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

Jane:                Hi, Jessica. I'm so excited to be here. It is a privilege and an honor. Thank you so much. I'm just going to go ahead and read my question. "Hi, Jessica. Thank you for all the wisdom you share on the pod. I listen to every ep, and I'm constantly snapping my fingers in agreement. Every time you give a reading, I feel like there's a perspective that relates to me and my life, and I find it extremely helpful and recommend it to everybody. I'm writing to ask you about gossiping and shit-talking. I've heard you say a few times not to gossip, and for obvious reasons, I know why.

"But there are often times I find myself talking shit with my girls, and it feels like a beautiful therapeutic practice where we connect on similar values. Most of the time, I feel like there's no harm in sharing stories and observations about other people. There's definitely a line, but am I missing something on how this can be harmful to others and potentially a way of me projecting or avoiding truths about myself? Very curious to hear your thoughts."

Jessica:            So I gotta say—okay. I really liked your question, and the way I pick questions is usually just, like—my guides or whatever. I get a yes, so that's—

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's like I don't think too deeply about it. I did not look at your chart before choosing your question, but then the second I saw your chart, I was like, okay, so you have this mammoth stellium in Scorpio.

Jane:                I do.

Jessica:            And you are a double Gemini.

Jane:                I am.

Jessica:            So this is a very good question for you to be asking because I'm guessing you gossip and shit-talk a lot.

Jane:                I have very little control. It's hard. It's hard.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So, first, we're going to share your birth data. You were born November 19, '94, in Melbourne, Australia, 9:34 p.m.

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. Listen. I could start off astrologically. We're not going to do that. Instead, give me a good example of the kind of talk you do with your girls that feels therapeutic; it feels like, "What's the problem? What's the harm here?"

Jane:                Okay. Well, the other night—

Jessica:            Exactly. Yes.

Jane:                —the girls came over, and I had just spent time with some of our other friends. And they immediately walk in the door, and they're like, "What's the tea? How was the weekend? What happened?" And I kind of was sharing every step of the way of what happened and kind of, yeah, was wondering if there was maybe just a line of where I should kind of stop talking about other people and observations about other people, because then we would kind of get into conversations about what we think of this person and their relationship and, you know, that kind of thing.

Jessica:            Yeah. So that one person you're thinking about, they have kind of light-brown hair or dark blonde hair?

Jane:                Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So think about the way you were talking about that person. We're going to call them Blondie for this conversation for ease. You're talking about Blondie. Now, imagine—okay. So you're thinking about it, right? You remember all the things you said about them, the relationship, yada, yada.

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Now, imagine Blondie being with your friends or, you know, with a big group of your friends and talking about you in that exact same way. How comfortable are you with that?

Jane:                Yeah. I know. That's something I think about a lot, and—

Jessica:            Wait, wait, wait. Before—just say how comfortable are you with that, with that same level of investigation and unpacking and laughter? How comfortable are you with that?

Jane:                I think I feel pretty comfortable with it.

Jessica:            Okay. So you'd be comfortable. So listen. I'm going to just be totally direct.

Jane:                Mm-hmm. Please.

Jessica:            You have a Sun/Pluto conjunction in Scorpio. You are lying. There is no way you would be comfortable with people picking at and unpacking your motivations behind your behavior.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Just think about it.

Jane:                Okay. I mean, I guess it's like if I don't hear about them talking about me that way, then—

Jessica:            No, no, no. No, no. You know. In this moment, I'm asking you to imagine that the exact same way you talked about Blondie, you know a group of your friends were talking about you and your relationships—what you said, how you said it, what you meant—and laughing, because I see there was laughter.

Jane:                Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You're kind of laughing at her—her? Them? I can't tell.

Jane:                Her. Yeah. Her.

Jessica:            Okay. So you're kind of laughing at her. How do you feel when people laugh at you behind your back?

Jane:                I don't feel like we were laughing at her. It was like some of the behaviors that we were kind of a little bit shocked by that we were kind of laughing about.

Jessica:            So you weren't laughing at her. You were laughing at the things she did.

Jane:                Yes.

Jessica:            What is the difference? I'll tell you something.

Jane:                Yes. Please.

Jessica:            If you were in a group of people and you were laughing at me because of earnest things that I did, I would feel pretty bad about that. I would feel like my friends were laughing at me behind my back and calling it tea. So I'm just going to, like—I know I came in hot.  I don't know what you were expecting, but I came in hot.

Jane:                No, it's good. No, I was expecting it.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Good. Good, good, good. To be fair, I feel like the people deserve to know it is 3:00 a.m. where you are, so you are being a sport from the get, okay?

Jane:                Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Jessica:            Yes. Yes.

Jane:                Appreciate it.

Jessica:            Yes. Absolutely, thank you. There's layers to what I want to say. The first is you have Venus. Mercury, North Node, Jupiter, Sun, and Pluto all in Scorpio.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the irony of having so many placements in Scorpio is it does make you really private. Your deep shit is like you only are comfortable sharing it when you're comfortable sharing it. So you can do a lot of really intense self-disclosure, but only with the things you're ready for and not the things you're not. Does that resonate?

Jane:                It does resonate, and I think in the sense that I kind of don't really realize that there's deep shit I'm not sharing until a few months later, and I'm like, "Oh yeah"—

Jessica:            Until you get it, right? Right.

Jane:                And then I'm like, "Oh yeah. I was feeling that," or, "I was going through that."

Jessica:            Totally.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And so what's really tricky here is that you do crave depth, and you do crave intensity of connection. You do like to bond with people. That is actually really important to you. And the thing about gossip is that it is superficial bonding that feels like deep bonding. The reason why I say that is because if you were—and we're going to use this example understanding that it's just an example, but I want it to be fresh for you. If you were talking about how you felt with your time with that group of friends, what you did, your behaviors, if we were talking about how Blondie x, y, and z and how you acted in response to it and whether or not it felt duplicitous or honest how you behaved—if you were talking about you, that would be sharing your lived experience.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            When you're talking about other people, what they said, what they did, what their motives were, what their feelings are, what's going to happen because of the shit they pulled or didn't pull, then you're shit-talking. And the reason why we call it shit-talking is because it would make them feel like shit if they were there.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            If somebody recorded the conversation you had with your friends and then Blondie heard it later, she would feel like shit, right?

Jane:                Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Anyone would feel like shit.

Jane:                Of course. Yeah.

Jessica:            Again, jes suis psychic enough to see that was not like friendly unpacking, okay?

Jane:                Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is where a lot of us—like, a lot of us, and especially in our 20s—and you're in your early, early 30s, right?

Jane:                I'm 30. Yeah.

Jessica:            30. Yeah, so, you know, still running 20s game. But especially in our 20s, the only way we know how to really build social connections can sometimes be talking about the other people we share social connections with.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's not inherently bad unless, of course, you think, "If someone in this room was recording it and the person we're talking about heard it, would it harm them?"—if the answer is yes, then what you're doing is building connections based on, essentially, something that's harmful. And so the problem here is, how can you actually truly trust anyone if you know that everyone would talk like that about Blondie? Because you better bet they would all talk that way about you and that you would talk that way about everyone in the room that you were sharing the tea with. Am I right?

Jane:                Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And so there's this surveillance culture that is inherent to gossip and shit-talk because I'm not just hanging out with you; I'm waiting to see what ridiculous shit you're going to do. And then I'm going to—what do we call it? We call it spilling the tea. Then I'm going to spill the tea to my other friends. And so I am inherently being a narc. I'm being a fucking op. Nobody likes it, but everybody likes to do it. And that's something you've heard me say a million times on the podcast, right?

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            Don't gossip. It's fun to do, but it's bad to be the subject of.

Jane:                Totally.

Jessica:            But we do—this is a problem that predates the internet, but I do think social media and the internet has made it significantly worse and more dramatic. Even just the widely mainstream use of "spill the tea"—it goes unexamined because if you are spilling the tea about the date you had last night, about what happened to you on the date, how you felt—and yeah, sure, what the person said or did, but inasmuch as it's related to you and your lived experience and your thoughts and your feelings and whether the sex was good or whatever the fuck—right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's spilling the tea, but it's about you.

Jane:                Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You see the difference, right?

Jane:                Totally. So when it's your—like, how it made you feel, as well, is that kind of like—

Jessica:            It's part of it

Jane:                —a part of it?

Jessica:            You're telling this—so here—okay. Let me share this. A lot of times, when I'm giving readings, I will ask a person about their mom or how they feel about their mom or how they feel about their partner. And they will start telling me about how the other person's personality, the other person's background, the other person's nature—everything about the other person's perspective. This is really normal. It's also really unhealthy, right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And I say this because if I ask you to tell me about how you feel about your mom or your relationship with your mom, and then you start telling me all about her, then you're not telling me about how you feel. You're not telling me about your perspective about your mom, your experience of your mom—who happens to be an adult human person who has multiple relationships and lived for a long time before you were conceived of, right?

Jane:                Oh, sure.

Jessica:            You're just telling me about your projections and perceptions of them. And this is a really normal thing. We unconsciously center other people and decenter ourselves, and we do this without even realizing it a lot of times. And I think this is part of why the lines around gossip are so uncomfortable and weird sometimes, because if you have the habit of already—when you think about telling me about your relationship with Bondie as an example, my guess is you would start telling me about Blondie instead of telling me about your relationship to Blondie. Does that make sense, the difference, what I'm pointing to?

Jane:                It does. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would argue—

Jessica:            Yes. Please.

Jane:                —that with this particular situation and this person, I probably would share a lot about how I feel and have felt. And there is—like, I recognize as definitely—there feels like maybe a little bit of fakeness from my end on the way that I am with her because of the discomfort that I feel and, like—because of the proximity of our other friends and relationships with the other people that we're close to. So I feel like there's—I do show up differently when I'm around her than when I'm not with her. I don't think that she would know how I really feel about her and our interactions and, yeah, our relationship, I guess.

Jessica:            I'm confused about what you're saying because you said, "I would argue that," but you actually just doubled down on my opinion—

Jane:                Okay. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            —because what you're telling me is not only did you talk about Blondie behind her back, but she has no idea what you think or feel about her.

Jane:                I think that—I guess where I feel a little bit of confusion is, like, what do I share with her? We're not super close friends. We're friends by proximity and by—like, because of our other relationships.

Jessica:            Totally. I see what you're saying.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's a great question. And there doesn't have to be one answer. It's not like you have to like everyone or be close to everyone, right?

Jane:                Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            That's not a thing.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            But if you have a group of friends—was there four people?

Jane:                Yes. There was more around, but yeah, four. Four. Yeah.

Jessica:            Four people who came over and were like, "Okay. Spill tea." And the first thing you do is start talking about Blondie. That's a reflection on you, right—

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you spent time with all these people, and then you talk shit about the person that you're not yourself around and you're not close to.

Jane:                Yes. Like—yes, yes, yes, yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you talked about other people.

Jane:                Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            But we're using this as an example of trying to unpack, essentially, the ethics of, like—it's not just about ethics, though, right? Let's say we pulled gossip, tea-spilling, shit-talking—lots of different labels for the same thing, essentially. What if we pulled that out of your relationships 100 percent? What are you left with? Okay. Let's play. Let's say you did a cleanse where you did not spill tea. You did not report on what other people said or did and your perspective on it, and you did not, in a group, dissect other people that weren't in the room to defend themselves. Eh?

Jane:                Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's say you went on a cleanse, and you didn't do that for three months.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, I've chosen a number that would be very hard for you. I mean, I think it would be hard for you to do for a short period of time, but let's say three whole months. Do you think that it would make it hard to connect with some of your friends?

Jane:                I think that—some of them, yes. I think the people that I was shit-talking with, no. I would definitely—they would be confronted by me saying, "I'm not going to talk about that." They would be like, "What? Why?"

Jessica:            Right.

Jane:                "Spill the tea."

Jessica:            Right. Right, right, right.

Jane:                But we do have very deep, long-term, vulnerable emotional connection that is not always about that. The situation with Blondie—without gossiping and talking about other people, I don't think we would have anything to connect on when we're around each other.

Jessica:            So are you gossiping with Blondie?

Jane:                Yeah, with everybody. It's a problem.

Jessica:            Well, this is why you asked the question, right?

Jane:                This is why I asked the question. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            This is why you asked the question. Right.

Jane:                Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            And this kind of brings me back to this other really important thread of what we're here talking about, which is it gives the illusion of closeness.

Jane:                Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is part of why I say it's giving 20s, because in your 20s, that's so much of how we build connections and community and all of that. And the older you get, the more everybody becomes the brunt of it, and people get a little more careful. Whether they're being careful of their reputation or they're being more caring, I don't know. But people do get more careful. People gossip less. You're going to hang out in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, and you're going to hopefully be gossiping a fuck of a lot less than you are now, right?

Jane:                Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            And therefore, it's harder to have relationships with people that you don't actually like, because you have nothing to fucking talk about.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Right?

Jane:                Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            So Blondie is a great example. You have nothing to talk about other than other people. But in a way, here's—and this is the challenging side of all your Scorpio stuff, is that in a way, you're using other people's vulnerabilities as a leverage to overcome your own. And you're not alone. Everyone in all of your social circles, it sounds like, is doing the exact same fucking thing. So it's not like you alone are doing this, but that doesn't actually absolve you of the impact. And additionally, if you were to stop doing it or if you were to do it 50 percent less, you would have these awkward spaces in your connections with people that you would have to figure out how to show up for.

And that, I would contend, is where real intimacy actually happens. It's where real connection actually happens because when the bulk of your connection is about, "I can't believe that she fucking did that. Oh my God, did you see what this person is doing?"—when the bulk of your connection is about what other people are or aren't doing, then you're not actually talking about your own feelings. You're not actually talking about the world. You're not actually talking about things that actually have consequence in your life. And instead, you are inevitably judging other people. There's no way to spill tea without judgment. It is a judging practice, right?

Jane:    Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And it's not like I don't spill tea. I'm not trying to say we all have to be perfect, ethical beings at all times. But we also don't want to lie to ourselves about what we're doing.

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So, when we come back to—so, when you were hanging out with Blondie, there was a bunch of other people in the mix.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            Right? Were you somewhere—were you, like, a camping trip or something? Were you somewhere?

Jane:                Yes, I was somewhere. I was away—yeah—with them.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And is it a bunch of couples?

Jane:                So Blondie, her partner—who is my good friend—and then me and my best friend.

Jessica:            Who are kind of like a couple in that context?

Jane:                Yes, but my best friend is very, very close friends with Blondie.

Jessica:            Interesting. So you're close with Blondie's partner, and your bestie is close with Blondie.

Jane:                And Blondie's partner.

Jessica:            Okay.

Jane:                My bestie is close with everyone.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay, okay, okay. And so was your bestie there when you were shit-talking Blondie?

Jane:                She wasn't. No.

Jessica:            No. Would she be comfortable with the way you were talking about Blondie?

Jane:                She would hold space for it, and then she would give another perspective as well, for sure.

Jessica:            So that's her behavior. I'm asking you, do you think she would be comfortable with the way you were talking about Blondie?

Jane:                Oh. No. No.

Jessica:            Okay.

Jane:                She wouldn't be comfortable. Yeah.

Jessica:            So, even in this teeny, tiny, little moment, I want you to kind of be curious about this. I asked you how she would feel, and you said what you thought she would do.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is part of what we must do in order to shit-talk people. We must stop thinking about how they feel and only think about what they're doing, because if you thought about how your bestie would feel, it might give you pause. In fact, it does give you pause because you're talking shit about Blondie when your bestie's not there, even though she's your fucking bestie.

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And here's the thing. Do you have to care about how other people feel 100 percent of the time? That's up to you. That's genuinely up to you. And I think that you are of many, many minds about it, to be honest, not just because you're a double Gemini, Moon and Rising in Gemini—lots of minds on lots of things—but also because not only do you have a stellium in Scorpio, including a Venus in Scorpio, but you've got Mas square to your Jupiter, Sun, and Pluto. Sometimes you just do shit, and you're not really thinking about it. You're just fucking doing shit.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And when you do that, it's like your way of off-gassing your anger and frustration with other people and with situations—

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            —because instead of having better boundaries with Blondie—because what I'm seeing—and please tell me if I'm wrong. But what I'm seeing is when you were at this—I'm calling it a couples' retreat because I think it's funny, not because I think that's what it was. But when you were at this couples' retreat, you were gassing Blondie up. Blondie would have this idea of you as somebody who feels encouraging; you were encouraging her.

Jane:                Yeah, in some ways. I think gassing up—no. There were times where maybe I would try and maybe ground and—but yeah, encouraging and supporting, definitely.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And she's maybe a little—I don't know if she's narcissistic, a little clueless, so maybe, also, her—if you were a little encouraging, she might feel gassed up at times. Does that make sense?

Jane:                Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay.

Jane:                Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah, because I think her idea of you—again, I don't know if she's a good person. She might be a total narcissist monster. That's not the point, actually. Who she is is not the point.

Jane:                Is that talking shit about her?

Jessica:            Excellent—okay. Excellent point. So no, because—

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            —what I'm trying to get at is this. Okay. There's two things. No, because, A, we're unpacking your behavior—

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            —and we're using her as an example. So we're not actually talking about her.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            So that's one part, right? There's a utility to the conversation that's—really, the utility is all about—we're talking about you. We're not talking about her.

Jane:                Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Jessica:            But the other thing is where I was going with this, calling her a—she might be a narcissistic monster, but that's not my business or your business. Your business—and this hour that we are together, my business—is who you choose to be, because if you're in a room full of narcissistic shit bags and you're like, "Well, fuck it. I guess we're narcissistic shit bags now. I'm going to be a narcissistic shit bag, too," that's a reflection on you, not on the room, because you could also be in a room full of narcissists—now, I'm using judging language, yes, 100 percent. Again, we all decide the ethics and how we run them. For me, I do not mince words.

                        So you could be in a room full of narcissists, fucking terrible people, and choose to still be true to yourself. That doesn't mean don't have discretion. That doesn't mean don't have boundaries. But it does mean you don't mirror them just because they're shitty, because then it turns you shitty.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so this is where if, in the presence of someone who you generally don't respect, you act in ways that are disingenuous, that's not because of them. That's because of you. That may or may not be bad. Again, your ethics and your standards are yours. They don't have to be the same as mine. And at the risk of sounding exactly like I'm going to sound, when I was your age, I did a lot more gossiping than I do at my age. It is something that I have, very thankfully and intentionally, outgrown. And it doesn't mean that everyone who's my age doesn't shit-talk. Trust that is not what that means. It just means—

Jane:                Yeah. I get it from my mom.

Jessica:            Does your mom shit-talk a lot, too?

Jane:                Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay. Yeah. It's, again, not necessarily an age thing. But I will say it is an age thing to build community and groups of friends based on talking behind the backs of other people. That is really normal in your 20s. Again, when you see your mom do it, does it always feel fun, or does it just feel kind of mean? Or does it keep her actually lonely because she can't completely trust anyone because everyone is talking shit behind everyone's back? That's the problem with gossip. It makes you feel connected in the moment, and later, it reaffirms that you're isolated, that you can't completely trust other people. If you know that when you leave a room, someone's going to say, "Spill the tea," and start talking about you and your behaviors and what's actually behind them and how embarrassing it was—yeah, how can you ever feel truly safe? How can you be safe?

And here's the fucking thing. You are currently going through a Pluto square to your Venus. It started late January, this Pluto square to Venus. It's a once-in-a-lifetime event. And one of the things that it does is it intensifies your desire for deep connection. Another thing it does is it serves to function as a boomerang, where the shit you put out comes back upon you. I would tell any person going through this transit—and I have many times over many years—do not gossip under this transit because it will come back at you.

This is one of the things in my study and practice of astrology that actually taught me to not gossip, was seeing this transit and how it functions, because Pluto is about depth, transformation. It's about healing, right?

Jane:    Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so a common thing that people do is we just kind of get into our resentments, and we get into our fucking pettiness—fucking Pluto, right? And because Pluto is squaring your Venus and your Venus is in the fifth house and transiting Pluto is in your eighth—oh yeah, so you're really fucking activated around gossip right now—it can come out that you said something about someone behind their back, and then what do you think happens in those situations? Have you ever seen it happen before? Because I can tell you people will take sides. Some people will take your side. Some people will take the other person's side. And then you're the gossip.

                        This is one of those transits where it teaches you about what intimacy actually is and what boundaries are. It teaches you about your own pettiness, vengefulness, insecurities—all those deep fucking Pluto vibes, right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And, that said, you have Venus in the fifth house. You love being playful and just like—it's not necessarily a shit-talking placement. It's more of a keeping it light, keeping it fun, keeping it moving placement. Right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            The thing you might have noticed so far in 2025 is that there is a shift in this issue for you, and that shift might be—are you talking more shit? Are you feeling more sticky about it?

Jane:                Definitely feeling maybe more aware of it, I guess. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's because of the transit you're going through, right?

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And here's the thing about Pluto. Pluto transits—they always confront us, demanding that we evolve. And what a lot of us do a lot of the time with Pluto transits is we say, "Nope. Fuck that. I'm going to stay the same." And so we dig in, and we push back against Pluto, and we just deal with further consequences of being unwilling to work through the survival mechanisms that are governing our behavior. And so listen. You have a very sharp tongue. You're good at talking shit. You're good at it, right?

Jane:                Talented.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're talented. Exactly. You have a very keen ability to get into people's motivations, right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And all of that is not good, and it's not bad. It's neither.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But if you point that instrument behind someone's back at their motivations for their unconscious or conscious behaviors—and I think you do it a lot about people's unconscious behaviors, right?

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Then it's like if I use my psychic ability to talk shit about people. Imagine. It is unethical. It is unkind. This is the thing about intelligence. I'm psychic; you've got this really intense ability to just zero in on people's motivations. Intelligence does not guarantee kindness or ethical conduct. It only guarantees intelligence, right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, if we have an accelerated ability and we don't pair it with an ethic, then it can eat at you. And so I've got two questions. So the first question is, are you partnered? Are you dating anyone right now?

Jane:                No, I'm not.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. And do you tend to date?

Jane:                I—yeah—try to.

Jessica:            You try.

Jane:                I'm trying.

Jessica:            Okay. Do you tend to be in relationships?

Jane:                No, I don't.

Jessica:            Okay. Have you ever been in a relationship?

Jane:                I have. I was in—yeah. I have been. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. I imagine you're really self-conscious in relationships in a way that's really uncomfortable for you.

Jane:                Extremely.

Jessica:            Yeah. This is part of it.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            This is part of it because you are so good at fucking tracking all the bullshit that bitches do—you can see it so clearly. And so then you get into a relationship, and you start becoming really self-conscious that you're doing those things, because here's the thing.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            Everyone is cringe. If you think you're not cringe, you're fucking on something.

Jane:                Oh, I do.

Jessica:            We're all cringe.

Jane:                Absolutely.

Jessica:            Literally 100 percent of us, right?

Jane:                Absolutely.

Jessica:            And if so much of your social connections are about unpacking and laughing at the ways other people are cringe, then you will stop yourself from doing embarrassing things, which is everything. Everything you do is embarrassing—

Jane:                Absolutely.

Jessica:            —because being a person is mortifying, right?

Jane:                Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's like—listen. Somebody who doesn't have so much Scorpio in them might not know what the fuck we're talking about, but we know what we're talking about, right?

Jane:                We do.

Jessica:            It is what it is. And being able to recognize that your ability to clock power and powerlessness—it's a heavy burden. It is a heavy burden to carry. And if you develop relationships both to your own critical analysis and to other people that are less cutting, then there's room for you to be vulnerable, make stupid mistakes, miss obvious things, act out, because you will do all of those things if you date because every single human person does all of those things when we date.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have this weird, kind of deep—this is North Node in the fifth house shit—feeling like there's a right way to be in relationships, and there's a wrong way to be in relationships. And if you just do the right way, then you will not be cringe that you will not be hurt. That, of course, is not true. I mean, does the "of course" make sense to you? Do you know that that's not true deep down?

Jane:                Yes. Yeah, deep down. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Great, because this gossiping behavior—it is harming you. So forget how it's harming other people. Forget the ethics. It is an act of self-harm that keeps you from being present when you feel powerless. And here's the thing. The reason why falling for someone is not stepping intentionally into something with someone is because when you fall for someone—whether it's a crush or you fall in love—you get hurt. It's inevitable. Listen. I have fallen many times in my life, and sometimes I get very hurt. Sometimes I barely get hurt. My ego is always bruised. Right?

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Same thing when you have a crush on someone. Same thing when you fall for someone. It is so embarrassing to look back and be like, "Oh my God. I cannot believe I was into that person." It is a horror show sometimes, right?

Jane:                Fully.

Jessica:            Fully. Fully. And being able to tolerate those feelings of the horror show and the embarrassment is really key to being able to give yourself the spaciousness internally that you need to explore your crushes so that you're not just attracted to power, and you're not just attracted to people who you ultimately know how it's going to end with them.

Jane:                Whoa. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's never just about gossip, right? It's never just about gossip.

Jane:                It's so funny. Yeah. I was wondering if this would be connected.

Jessica:            It is connected, like deeply connected.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And again, this is why it is less prevalent as you age that people gossip in the way that they do in their 20s, because at a certain point, everyone becomes aware that we are all embarrassing—

Jane:                Oh, fully. Yeah.

Jessica:            —and we are all the problem. Right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And again, there is this surveillance culture that is a part of youth culture now in a way that it wasn't before because we didn't have the technology to surveil each other. Right?

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            So now you can do all these ways of just looking back at someone's feed and see who they've been for the last five years. That is a brand-new thing in human development, and it is terrible for someone with a lot of Scorpio in their chart. It is the worst timeline to live in for someone with so much Scorpio in their chart because you're constantly having to curate and protect what you put out there—

Jane:                Yeah. Wow.

Jessica:            —so other people can't see the things that you see in them.

Jane:                So that other people can't see—yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so here's the thing. I said recently in a reading that I gave to somebody and we were talking about honesty and being direct—and I said if you're a liar, you think everyone's lying to you.

Jane:                Yeah. I remember that. Yeah.

Jessica:            And I will say to you essentially the same thing. If you're picking people apart and then shit-talking them behind their back, you will assume everyone's doing that to you. And in your social circle, they probably are because—

Jane:                They probably are. Yeah.

Jessica:            —that's the circle [crosstalk], right?

Jane:                Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Although it sounds like maybe not completely with your bestie.

Jane:                I've got a few besties. I've got lots of pockets of friends, and there's definitely some—there are three people in particular that I'm extremely close to. And yeah, it definitely doesn't feel superficial at all with them.

Jessica:            And do they tea-spill, shit-talk, that kind of thing?

Jane:                Yeah. We do. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            In groups or just one-on-one?

Jane:                Just one-on-one or with the four of us. The four of us are very close.

Jessica:            I see. I see. It's like a foursome of friends. I see.

Jane:                Yeah. Yes. It's a foursome.

Jessica:            So a way to adapt is, first of all, unpack this with your four friends.

Jane:                Yeah. I definitely will.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jane:                They're going to listen to this, for sure.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Good, good, good. Thank you. Thank you [crosstalk].

Jane:                Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Hi. Okay. So that's where you start. The other thing is do your level best to notice when you are talking about other people, their behaviors, and their motivations and leaving out what you said, what you did, whether or not you were being disingenuous, how you feel about it, what it brings up for you. If you can do more of that, I promise you you'll shit-talk less because you don't want to say all that shit. You don't want to sit with your four besties and say, "I lied in her face. I acted like I was supportive. I pretended that I thought she was funny. I pretended that I was interested," because that doesn't make you feel good about you, because that doesn't make you sound good. None of that is going to be comfortable for you—

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you don't want to think about that part, right? Nobody does. But that's the only part that's your fucking business, and it's the only part your friends can actually help you move through your shit and become more whole so that you can tolerate vulnerability with new people, including loves, romantic loves, because again, you've got this fucking Venus and Mercury and North Node in the fifth house in Scorpio. So dating stuff is complicated for you. You also have Aquarius intercepted in your eighth. And so you can spend your life feeling essentially really lonely and having casual sex or quickie sexual relationships, but it's not what you want.

Jane:                Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so what we're talking about is one of the key things that you can work on within yourself and in your active present relationships, platonic or otherwise, that will help you to be able to tolerate the feelings that you have when you feel powerless or like you might be under someone else's power—or somebody else might be fucking surveilling you and talking about you behind your back later, so you better make sure that you're shaping your behavior into something beyond reproach. And being beyond reproach is either a power move or an ethics move. And you've been doing the power move—not to say that you don't have strong ethics, but that's not what's driving your behaviors on this specific topic.

Jane:                Yeah. I hear that. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Here's my prediction. Because you have Mars intercepted your second house and it's square to your Jupiter, Sun, and Pluto, my prediction is if you actually do this work, you will find that you're actually very angry and irritated a lot and that you don't know where to put it, so it tends to get projected onto others or internally—and that what, actually, I think is a big part of you is you need to figure out ways of running energy through your body. Do you exercise? Do you do sports? Do you dance?

Jane:                Not really—like, a very slow mover, so walking and stretching and dancing around my apartment and going out occasionally, but not like regular exercise.

Jessica:            Do you enjoy dancing around your apartment?

Jane:                Yeah, I do.

Jessica:            Because Mars in Leo intercepted square to all that shit in your chart—it needs your heart rate to go up and a little bit of sweat. So it sounds like dancing might be your move. And I'm not talking about going to the clurb. We're not talking about that. We're talking about in your house. We're talking about before you go socializing or maybe when your friends all come over and you're like, "I'm about to gossip," go to the bathroom. Put headphones in. Dance for a minute. Get in your body. Do you know what I'm saying?

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm just talking about a way that feels pleasurable or neutral to get in your body, not adding something to your life that you don't fucking enjoy. That's not what I'm talking about—

Jane:                Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            —because that's counter to the whole point.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            The point is developing a relationship with yourself where there's space for you to figure out how you actually feel. And what you're doing is you're using your noodle to get around your feelings, and this is, again, where your insights can be very sharp, very, very sharp. And the truth is, if you do date people, you will find that you're mad at them at times, and you have to fight with them sometimes.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And do you have judgments around that? Do you think that's a bad thing?

Jane:                I don't think that's a bad thing. I just haven't really experienced that before.

Jessica:            Interesting.

Jane:                Yeah, expressing that much.

Jessica:            Did your parents fight?

Jane:                No, but really—like, my mom would get a buildup and get resentful and have, kind of, outbursts. But my dad rarely—yeah.

Jessica:            Interesting. That Mars interception does speak to how it was modeled for you that it is not kind and not right for you to be aggressive. So what I want to encourage you to do, alongside all this gossip stuff, is to look for models of human people who express anger, conflict, even outrage in ways that you think are ethical and kind—

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            —not in ways that you think are worth talking about.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            There's a big difference, right?

Jane:                Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. Exactly. So these models can be in movies. They can be on TV. They can be in your life. They're less likely to be in your life, because you probably don't know people who are doing that, because you have a lot of friends who shit-talk. And when people talk behind other people's backs, they tend to not be very forthcoming, and they tend to not be very honest. And I am of the mind that anger and conflict management is all about honesty. It is not about aggression. It is not about cruelty. It's about honesty because how can you be in a relationship with somebody without telling them when they've crossed a line or when they're annoying you?

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            When you are dating someone, if they believe—or worse, if they know—that you are going to talk shit about them behind their back to all your friends, then they're going to feel uncomfortable when you're with your friends. And that makes sense. You'd feel the same way, right? If you knew that your partner was telling every fucking thing you did to their group of friends, you would feel so uncomfortable with them because it's invasive. There deserves to be boundaries and privacy in our relationships.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And not in 100 percent of them. Again, Blondie is a great example. You're not fucking besties with Blondie. You don't owe her some great privacy. And also, the story you could have/should have told has to include you.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And it didn't include you, because you didn't actually—you didn't think about it, but if you did think about it, you wouldn't like how you show up in the story because in the story, you were just pretending. And you weren't pretending for the story that you could tell later, although that might have been in your head here and there. You were pretending because you don't have the skills yet to navigate honestly. It's like in, actually, a number of relationships. When you don't feel clear about your role, when you are in disagreement, when there's a power thing going on—in that foursome, it would be deemed awful if you expressed dissent or if you were critical, right? Am I seeing that correctly?

Jane:                Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It wouldn't have affirmed your power, whereas in your group of besties, it affirms your power to be able to spill, spill, spill [indiscernible 00:44:46], spill, spill, spill. Right? And so it's hard for you to know how to navigate that. So okay. I'm going to take a moment here. I'm going to have you say your full name and then say Blondie's full name.

Jane:                Sure. [redacted], and her name is [redacted].

Jessica:            She thinks the two of you are friends.

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Do you think the two of you are friends?

Jane:                Friendly, but no, not friends.

Jessica:            You definitely don't think they're your friend.

Jessica:            I don't. I don't.

Jessica:            You don't. So okay. Okay. If that was true in the reverse, if one of the people you consider to be a friend doesn't actually consider you to be a friend, would that not hurt your feelings?

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            It would make you feel a little ashamed, make you feel vulnerable and bad, right?

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            There's something about niceness that is not kind, right—

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you have misled this person to think that they are safe with you, when they're not actually safe with you. And I'm not trying to say you're a fucking terrible person. It's not about that. It's about—

Jane:                No, no. I—yeah.

Jessica:            You get it, right?

Jane:                I totally hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Good, good, good. So the question then becomes, do you actually want to give this person more of a chance? I don't think you do. I think you know enough. You just don't like this person.

Jane:                I think that the recent hangout was me giving them more of a chance.

Jessica:            I see. It's a hard pass for you.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And so I think what that might look like is exploring the awkwardness of the next time you hang out—because you will hang out with her again because you're socially connected.

Jane:                Of her partner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Notice how much you lie.

Jane:                Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Just notice how disingenuous you are. And if you can, rein it in. Ask yourself, "Is there a way that I can express this that's not like, 'Yes,' and just be like, 'Yeah'?" because it's different. It's different.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, if you do this, you will be awkward. It will come across weird. Bet, okay? That is just how it will go. And I still encourage you to do it because you need to develop the skill sooner or later, and—

Jane:                For sure. Can I ask a question?

Jessica:            Yeah. Please. Please.

Jane:                So I feel like that was something I was kind of trying in our last interaction, and it did keep me more quiet in our conversations and in our interactions. And that felt fake to me, but then I'm like, "What is the alternative? Just being really honest?" I don't know. I'm, I guess, finding that middle ground of, like—

Jessica:            What were you talking about? Or was it just, like, everything?

Jane:                Kind of everything, really.

Jessica:            Was there something specific you're thinking of, though?

Jane:                There's something specific I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of—she was having issues with a person, a friend of hers. And she was talking to the group about it, and I was just kind of not really sharing my opinions, which were more about the way that she was engaging in the situation. I didn't really see her perspective of how the other person was treating her, if that makes sense.

Jessica:            It does make sense. Yeah. Okay. So Blondie says, "Karen is so terrible. Karen is doing x, y, and z."

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And Blondie's partner and your bestie are like, "Yeah, fuck Karen." Right?

Jane:                Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Jessica:            So, in this situation, Blondie is doing what you did with your four besties: shit-talking.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            She's not actually asking for real advice. She's asking to be backed up.

Jane:                Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So here we have a great example of what doesn't work about shit-talking in a deep way.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            She's saying, "I am suffering in this relationship, and I need help." But she actually isn't saying that. She's saying, "I want you to back me up."

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            That's a very different thing. That's a very fucking different thing. So, in this situation, if you were to change—right? You'd have to change. You could ask Blondie questions.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            You could just be like, "Wait. When Karen did x, what did you do? I'm really curious. Tell me more." As you ask people to talk about themselves, they will either change the subject or you'll start to have a real conversation.

Jane:                Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            You can always ask someone, "Do you want feedback, or do you just want me to listen and be there for you?"

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            You're always entitled to ask people that, too, right—

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            —because sometimes we don't want fucking feedback; we just want to be gassed up.

Jane:                Yeah. For sure. For sure. And I definitely do that with my close friends.

Jessica:            Real friends. With your actual, real friends.

Jane:                Absolutely.

Jessica:            Right. That makes sense. But you can do that with people like Blondie as a way to navigate—you realize, "Okay, it's been two hours, and I've barely said a fucking word." That's where you start to ask questions if you want to be participating so you don't seem like—you don't want to be obvious, right—

Jane:                Right.

Jessica:            —that you're like, "This fucking girl. I'm fucking"—

Jane:                Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            That's when you ask questions. And the key is to try to find something you're actually interested in.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            For me, I would guess that 90-something percent of the time, the question you can ask the person you're connected to is, "Well, what did you do? When they did that, how did it feel? How do you generally engage with this person when they act like this?" Right? Because I'm guessing that, 90-something percent of the time, the people in your life are telling stories where they're not including any personal information; they're just talking about a relationship as though the other person was 100 percent of the problem.

Jane:                Yeah. Definitely not my close friends, but they're very introspective and committed to their growth, and we challenge each other a lot. So there are definitely some people, but not everybody.

Jessica:            Yeah. We're talking about, in this moment, not the people that are your close, well-developed relationships—

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            —where you know you can be intimate, where you know—

Jane:                More—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            We're talking about people you start dating.

Jane:                Blondie.

Jessica:            We're talking about people who are connected to the people—

Jane:                Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            —that you're connected to, right?

Jane:                Yes.

Jessica:            We're talking about the people that, typically, you're completely disingenuous around, right—

Jane:                Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            —because you're trying to keep the peace, essentially. Right?

Jane:                Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So understanding that your four besties are going to—so, when you're not in the room, is it you plus four or is it three plus you?

Jane:                Me plus three.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So, if you are not in the room, the three of them are going to talk about you; is that correct?

Jane:                I assume so. Yeah.

Jessica:            When one of them is out of the room, do the three of you talk about the one who's not in the room?

Jane:                Yes, sometimes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Not 100 percent of the time, but—

Jane:                Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            —it's a guarantee, right? So, eventually— I don't know how long you all have been friends, but eventually, that's going to be a problem.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            One of you is going to feel really bad about how one other of you talked about them, or one of you is going to cross a line, and it's going to get back to them, because that's how human relationships work, not because of you, not because of your chart, not because of them—because that's how talking behind people's backs works, period. And so, again, it's a good question to ask yourself—which is a very hard one, and you don't have to do it. Honestly, genuinely, you don't have to do this. But a good question to ask yourself is, if the person who's not in the room heard a recording—if one of us was recording this on our phones and played it for our friend, would they feel bad?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And if the answer is yes, then yeah, you've crossed the line.

Jane:                Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And maybe the four of you have agreed as friends that it's okay to cross that line, as long as nobody hears about it.

Jane:                Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            That's fair. You may have made that agreement as friends, right? You don't have to be a triple Capricorn just because I am. But if, actually, the truth is, "I hadn't thought about it that way, and I don't want to think about it that way," then there's an invitation there for the four of you to explore, well, why do you do it? Is it something that you all need to examine as you evolve?

                        And this is the thing. Friendships wherein the parties do not change over time in compatible ways don't last over time. That's a thing. This is why the Saturn Return, which you've just completed, is a time where a lot of friendships end, because people change, or they don't. And as you don't change but you age, that is a change.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just the change of resisting momentum to change. And so these are things for you to kind of explore and unpack, as it were.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            So, all of this said, I'm going to just shut up and pause, and I want to encourage you to take a moment and see if I've answered your question in a whole way, if there's anything—not like a whole new topic, but if there's anything there that you want me to speak to.

Jane:                I feel like it's pretty well covered. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Say your name one more time.

Jane:                [redacted]

Jessica:            So can you feel your stomach? Not can you put your hand on it, but can you feel it?

Jane:                No, no, no—all the time. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. It's like an activated place for you, eh?

Jane:                It is the most activated place. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. You spend a fair amount of time abandoning those feelings because they feel bad, and there's nothing you can do about it, so "I don't want to hang out where I feel bad." And I want to name the reason why I'm naming this part of you is because—listen. You don't have seven million planets in Scorpio and not experience shame. That's just like—

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            —sorry. That's just—you know, it's not a thing.

Jane:                Most definitely.

Jessica:            And I want to just name that there's a way that you can hold the messiness and the complexity of this topic of how you've behaved, of what you think, what you don't think, what you are cool with, what you're not cool with, without shame. But it will require that you breathe into the discomfort in your belly and give yourself permission to be a person with seven million planets in Scorpio. Your nature is to go deep with people and be really private, and that's ultimately the motivation behind talking about everything but yourself—

Jane:                Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            —which is ultimately what the gossiping is, right? It's talking about everything but yourself. And so I want to just center you into this practice of breathing into it because you're going through a Pluto square to Venus. This is your time to push up against the boundaries of how you relate to other people and whether or not it's working, how much it's working. And that's just that, right?

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            That's just a process. That's just a process. And so understanding the role that shame or guilt or pettiness or resentments plays in how you relate to yourself will give you more space to make choices. Sometimes we will talk shit. We will spill tea. And that is not inherently bad. Everybody does, right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And if you don't have that component to your relationships, you will have less to talk about with people. And that's awkward.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Jessica:            And that's real, right?

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            That is vey real.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And what you do one-on-one with a close friend—it is different than what you do three-on-one with close friends because there is a difference between a group of people talking about you and two people who are very close in privacy talking about you, isn't there?

Jane:                Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Does that feel different to you when you think about it?

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can understand that, yeah, for sure.

Jessica:            Especially because you might be comfortable with a certain level of people talking about you that other people aren't—you just don't know. All of this is—again, coming back to your love life—going to help you lay a foundation in yourself so that you can be more vulnerable, which will—even though none of this is about dating, it will create more space for you to have the vulnerability and to make mistakes so that you don't just date people who you already know what's going to go wrong, so you can tell your friends, "I know that this is what's going to end it, and then you're right."

Jane:                (laughs)

Jessica:            You're welcome.

Jane:                Oh, so funny.

Jessica:            Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            But you can actually date people where you don't know what's going to go wrong because those are the people that you're more likely to have things go right with. Sorry. Sorry, Charlie.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But that's it. That's it.

Jane:                Okay.

Jessica:            So that's the homework. Don't do this for your love life. Do this for the you part. What we're talking about is not pulling out gossip. What we're talking about is expanding how you show up instead of just doing this one-trick-pony thing that you do, right?

Jane:                Totally.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jane:                Totally. Yeah. That feels really—

Jessica:            So it's about expansion.

Jane:                Yeah. That feels really, really accurate to what—yeah—I've been feeling lately.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            That makes sense because—

Jane:                It makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

Jessica:            —it's like there's a way that you are very immediately post-Saturn Return, and when we are post-Saturn Return, you start to become aware in a whole new way of the ways that the grooves of your behavior are or aren't like you. The 20s are about trying it out, but we get stuck, and we don't really try out certain things; we just—that's what we do. That's who we are. And you are at this place where—there's a lot going on astrologically that points to this—that you are ready to evolve.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, as you evolve, you create space. And in that space, it is awkward and uncomfortable because you don't have anything to fill it with yet. And then, eventually, if you stay with it and you get more comfortable hanging out with the spaciousness, then new behaviors, new relationships, new impulses, new emotions start to fill up that space.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's how you substantively change.

Jane:                Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's hard, but I mean, if anyone can do it, you can do it.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            This is the thing, is as deep as your fucking habits can be and as intense as your shit can be at times, you have all the tools to evolve and transform it, right?

Jane:                For sure. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's the double-edged sword of all that Scorpio shit, right—

Jane:                Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            —is you have to evolve, but also, you have all the tools to evolve, but also, you have to evolve.

Jane:                And I want to as well.

Jessica:            And you want to.

Jane:                And it's funny that you mentioned before the three months thing as a trial period because I'm in the middle of a three-month sobriety thing—

Jessica:            Good for you.

Jane:                —this is one of the—thank you. This is one of the reasons why it's become a little bit more clear to me, like—because, you know, drinking and gossiping and smoking weed and stuff, you're not as aware of it. And now that I'm in these spaces sober, it's a little bit more clear to me of how it's making me feel.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jane:                So, yeah, all of that really, really resonates.

Jessica:            I'm so glad.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, seriously, congratulations for fucking with sobriety because your chart—addiction is a really big issue in your chart.

Jane:                Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            And not only are you going through a Pluto square to Venus, but Neptune is at the top of your chart. And so this is a period astrologically where you would take a turn with addiction. And this is a good turn.

Jane:                That's so interesting.

Jessica:            Yeah. This is the right turn.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            This is like your best-case scenario turn because you're not—

Jane:                It's hard.

Jessica:            It's so hard. It's so hard.

Jane:                It's so hard. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's really, really, really, really, really hard.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's especially hard if most of your friends smoke or drink or whatever, which of course, most—that's normal, right?

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            But there is that addiction stuff in your family, and it's like a body thing. It's not a self-control thing.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            It's a body thing.

Jane:                For sure. For sure. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And for you, I would say alcohol is really the trigger substance as opposed to weed. Am I correct about that?

Jane:                I'd say more so weed.

Jessica:            Interesting.

Jane:                I think when I would take a break from one, I would lean on the other.

Jessica:            I see. I see.

Jane:                But weed is what I'm really missing at the moment. Like, I—yeah.

Jessica:            Interesting. So, when you drink, do you feel like you have more control over your relationship to alcohol than you do over your relationship to weed?

Jane:                Control. Hmm. Oh, I don't know.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jane:                Maybe not. Maybe not.

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, it looks like there's alcoholism in the family specifically.

Jane:                There is, definitely.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Jane:                There definitely is. Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, it is the thing that, as an astrologer—you don't have a Jupiter/Sun/Pluto conjunction in Scorpio in the sixth house and not have alcoholism in the family or some sort of mental health illness stuff that can replace that astrologically.

Jane:                Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            But it doesn't give your physiology a neutral response to alcohol. Does that make sense?

Jane:                Totally.

Jessica:            The body has its own genetic, as well as social and inherited, thing. And then there's weed, which you actually enjoy more, right?

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You've got this Venus/Saturn trine. Saturn governs weed and hash. And so this Venus/Saturn trine—it's like you ground your—you ground. You're not really grounding, but it feels like you're grounding yourself—

Jane:                I think I'm grounding. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. You feel like you're able to really connect to other people with weed, whereas alcohol comes out of more of, actually, like a—you're going to have one drink, but then you never have one drink kind of thing is what it looks like.

Jane:                Totally. Totally. Totally.

Jessica:            Yeah. So, from my perspective astrologically, alcohol is the thing to be careful about because it looks like you—again, there's alcoholism in the family, and I don't need to say more than to explain it that way. And then, because you have a million planets in Scorpio, you have a compulsive addictive nature. And so you're not someone who's just going to be like, "Yeah, I'll smoke weed when I'm out with my friends here and there. Whatevs."

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            If you smoke weed, you smoke the same amount of weed in the same way all the goddamn fucking time.

Jane:                Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            And if you don't, you itch. You itch. Your brain is itching because you're supposed to feel different, right?

Jane:                Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so sobriety is a really good friend to you, especially at this stage of your life where you're battling with compulsions on all the levels. Again, Neptune at the top of your chart, Pluto on your Venus—addictions are going to be up. Two years. Not three months, two years.

Jane:                Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            So do with that as you will, right? You know what I mean?

Jane:                That's good. That's good.

Jessica:            You start somewhere. You start somewhere.

Jane:                Yeah.

Jessica:            But, like, just good to know that that's what's activated. And as you pull out substances, it's good to put things into the space that creates. So, whether that means a sober curious or an actual sobriety group or that means more art or meditation or more woo—whatever the fuck you do, know that if you just pull things out and you don't develop new relationships, new behaviors, new things to fixate on—right? There's a reason why, if you go to an AA meeting, everybody's fucking pounding coffee and eating all the donuts or smoking outside, because we don't just pull out an addictive behavior and then magically not have an addictive nature. Right?

Jane:                Absolutely. I've noticed that—

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm sure you do.

Jane:                —with reality TV and social media.

Jessica:            There you go. Reality TV is like nonpersonal gossip, right?

Jane:                Oh, totally.

Jessica:            It's like that same thing.

Jane:                I love it.

Jessica:            I bet you do. I bet you do. Again, I know other people who have a lot of Scorpio in their chart, and they all fucking love reality TV.

Jane:                Oh, it's so good.

Jessica:            There you go. There you go. So all of this to say you're exploring these parts of yourself, and the more consciously you explore them the better.

Jane:                Yeah. Yeah. Cool. That's really affirming. I appreciate it.

Jessica:            It is so my pleasure.