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

Brandi:            Oh my gosh. Thank you so much, Jessica. Here's my question: "After three years of mostly silence, I got a letter from my mom today asking why I've stayed away so long. We had a falling out back in January of 2022, but the letter didn't mention it, only apologized for things they were sorry for in my childhood. My mom is Christian and homophobic and has struggled with mental health over the years. Is it possible to try to repair a relationship with someone living in a different reality? I am 45 and a lesbian and also the mom to a 12-year-old kid who is Gay and Nonbinary. The stakes feel really high in opening up more contact, but is that just my past wounded self reacting? How do I know what's real versus the story I'm telling myself? Would love your triple Capricorn insight. Love you and your show. XO."

Jessica:            Thank you very much. Okay. I have follow-up questions. We're going to share your birth information and pull up your chart in a second.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            So a couple follow-up questions. So you referenced your mom, not your dad.

Brandi:            Correct.

Jessica:            Is your dad not in the picture?

Brandi:            No, my dad—my parents are divorced, and my dad and I do have a relationship.

Jessica:            Okay.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So this is just about your mom.

Brandi:            Just my mom. Yeah.

Jessica:            You had a falling out three years ago.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Briefly—

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            —what are the broad strokes?

Brandi:            So we've had a difficult relationship my whole life, you know? But the broad strokes—three years ago—so I'm a writer, and I had some poems that were published in a little book. And then some of the poems I wrote kind of referenced, like, a generational trauma, in a way, that involved my mom. And I think I was hoping it would all be okay, but she got really mad.

Jessica:            So you told her about it.

Brandi:            Yeah. I mean, because I wrote—there was one poem in particular that sort of referenced abuse that happened to my mom. So my mom's the youngest of three sisters, and the poem referenced something that happened when they were kids that my aunts didn't know I knew about. And then—

Jessica:            So the whole family found out about this poem.

Brandi:            I ended up sending them the manuscript before it came out because I wanted them to be prepared because they knew it was coming out.

Jessica:            And you named names or no?

Brandi:            No, I didn't name any names. I made sure that there were no names. It's a very vague poem.

Jessica:            But your family knew what you were saying.

Brandi:            The people who knew what it meant knew what it meant, and they all freaked out and basically stopped talking to me, basically said—

Jessica:            So it wasn't just your mom; it was your mom-plus-plus.

Brandi:            My mom, yeah, and my two aunts. They're kind of like—they were like a wall.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Brandi:            And I'm the only granddaughter in the family. My cousins are all boys, and so my aunts didn't want my cousins to know about this abuse that had been done by a family member. And I was trying to make sense of it because of things happening in my own life. And basically, my mom stopped talking to me.

Jessica:            Okay. So it wasn't about gayness at all.

Brandi:            No, but I think that's still there because, you know, I'm married. My wife and I have been married since 2009, and she didn't come to my wedding—

Jessica:            Okay.

Brandi:            —[crosstalk] culture.

Jessica:            So these are like two separate, overlapping issues.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. And so the falling-out was about, basically, you outing the family abuse and trauma. Okay. Okay.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, when she reached out more recently, she referenced not her homophobia—

Brandi:            No.

Jessica:            —not the conflict you had three years ago; she referenced a whole other little bucket. And I'm assuming the bucket was related to her understanding that you feel there's generational trauma, that you feel that she treated you poorly in some ways.

Brandi:            Well, in my mind, it's kind of separate because basically—

Jessica:            I'm not asking about your mind.

Brandi:            Oh. Okay. Yeah, Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm going to stop you right there.

Brandi:            In my—okay.

Jessica:            We're not talking about your mind. We're talking about what she said, what she's referencing, because she doesn't have your mind.

Brandi:            Right. She's referencing my childhood where—because I grew up an only child, very isolated in the Midwest, and my mom was struggling with mental illness at that time. So I think—

Jessica:            She was acknowledging that stuff.

Brandi:            Yes, only that stuff.

Jessica:            Do you think that her struggles with mental illness is in any way related to the trauma she suffered as a child?

Brandi:            Absolutely.

Jessica:            You do. Okay.

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. So I wanted to just—I want that to be on the table. I don't want to get too complicated in details outside of that, because—

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —because there's so many layers to this, right?

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So okay. We're going to pull up your birth chart. You were born 9:07 a.m. in Columbia, Missoura—Missoura? Did I do it right?

Brandi:            I mean, I say Missouri. If you're anywhere south of Jefferson City, then you would say Missoura, so—

Jessica:            Okay. Well, I'll say Missouri, but I really like saying Missoura because it makes—

Brandi:            Yeah, please.

Jessica:            —no sense and there's no a there. But June 6th, 1980. Okay. So I'm going to just start by having you say your full name and your mother's full name.

Brandi:            Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Brandi:            Do you want my mother's—like, all of her names? Because she's had a couple—

Jessica:            Please.

Brandi:            Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            I got her. Great.

Brandi:            You got her.

Jessica:            I got her. Yeah. She's right there.

Brandi:            Amazing.

Jessica:            So okay. The kind of money shot of your question is, is it possible to build a relationship with this person—

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —who I have so much difference with? And the answer to that is yes.

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            Let me just have a—let me jump ahead. I don't usually do it this way, but you'll see why in a minute, okay?

Brandi:            I'm so surprised. I'm very surprised.

Jessica:            Yeah. Well, let me surprise you less in just a second here—

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            —by saying a relationship is a broad thing.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            A relationship doesn't mean the relationship you want.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            It doesn't mean she becomes a different person. It doesn't mean that you become a different person.

Brandi:            Totally.

Jessica:            It only means you can have a relationship with this person. Yes, you can.

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            But you would have to accept who she is, accept her boundaries, and make decisions about how you can navigate who you are and your boundaries in context of that.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And there's so many layers. If we just focused on the Gay/Christian shit—right—

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —I mean, we would have a really different conversation than if we focus on what happened with the poem.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And this is always a risk when we as individuals tell the story of our living relatives without their prior consent, right?

Brandi:            Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's kind of like outing, right? You kind of outed these people without their consent.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And they obviously weren't capable of handling it.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think they have a right to be like, "No. No. No," because they weren't trying to out themselves.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            And I want to just acknowledge that, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Not for any other reason than your mother is a fucked-up human who made choices, some of them good, some of them bad—as are you.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Right? And now that you're a parent, I think that there's that massive umbrella—it's like a huge—it's like a tent of issues to be unpacked—

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —in regards to your mom as a person, you as her child, and also you as a person, you as a parent—there's a lot in there, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And then there's the more immediate issue of, do you let her in your life? What the fuck? How? Why? What are the boundaries? And all of that. So I want to just have you ground me into, are we talking about what to do next? Are we talking about unpacking the homophobia stuff from your mom? Are we talking about unpacking the poem event?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Because part of what I'm hearing from your reaction to her letter is, "She didn't acknowledge the thing I wanted her to acknowledge. She acknowledged something else." And you feel dissatisfied with what she acknowledged, even though it doesn't sound like the worst thing that she acknowledged that she was shitty in some ways.

Brandi:            Exactly. It felt like a bridge. It felt like an awkward attempt—I think what I'm really nervous about with my mom is I have never been able to be in a relationship with her thus far where I feel like she actually hears me and sees me as a person. I'm always taking care of her feelings.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Brandi:            And so the letter—to me, in some ways, it felt like, "Oh, why aren't you coming to visit me anymore? I miss you. The family misses you. Can you learn to forgive?" But she didn't reference her role in anything, which basically, like—she stopped talking to me, but she still wants access to my kid. And there was a moment right after it happened when I sent her a letter, and I thought we had gotten to a place where we could move on. And she just didn't respond. And then it was like I found myself reaching out to her at that time—this was like two years ago, maybe—and I was thinking, "Should I try to mend this?" And then I get a letter from her saying she's changed her will.

Jessica:            To not include you anymore?

Brandi:            Well, she didn't say that, but the timing was very interesting. She said she decided to change her will to give everything to charity, but she might give some small gifts to friends and family. And my mom doesn't have a lot of money. I don't need her money.

Jessica:            Right. It's not about the money. It's about—

Brandi:            But it felt like a dagger in the heart. And that was when I was trying to decide if I should go see her. And then, after that, she just felt so distant. There was a point when I was trying to kind of almost—you know like when a dog wants to show you they're not a threat, they show you their belly?

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Brandi:            I feel like I was doing that with her, trying to send her heart emojis, because I felt like I had fucked up, in a way, where I just—I had had this thought that it would all work out, partly because I found out my book was coming out on my grandmother's birthday and my—her mom. And my grandmother had passed at that point. It just felt like a sign to me, and I think I had—

Jessica:            What do you think that sign was? What was the sign that you're interpreting?

Brandi:            The sign, to me, felt like it was okay to talk about this stuff.

Jessica:            So I'm going to just slow you down—

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you're doing a lot of projecting your worldview and your take on family events. It was her trauma. So, for her, that might have been the worst possible day because she's grieving her mother in all that complexity. And on top of it, you're outing something that she can't cycle—and this I'm going to say I can see very clearly energetically. None of these women—but we're really focused on your mom—have the tool kit to process the abuse they went through.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            And so, when you put words, eloquent words, to their trauma, I want you to know that that's—I don't think that you did the wrong thing by writing this poem and having it published. And also, if I were them, I would feel the exact same way.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            If you were them, you would feel the exact same way because it was a betrayal of trust. You didn't ask for their permission. They wouldn't have given it. It wasn't your story to tell.

Brandi:            Yeah. I mean—

Jessica:            You could have told your story—you could have done it in a way that was not telling their story as much as you did, because it wasn't your story.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And I'm not—again, I don't think what you did was wrong. I think that there are two different ways of looking at this. There's a myriad of different ways, but you're so focused on your way—which is just what your mother does. Which is just what your mother does.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's why I'm interrupting you on this one, because you being like, "Oh, it's a sign. It's my grandmother's birthday"—the sign would be the opposite sign to someone else, easily.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Again, you have decisions that you've made about how your mom should process her trauma when you have nothing but a lifetime of evidence that she doesn't process her trauma at all.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So you actually know she doesn't have—whether it's because of mental illness, whether it's because of choice, whether it's stubbornness, she checks out and then deals with the consequences of checking out instead of the root of why she checked out. You know this about her.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's why you've been her caretaker, right?

Brandi:            Yeah. Well, I think, too—not to get into a defensive space, but part of the poem—it's like information that I had from a very young age about a person that I was made to continue seeing. It was a lot for me to hold as a young person.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Brandi:            And then things were happening in my life where, almost, the pattern was repeating, where there was a person in my child's life when they were very young that we found out was not a safe person. And it felt almost like the pattern of my mom's childhood was repeating. And that's basically what the poem was about. It was like it started with me, and then it referenced my mom a little bit, and then it ended with me. And when I first wrote it, it was super vague, but then my publisher pushed me to make it more specific.

Jessica:            So what you're describing is your thought process, your behavioral process, and what I'm referencing is your impact.

Brandi:            Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            So we know intent and impact are different things.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Your mother's intent when she wrote you that email recently was to mend a bridge. The impact she had was to make you feel fucking chaotic and all kinds of—a million different things, right? Similarly, I am not saying that you or anyone doesn't have a right to write about your lived experience, and part of your lived experience is the awareness of this trauma, is exposure to an unsafe person, is seeing the consequences that abuse and unsorted trauma had upon the person who was supposed to be your safe space, your mom, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You have a right to write about those things.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And she has a right to not be okay with it. She has a right to feel violated by you not changing the genders, not changing the nicknames, not taking greater pains to protect her anonymity.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You have a right to tell your story, but you do not have a right to be free of the consequences of how it makes her feel, just like she has a right to be a Christian and a homophobe, and that does not absolve her of your rights to say, "You don't get to be a fucking homophobe to my Gay, beautiful life and my Gay, beautiful family." There are so many layers to this, right? But I want to just hold space for, if you are going to have a relationship with your mother—and you don't have to. Let's be clear. You don't fucking have to do anything you don't want to fucking do.

Brandi:            Thank you.

Jessica:            And let's hang out there, right?

Brandi:            Okay. Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. But if you are, you get to decide, "Do I want to work towards healing, or do I want to work towards having a very boundaried, surface relationship?"

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            You don't have to have any relationship. But if you are going to have a boundaried, surface relationship, then you don't get your pain acknowledged, and she doesn't get her pain acknowledged. You don't get your needs met in a deep way, and she doesn't get her needs met in a deep way. And it's important to recognize, because you're now in your mid-40s—right—

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —that it's not just about your feelings and your needs. It's also, at this point, your adult behavior and how it's impacted her. And listen. She's still your fucking parent. She's still your parent. I believe in the power structure. I believe that the parent is always the primary responsibility, even with a 60-year-old kid or—not that you're 60, but even when you're 60, she will still be your parent.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, you were a grown-ass adult with a whole lot of knowledge when you chose to publish her stories without asking for permission.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You made a decision, and you were like, "This decision is about me," and you weren't considering the impact on her, or you considered the impact on her but didn't actually give her the right to make a choice, right? And I think that's really not typical of you as a person. It's just what you did with your mom because of your shit with your mom.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            I don't think you would do that in a story about your partner, your wife.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            You wouldn't do that about your ex in the same way—

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            —[crosstalk] about your mom because you and your mom have shit, and this issue of consent and protection is a familial trauma pattern.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, in the poem, you reiterated it for her and for her siblings in a way that you were not thinking you were doing, but you did, right? You stepped over the boundaries of consent.

Brandi:            Yeah. Well, what's interesting, too, is the way that the three of them operate—I sent it to my mom first, and she was like, "Oh, this is going to be very upsetting to everyone. Please don't do this." And I was like, "Mom, I have to." And so then I ended up emailing it to my other two aunts. And one of them—she called to yell at me and said, "Shame on you for what you've done to our family."

Jessica:            What I'm pointing towards is something that I think is really hard for you to metabolize, and I want to just say this does not invalidate anything in addition that's true. But I do want to say you know that your mom and your aunts suffered through something where they didn't have choice, and they weren't safe.

Brandi:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you reiterated that trauma by telling them after the decisions were made that you were telling the world about something that they would never tell the world about because they didn't feel safe to. Whether or not they're assholes, whether or not they handled it wrong is not actually what we're talking about. Multiple things can be true at once.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to just acknowledge that the outsized reaction that they had, again, may be connected to a million things that are fucked up about them, but one thing that is really important—because the whole reason why you wrote this poem is to sort through trauma, and you unintentionally participated in the family dynamic—

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            —as a perpetrator in their experience.

Brandi:            Oh my God. I didn't even think of that.

Jessica:            That's what I'm trying to slow us down and hang out in because—

Brandi:            Whoa.

Jessica:            —it's—and this is the fucked-up thing about being an adult, is that you were doing the right thing for you from your perspective. But if we look at it from these women who are of a different generation, a generation that does not process trauma in the same way that your generation does—

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —that the values of that generation are you have to fucking soldier through.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            And the truth is every generation before Pluto in Virgo/Pluto in Libra times—that was it. Soldier through. So this thing about "go to therapy and heal" is as new as Pluto in Virgo, a.k.a. the 1960s.

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            Just giving cultural context, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Just giving some cultural context. And so, as we have the perspective that, oh shit, the way that you were thinking about it was from your lens of having gone through a million years of therapy, of—

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            —being in a culture where people younger and older than you sort through trauma—you also are coming through an artist's lens. You're like, "It's poetry."

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            "It's not me telling your story in a journal. It's my creative process, and it's a creative pathway." They don't have any of that perspective, right?

Brandi:            I know.

Jessica:            None of it. Zero percent.

Brandi:            I tried to explain it. They [crosstalk].

Jessica:            No. They wouldn't. And again, the thing that's really important here is that you told their story without consent, and that reiterated trauma for them. And their reaction is evidence that I'm correct about my theory, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Their reaction is such a trauma response, and it's a sense of being violated, right?

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's the feeling they had. And you just couldn't see it because it's so not your intent.

Brandi:            Right. Also, growing up the only granddaughter, the women of the family just are the ones who had to hold everything.

Jessica:            Yep.

Brandi:            And I think there was this part of me that was like, "Well, fuck that. I don't want to have to hold this anymore," because my aunts didn't even know that I knew, but I knew from a very young age. And who knows if it's like my father told me or I overheard it or, like—there was a part of me that was like, "Well, maybe because these people are dead"—

Jessica:            The perpetrators, not the victims, are dead. What we want to hang out with is the you part. And you're telling someone else's story again.

Brandi:            Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            You're telling somebody else's story to justify your story. And I want to slow you down to say—

Brandi:            Oh my God. Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            No, this is good. This is the whole point of being here. This is it exactly.

Brandi:            I'm feeling it.

Jessica:            Yeah. I can see that you are, and it's like a lot of fucking energy. So let's just let it course without judgment, okay—

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            —because the thing that you're missing is that you're like, "Well, the perpetrators are dead, so it's fine to tell the story." But it's the victims we should care about, not the fucking perpetrators. You know that, technically speaking, but you're involved in the trauma pattern. And the trauma pattern is, "I'm not going to be the victim anymore."

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So, unfortunately, your behavior to them was perpetrator behavior because you told—you ripped away their consent, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You're like, "You have to fucking deal with this. Suck it, ladies."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            They didn't know you knew. You didn't ask consent. And you outed them, right?

Brandi:            I know. And I think my ego got so caught up in just the excitement of getting my first book published. I talked about it a lot with my editors at the time, and I was like, "I'm really worried about this poem. I think my family is going to be really upset about it." And they're like, "No, it's fine. They'll get over it."

Jessica:            Well, what do they care? They're not—

Brandi:            I know.

Jessica:            They're like, "This is the money shot. Let's go."

Brandi:            I had no idea. And they fucking put it first. I was like, "Don't put it first. Hide it in the middle."

Jessica:            That wouldn't have made a difference.

Brandi:            I just was so afraid.

Jessica:            That wouldn't have made a difference, for the record. That wouldn't have made a difference. I think the thing about your mother's homophobia and the way she weaponizes her religiosity—right?

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            That is written in your chart in a bunch of ways, but we're not focusing on astrology right now. We're focusing on the conversation.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            The thing about that is how incredibly coercive and nonconsensual it is from your perspective, correct?

Brandi:            Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It is an emotional and spiritual manipulation, right?

Brandi:            Mm-hmm. Yes.

Jessica:            And it is—even though she herself fervently believes these things—her intent is to save your soul, to show you what she believes is correct—the impact is actually pretty fucking abusive, right? It's pretty shitty.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's pretty shitty.

Brandi:            It's very shitty.

Jessica:            Yes. So I want to hold space for—you should be able to identify with that in the context of this situation.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You thought you were doing the right thing. It worked with your ethos. It matched your worldview. And you thought, "I'm helping you. As a person who's done a lot of therapy, I'm helping you."

Brandi:            Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            But none of these women wanted that help. None of these women share your worldview.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            And this is where it's so important to recognize, when we are unconsciously playing out familial patterns—because for as long as you're doing perpetrator or victim in the family ethos, you're not free.

Brandi:            Right. Right.

Jessica:            And you get to get free, but this is not—telling other people's stories without getting their consent first of trauma and abuse is not how you get free.

Brandi:            No. Yes. I agree.

Jessica:            Now, it might be how you get a book deal—true talks. And also, it is what it is. It was what it was. Now, let's come to your relationship with your mom, okay, because your relationship with your mom—I'm going to ask you a question.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            I think you're going to have a hard time answering it, but I'm going to ask you to just try to answer it. Do you, in present time, want to have a relationship in present time with your mother in present time?

Brandi:            No.

Jessica:            Okay. So that's the answer to your question.

Brandi:            I know, but I feel so guilty about it.

Jessica:            Why? Because you're Catholic?

Brandi:            Because I'm Catholic, because I'm her only child, because she has mental illness. I mean, she has remarried, so she's not alone. I mean, I'm not Catholic anymore, but I had to go to Catholic school my whole life, so yeah, that's—

Jessica:            Yeah. You have the Catholic guilt. It's like a cultural—

Brandi:            Oh yeah.

Jessica:            It's an expression of love.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Guilt is connected to love, right? Listen. I could also say because you've got Saturn opposite your Moon and square your Sun—right? I mean, and square to Neptune—there's a lot of reasons why you have guilt. But none of that's—

Brandi:            Oh. Interesting.

Jessica:            That's actually not where I want to hang out with you because I'm nervous to give you too much astrology details because you're a narrative queen, if I may call you that. I just made that up.

Brandi:            Please.

Jessica:            But you're spinning off with narrative, and I want to actually keep you really present because your reaction is, "I don't want to have a relationship with my mother, and I feel guilty." So what I want to then start to understand with you is, is that guilt just shit that you need to slough off like dead skin? Or—

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            Or—

Brandi:            Oh, sorry.

Jessica:            No, it's okay. You might have just as clear of an answer after I get through this or not. We'll see. Or is that guilt the scab over a wound where you just don't know how to process through developing a different kind of adult relationship with your mom? You might just have as clear of an answer, but I want to just give you another option.

Brandi:            Yeah. I mean, I think when we initially first had our falling out, I didn't intend to never speak to her again, right? But I recognized that a lot of the past dynamics of our relationship were me putting energy into it. I would call her. After I sent her a letter—like after my aunt and I had our long talk, I thought we had kind of come to an understanding, and I was ready to sort of move on. My mom was not, right? So she basically iced me out.

                        So I think what I've noticed as the years have gone by and I've had less and less contact with her—I feel like I'm getting all my energy back. I feel like I have all my energy back in my body in this way that I didn't even realize it was missing. And I'm just really nervous that our old dynamics will rear their head, and she'll just take my energy again, and I'll go back into people-pleasing and taking care of her feelings, basically to the detriment of my kid because my kid [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            I'm going to slow you down. You're giving too much data.

Brandi:            Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            You're giving too much information.

Brandi:            Too much data.

Jessica:            I want to hear what you're saying, but I also want to say you're pulling the conversation in a lot of directions.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            And so the question you asked when you sent in a question doesn't sound like it's actually your real question.

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            What you're really saying is, "Am I allowed to not have a relationship with my mother?" because don't seem—you asked the question, "Can I?" but you just told me you don't want to. So now you're starting to talk about your kid and this and that, but I asked you, do you want to have a relationship with your mother? And you said no really emphatically. So I want to come back to that.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            Does that still feel true, "I don't want to have a relationship with my mother at this time"?

Brandi:            I mean, I wanted to go to therapy with her, and then she—

Jessica:            Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Brandi:            This was—

Jessica:            Have you met your mother?

Brandi:            I know. [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Have you met your mother? So this is why I phrased the question the way I did. Do you, as you are now, want to have a relationship with your mother as she is now? As she is now is a woman who will not go to therapy with you. Come on, girl.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            She will not go to therapy with anyone.

Brandi:            I know. I know.

Jessica:            If you accept—if you say to her, "I'm a fucking homo. I have a beautiful, Gay life and a beautiful, Gay family. I need you to accept that, but I need you to accept that as a different version of yourself, where you go to therapy and work through trauma and directly cope with things," how are you expecting that? That's unrealistic.

Brandi:            I know. Totally.

Jessica:            So this is why we're coming back to you said emphatically and very firmly, "No. I do not want to have a relationship with my mother." Does that feel true?

Brandi:            I mean, I don't actually know. And this is kind of at the root of my question. I just feel very stuck because, based on my past experiences with my mom's homophobia—like, the idea of never seeing her again makes me feel really sad, and it also—it makes me feel—I don't know. Maybe "guilt" is the only word for that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Guilt. Sure. Okay.

Brandi:            But—

Jessica:            So let's hang out here for a second.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            I want to just reflect back to you the answer is "not right now." That's first of all. You're allowed to say, "The answer is no and not no forever."

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            "I don't know if it's no forever. This week, the answer feels like a no." Does that sit in your body okay?

Brandi:            It does. I think I was putting pressure on myself to figure this out quickly because my dad and my mom live in the same town. They literally live three minutes away from each other. And I'm going to be visiting him in a few weeks. Every time I've gone back, though—I think I've gone back three times now without telling her—I'm terrified.

Jessica:            Right. It's awful.

Brandi:            I'm terrified I'm going to run into her. [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            So I'm going to give you advice. I'm going to give you advice

Brandi:            Okay. Please do. Thank you.

Jessica:            Have you responded to her email yet?

Brandi:            Yeah. It was a letter. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Letter. Okay.

Brandi:            I wrote—I basically just said, "Thank you for sharing your feelings. I am still processing my own feelings. I currently don't have plans to visit, but I'll keep you posted."

Jessica:            Okay. Great.

Brandi:            I said, "Give everyone my love." It was just very short and sweet.

Jessica:            Perfect. So you have the right to pop her an email or send her a postcard saying, "I'm not ready to see you yet. I do think about you often. I love you, but  I don't know how to proceed."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Two sentences.

Brandi:            Oh, I love that.

Jessica:            So here's the thing. In all of the stories that you're telling, you give so much backstory on other people's feelings and other people's behavior.

Brandi:            Ooh.

Jessica:            So what your work is is to own your behavior and your story. You have the right to say to your mother, "I love you, and I can't talk to you today. And I'm thinking about it. I'm not abandoning the process. But I can't today," because you're entitled to a fucking boundary. You're entitled to have your answer be, "I don't know." And the only way to have a relationship with your mother is to have boundaries.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And because you're telling me so many stories about what everyone else thinks and does and experiences, I know that you don't have great boundaries. That's the tell, by the way. When somebody starts telling stories that include primarily details about other people, that means the person telling the story doesn't have good boundaries themselves. That's just a hot tip, which is why a lot of us do that, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            We tell a story, and the story—even the story about the poem, you focus on talking about the publishers. You focus on talking about what you first wrote, but you leave out your decision to trust the publisher even when you knew it was wrong for you, or for your family, rather. You leave out the part where you chose to not ask people before you wrote it or published it.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You're leaving out all the parts where your agency is the linchpin, right?

Brandi:            Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the only way you are going to have a relationship with your mom that works for you and that is not a slightly older, more mature version of the same trauma of your childhood is if you are able to own your needs and your limits and accept her for who she is. You don't have to like it. I mean—you know what I mean? You don't have to like it. You don't even have to like her. But here's the thing that I can see. You love this woman. You have empathy for this woman. You also have pity for this woman. And you are able to see her trauma, but what you're not able to do yet is to hold the way her trauma has impacted her and shaped her and have a boundary at the same time.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Either you see her pain and you completely dissolve and you go into this old pattern where you're taking care of her and abandoning yourself—you're eating shit because she served you shit because she doesn't know better, or because she's an asshole or whatever else it is, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Or you're like, "Wall's up. Fuck off." Right? There seems to be two channels for you. And this is the family trauma on the matrilineage.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Being able to identify that what I see as your psychic is that it is possible to have very clear boundaries—she's a part of the church. She loves rules. She loves being told what's right and wrong.

Brandi:            She sure does.

Jessica:            She responds really well to it, actually.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's not just about the church for her, although that's your evidence. It's about—she doesn't have a sense of self. Her trauma and her mental health struggles have made it so that she is shattered into so many pieces that when she doesn't—she doesn't know what's too much. And actually, you struggle with that sometimes, too. This whole situation is great evidence of it. Sometimes you're like, "I'm just showing up happy." And then people are like, "Well, you're not listening," or whatever it is, right? These things happen for you, and it's not—

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's not bad or good. It's—this is how you're a person. This is how you're an adult. And in the context of your mom, you can have a relationship with her where you say, "Listen. You can have access to my kid. We can all meet up and go to the Olive Garden or something like that. And here's the conditions. You don't talk about religion. If you can't say something nice about gayness or transness, then keep your mouth closed. And if those conditions don't work for you, then let's talk on the phone instead."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            That's a boundary.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, you don't have to give this person access to your child. You can give her access to you and not your child.

Brandi:            I think the way that I've been enacting the boundaries that I'm telling myself is I have been hiding from her.

Jessica:            That's not a boundary.

Brandi:            I know.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you put little quotations on the word "boundary," because that's not a fucking boundary. Hiding is not a boundary. That said, you can say, "You're not welcome in." That's not hiding. It has the same effect of saying, "No, not past this point."

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            But it's a different motive and it's a different energy, and so it feels different. So you don't get the full benefit of your boundary because you're not having a boundary.

Brandi:            I know. I haven't communicated it.

Jessica:            No.

Brandi:            And my mom really wants access to my kid, but my mom doesn't really know my kid because my mom hasn't seen my kid in like three years.

Jessica:            Right.

Brandi:            And so, since then, they are just a very amazing, magical, sparkly, very out child. And—

Jessica:            I have a question. Your kid is tween, right—is a tween?

Brandi:            Yeah, just turned 12.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So have you asked your kid what they think?

Brandi:            My kid doesn't want to see my mom because my kid knows she's homophobic.

Jessica:            Okay. I feel like this is an important thing for you to put into the mix.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            You've asked your child for consent. And listen. They're a child.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            And also, they have said, "I don't want to expose myself to that at this time."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And so you can share that with your mom and say, "Listen. As a parent, I feel really uncomfortable with your homophobia and exposing my child to it. I asked my kid if they were comfortable, and they said no because of your homophobia. And so this is my boundary. Unless you work on changing and evolving your understanding of queerness and transness, then you can't have access to my kid because I have to protect my kid."

Brandi:            Exactly.

Jessica:            Now, in saying this clearly, I want you to understand this is so triggering for your mom because nobody protected her from her abuser. It's a different context, but it's the same trauma pattern, is that there's a kid, and the kid says, "I don't feel safe." And the parent has a chance to respect or not respect that. And your mom can never see herself as a perpetrator. She doesn't have the capacity. She's always a victim. Am I right?

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's who she is. And this is, in part, a result of unprocessed trauma.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            She's still a little kid who has no control, and she's never recognized that she's an adult who has agency. And this is where she has looked outside of herself for morality, for the rules.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            And so, if we understand that, then we understand that asking her to step outside of her church's—I mean, there's lots of kinds of Catholic churches. There are Catholic churches that embrace queerness.

Brandi:            I know.

Jessica:            But that's not the church that she's aligned with, right?

Brandi:            No. No.

Jessica:            And so understanding that she is not an adult who has figured out how to have morality outside of institutionalized direction—right?

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You can say to her when you express this boundary, "I've found three different Catholic churches in your area that are embracing of queerness, and I would like to invite you to check out their services and see if that helps you process this." And then don't check in with her for several months. See what she does with that.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You have the right to say to her, "I need to feel safe. I need my kid to feel safe. And honestly, I can protect myself from your values and your views, but my kid is only 12 and can't. So that's the boundary. And also, I love you. And also, I want you to grow. And also, I respect your religion. Here are some resources." Bada-bing.

Brandi:            Well, I don't respect her religion.

                        [crosstalk]

Brandi:            I know what you mean. I know what you mean.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you can say you don't respect her religion, but then—

Brandi:            I know.

Jessica:            —you're in this position where a good-faith relationship requires mutual respect.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It can't be—because you both want to be able to not respect core parts of the other and still have a relationship.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            So it doesn't work in either direction, just to be clear.

Brandi:            Yeah. I mean, I think, too—you know, I've talked about this before with her. I mean, it all goes back to her not coming to my wedding when I was 29.

Jessica:            Fucking huge.

Brandi:            And she said because her priest told her she couldn't. And we've talked about it so many times, and I think in her mind it's resolved because she doesn't see it as being Gay as, like, who I am. She thinks of it as us being two different political parties. So I don't think she even would consider herself as homophobic, but her actions are homophobic. Do you know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. She's homophobic for sure. Yeah.

Brandi:            Yeah. But—

Jessica:            She's very homophobic.

Brandi:            Yeah. But, like, you know—

Jessica:            She's not just homophobic, though. She's old-school heterosexual.

Brandi:            Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            She is from a time and a world where women don't really have a say, and they follow a man.

Brandi:            Yes. Exactly.

Jessica:            But to be clear, she's not a million years old. Part of why she has those values is a trauma response because if—and I want you to really hear this part.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            If your mother were to stop listening to men, if your mother were to take total responsibility for her behavior around this stuff, it would require that she look at and deconstruct all the ways in which she has taken in and on other people's worldview, other people's shit.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            Your mom—if she started to see her own responsibility—and whenever she does see her own responsibility, she crumbles. She falls all the way apart because that core trauma is right there waiting for her, undisturbed. And I don't think she has the skill set or the drive to heal it.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            And on the one hand, this is not your story. This is not exactly relevant. And on the other hand, if you can have awareness and empathy and, at the same time, boundaries with her around this, then you can have more realistic expectations that actually get met.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            She is never going to be a person who takes responsibility for herself in a major way.

Brandi:            No.

Jessica:            It would require her to deal with her trauma, and that's not where she's at. That said, here's the thing about your mom. She actually really loves you.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            She actually really loves you. She's actually curious about you. She's actually proud of you.

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            She is. She's proud of you. She's curious about you. She's—doesn't want to hear anything she doesn't want to hear, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's the fucked-up thing. And also, to be fair, you don't want to hear any of the shit that you don't want to hear.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            Now, again, she's the parent, and I hold her to a higher standard in the context of your relationship.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            If your mom gains access to your family, the healthiest thing for you to do—if you were to do anything, which you don't have to do—is to visit her with your wife and not have your child there—

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            —so that you can suss out, where is this woman at? How has she evolved? How does she plan on talking to your child? What is her relationship to pronouns? You can protect your kid.

Brandi:            Yeah. Right.

Jessica:            And this would mean also saying, "Me and my wife are showing up." And how is she going to handle that?

Brandi:            Not well.

Jessica:            Of course.

Brandi:            She wants me to be alone all the time. And that's part of it, is I always feel outnumbered because she always—

Jessica:            Why would you consent to that?

Brandi:            Well, I mean—exactly. Yes. Why would I?

Jessica:            And it's because you don't have good boundaries with your mom, right? Okay.

Brandi:            It's the—yeah. It's the people-pleasing, I think.

Jessica:            I think it's a little deeper than people—people-pleasing is what you do with the person who gave you the wrong order at the coffee store, and you don't bother telling them. What you're talking about is there has not been an evolution of the trauma-based relationship with your mother where you protect her from all bad feelings.

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            That's not people-pleasing. That's a whole other fucking can of worms, see.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It is imperative that you never do that again in regards to protecting her from feeling any kind of way about the fact that you are Gay as they come.

Brandi:            Thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome—so Gay. You go with your wife just like any straight couple would go with their partner. You go with your wife.

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            And if your mother cannot tolerate that, then she cannot tolerate you.

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            Then she's not a safe place for you. Asking your wife to show up to prioritize being there for you and not to center her reactions to your mom—she can do that after you leave, but in the moment, she's there as your bodyguard, as your support.

Brandi:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You tell her what the boundaries are.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But your mother, if she's going to evolve—and we don't know if she is.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            You don't need to have your kid be a part of that process, and you do deserve to have your fucking wife there because she's your fucking wife. Right?

Brandi:            Yeah. Yeah, she's my fucking wife.

Jessica:            For as long as you're waiting for your mom's permission, you're participating in the same relationship you had when you were 12.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            On the day that you say, "You know what? I'm going to be in town. Me and my wife will visit. My kid I'm not comfortable bringing around you yet. But if you would like to host me and my wife for some tea or if you want to meet at the Olive Garden"—I don't know why I keep saying Olive Garden, but there it is. It's coming up.

Brandi:            I mean, that's very accurate.

Jessica:            Is it? Okay.

Brandi:            It's very accurate.

Jessica:            I've never even been to one, but I'm just like, "It keeps on coming up." So, "Then we can do that." And then you can suss out how much she has or has not changed, how much you can tolerate of who she actually is. Who she actually is is somebody who's never going to go to therapy.

Brandi:            No.

Jessica:            She's never going to go to therapy, okay? That's never going to happen. So, if you having a relationship with her is dependent on her going to therapy, you're never going to have a relationship with her. Bing. Okay?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But can you accept that this woman is not somebody you necessarily like that much, but you love her—

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —and you don't have the ability to have a close relationship with her because of all the things she is? And also, that doesn't mean you can't have any relationship with her, because you are a part of your matrilineage, right? You are a part of your mother's line. And the way to break the chains is to have boundaries.

Brandi:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's to acknowledge reality and have boundaries.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            Hiding is not boundaries. Your mother has hidden from her trauma her whole life. Look at the effect—not ideal. Now, you obviously do not hide all the ways, all the things, like she does. You are in all kinds of therapies. You've done all kinds of healing work.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But your vulnerability, your kryptonite, is your family, obvi. Everybody's is, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So don't feel guilty or bad about that, but instead, I would say either don't see her when you go back or only let her have access to you with your wife and without your child. And on the day, if you do this, send your child to something super fucking fun.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You know what I mean? So your kid gets to have this life-affirming moment while you pursue a much more painful adult life-affirming moment, the moment where you say, "You accept me as I am, or we don't have a relationship." And you go about that with the intention that you're going to strive to accept her as she is. So I will give you something that you may have heard me say before, but we're going to pretend your mom's name is Sally.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            Whenever your mom says or does something that you find triggering that you don't like, you say to yourself this simple mantra.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            "That's just Sally being Sally."

Brandi:            Oh. I like that.

Jessica:            That's all. It's just practicing an acceptance of what is. You get to decide, moment by moment, after you see her or not, "Can I accept that? Is that healthy for me? How do I want to orient myself around that?" But the foundation baseline has to be Sally being Sally because Sally is not homophobic because of you; Sally is homophobic because of Sally.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            Sally does not have an inability or an unwillingness to directly talk about trauma because of you; it's because Sally is being Sally. You see what I'm saying?

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So as you track, okay, every time she acts fucking weird towards your wife, you just say, "That's Sally being Sally."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And once you leave, when you talk about it with your wife or you talk about it with your friends or you talk about it with your shrink, you can unpack, "How did I dissolve? How did I either try to escape or abandon myself during this process? How did I get defensive? How did you show up around that? And also, was this healthy for me? What are the boundaries I need to have with this? Is the boundary, 'I can't fucking do this at this time'? Is the boundary, 'Okay. That sucked, but actually, by the end of the hangout with my mom, she made eye contact with my wife. Maybe I want to work towards something here, maybe not'?" But you don't bring your fucking kid into the mix until you have certainty.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that can be years. If that's what's true for you, you're allowed to have it be years.

Brandi:            Yeah. Thank you.

Jessica:            Yes. Fuck yeah. And also, keep on checking in with your kid because if your kid is like, "You know what? I do want to have access to my grandparent, and I'm aware that they're shitty in x, y, and z way, but I also have heard you talk about progress over the last two years"—maybe your kid is going to be 15, 16, and be like, "Fuck it. I want to meet this person." Ultimately, you're the parent, and you decide what's safe for your kid. And also, there's something in the process of acknowledging the problem and having the ability to use your agency to consent or not. That's an important thing in your family line, and your kid is a part of your family line. So it's a good practice with your kid, right?

Brandi:            Wait. So can you say it again?

Jessica:            Okay. So, for you, the process is be around your mother, whether it's think about your mother or actually be in her physical space, right—

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —because I want to just acknowledge something. As I've suggested the idea of you visiting your mom with your wife and not your kid, energetically, I see that you're really curious about that as an option.

Brandi:            Yeah. I mean, I think I usually just feel outnumbered because it's not usually just my mom; it's my mom and my aunts and her husband, and then it's me and my kid. And it's just—it feels shitty.

Jessica:            Oh, that is shitty because you—

Brandi:            It's always what they all—what they want.

Jessica:            Right. The reason why that feels shitty is because it is shitty. They've said, "Don't bring your wife, your life partner, your soul mate."

Brandi:            Yeah. Right.

Jessica:            And you say, "Okay. I'll leave that part of myself behind." Never do that again. That's done.

Brandi:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's done. Okay? So that's a commitment I want to encourage you to make to yourself and to your wife. And if your family of origin is like, "You can't come if you bring your wife," then you don't go, period.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            Your kid no longer comes until you're sure that they can be accepting and respectful of you and your wife as a married couple—pointe finale. This is non-negotiable.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And this, I think, is an important place to, again, explore, like with your therapy, how you really just have been like, "Well, they won't let me," as opposed to, "Huh. I'm a grown-ass adult who's a married person who's letting them make a decision that makes me feel terrible, and I'm just going with it? Huh. That's so weird."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So there's this theme in your family of being coerced into things that are unhealthy.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so breaking the chains of that is bringing your fucking wife.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Bringing your fucking wife, and let her dress however she wants. Let her be whoever she is.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Nobody needs to change to show up. Either they adapt or they don't, and therefore, the relationships adapt or they don't.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            You're allowed to have that. So the process is, if your kid's not there, then you can, as an adult, notice where you get defensive. You notice where Sally's being Sally, right—

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            —which is really different than being like, "Oh my God. My mom's doing this again."

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            We're not talking about your mom. We're talking about Sally. We're talking about this woman who is a person, who was a person before you were conceived, who lived a life before you were born, who is a fucking fucked-up person.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            That's Sally. Now, your mom is your mom, but Sally is a different way of understanding who your mom is. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, because when you think about it from the perspective of your mom, you think, "Well, my book coming out on the birthday of her mom—that makes sense. It's maybe a meant-to-be thing, a powerful thing." But if you think about it from the perspective of Sally, you're like, "Oh, that's trauma. That's a day of trauma for my mom." Again, Sally is a fake name. But if you read it from Sally's perspective, you're going to see it differently than if you think about it from your mom's perspective, right?

Brandi:            Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            So, when you think—this whole "Sally being Sally" strategy that I like to use is really about being like, "This is who this person is," not, "This is who my mom is to me." "This is not how my mom is taking care of me or not taking care of me. It's about, oh, this grown-ass fucking woman in her 70s—this is who she is."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So "Sally being Sally" is a way of identifying and accepting who she is. And maybe you can't accept it, but you can identify it, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And then, afterwards, you can process with supportive people, "Did I disappear? Did I self-abandon? Did I get angry and defensive? Did I act out? What did I do? Who do I choose to be?" You find your agency. You find your boundaries. And then you figure out what the next steps are. Listen. This is why, straight out the gate, I was like, "Yes, you can have a relationship with your mom," because hiding from the relationship won't heal the relationship.

Brandi:            Oh, you're so right.

Jessica:            I'm sorry.

Brandi:            I know.

Jessica:            But that doesn't mean you have to be in a relationship with her either.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            But exploring your boundaries and accepting your reality is how you break the family trauma pattern. Exploring your boundaries and accepting reality are the two things your mother has never done. I don't think your aunts have either.

Brandi:            No.

Jessica:            So this is how you break the family trauma pattern.

Brandi:            I'd like to.

Jessica:            Sure. Who wouldn't?

Brandi:            I mean—

Jessica:            Who wouldn't? But that doesn't mean you have to.

Brandi:            [crosstalk].

Jessica:            That doesn't mean you have to. It has to be for you, and it can't be for your kid.

Brandi:            Right. Right.

Jessica:            I cannot stress this enough. This cannot be for your kid. In fact, I recommend you take your kid out of the mix of all of this because your mom wants access to your kid—that's cool. I want an ice cream cone. We don't get what we want all the time.

Brandi:            Thank you.

Jessica:            You know what I'm saying? But instead, if you are genuinely open to developing a relationship with your mother that is healthy and well-boundaried, then that is a series of steps that could lead towards your mom and your kid having a relationship.

Brandi:            Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            But you would have to be confident that you would be able to share with your child what boundaries are and to have faith that your mother would not be cruel and punishing towards your child through homophobia or some other thing, right?

Brandi:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And that would mean you'd have to have a relationship with your mother for some period of time where she is evidencing this through her behavior. So Sally would have to evolve; not just your mother would have to evolve. She as a human person would have to evolve.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Here's the thing about your mom.

Brandi:            [crosstalk] she. Yeah.

Jessica:            She's not going to fucking evolve.

Brandi:            I know.

Jessica:            No, no, no, no. There's a "but." There's a "but."

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            Your mom handles rules and consistency.

Brandi:            That's true.

Jessica:            You just don't ever give them.

Brandi:            Oh, you're right.

Jessica:            Yes.

Brandi:            I've just been ghosting her, basically.

Jessica:            That's the least effective thing you could possibly do. But—no. The least effective thing is you could fight with her and punish her. The second-least effective thing is you could ghost her. And those are the two things you do. Okay. So you're welcome. You're welcome. So boundaries is what your mother handles well. So, if you say to your mother, "I will talk on the phone with you once a week," and then you do, and then she brings up some homophobic something, every single time she does, say, "You know I don't talk to you about that. I'm going to go"—and you don't get punishing; you don't get cruel. You say, "This is the boundary. Here's the reinforcement. Bye. Talk to you next week."

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            If she says something truly egregious instead of something stupid, you say, "I'm not going to talk to you next week. Let's check in via email."

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            You are allowed to have boundaries. Now, you do not want to be carceral and punishing with your boundaries. That's not what boundaries are, right?

Brandi:            Right. Right.

Jessica:            Boundaries are a reflection of what you can and cannot do in a healthy way. So, if she learns that she can have a relationship with you as long as she's respectful to your wife, she recognizes your wife as your wife and not your friend and not your phase, as long as she doesn't bring up things in her religion that have to do with hell, perhaps, or whatever it is that is nonconsensual to you—it will take her time to learn the boundaries, but more importantly, it will take you time to be consistent and clear about your boundaries. Yep. But—

Brandi:            Wow.

Jessica:            —you could do this. This is absolutely possible.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            This is totally possible. The question is, do you want to do it?

Brandi:            Do I want to do it? I mean, I do think we both need some clarity, you know?

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. I think clarity is great. Yeah.

Brandi:            Can I ask you an astrology question?

Jessica:            Yeah.

Brandi:            I feel like, sometimes, part of what gets in my way is my mind—and maybe it's my Mercury; I don't know—is so active. And so I sometimes think I just—my mind spins out about the right thing to do. You know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yeah. So let's talk about that.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            You have a Grand Cross. You've got Saturn opposite your Moon. You've got Saturn square to your Sun and your Neptune. You've got Neptune opposite your Sun square to your Saturn and your Moon. That's all in mutable signs. It's not your Mercury.

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            So you come across as somebody who's super in your head. If I wasn't an astrologer, I would say you were super in your head.

Brandi:            I am.

Jessica:            But I am an astrologer, and I'm not going to say that. You are super out of your body. Your head is a balloon, and that ballon is constantly trying to fly away from your body.

Brandi:            Yeah. I feel that.

Jessica:            That's it. So your head—it's not really about Mercury. It's not about your mind. Instead, what it is about is you try to ground yourself through narrative—

Brandi:            Oh. Uh-huh.

Jessica:            —instead of grounding yourself through your Saturn.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            So you have Saturn in Virgo in the second house on the second/third-house cusp. And so this is about taking responsibility for what you say based on your values—

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            —taking responsibility for what you do based on your values. So that part of you that tells stories about everyone in the situation but yourself—you talk about your intent instead of your impact—that's Neptune opposite the Sun square the Moon and square Saturn. It's Neptune.

Brandi:            Neptune? Jesus.

Jessica:            It's Neptune. It's Neptune.

Brandi:            Oh my God. That makes so much sense.

Jessica:            Yes. It's an escapist—so this—we could talk about this configuration in your birth chart in the context of having a mentally ill parent who didn't have the resources for self-care. So it's not just like the time, like in the '80s and the '90s, there wasn't the same resources for mental health support. But also, she just didn't have the people. She didn't have any other resources. So you were the resource, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You were her resources. So that's part of this Neptune thing. Another part of this Neptune thing is the coping mechanism that was imparted to you from your matrilineage is—just disappear.

Brandi:            Disappear. Yeah. Disappear.

Jessica:            Disappear. Neptune's move is disappear.

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            It's escape. It's hide. It's say everything is fine when it's not. It's, when your family says, "Don't bring your wife," you're like, "Okay. I don't want any trouble here. I just won't bring my wife."

Brandi:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You abandon yourself. You abandon your whole life to go hang out with your family. That's Neptune.

Brandi:            Right. Right.

Jessica:            That's Neptune. So the spinning wheel that you're constantly engaged in internally does so well with boundaries—Saturn.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            Saturn, right?

Brandi:            Saturn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            So you're always going to be telling a lot of stories, and you're always going to be really creative, and you're always going to have a very busy mind.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But you don't have to abandon yourself or your limits and your needs in order to be creative and dynamic and tapped in.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm. Okay.

Jessica:            The work here—we could talk about it astrologically, but that will be a distraction for you, so I'm not going to do that any further, even though you want me to.

Brandi:            Oh my God.

Jessica:            You love details, right?

Brandi:            Yes.

Jessica:            I have been staring at your chart. I have been reading your chart and reading you psychically a lot. But the reason why I've used very little astrological language is because you love a reframe. Oh, do you love a reframe.

Brandi:            I do.

Jessica:            You love a reframe. And if I gave you a reframe, then it would be an extra thing for you to float away on. I want to keep this—the KISS method, Keep It Simple, Sweetheart.

Brandi:            Keep it simple, sweetheart. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. This is the KISS method. Have boundaries.

Brandi:            Have boundaries.

Jessica:            You don't know what your boundaries are? Then figure out what your fucking boundaries are.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Your answer is "I don't know"? Then that's your answer.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Deciding whether or not you want a relationship with your mother does not need to be written in stone.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's more about self-awareness.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            The answer in this moment is, "No, I don't want a relationship with my mother." 15 minutes later, it's, "I wish I could have a relationship with my mother." You're allowed to cultivate self-awareness without anchoring it. That cultivation of self-awareness empowers you to have boundaries. And once you have boundaries, you are then able to kind of negotiate imperfect situations. So the work for you is acknowledging your own agency, acknowledging your own needs and limits around what you can offer as well as what you need.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            It's both, right? Not just one, because you know how to do one or the other, "This is what I need from my mother," or, "Oh God. This is what I need to give to my mother." You have a hard time with, "These are her needs. These are my needs. And within that, this is what I can do in a healthy way." You cannot, in a healthy way, leave your wife behind.

Brandi:            No.

Jessica:            That's unhealthy, okay? So, if that's a prerequisite for any kind of relationship, okay, that's the answer. The answer is no.

Brandi:            I mean, they would never say that.

Jessica:            Who?

Brandi:            She comes home with me sometimes—my mom. But I think I'm still just so hurt about the wedding, even though it was, like, 18 years ago.

Jessica:            You never need—you don't need to get over that. You're allowed to be hurt that your mother wouldn't come to your fucking wedding, my God.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You're allowed to have that anger and that hurt—

Brandi:            Thank you.

Jessica:            —and also—

Brandi:            Also. yeah.

Jessica:            —acceptance that it already happened.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            She's never going to fix that.

Brandi:            No.

Jessica:            She's never going to change that. The past cannot be changed.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            So either that hurt is too great for you to get over this week, and therefore you can't talk to her, or you accept that she broke your fucking heart and she did something that is unforgivable, and you are open to building a relationship that is based in her treating your wife with the same respect she would treat a husband.

Brandi:            Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you haven't fully required that of her. We don't know if she would give it to you if you had forced her over the last nine years to accept your marriage, right? You haven't forced it because of your own coping mechanisms that come from your mother around, "I would rather just not be uncomfortable. I'm just going to abandon my body. I'm going to float up above the whole situation. It's going to be two hours, and then I'm out. And that's better than dealing with all the feelings and all the thoughts and all the needs and all the consequences of reality."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But I want you to hang out in reality because that's how you break the family pattern.

Brandi:            Right. Okay.

Jessica:            That's how you get your needs met. And getting your needs met doesn't mean your mom becomes, all of a sudden, someone who can meet your needs.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            Your needs are to identify what is real and to assess your boundaries in response to what is real.

Brandi:            Okay, identifying what is real as opposed to assessing my boundaries—what was the last part?

Jessica:            Interesting. Interesting. It's not an opposed to.

Brandi:            Oh.

Jessica:            Identify what is real so that you can assess your boundaries.

Brandi:            Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            So, if what is real is that your mother is actually, in her own way, trying to meet you where you're at with your very gayness, like with you and your wife and your kid—she's trying and she's doing it terribly; she's fucking terrible at it, but she's trying—well, then, that's really different than—you are not asking her—your current situation is you don't ask her to confront your gayness.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            Not consistently.

Brandi:            No.

Jessica:            You do once, and then it doesn't go great, and then you don't several other times. And then you're resentful. Okay. That's fair. And also, you're participating in the problem.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if we're talking about Sally being Sally, well, let's also talk about Brandi being Brandi because Brandi is not being consistent and clear about boundaries, not being consistent and clear about needs, is abandoning themself in order to just fucking get along.

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            So Brandy is sending a mixed message to Sally. You're basically doing what your mom does, and your mom is doing what you do, and nothing is changing.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's your mom's fault, and you have a role to play.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So, as you—let's say you and your wife go and you visit—and you don't have to do this; this is an example. You go and you visit your mom for an hour on your visit with your dad, and your kiddo is at an amusement park with their relatives, and you know that your kid is doing something really cool that day, and you know that you and your wife are going to go and drink fucking daiquiris afterwards. I don't know why there's strawberry in my mind, strawberry daiquiris.

Brandi:            Yeah. That sounds great.

Jessica:            Okay.

Brandi:            Love it.

Jessica:            So you have a plan. After you go visit your mom, the two of you go and do something ridiculous and fun and life-affirming. You find the Gay bar in your weird town that you're from or the one in the town nearby. You do something like that immediately afterwards, something very Gay. And the goal here is not to have Sally be different than Sally. The goal here is to acknowledge who Brandi is, what Brandi's needs are, and to see and to check in with, "Where is the situation as it stands currently?" because we don't know. She might have been radicalized in the past couple years.

Brandi:            Fuck.

Jessica:            Right? It's America. She might have done a lot of soul-searching and be so desperate to be in relationship with you and your family that she's willing to change. We don't know. They can both be true at once. We don't know. The only way for you to know is for you to dip your foot in the pool.

Brandi:            Yes. [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            But the thing about dipping foot in pool, let me just really quicky say, is it's not jumping in headfirst to pool.

Brandi:            Okay. Perfect.

Jessica:            It's not committing to living in pool. It's dipping foot in pool. It's getting information. That's all that dipping your foot in a pool is. It's getting information. "Is the pool too cold? Is the pool too hot? Do I want to dip my body in this pool?" have you ever been in a pool? I put my body in a pool very slowly. And guess what: half the fucking time, my old ass doesn't put the whole body in a pool; I just wait till I get to my waist, and I'm like, "No. Too cold," and I get out of the fucking pool. You get to do that with your mom.

Brandi:            Yeah. Yeah. I recognize my pattern of jumping ahead of finding a perfect solution.

Jessica:            Yes.

Brandi:            And I think that my hiding partly is like the part of me that feels like I'm still a little kid and I'm in trouble. When my aunt called and yelled at me, "Shame on you," the part of me is worried, like if I actually tell my mom what I need, then I'm going to get everyone mad at me again, and they're all going to call and yell at me. And it's like, "Well, if that happens, well, then that happens."

Jessica:            Yeah.

Brandi:            I can't be in charge of that. Also, if I run into my mom when I'm home visiting my dad, I will survive that.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Brandi:            But in the past, I have just felt like I'm still hiding, and it doesn't feel good to feel like you're hiding.

Jessica:            The hiding is part of the trauma in your family, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Your mom and her aunts are hiding from their trauma.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You have been protecting your mom and her lies that she tells herself.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, pulling the rug out and telling her story for her—okay, that was sketchy.

Brandi:            I agree.

Jessica:            But again, you can email or call your mom or text your mom—email or text would be ideal—and say, "Listen. I'm not ready to see you. I love you. I'm going to be in town. I'm not ready for a visit, but I want you to know that I love you and that I'm still thinking about you." To me, that feels like the cleanest because you do love your mom, and you do not want to see her. And you are taking responsibility for who Brandi is right now.

Brandi:            Wow, actually tell her that I'm there? Jesus. Okay.

Jessica:            You're allowed to. You don't have to.

Brandi:            I'm allowed to. I don't have to. I don't have to.

Jessica:            It's about taking—instead of hiding because you're scared of being punished—

Brandi:            Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            —it's saying, "I'm a fucking middle-aged homo. I'm doing this thing, and I'm not doing it with you because we're not there yet. But I love you, and I hope we get there one day."

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            "Today's not the day"—

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            —so that you're no longer hiding from your mother. Instead, you're saying, "Hey, Mom. Here's the boundary." You're allowed to do that. You don't have to. But if you don't do that, be honest with yourself about what that means about where you're at because if you can't have boundaries with your mom, that's a reflection on you and not on her.

Brandi:            What do you think about doing letters? Because my mom does letters. I do letters. My therapist wants me to not do letters, thinks I should do on the phone. But I—for some reason, I'm just really scared to be on the phone with her. I don't know why.

Jessica:            Because you don't have boundaries.

Brandi:            Ah.

Jessica:            So the second you actually talk to her, you're just going to slip into this Neptunian, like, "Oh my God. What do I do? I don't know what to do. I don't know what to be."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And then you go into reactiveness.

Brandi:            And then I just—I feel like I absorb all of her shit because I can just so easily get absorbed into other people's—

Jessica:            Yeah. You absorb her shit, or you react defensively. You do one or the other is what I'm seeing.

Brandi:            Yeah. Okay, okay, okay.

Jessica:            So I would say the middle ground is email or text because—

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            —it's more immediate than a letter. This is not 1901. But it's not a phone call, because you're not ready for that yet.

Brandi:            Yeah. It's just the immediacy of that. We do text a little. You're right. [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Okay. Here's the thing about texting. If your mother sends you a text—let's say you text your mom today at 6:00 p.m., and she texts you back at 6:03. You are allowed to not text her back for four days. Just because you got the text doesn't mean you need to respond. Do you have read receipts?

Brandi:            Are you serious?

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm serious as a fucking heart attack.

Brandi:            I have read receipts, but I don't have them turned on.

Jessica:            Okay. So, yeah, make sure they're turned off because then she doesn't know if you've read the text.

Brandi:            Wow.

Jessica:            And when you text her, you are allowed to say, "Hey, mom, word, word, word, word," and then say, "It might take me a couple days to respond to your text because I want to be really intentional."

Brandi:            Wow.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's called a boundary well articulated.

Brandi:            I love that. Oh my God.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Brandi:            Really good.

Jessica:            So what I want you to notice is how these very simple and somewhat obvious things were completely novel to you because you were so focused on everyone's story but your own.

Brandi:            Yes. I didn't even think about that, because I think I was so worried, like, "Oh, she's going to get upset if I don't text back right away."

Jessica:            Yeah. Guess what: there's no way you're having a relationship with your mother that's not upsetting for both of you.

Brandi:            That's very true.

Jessica:            You're going to be upset, too, right?

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Listen. Your mom is allowed to have her emotions.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            You are not allowed to micromanage other people's emotions.

Brandi:            Ooh. Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, she trained you to micromanage her emotions to protect her.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But in order to change the pattern, you have to be different.

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You capisce?

Brandi:            I do capisce.

Jessica:            Okay. I love it when you capisce. Now, I just encourage you to take notes after we get off this call, but to not take notes about a narrative, but instead about all the instructions you remember.

Brandi:            Yeah. Okay. Great.

Jessica:            And then—you're not going to remember them well because Neptune. And then, when the episode actually comes out and you have the transcript, I want you to look at what you wrote down versus what was actually said and get information about yourself that way. So, all of that said, every time you catch yourself fixated on making other people uncomfortable, know this.

Brandi:            Okay.

Jessica:            You're actually concerned about being uncomfortable, of you being uncomfortable, not them being uncomfortable, because who cares if your mom is uncomfortable? She's uncomfortable right now, but you're ghosting her. But if you actually are in relationship with her, then you have to feel how you feel about her discomfort. And that's your problem.

Brandi:            That's my problem.

Jessica:            It's called a boundary, a need for a boundary. Okay. Sally gets to be Sally, but who's Brandi going to be?

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            How is Brandi going to be?

Brandi:            Right.

Jessica:            That's the thing to work on.

Brandi:            Okay. Okay. Oh my God. Jessica, thank you so much. Can I just say your podcast has been such a light in a dark time and has provided such scaffolding?

Jessica:            Thank you.

Brandi:            And I just really love your presence and your take. And thank you for being in the world and doing this work because it's so important.

Jessica:            I appreciate that.

Brandi:            And I just love you so much.

Jessica:            Oh, I really—that's filling up my heart and all the things. So thank you so much. And this has been really, really good. It was like one of those readings where I was like, "I have no idea what's going to happen," and then we got on the call instantly, and I was like, "Yes, you can have a relationship with your mother."

Brandi:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It really is—it is available to you, and that doesn't mean you have to choose it. And I wanted to make sure to repeat that for you.

Brandi:            Oh, thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. You're welcome.

Brandi:            Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yay. Muah.