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:            Spirilina, welcome to the podcast. You're a fox in space. What would you like a reading about?

Spirilina:         Thank you. I'm just going to read my question. So, "Hi, Jessica. I'm very grateful for all that you are and all that you do. I took your midlife transit class last year, and it has been incredibly useful context to hold as I navigate unexpected twists and turns in my marriage, my partner going through Pluto square Pluto and Neptune square Neptune. At the same time, the USA and the world are also doing what they are doing. And I'm a therapist. I've been hanging on, at times, by a thread and aware that more midlife transits are coming fast, this time for me. How can I best hang on to myself and the self I am becoming as I navigate both my own and my loved one's many changes? What wisdom does my chart have for me regarding when to hold on and when to let go? Thank you."

Jessica:            Damn. Okay. Such a good question. I want to just kind of check in. So partner—what's the right pronouns for me to use for this person?

Spirilina:         He/him.

Jessica:            Okay. So how long have the two of you been together?

Spirilina:         13 years.

Jessica:            Oh shit. Congratulations.

Spirilina:         Thank you.

Jessica:            And are there human babies?

Spirilina:         No.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Okay. So you and him are partnered. He's just a couple years older than you?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Spirilina:         Three.

Jessica:            Three years. That makes perfect sense because he's in the midlife transits, and you're right at that precipice, right? Okay. So are there specific things that you're thinking about when you're like, "Let go; hold on"? Are there specific dynamics in your life or issues that you're working on that you're thinking about, or is this more broad?

Spirilina:         Both/and. I mean, I think there is definitely, yeah, specific coping skills I've used that maybe it's time to let go of. Our housing has been in flux. They have been doing construction on a building that was supposed to be six months, and now, I think, by the end of it, it will have been like 18.

Jessica:            The building you live in or right next to you?

Spirilina:         The building we lived in. So we've been hopping around because the timeline keeps changing. And so there's a point of just, do we find a different place? Really loved the place, but maybe moving on. Had a lot of changes health-wise these past few years, so I think even just my relationship with my body or what expectations to have. My relationship just—I have a very devotional way of loving.

Jessica:            Yes, you do.

Spirilina:         And when do I need to step back, I guess.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. I've taken a lot of notes on what you said. Let's pull up your birth chart. Hold on.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            Your Pluto square to Pluto—it's not happening for a minute, right?

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Your Neptune square to Neptune, I guess, is your first one. And how old are you?

Spirilina:         I will be 39 in a little bit.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your gen is getting hit a little different. So, in terms of the midlife transits specifically, I'm not going to focus on that in this moment, okay?

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            I'm going to instead focus on all the other shit you got going on.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? So you're naming health. You're naming coping skills and kind of love and boundaries. Am I hearing that right?

Spirilina:         Yeah. I think that's fair.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm inclined to start with your physical health—

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            —because it was your physical health you were talking about, not your mental health, eh?

Spirilina:         Yeah, my physical health.

Jessica:            Okay. And is there something specific, or—

Spirilina:         Yeah. The last three years in particular, I have a connective tissue issue, and so—

Jessica:            I'm so sorry.

Spirilina:         Thank you.

Jessica:            Is it like hypermobility stuff?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Fuck. Uranus conjunction to Saturn in Sagittarius intercepted in your sixth house—what a bitch.

Spirilina:         Oh. Well, there you go.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         Yeah. So the past three years in particular have been really hard and just kind of injury after injury, kind of trying to figure out what's helping, what's not. I think some perimenopause maybe kind of bringing in there, too. I also had a concussion February of 2020.

Jessica:            Oh no.

Spirilina:         Yeah, and so I've had some post-concussion stuff. So it's just, yeah, been quite an adjustment.

Jessica:            It's a lot. Okay. So let me start with the hypermobility joint stuff. Do you wear compression garments? I don't know anything about this from a medical perspective—

Spirilina:         That's okay.

Jessica:            —but I'm looking at it astrologically. So do you wear some sort of compression garments for this hypermobility?

Spirilina:         Yeah. At times, I'll do compression socks—that's helpful—and then, at times, different braces. As things continue to progress, I'm looking at maybe getting some splints for my thumbs, but still definitely figuring it out.

Jessica:            Okay, because I am not a doctor, and nothing that I say should be construed as medical advice but instead as an astrological perspective on medical advice that you would want to then bring to a doctor.

Spirilina:         Gotcha.

Jessica:            Let me be clear.

Spirilina:         Gotcha.

Jessica:            I mean, I know that that's a common-sense thing, but I want to be really clear about that. So, because of this placement that you have in your chart—and what did you call it? A connective tissue? Is that what you called it?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         Yeah, connective tissue.

Jessica:            So, basically, Saturn is your bones, and Uranus is your ligaments. And the fact that they're conjoined in Sagittarius and in your sixth house and they're intercepted can just be like this hypermobility that you think you're doing a small motion, and your body is like, "Whoa."

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's like a banana peel slip. And so it gets really problematic in your system. This is why it looks like some sort of compression or brace does make sense. The thing that I'm seeing for your system is that there is a stress component to it.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's like when you're a little bit more in your body and a little bit more like your mental health, your mood, is a little more centered—I won't say grounded because those are fighting words to a Pisces. But when you're more centered, you are less inclined to make sudden, subtle movements that agitate this tendency.

Spirilina:         Yeah. I think so. I can be in my body and more aware in how I move.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You're more likely to be having a day and then hurt yourself than being super connected and hurt yourself.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is just—kind of speaks to the larger—I'm going to call it lesson, but we can call it opportunity of this fucking problem that you're dealing with, which is, when you figure out how to choose to be present and not perceive it as a punishment or a duty, your life is better.

Spirilina:         Whoa. Okay.

Jessica:            I know. It's fucking annoying. I apologize on behalf of the Universe, but that is a big, big deal in your chart. The way that you were raised, it's kind of like dealing with responsibilities, showing up to duty, is kind of like—you just kind of pour yourself into it and focus on the responsibility and deal with yourself later.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And that practice is very high functioning in capitalism. It's a good skill set to have. But when it comes at the expense of relationship to self, it ends up costing you.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so this is how your body is kind of articulating that. And the thing about the compression—if we go metaphorical and not medical, the thing about compression is it's like you hugging you, you being like, "I'm going to take care of me in this pulling-it-together way"—not in a "Bitch, pull it together" way, but in a "Oh, I'm going to put this hug on a joint that pulls a lot. And that hug is like a reminder that I care about this joint." Instead of, "This compression item is a reminder that I have a problem," it's, "Oh. My feet are my foundation, and I love my feet. And so of course I'm going to hug them." That kind of a reframe can be really helpful for your motivation and your mental health side of this physical issue.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         That idea that I care versus I'm a problem is a big one.

Jessica:            It's such a hard one. We're raised to think, if there's a problem with something, that's because something's wrong. When—not if—your body inevitably starts to break down in a variety of ways or complain in a variety of ways, which every human body does, we think of these as problems and a symptom of something being wrong. And that's true in a certain way of thinking. But another way of thinking is life itself is deeply connected to the meat suit. And the meat suit, the body—it's not this thing that demands our attention, that distracts us from this life. But instead, how we engage and how we steward with the body is life.

                        And an inevitable part of life is heartbreak or cloudy days or whatever else. And the body expresses that as well. When things are hard with the body, it points us towards what needs care and attention and love or boundaries or whatever. And if we can reframe it that way, it helps. And it's like sometimes that's a lot fucking harder to do than other times.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And I'm certainly not great at it, but I do believe that that's the assignment of being a human. And the thing about the feet specifically, because you mentioned compression socks—the feet are Pisces. Pisces governs the feet because it's the part of your body that, if you are somebody who walks, then you place all your body's pressure upon it. But it doesn't get a lot of attention. It's not like the hands. They're such a star of the show. But feet—we just kind of take them for granted a lot of times. Classic Pisces vibes, right? So Pisces vibes.

                        And so there's something about being really—like I might give you the assignment of not just wearing compression socks but trying to find fucking cute ones. And by cute, it just might mean it could be a pattern that pleases you or colors you want to imbibe into your aura or your field. Being really multilayered or multidimensional with your approach to how you care for your system will be meaningfully impactful for you because you are so sensey.

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not going to fix the problem. That's not the goal. It's instead to be like, "Okay. So, if I have a struggle with this thing, how can I be curious about what the struggle opens up?" And you're good at that with mental health.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            That's like your jam with the mental health. But mental health and physical health are like heads and tails of the same coin, really. They're interwoven. And unfortunately, your birth chart kind of demands that you believe that. Sorry.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But it does. It's very demanding. Now, you mentioned there was another health thing going on.

Spirilina:         I had a concussion.

Jessica:            Concussion. Okay. So you actually have been in treatment for that, though, eh?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Because of COVID lockdown and all that, I wasn't able to be seen for about a year. So yeah.

Jessica:            That's awful.

Spirilina:         But things are a lot better. But it was really difficult, particularly how it impacted—like I still smell things wrong that I didn't used to smell. I used to know where commas go. So it definitely was really humbling and, I think, actually was a good preparation of looking at some of my internalized ableism. That was helpful, then when more of joint stuff started going off—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         Yeah. It's funny you mentioned the feet, too, because walking is really helpful for me. And that's been harder these past few years, just a lot of foot, ankle, knee, hip stuff. Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm so sorry. Uranus—it's the tendons, right? It's not the muscles; it's the tendons. Am I seeing that right?

Spirilina:         Yeah, tendons, ligaments joint—

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah. Tendons, ligaments—fucking Uranus. The most annoying part of that is Uranus governs the nervous system. Uranus is like, "Go. Go. Go. Go." And it governs the tendons and the ligaments, and the only way for those things to heal is to sit the fuck down. It's to not use them. You can work a muscle, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But with tendons and ligaments, you're just supposed to not use them for months or a year or whatever, and just wait for them to feel better, which is torturous, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So I am not a doctor, I am going to repeat, and I think it's so important that I keep on repeating this. But I will say Uranus has been squaring your Mercury. This is a once-in-a-lifetime transit. It is over May 30th, so soon, okay? May 30th of 2026. That fucks with your mind, literally. Uranus square Mercury really stimulates both your nervous system and your mind in such a way that it's actually not uncommon to, all of a sudden, spell poorly or have your thoughts get really jumbled or start processing in different ways or being exposed to different ideas.

                        And so my hope and also my sense is that, within about six months of that time—so by the end of 2026—there will be a meaningful and positive shift with your cognition. It looks to me like, as hard as the recovery from the head injury has been, it actually looks like that's—like you're on a very clear path with recovery, and it's going well, as opposed to the joints, actually. As opposed to the hypermobility issue, that actually looks like it's not really being treated in a consistent way. You're not really sure how to navigate it. And so there's reinjury and stress to that—

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —whereas the concussion is so slow and so stressful. But it's like you're on the right path with that. Now, within all of this, your hormones are so sensitive. Like, oh my God.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Somebody starts bleeding next to you, and you're like, "Oh, my hormones." You're very fucking sensitive with your hormones. And do you have any endometriosis stuff?

Spirilina:         Not to my knowledge. I do have PMDD, which also impacts the joints.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         So I've been better able to track, okay, really being careful these two weeks or whatever, because it can be so long.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         I have been having a lot of pelvic pain, lower back pain, kind of in my legs now, so not really sure what's happening. There is a thing where your muscles that compensate will get very, very tight to try to hold the joints in place.

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah.

Spirilina:         So I think that is the latest thought of what might be happening.

Jessica:            Damn. Okay. So there's a couple things I'll say. One is that having a good gynecologist is so important for you.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            And do you have one?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Great, great. You're going to start—Pluto square Pluto in 2029 is when it begins, okay? Pluto transits are always about two years long. I want to be really clear you are not in your Pluto square to Pluto. You will be in a couple of years—three, two and a half years. Pluto square to Pluto is going to really activate your hormones because of the fact that Pluto is in your fifth house, and it natally squares Venus in your eighth house.

I could kick myself that I'm doing so much medical astrology on the podcast, because I try not to do this because I don't want other people who are not expert astrologers to be looking at their birth chart and trying to medically diagnose themselves or, worse, their friends or, worse, their clients. If you're not a medical astrologer, don't do medical astrology. Also, yeah, your fucking—your Pluto square is going to be like a hormone—(makes explosion noise). And you'll be in your early 40s. That tracks, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So what I want to say about that is having an ongoing relationship with—I mean, I am a fan of Chinese medicine for perimenopausal and menopausal treatments. I just think Western medicine is very flawed, very unresearched for us.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So I would say setting the intention over the next two and a half years that you're going to establish good relationships with these kinds of medical professionals and develop the motivation to treat your symptoms before they become drama is a really good move for you because the thing about this that is all kind of building up to us talking about your partnership, is you're like, "Yeah, I'll deal with me when I have to. But what's going on with you? How are you?" It is like a gift. You care about other people. And it's also a coping mechanism, is deflecting away from yourself. And you're always interested in others, so that's where you end up putting your energy.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so prioritizing hormonal shifts around perimenopause is the practice of prioritizing how you feel, and not just because of how it affects other people but because of how it affects you. And this is why post-menopausal women give zero fucks and, in so many ways, step into power. It is because the process of perimenopause is so much about the body saying, "You need to start caring about you." Right?

Spirilina:         Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            So do you fuck with Chinese medicine at all?

Spirilina:         I do. And before all the construction on the apartment, there was someone I was seeing really regularly, which has been really, really helpful. And I'm like, oh, maybe that's also part of why I'm having more of a hard time, is because I haven't been doing that.

Jessica:            Because you've been out of the loop.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Go back into the loop if you can.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            I do think, if you're going to waste money, it should be on medical care for you.

Spirilina:         That is where it's going.

Jessica:            That's where it's going, right? It's like ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And your system is so sensitive. So, a lot of times, a physician might be like, "Oh, you need this small dose," and you're like, "Okay. Cool. I'll try this small dose." And then you have to have it. Your body is really sensitive when it comes to hormones.

Spirilina:         I'd say it's really interesting because my experience with medication has been I almost have to be on the highest dose to—

Jessica:            You flip it.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You double it.

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Interesting. Is it the same way with herbies or just with pharmaceuticals?

Spirilina:         That's a good question. I'm not sure. My acupuncturist would make up herbs each time, depending on what was going on. But I'm not sure if we had to—I should ask him.

Jessica:            Interesting. Ask. Yeah. It's worth asking. I would say that, again, Pluto is extremes. So it's either super sensitive or the other way, like super resistant. That doesn't knock me out of the park. But I will say you can wait, like you like to do, until there's a calamity before you take care of yourself.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But I'm going to gently, yet firmly, encourage you to be like, "Oh. The call is coming from inside the house. All I have to do is pick up the phone and have a conversation with myself."

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not that simple, but it is that simple.

Spirilina:         So that's one of the things I can let go, is waiting until—yeah.

Jessica:            You don't need to wait for things to get worse before you take care of yourself. That's actually a terrible idea. And when your partner does it, it puts all kinds of burden on you; am I right?

Spirilina:         Say that one more time.

Jessica:            When your partner does that, when he doesn't take care of himself—he waits till things are calamitous—

Spirilina:         Oh. Yes.

Jessica:            —it puts more pressure on you, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            There is a part of you that has a pattern from your childhood: "If I wait until things are calamitous, then at least I get care," because you had to be a very squeaky wheel before you got any grease.

Spirilina:         I think my system can be very responsive in some ways or, even when I was younger, very dramatic. But things just impact me that—I remember, one time, I fell and hurt my knee, and they're like, "Oh, let's get the magnifying glass out to see," which I think is legit because I was probably bleeding the tiniest bit. But I think it's really hard for me to trust myself until —like even thinking about the concussion, until things are really bad and like, "Oh, I can't really feel my fingers, and I'm losing track of what I'm saying. I guess I should go in. Maybe there is something wrong."

Jessica:            Okay. So let's slow that down because this feeling that you are too dramatic or you're making too much of something—right? That's one thing you've just articulated. Another thing you've articulated is, "I need to essentially be able to prove it."

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            "So, if I'm not bleeding, then it doesn't matter. Then I'm like, 'whatever,'" right?

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            As opposed to—you could actually deeply bruise a knee and then have long-term problems from a fucking bruised knee, actually. You don't have to be bleeding to be concerned about the welfare of your knee. What it really comes down to is that your body is—it's your body. You are the steward of your body. And you have a right to be in your body. And I like to paint my house. I like colors, and I like weird stripes of color, not just a whole wall that's pink. I like stripes of color. You might like white walls. We each have a right to treat our homes the way we see fit, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You can have lots of jars of things like herbies up in your kitchen, and I can have them in plastic bags. We get to do whatever the fuck we want with our house. And I'm saying to you that if you have a relationship to your body where you are really sensitive—and sometimes that means you have an outsized reaction, and sometimes that means you pick up on things before they get dramatic. I want to encourage you to honor that. That's not, therefore, you should ignore your body. It's, okay, well, therefore, you need a more nuanced relationship to pain so that you can assess, "Oh, I'm scared that this is going to get worse," versus, "Oh, this actually feels really off."

                        Right now, you don't have great access to the nuanced difference between those two things because you recoil from your pain because you have these narratives about yourself.

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So, when the—say your full name out loud.

Spirilina:         [redacted].

Jessica:            So you had the head injury, and you immediately knew something was wrong, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And you also immediately told yourself that you were overreacting, yeah?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So what I'm seeing you did was, "Oh my God. Oh fuck. Oh shit. Oh no. Oh God. Wait. No," and then shut down.

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And then you vacillated between, "Something is wrong, and I feel wrong, and I'm frightened about it," to Virgo Moon bullshit. You started telling yourself why you need to calm down, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Instead of being like, "Okay. I need to slow down. I need to actually feel my emotions so that I can get to my body and notice what's happening in my body." You didn't do that at all.

Spirilina:         No.

Jessica:            You waited until your body was like, "Hello. Here."

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And it was much worse as a result of that.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Now—context—we had 2020, and you couldn't get into a hospital. But I'm just using this as an example because I can see it really clearly, that injury.

Spirilina:         Yeah. I know. It was like the month before the shutdown, so it was—

Jessica:            Okay. So you could have actually gone.

Spirilina:         I could have gone. Yeah.

Jessica:            You could have gone.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. It's a really great example of what you do in large and small ways with your body and your emotions all the damn time. You have a very strong reaction, very strong emotions, and then you're like, "No. Self, that's wrong. You're not supposed to do this." And then you have a controlled response. And that controlled response is a narrative. That controlled response is like a pulling back or a shoving down.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's like vacillate, vacillate, vacillate instead of—and here's the methodology I'm going to share with you. Instead of, the next time you experience any kind of what you tell yourself is an outsized reaction, like a strong pain response—it's largely around physical stuff, but it does happen interpersonally and emotionally as well—first start naming the emotions. "Okay. What am I actually emotionally feeling right now? I'm feeling scared. I'm feeling upset." Name the emotions, not complex, nuanced, psychological breakdowns. The emotions.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            Big difference, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So you know that emotions are sad, mad, bad, glad. Keep it fucking simple. So you name the emotions. You ask yourself, "Is there something I need around these emotions? Do I just need to feel sad? Do I need to sip tea? What do I need?" And if you can stay sitting with the emotions, then you can either get to a place where you say, "Okay. Now I need to be curious about what's happening in my body. What am I actually experiencing in my body?" or, "I'm not able to get to a place where I can listen to my body right now, and I want to own that. I'm not emotionally capable of listening to my body. So I'm going to keep on tending to my emotions so I can get to a place where I can listen to my body." Does that seem like a viable methodology for you?

Spirilina:         I think so. And I think there is a worry I have that I can talk myself into being sick, if that makes sense.

Jessica:            Of course it does. Yes.

Spirilina:         So I guess I'm curious. How do I—what are your thoughts on how to kind of navigate that?

Jessica:            Give me an example of the last time you talked yourself into being sick.

Spirilina:         I don't know if I can—

Jessica:            You can't. you can't, because your parents told you that you talked yourself into being sick when you were little, and now you believe that you can. But you don't. What you do do is you fixate on something, and then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But that's not talking yourself into being sick. That's panicking. That's just fucking panic, girl. That is panic. And I want to just name that you—and I didn't give you a lot of time. I can give you three days. Email me in three days, if you can think at the time, that you talked yourself into being sick. You don't. You don't do that. What you do do is you stub your toe, and then you start freaking out about the fact that you stubbed your toe. And then you're like, "Oh my God. Is my toe broken? Am I going to lose my toe? Does it have gangrene?" You do have the capacity to panic. But then you overcompensate for that panic. You shut it down, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And what I'm recommending is, the next time you stub your toe and you're like, "Oh my God. Is it going to fall off? What's going to happen to my toe?" being like, "Oh, I'm experiencing fear. I'm experiencing fear that's ratcheting up to terror. I'm panicking right now. Okay. So I'm feeling panic. So what do I know about panic? Oh, I can breathe. I can do breathing work. I can acknowledge to myself that my fear is real, but in this moment, my toe is still connected to my body, and it is not yet gangrene," right?

                        So you tend to the emotions. You hang out with the emotions. And then you're like, "Okay. I'll take off my shoe and take off my sock and look at my toe, see if I can bend it, see if I'm losing the toenail. You can do a little bit of investigation. And if it's something like hypermobility thing with the finger or something hormonal, where you can't just take off your sock and look at your toe, then that's more complex. That's when you say, "Okay. Do I have the emotional capacity to commit to noticing the symptom over the course of the next hour or the next three days, depending on what it is, because if you have the emotional capacity to do that—and then you can kind of take notes in your phone—just pay attention—then you can start to do two things. One thing is separate out your emotions from your physical body. "I am panicking about a physical sensation, but the panic and the sensation are separate." For you, now, they're one because you're resisting hanging out in pain, which is a great instinct. Don't hang out in pain. That is a very good, adaptive response to pain. But the problem is it's an overdeveloped skill for you, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            What I want to support you in doing is cultivating a practice where you can get a little bit of separation, a little bit of daylight between the two.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It's very hard to do. I want to be clear. It's not easy. Anyone who has any physical pain can attest.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But it is the path forward. And make no mistake: this is connected to your marriage. Married, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. To your knowledge. And my instinct is to shift gears into that. Does that feel good?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Spirilina:         That feels good. And one thing I can say that I really appreciate about him is how much he believes me. He'll be the one being like, "You should go in. You're not being stupid. You have a migraine. Take your med."

Jessica:            Yeah. Go.

Spirilina:         It's okay. You don't have to wait until, like—

Jessica:            Yes.

Spirilina:         Yeah. I really, really appreciate that.

Jessica:            That is very important. You ground me into what would be helpful for me to look at or speak to in regards to your marriage because it seems like a pretty big issue for you.

Spirilina:         I mean, I think something I've been thinking about, especially thinking, again, the midlife transit, it's like how to not get lost in his fog I think impacts me in the way of the place of maybe questioning all the things.

Jessica:            Like questioning whether or not he believes in God or questioning the marriage?

Spirilina:         The marriage, I guess, would be the one kind of more to us. Like, bring it down to us. And I think in your midlife transit clash you kind of talked about, it kind of being a time of maybe looking at coping skills developed in childhood—are they still working? I think we both can be people pleasers a bit. And so, for me, it's just brought up a lot of what is real, how do I trust, how do I figure out what that is?

Jessica:            So you are going through a Uranus square to your Moon. And let's see the dates—started in July of 2025. And it'll be over in April of '27. It's an off-and-on transit. Uranus square your Moon is much more your problem than your partner's midlife transits because the Uranus square to the Moon challenges how you feel and your emotional coping mechanisms, which is directly connected to marriage, your partnership, your home life. The instability of not knowing where your housing is going to be—that's Uranus square the Moon.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            And the kind of disruptions it creates and constantly having to negotiate stress with your partner—Uranus square your Moon. And so the part that's about him—right? The part that's about him—he is really private, and he wants to be seen. Both of these things are true.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            That's pretty much all he wants me to know about him. And I respect that, so that's fine. But luckily, it doesn't—I mean, it deeply matters what's up with him, but it doesn't matter what's up with him.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            What really matters is that you both really want your marriage to work.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just not an easy time for your marriage. And it's not because you don't like each other, and it's not because you don't vibe each other, and it's not because you don't love each other. Am I seeing that correctly?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just a rough time. You're not connected the way you've been in other periods. It's not like a hot time. It's like everything is kind of like—you're family right now more than you are like romantic partners. Do you know what I mean?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And both of you are like, "Wait. What? That's not—wait. What? Is that bad? What does that mean? Does that mean something bad?" And I don't actually think it does. It looks like your friendship is stronger, but you're both just fucking tired. Am I seeing that right?

Spirilina:         I think so. Yeah. We're both trying to figure out how to really be who we are really authentically in a way we've never experienced in our lives before, and what does that mean and how to do it. Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, that's very high level. It's a very high-level thing to say. Are you saying that because that's how the two of you talk, or are you saying that because you're trying to be vague for his privacy?

Spirilina:         A little of both. I mean, that's something we've said of we want to stay together if we can be our healthiest selves.

Jessica:            Do you feel like you're not your healthiest self with him?

Spirilina:         I feel like—and I think that the ways our relationship challenges need to grow are some of the things I need to be working on anyway, like even when I was like, "Oh. My North Node is in Aries. How interesting."

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         Yeah. I think it's just scary.

Jessica:            It is.

Spirilina:         And again, I think, also—I think you said this on one of your last podcasts of there comes a time in any long-term relationship where you might look and be like, "Who is this person I'm having to choose?"

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Two individuals choose to be together. Patriarchy would have us be property.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But actually, I choose. And I love knowing that I could leave at any time. That's me. I know you're not wired that way. That's not your happy place, to be like, "I can fucking walk away." But there is, as you said, something very important about that North Node in Aries speaking to feeling like you are an individual—

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —and not having that feel like a sad or bad or frightening thing, but instead like an affirmation that you choose to be partnered, and you choose to be partnered as yourself. Now, he is very in his head.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            He's super fucking in his head. And so he's going through this period of his life where, for the last two years, he's unfortunately so emotional that he's retreating into his head a lot more—

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —which—if I was queen of the world, that's not what he would be doing, because when he's in his head, he's harder to reach. But also, he comes up with theories about how his life could be better. And sometimes they're with you, and sometimes they're not. They're theories. The problem is that when he's in his theoretical mode, happiness is not what he's seeking. He's seeking freedom. He's seeking a challenge. He comes up with these theses, and he's chasing a thesis. But then, when he's connecting with you, he's like, "Oh, I'm happy with this person. I feel safe with this person. I feel loved with this person. I feel at home with this person." And his instability is scary for you.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Fucking fair. But I can see his instability in your chart. Isn't that fascinating?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Say more, please.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yes. So Uranus square to the Moon creates instability in your personal life, and that instability is so that you change. So the question is, if we accept that you have a panic response to pain, so you start to maybe have a challenging conversation with your partner, which you show up for very well because you're very good at that, and then you go off and you're like, "Oh shit"—right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Then the "oh shit" becomes the whole narrative, instead of understanding that your panic response is a panic response. It's activation, but there are emotions underneath the panic response. And those emotions are your truth, not your panic response. Your panic response is loud. Your emotions are your emotions. They're actually different things. Does that make sense?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so are you comfortable saying your full name out loud and then his?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Spirilina:         [redacted].

Jessica:            Please tell me if I'm wrong, but what I'm seeing is it's not exactly that you have a question; it's just that your marriage is in a state of instability because you and he as individuals are in states of instability and not because of something wrong between the two of you. Am I seeing that correctly?

Spirilina:         I think. At this point I can—yeah, I feel kind of foggy. But yeah, I think so.

Jessica:            Is there a problem that you could point to and be like, "Oh, he and I fight about x," or, "We don't get along about y"?

Spirilina:         No, not specifically.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Spirilina:         I think it's like how to make sure we're being really honest with each other, and not honest like—

Jessica:            That's not a problem. That's not a problem. That's a story.

Spirilina:         That's not a problem? Okay. Then I guess not.

Jessica:            If I asked him this question, would he be like, "Yeah, we're not having enough sex," or, "Yeah, we fight about the dishes," would he say something?

Spirilina:         No.

Jessica:            No?

Spirilina:         No.

Jessica:            Okay. That's great news. Okay. What this is saying is that you are both evolving, and you are both really in your own individual evolutionary struggles. And as you change, you are inevitably—you know when you're tuning a tuning fork, or maybe you use Tibetan bells and you're clearing with the bells or some shit like that? Have you ever done any of these things?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So, when you do any kind of tuning work, you have to hit it a number of times before it reaches the resonance you want it to reach, yeah?

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. You are both in individual processes of tuning your forks. And you are, as a result, out of resonance with each other a lot of the time. You're not in conflict. You're not in conflict. You're not even out of alignment, per se. You're out of resonance. You're going like this, and he finally is stable. You're stable, and he's going like This. It's that you're not able to as easily locate each other, and so it's interrupting your habits within the relationship.

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            In the realm of problems, it's the problem I wish for someone. And the reason why is because it's the process of choosing yourself and keeping all your fingers and toes crossed that doesn't break up the relationship.

Spirilina:         Yeah. That's exactly it.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. But this whole thing the two of you are doing where you're intellectualizing it as a team and talking about honesty and all this shit—I would kind of—I want to pop that bubble. That's just trying to prove to yourselves that what you're doing is not self-indulgent because both of you struggle to make space for your individual emotional welfare.

Spirilina:         Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Emotions are really, really, really important. They're so important, and they're not the same thing as thoughts, and they're not the same thing as activation. Activation is panic. Panic is not an emotion. It's like a complex psychological activation that stimulates emotions, but it is not of its own volition an emotion. Now, you might disagree with me on this, but that is my take.

Spirilina:         Yeah. When I think about, like from a body standpoint, panic [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         —feeling does feel different, yeah, for me. Yeah.

Jessica:            The feeling of panic—so, a lot of times, when I ask people how they feel, they give me complex psychological analysis. That's never emotions. Emotions are quite simple. They're challenging, but they're simple. Psychology is psychology, but it's not emotions, right? We talk about mental and emotional health, and they are interwoven. But they are different threads, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And your man is emotionally supportive and kind but not in a deep relationship with himself emotionally. And he's, right now, trying to uncover whether or not he wants to be.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And he's choosing his thoughts a lot, right? You're in a similar position. Your body is really forcing your hand, though.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's great. I mean, it's fucking awful for you, but developmentally, it's great for you if you take the bait, because your body is saying, "Every time you abandon me, I'm going to give you consequences."

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's very motivating. Your partner is not being thusly motivated.

Spirilina:         Gotcha.

Jessica:            So he's capable of going a lot longer on this winding path of theorizing his wellness. And what might be good for the two of you—do you meditate?

Spirilina:         No, not exactly.

Jessica:            Does he?

Spirilina:         I don't think so, no.

Jessica:            Would the two of you try doing some sort of guided meditation together or take a tai chi class together, something that's either body or meditation, something that's really different than what either of you do typically, but that engages the process of slowing down and noticing? So you could do it through different body-based practices. You could do it through guided meditation.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It would be good for both of you as individuals, and it would be interesting for your relationship.

Spirilina:         Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Spirilina:         He'd be down. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Yeah, I feel like he'd be down, too. I mean, he's interested in consciousness raising. He's not, unfortunately, interested enough in emotions. And actually, I think that that is part of your worry, is that some of his evolution is so theoretical, it's like he could kind of convince himself to go in some directions that don't include you.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And that would be a mistake for him.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And I'm not saying it would be a mistake for him to outgrow you, because I mean, that's not what I'm saying. I mean, it might be, but that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is he has a lot of balloons, thought balloons, you know?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And they're just attached by strings. They're not embodied. And it's okay to be worried about that for him, and it's okay to say to him—maybe just share this reading with him, and you could be like, "What do you think? Is she wrong about x? Is she right about y?"—that kind of a thing. But it is really hard to parse out the difference between emotions and thoughts, emotions and activation, sometimes emotions and physical sensations.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's work you both need to do.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            Now, you need to—like, if you don't, you have physical distress.

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            He needs to—like, if he doesn't, it'll just take him down a path where he ends up quite disconnected from himself and lonely.

Spirilina:         Yeah. That's—yeah. That's what I—

Jessica:            Yeah.

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's what you worry about. It's a good thing to worry about. I mean, you see it. He's walking towards this direction. You can talk to him about it, and you can ask him about it. But it's not like you're like, "I know the difference between emotions and thoughts." So this is part of why I'm like, maybe do qigong together. Maybe you meditate together—something where you can then be like, "Okay. This is hard for me," or, "This is interesting to me," or whatever.

                        If he could access his emotions more, man, this guy—he'd be amazing. But he is struggling. He's struggling with what he wants to be. And that's a great struggle for him to be engaged in, for you to talk to him about. But I am really interested in you struggling around what you want to be and, within that, recognizing that you have a right to be in your body, even when your body is in pain, even when your body is panicked—that you don't have to perform wellness for the people that love you or for yourself all the time, that you get to be in distress when you're in distress and to have fun when you're having fun and all the things, right?

                        Giving yourself permission to explore that narrative that you have, that you can think yourself into being sick—which is objectively untrue. It's not something you've done. It's not something you do. But it's a thing you tell yourself to stop yourself from thinking and feeling your thoughts and your feelings.

Spirilina:         Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Oh shit. I see what's happening right now. Okay. Sorry. I just saw what you were doing. You're fixating on fear of losing your partner, yeah?

Spirilina:         I think, in this moment, I think that is something that comes up for me. But I didn't notice it just now.

Jessica:            Okay. Wait—

Spirilina:         I think I kind of blanked out a second, maybe.

Jessica:            Okay. You blanked out. Okay. So, as you blanked out, that's what I—I was like, "Oh, I'm pulling this in." So I think what happens for you—so we've talked about how you go into a panic, and then you disassociate. It's hard for you to parse out the complex response from the emotion or the sensation. Very Plutonian. On the flip side of it, sometimes you just completely check out, just gone. Where'd she go? Nobody knows. And in that moment, what I could see is it's really hard for you to accept that your relationship is in a process, and it's not guaranteed to land somewhere.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And there's, like, a terror around that. And there is a part of you that very much accepts and is in alignment with, "We'll see what happens, and we hope we stay together and that we work together." And also, there is a part of you that is really actually open to this process, and then there's a part of you that's fucking terrified about it.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to just hold space with, first of all, fucking yeah, that makes sense. That is healthy and normal and fair. And the healthiest thing you can do for yourself is to give yourself permission to have this feeling and also that feeling, and also this feeling and also that feeling. Right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            But what happens is, because you blanked out in that moment, that blank-out was because your system didn't want to have to feel this panic because, if you were going to start to panic, then you would shut down, or you would maybe get needy or something like that in this conversation. And you were wanting to perform wellness for me. Thank you very much. That's very kind. It's very kind. But you were wanting to perform wellness and being reasonable and being correct and trying and being a good patient and all these things.

                        So, again, this is my psychic read. You may reflect on it and be like, "No, Jessica's right about this and wrong about that." And that's great. Use your discernment. And also, you might reflect on it and be like, "Oh. Yeah. This tracks." And I'm not pointing these things out because you're wrong. I’m pointing these things out because being a better steward to your emotions means giving yourself permission to get overwhelmed and to be scared and to whatever else, as it happens, without needing to seize onto it and say to yourself, "This means x." Your emotions mean that's what you're feeling right now. That's all it means. You're scared of losing the person you love. That's all it means. And that's fair. Having that fear doesn't mean you're actually losing him.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It just means he is tender and precious to you, and your life is organized around him, and you don't want to lose him.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            That's fucking fair. And if you can cultivate that practice of, every time you feel fear about it, saying to yourself, "This fear doesn't mean I am losing him. This fear means I'm scared," and giving yourself permission and space to experience your fear and to not catastrophize that fear or tell yourself that that fear is an indication of the future—it's a feeling in the moment.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And as I say that, I just see a little more space inside of you.

Spirilina:         A little bit. It's funny. I was like, "Oh, now I can feel that panic you were talking about." So I think I became more present.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm tracking that as space inside of you.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's complicated.

Spirilina:         But it just makes a lot of sense to me. And in the conversation [phonetic 00:50:45], but I kind of cut off through, like, "Go over there. We'll deal with you later," kind of thing. But I don't always do the later. And then where are spaces where I can just be in it when it's happening as opposed to that comes later?

Jessica:            And sometimes it does have to come later.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, interrupting the "That needs to come later" narrative is a good practice, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Because do your emotions need to come later when you're getting a reading with somebody who's trauma informed and loves going into it? No. That's actually not the greatest time to be like, "I'll deal with my emotions later"—

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —whereas having a conversation at work is the best time to deal with it later, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah. I get a lot of practice with that. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I bet. I bet. And so being able to recognize, "Oh, I'm actually talking to a friend. I don't have to deal with my panic later"—which sometimes is the case for you—

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —it's just a good practice to notice, just to notice. You are supposed to be in the time of instability, period. Okay?

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            That's what fucking time it is. That's for years, for a couple years.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            It's the time of instability. And it is scary to have a lack of stability, but it is not an indication of things going wrong or even of divorce

Spirilina:         Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            Instability is what is needed for a seed to break through the earth to become the beginning of a bud that will eventually yield a rose, you know?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Instability is what we need to break bad habits. Instability is what we need for changing our sex life or evolving in any fucking way, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Instability is what needs greater support in your joints.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's not about anything other than adapting your response to the need in the moment.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            Adapting your response to the need in the moment—that requires instability because, if we're in a state of security and stability, we are not adapting our response to our needs in the moment.

Spirilina:         Got it.

Jessica:            So, some days, you will think of my words and be like, "She's full of shit. I fucking hate her. I just feel in a not-stable"—and that's fair, I accept. And other days, you're going to be able to be like, "Yeah. I don't know what's coming next, and I don't know what my coping mechanisms are. And also, I'm going to just keep on adapting in this moment," whether that means, for you, do less/feel more—for you, that's often going to be it.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Or it means adapt your boundaries. Now, we didn't get to talk about boundaries, which is a shonda because we could spend like ten hours talking about boundaries, and I would be like, "Did we cover it enough?" Boundaries are very important in the context or your relationship to yourself—and I guess we have talked about it, but not with the word "boundary," I guess—but also within your partnership, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            I want to just name that you and your partner are a little mergy and also very consensual around that. Maybe you tiptoe around each other's boundaries, but you do not invade each other. Am I seeing that right?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Within this period of your life, for the next couple years, you may need to reshape your boundaries within the relationship because you're learning, ideally speaking, how to rely upon yourself not because you have to, not because you're isolated, not because you're alone are unlovable or too much or whatever else, but instead as an act of self-love. Again, that compression thing is hugging the need.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, around that, you may have this habit with your partner of so many years of being like, "Hey, babe, what do you think?" or, "What should I do?" or leaning on him in ways that are reflexive, that it's not about decentering him; it's about centering yourself a little bit more and being like, "Can I adapt my relationship to my emotions in this moment?" And in order to do that, you might need to have an energy boundary or an interpersonal boundary with him so you don't go immediately to him for the habit that he provides. So I want to just name that.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And I also want to name, because of your fucking Uranus square to the Moon, your housing is going to probably stay a little unstable. Again, that transit is over in April 2027.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            So I don't know—is your landlord currently paying for your rent while they work on the building?

Spirilina:         No. There's kind of a thing, if we decided to move back, we can have two years at the previous rent, which would be great—

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Spirilina:         —or we can have a buyout, but then still have to find a place to live, you know, all that.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're just not going to know in a timely fashion, but hopefully you'll get money from the situation if you don't get your house back, right?

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. I think that treating this as an instability that cannot be solved is the most sustainable approach.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            And are you in a sublet or an apartment?

Spirilina:         Right now, we're in an apartment.

Jessica:            Okay.

Spirilina:         Yeah, month to month.

Jessica:            It's month to month?

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's not stable in that way.

Spirilina:         Yeah, although this landlady is amazing, so great. She'll make us cookies if we're sick. She's great. So we have an open—

Jessica:            Okay. Great.

Spirilina:         —as long as we need. Yeah.

Jessica:            Oh, great. Okay. Good, good, good.

Spirilina:         So, yeah, we're good.

Jessica:            So you're not in a bad, unstable place.

Spirilina:         No, thankfully.

Jessica:            And this is it, right? And this is it. The story you told about the instability with your housing is a true story, and it's really an intense reality for you. And also, where you live has really competitive housing, but you still have a cookie-baking landlord good situation.

Spirilina:         Yeah. Had some bad ones before that, but—

Jessica:            I believe that.

Spirilina:         —[crosstalk] that. This is amazing. We couldn't have asked for a better—we're so lucky.

Jessica:            Yeah. I see that. And I feel like this is kind of a big part of your story. You have so much that really does flow for you and that's working really well for you.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            And I don't think that cancels out any of the challenges, but I want to name that. Because you are dealing with really challenging emotional content, it's valuable to be able to point to things in your life and be like, "Okay. This is really something that I feel safe and good about. This is where I don't feel safe and good," and not use one to invalidate the other, but instead to be like, "Okay. I have resources and tools. I'm going to let myself hang out in this challenging place because I also have a soft place to land." Right? To be able to do a lot of "and also" shit will help you over these next couple of years.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            Okay?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So is there a final question, or did we address?

Spirilina:         I guess a real quick—just that meaning to both/and, because I often can be like, "Yeah, I have health issues, but I am lucky enough that we're able to afford insurance, and I do have doctors who listen to me"—

Jessica:            Yes.

Spirilina:         —and how to not have them invalidate the other—

Jessica:            Right.

Spirilina:         —because then I think this shame of, "Oh God. See, I made it sound worse than it was, and it's totally not worse, and I was being dramatic."

Jessica:            Right. Right. No, no, no, no, no. This is the problem, is that you stop there. You do both/and. "I have health problems, and I have good doctors and great insurance." And then you stop there. You go into guilt. You go into whatever else, instead of being like, "And I don't actually ask for enough of the medical care that I need." And this is the problem, is you can have a home gym. You can have all of the weights that you need. You can have the best sneakers that have the best support for your arches and your back and your hips. But if you never wear the shoes and you never lift the weights and you never step on the equipment in your beautiful home gym, then it doesn't—so what?

                        And so this is where you're like, complaint, asset—so you say the asset invalidates the complaint, and you're done. And this is because there's this process of self-abandonment that you're not even aware that you're doing. Having support of doctors and access to healthcare—oh, I can be really grateful for the privilege of that and also choose to use those resources and also run into fucking walls—because medicine, because body—

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            —because all the things that exist. And so you can struggle within your very privileged access to medical care and also get help with certain things and also struggle with other things and also sometimes not do what the doctors say, even though you know it's the right thing, and also do, sometimes, the things that the doctors say. And it works and it helps, or it doesn't work the way you want it to. You gotta stay in the "and also."

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            You're leaving at the first.

Spirilina:         Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            Okay?

Spirilina:         Stay in the "and also."

Jessica:            Stay in the "and also." Hang out. Keep on being messy.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            I want to encourage you to just fucking be messy. And I know you have a Virgo Moon, and you don't want to be messy.

Spirilina:         But yeah.

Jessica:            But you are a Cancer Rising Pisces. Be messy. Also, every zodiac sign—there's no zodiac sign, I believe, that shouldn't be messy, because people are messy, and health is messy, and emotions are messy.

Spirilina:         Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just about being accountable to your messiness, not so that you can perform wellness or appear tidy, but instead, being accountable to your messiness is allowing that messiness to be about complexity instead of about self-harm or self-abandonment.

Spirilina:         Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            Fucking subtle, powerful lines, right?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, yeah. And within all of that, you don't have to want to take care of yourself all the time. Okay? Just—permission granted. You can fuck up. You can abandon yourself. You can make mistakes sometimes. Go for it. It's, then, and also, you pick yourself up, and you show yourself care, and you practice doing whatever needs doing.

Spirilina:         Okay.

Jessica:            Right?

Spirilina:         Yeah. Thank you for that.

Jessica:            My pleasure, my pleasure, my pleasure.