a truth that I'm conjecturing, but that she already knows that she's not doing, necessarily, the right thing—

Jessica:            Obviously. Obviously.

T.:                   —or going about it the right way.

Jessica:            Yeah.

T.:                   I think she knows that. So I don't think I need to tell her.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

T.:                   And I feel like there can be other conversations in the future about all of this and process all of this, maybe together, or maybe not. I don't know.

Jessica:            Have you ever been in a relationship with someone?

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            And have you ever left someone?

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            And did you kind of have a crush on the horizon when you left that person?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. It's a pretty normal human thing to do. And the way your mom is wired is to be terrified of living life without a man.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            She just—she's that way. Whether it's from your grandmother or from culture or her generation doesn't matter. That's how she is. And so I'm zero percent surprised that she's talked about leaving your dad for a long period of time and is only actually making moves to do it when she has someone else lined up.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Zero percent surprised. The question for you to ask yourself is, what is your truth around this? Do you want to know all the information as a way to keep your father and your mother and yourself safe? Because that's your habit. Instead, might you identify, "Dad, we're going through this together. Neither of us have gone through this before. I need there to be some ground rules and boundaries. I cannot counsel you through this because she's my mom."

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And you can stumble through navigating that boundary, knowing that you'll get it wrong sometimes and you'll get it right sometimes. But you have an insatiable curiosity, my friend. And so there is a part of you that would rather know everything, even if it hurts, even if it's wrong, even if it tortures you.

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so now we come to understand your role to play in this dynamic because this dynamic is with your parents, but trust and believe it happens with other people, right?

T.:                   Yes, it does.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's how this works. Parents set us up, and then we fucking replay this shit with other people. And so can you tolerate not being the wise and trusted counselor, not having all the information, not being the one that people turn to? Can you tolerate letting your mom make a mess of her life, letting your dad make a less of his life, because it's their fucking lives? And you get to check in in a way that is appropriate to your capacity and your needs. I mean, the truth is your capacity is massive, so it's not really about your capacity. It's the healthy boundaries and limits of your capacity, which is a radically different number, right?

T.:                   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Your capacity on a scale from 1 to 100 is 120. A healthy boundaries of your capacity on a scale from 1 to 100 is 60 to 80, depending on the day and the situation. And you're allowed to have it be at 60. The truth of the matter is all these people telling you what your mom is and isn't doing is robbing you of your—first of all, your innocence, and second of all, of your natural curiosity to be like, "Hey, Mom, why are you being so mean? Hey, Mom, I get that you feel really guilty. It's obvious because you're being really defensive." Hold on. Say your full name out loud.

T.:                   [redacted].

Jessica:            Do you want to be friends with your mom?

T.:                   Yeah. I mean, yes. I think that's kind of been our dynamic in my adult life.

Jessica:            That's a very interesting answer. You answered a question I didn't ask. So let's go back to the question. Do you want to be friends with your mom? Is she the kind of person you're friends with? You have friends, right?

T.:                   Oh, is she the kind of person I'm friends with? No.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's hang out with that little truth. You want to have a healthy relationship with your mom, but that doesn't mean you want to be her friend. Is that right?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Sometimes a parent/child relationship can evolve in a healthy way into a friendship. But in order for it to be authentically healthy, the parent is still the damn parent, and the child is still the damn child, right? For as long as the child is the therapist and the confidant and the fixer for the parent, it cannot be a true friendship. And I know some people will be hearing this and be like, "Well, that's not true with me and my parent." But yes it is, I will say. I will say, yes, it is.

                        And so I want to say that there are a myriad of ways that you can develop a relationship with your mom, with your dad, with your bestie, your ex—whatever. There are many different ways a relationship can look. But if you can't really evaluate for yourself, "What do I want from this relationship? Based on who this person actually is and based on who I actually am, what kind of a relationship do I want with them?"—if you can't navigate that, then every other pursuit of truth will be tainted by a dishonesty with the self.

T.:                   Can you repeat the first part again?

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. What I'm getting at is if you can't identify—so okay. Let me come back to how I started kind of digging at this point is that I asked you if you wanted to be friends with your mom, and you said, "Well, we've been friends most of our relationship."

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Uh-huh. And so you talked about what has been—what has been established by your mom, what the two of you have done so far. And the reason why that was your answer is because you are clear about that. The glasses are pink. You see them; they are pink. Okay.

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            The truth of "Do you want to be friends with your mom?"—I don't think you actually know the truth of that. And therefore, what I'm suggesting is that navigating truthfully within a relationship with her as an adult, if it doesn't start with a measure of clarity about, based on the reality of who she is and the reality of who you are, what kind of a relationship do you want with her—if you don't have an answer to that, then it's hard to have truthfulness built upon that foundation.

T.:                   That helps a lot. Yeah. That helps a lot. Thank you for [crosstalk].

Jessica:            My pleasure. And this is the joy and pressure of being post-Saturn Return, is that now you're old enough, you have enough adult experience, to be able to really assess that. So you have been friends with her, and she's been the kind of friend that leans on you and you don't really get to lean on her.

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            So, that said, you don't really want that kind of friendship with your mom.

T.:                   I don't.

Jessica:            No. Okay.

T.:                   I don't.

Jessica:            Hang out in that truth. Okay. Let's think of each truth as a tree, and it is this—got maybe a spindly trunk or maybe a big, old trunk. Different trees, different things, right? Some trees have leaves on them all the time. Some trees lose their leaves and are naked half the time. Some trees bear fruit; some do not. Every tree has limbs. So there's offshoots of truth from each individual truth, right?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You have had a relationship with your mom where the trunk—it is thick because it's a mother/child relationship. So it's a deep relationship. However, the truthfulness of it has always been a little spindly. And this is a tree that loses its leaves for sure. There are seasons where you get a lot out of this relationship, and there are seasons where you do not. Am I correct in that?

T.:                   Yes, 100 percent. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And it has borne a lot of fruit, some of which you have gotten to enjoy, most of which you have not. As a post-Saturn Return adult human person, you are now in a unique-to-your-lifespan-thus-far position to really start to identify, "Well, what do I want from this? What do I bring to this?" For you to have the relationship be a more honest reflection of who you are and what you're willing to do and what you're not willing to do, you've got to be able to sit in the not knowing of the answer because that's where the knowing lives.

                        So, if your mom is really going to leave your dad, whether she's going to date this other guy and marry him or not, or whatever the fuck happens with your mom, now she's going to be this person who did all these things and didn't tell you about it. Maybe for the first time in your life, she didn't tell you what she was doing. And your pattern and your habit would be to feel entitled to knowing what's happening with her because you have been her crutch.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And what we don't know is, did she not tell you because she's evolving a little bit and maybe she didn't want to dump that on you? Did she not tell you because she was ashamed, and so she didn't tell anyone? We don't fucking know. Your habit and your training would have you want to ask her a million questions, find out all the things, let her know that she can tell you anything at any time. But that's you further investing in being her dad or her friend. And you don't really want to be her friend, and I know you don't want to be her damn dad. So can you be on the outside is the question.

T.:                   Yeah. I mean, that's an honest question, right? That's a good starting point.

Jessica:            Yeah. What you get out of knowing everybody's truth or everybody's theories or everybody's lies they tell to themselves—and you do. In your friend group, people always tell you what's going on with them.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            People always lean on you, right?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And sometimes you like it, and sometimes it's a fucking burden. Am I also seeing that right?

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But what you get out of it is you're always on the inside. You're always on the inside.

T.:                   Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Now, listen. People sometimes throw you away when they don't want someone to know their truth. They turn to you when they want to be honest, but when they don't want to be honest, they ignore you. They drop you—hot potato. Am I right?

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. You know what doesn't work for you in this pattern. You know how bad it feels to be basically given the role of supporter, therapist, daddy, and not of true friend, an equal relationship where you share/they share, they share/you share.

T.:                   Mm-hmm. Yes.

Jessica:            So you know what you don't like about that shit. But I'm getting at what you do like. What you do like is being the guy on the fucking inside. You always know what's going on. You are the mature one. You are the trusted confidant. Even when you're the hot mess, you are not the hot mess of the situation.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            All right. So, when you honor your truth over the, quote unquote, "truth of the situation" or other people's truth, it's going to interrupt your control issues and sometimes put you on the outside, where you don't know what's happening for other people. And there's a lot of freedom in that, and there's fear in that.

T.:                   100 percent. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Even as I say it, I can feel the fear kind of in your stomach, in this really—just an anxiousy way.

T.:                   That's where it lives, for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it. And the truth is this is way too easy of a pattern to play out with friends and with dates. So this is really important it's coming up now in your relationship with your parents. It's come up a million times before in a million different ways. But the part that you actually have—you're supposed to have control over is the you part. You can't turn your parents into emotionally honest people by being honest yourself. That's not a thing. Are you dating somebody currently?

T.:                   No. I recently went back to being friends with someone I dated for a while. We were friends for a long time before that.

Jessica:            Because this pattern is coming up with that person as well.

T.:                   Okay. Interesting.

Jessica:            What's that person's name?

T.:                   [redacted].

Jessica:            So, in this relationship, do you have the role of being kind of the mature, understanding one?

T.:                   Yeah. I mean, I think part of what led me to the decision of not being in a romantic relationship with them anymore was that it felt like I was driving the relationship, and I was the one doing a lot of the thinking. But that doesn't mean that it felt totally unequal. They're very supportive, and they're really—they look out for me and everyone in their life. I think there are just different ways that we show up.

But for sure, since kind of the start of our romantic relationship, I feel like I've been kind of the one supporting. I feel like I am a pretty major support base for them, and vice versa is true for me, too, but I think I have other people in my life that can also hold and support me.

Jessica:            So what's valuable to notice as you move forward in this relationship—because you're kind of building it from—

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —in this new way—is that it's not the exact same thing. On a scale from 1 to 10 with your mom, it's a 10. On a scale from 1 to 10 with this person, maybe it's a 4. Maybe it's a 6. It's definitely not a 10. But it's the same pattern. That pattern of being the only person that they can truly trust and rely on, where it really does require you to bring yourself to the table because they're so focused on what they need and what's going on for them, they have a harder time—that is a pattern that you've experienced with your parents, who genuinely love you. It's just their limitations as adults. So it feels like love to you when it happens in your personal relationships because it's familiar.

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And it's happening with this person, and it's always happened with this person. And that doesn't mean they're bad for you, and it doesn't mean burn the bridge. It means track your pattern. This isn't your parents' pattern. I mean, it is your parents' pattern, but it's your pattern. And this is interesting for you to get to see, "Huh. How am I participating in this? Maybe, even though I know I give them amazing advice and I know I've just observed something that would be really helpful to them, maybe I shut the fuck up; I don't say it. I let them be where they are, and I don't step forward with aid, because it's not always necessary."

                        We're having a conversation about honesty, and the truth is you have the nature where you can perceive so many different things, and you're tracking so many different details, and you have so many things that you can say and do that would be supportive. And you know it. That's the damn truth. But it's not always appropriate or necessary. Sometimes it's at the expense of a healthy dynamic. Sometimes it's an unconscious drive to be on the inside of whatever that person's going through, to be a part of it.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And there's nothing wrong with wanting that at all. You have gifts, and these are gifts that you can share with people that help people. Whenever we enact a pattern that is part of a trauma pattern, then our own motivations and needs and participation is sticky. So, as you go through this relationship with your ex/friend, notice your own stickiness. Notice your own relationship to the truth and whether you are trying to get something off your chest or insert something or it's a truth that actually needs to be communicated.

T.:                   Right, and the kind of relationship that I want, also, or that's kind of a starting point.

Jessica:            That is exactly right. It's being mindful of, "Do I want to be a primary support for my ex/friend, or do I want to make sure that we can have closeness that isn't completely about being therapists to each other?"—

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —which is hard for you, honestly.

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You enjoy having that deep kind of "Let's get in there" kind of stuff. And that's great. You don't need to stop that. But again, it's being honest with yourself about the nature of the relationship and whether or not it's appropriate or helpful to the relationship.

T.:                   Yeah. It helps me a lot to hear that from you.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I'm really glad. My guess is, if the Universe—like when your grandmother walked in the room that day, if the Universe had pressed pause and plucked you from Earth and been like, "Your grandmother is going to tell you something. It's juicy. Do you want to know it or not?" you would have said, "Fuck yeah. Give me the fucking info," right?

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

T.:                   I'm a nosy bitch.

Jessica:            Yeah. Sure. Awesome. Again, no problem with that. Also, it has done you a great disservice.

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It has done a disservice to your relationship with your mother. It has done a disservice with your relationship to your father. It has done a disservice with your fucking mental health. It has done you no good.

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            None.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the drive towards—and this is kind of, as you wrote it in your question, of, like—it's hard for you to know when to let go and when to fucking drill down. And you never have a hard time drilling down. You only have a hard time letting go.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So let's just get clear about that.

T.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            And therefore, the practice is experimenting with letting go more frequently than you drill down because you never have a hard time drilling down.

T.:                   So true.

Jessica:            Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Good. Excellent.

T.:                   Okay. Yeah. Practice. Practice. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's a practice. It's a practice. And listen. You will always have a Mercury/Saturn opposition. You will always have a Pluto conjunction to the Ascendant. So it's never going to be that you're super chill, never going to drill down, not very curious—that's never going to happen. You're not going to lose your edge. You're not going to lose your insights. It's about experimenting with different ways of being with the relationship between information and control, with truth and with, honestly, gossip, theories, tracking what is the difference between reporting on facts and saying, "This is my theory?" because you hold everything as a fact once someone's told it to you. It's how your brain works.

T.:                   Yeah. It's information. I treat it all like information, for sure.

Jessica:            Information is very important for you. Data, data, data.

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And the truth is, like for instance with your grandmother, it was gossip based on inference based on experience, which turned out to be accurate and true, but she didn't know, and it wasn't her truth to tell.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so this practice for you is one of not just collecting data and assessing data; it's about recognizing that there is an emotional component to all of this. And if your own needs and limits aren't at the forefront of your data collection process, it will interrupt your happiness in your personal relationships, whether it's with your family, your friends, your exes—you get it.

                        So I'm going to shut up for a minute. I'm going to give you a moment to sit with it, reflect on it, and see if you have any questions for me.

T.:                   No, I think you definitely drilled in on the points that I was having a hard time drilling in on myself. It definitely makes sense that, yeah, it's just going to be a practice to let go, and it's going to be uncomfortable for a while to practice that. But that doesn't mean that I have to completely be untrue to myself.

Jessica:            Yes.

T.:                   I know that I have this ability and this skill to kind of take in information and do what I do with it, but that doesn't need to be done all the time. It doesn't—thinking—yeah—about the—is it getting something off of my chest with a specific motive, or is it I have a motive to have someone hear something? Is this important for them to know? And as I've been kind of turning this over in my head and really thinking about talking to you about it, I found myself thinking about, "Okay. So this is information, information this, information that." And a lot of the information I have is, of course, about how other people respond to these moments and how I notice my dynamic with other people. And I also want to always come back to the point of, "Okay. Let me be honest with myself. What is going on in here with me?"

Jessica:            Yes. Yes.

T.:                   It's not just information. It's also—there are going to be emotions that come up with it. And I think that's something that I've been recently talking to my therapist about is, well, yes, you might share the truth or you might not, but there are going to be emotional consequences either way.

Jessica:            Yep.

T.:                   And that's also just the truth.

Jessica:            Yes.

T.:                   And yeah, so I really appreciate you being real with me, and yeah, I feel like it corroborated a lot of stuff that I was already reflecting on and really drilled in on points that I was having a hard time with. So I really appreciate it.

Jessica:            Awesome. I have to ask, what do you do for a living?

T.:                   I'm an interpreter by trade. I now do a lot of consultation around interpretation and language access and those things.

Jessica:            Perfect. Okay. Great. I'm so glad that's what you do. Okay. I mean, you've got to do something with that damn brain of yours. What is it? It's like therapist, trauma worker, interpreter. Great. Works. That's perfect. That's perfect. Have you thought about being a shrink?

T.:                   I have, actually, a lot. As we're going into this new—well, as we are in this era right now, a lot of stuff around interpretation and language access and stuff has—the funding is being cut. There's also the executive order around English being the official language of the U.S. And so that just means that what I thought was kind of like a ten-year span for me to kind of switch lanes is going—it's just shrinking. You know?

Jessica:            Yep. Yep.

T.:                   So yeah. I've thought about that as kind of a switch.

Jessica:            If you decide to be a therapist, you will love it, as long as you recognize that that path will further strengthen your skills of doing what you already do with your family and with your friends, and if you don't make a conscious choice, you run the risk of turning all of your friends and family into clients. I mean, they're already clients, but turning them all into clients and having your life just feel like there's no room for you. So don't do that.

                        I think you'd be a great shrink, especially if you work with trauma specifically. I mean, it's a great use of your skills. It's just really important that you recognize that whether you are a shrink or you're not a shrink, there is a time for that, and then there's a time and spaces where it's not for that. Right?

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And honestly, have these boundaries with your dad. He will not handle it well.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's his problem. Your problem is how you navigate him not handling it well, how you take care of yourself around that. Have these boundaries with your mom—honestly, I think 50/50 with her. She's changing so much anything's possible.

T.:                   She is. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Meet her in the middle. You know where the middle is? Somewhere you've never been with her. Interesting. Just be yourself. Just be yourself with your mother. And you know what? Everything might fall the way it always has, but it might not. It might not. Your mom is changing. So you get to do whatever the fuck you want. You get to be right. You get to be wrong. You get to be mean. You get to be nice. And there are consequences to all of it.

                        And your responsibility is not to control how other people feel, how they interpret the truth, whatever it is. Your responsibility is to own what you did and the consequences, intentional and unintentional, and then navigate your own boundaries, your own truth, from there. Right?

T.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So your dad, if you have boundaries with him, will be mad. He will be mean sometimes. This is passive-aggressive, whatever—it doesn't matter to me. Oh well. I mean, it sucks. I don't want to minimize that. But I also want to say don't let that stop you. Don't let it stop you, because your truth is really something important. And it's important for you to care about your truth. And I'm not just talking about the data truth. Of course, we're talking emotions. Emotions.

T.:                   Yes. Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            So one last thing I'm going to say.

T.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            You've got your beautiful little Moon in Aries. It's opposite your Venus in Libra, and it forms a T-square to Neptune and Uranus in Cap. And in English, what this means is we've been talking about your very linear part of your nature where you're a data collector. You're a perfectionist. You're everybody's daddy, if I may. If I may.

T.:                   Oh yeah. That's true.

Jessica:            Okay. It's completely true. But you have another part. It's the Disney princess in you. It's the part of you that is like, "Love is devotion, and devotion means never saying no to the person I care about, never truly disagreeing with them. I'm always on their team. Their team is the most important team. If I'm not on their team, then I'm abandoning them and I am mean." You get this from your mom, who got it from her mom.

T.:                   Okay. Yes.

Jessica:            And this part of you can be so romantic and so floopy-doopy and so all over the place that you have decided to primarily live out of the parts we've been talking about. And that's because you have real contrast inside of you. Parts of you are very like, "I will fucking drill down. I will get at the truth. I will go to therapy for seven hours a week. I will do what needs being done." Am I right about that? Yeah. Okay.

T.:                   Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. And then you have this other part of you that's like, "I would like to live in a poem. I would like to love love and have love love me and for us to tra-la-la into the sunset."

T.:                   Mm-hmm. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. You have a very romantic nature. You have a very relational nature. And you have seen the consequences of that for your mom, who saw the consequences of that for her mom. And so you have instead leaned into your inner daddy, abandoning your inner Disney princess. And I want to say, yeah, abandoning your parts is never going to work out well for any one of us. Not the way to go. Getting to know yourself, embracing yourself, acknowledging your parts, empowers you to be more whole, which empowers you to be healthier and happier.

                        So part of why you do all the shit we're talking about is because it's linear, and you love it. You're like, "I get to be the one who's in control instead of the one who has feelings and needs and is messy or does things that are not technically right.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to acknowledge that part before we end this call because if you do this work that we've been talking about—identifying the truth and giving yourself permission to have boundaries—inevitably, your Moon and your Venus are going to be like, "Oh, that's mean. I shouldn't do that to them. I should always listen to my dad and his feelings. That's mean if I don't do that. If I have a boundary with my ex who's now my friend, then am I actually limiting the capacity of my own ability to love? Am I limiting them? Is this unkind if I don't hold all the space for them that they want me to hold for them?"

                        So it's good for you to know that, yes, you've got this very strict data-collecting daddy part, but then the other part of you is just on another fucking planet, completely different set of ideas and values. And so you can be very extreme in that way, and it makes sense why you would lean on the extreme that gives you more control.

T.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But I want to say your other parts are fucking weird and lovely and loving and that there is room for you to be all the things, as long as you're practicing healthy boundaries with yourself and then, as an extension, with others. And I'm going to repeat that for the parts of you in the back. First, you have healthy boundaries with yourself. And then, as an extension, you focus on the boundaries with other people. It starts with the boundaries with the self. And that will make it easier to recognize, "I am not saying to my dad, 'I don't love you.' I'm not saying to my dad, 'I don't care about you.' I'm saying to my dad, "I love you and I care about you, and this is how I can take care of myself and you at the same time." And again, you know—

T.:                   [crosstalk] to hear that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad, because I was like, "I don't want to leave this conversation without acknowledging that," because it's such an important shift. And this is part of why I was like, "Oh, being a therapist would be great for you," because, theoretically, when you get training to be a shrink, you learn boundaries with people.

T.:                   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So that would be great for you.

T.:                   Thank you. Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're welcome.

T.:                   I feel like you corroborated so many parts of kind of just my personal life, and that's also been one point that I've been kind of turning over and been encouraged on, too. And so thank you. I really appreciate you.

Jessica:            It is my pleasure.