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:            Okay, TW.

TW:     Hi.

Jessica:            Hi. Welcome. What are we going to do your reading about?

TW:                 Well, my husband recently confessed that he's had fantasies about our dog dying and that other than feeling sad for me and the kids, that he confessed he wouldn't be sad. So is there any way to help them connect? Because this dog means a lot to me, and I think life would be better for all of us if we could find a way to cohabitate. She is a rescue, so she is a little bit of a handful in some ways.

Jessica:            Okay. I have your chart information. We're going to pull up your chart information, but first, I have questions, questions, questions.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            The first one is the word "fantasize"—when you say that, do you mean has he sat around wishing, hoping, dreaming? Or was it more like he imagined it happening and felt no sadness?

TW:                 I think he imagined it.

Jessica:            Okay.

TW:                 I told him about what we were going to talk about today, and he was just like, "I don't want her to die."

Jessica:            Okay.

TW:                 But he did imagine it happening a couple times—

Jessica:            A couple times?

TW:                 —and feel relief. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. And he felt relief, and that's, in part, I'm getting from what you're saying, as opposed—I didn't really get this from the question. It's in part because there's a lot to her care?

TW:                 Yes. Not her care, her—well, I guess it's her personality.

Jessica:            Okay.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm going to ask you a question that's going to seem to you completely out of left field.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            When you were growing up, was your childhood home, like under the age of 14, a safe place for you?

TW:                 Yes. Yes, it was physically. To be honest, I'm learning more that in a household of—there were four of us total—I was the only—on the Myers Briggs, the only feeler. So emotionally maybe not always feeling seen.

Jessica:            Okay. So I'm going to ask you another question. I'm going to tell you why I'm asking these questions. Don't worry.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            But the other question is, did you guys have a pet when you were little?

TW:                 Yes, we did. We had two that I remember. The first one, her name was Nikia, and she was an Alaskan malamute. And she was a loving dog for us. I have great memories with her. But she got hit by a car once because she was—I mean, we had like a three-foot fence, and we would have to tie her up. And that's just not what Alaskan malamutes are made for, right?

Jessica:            Right. Right.

TW:                 So she would escape because she—and she got hit by a car once, and then was blind in one eye, and then got hit by a car again, and then died. And that was really hard for me.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 I loved her. And then—

Jessica:            And how old were you when she passed?

TW:                 I think first or second grade.

Jessica:            Okay. So you were little. You were little.

TW:                 Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So her care was kind of chaotic and she had health stuff, and then she passed. Okay. It's interesting. Okay. So I was just asking you about your childhood, and some of how you described your experience was really not from the inside out. You weren't exactly saying, "This is how I felt." You used external descriptives. You talked about—it was physically safe. Good. Great. Important context information, right? And then I asked you about if you had pets, and then you described your dog's experience as opposed to your experience of your dog. So I just want to—

TW:                 Oh, wow.

Jessica:            Yeah. I want to hang out with that just little reflection for you because your question is how can you get your husband and your dog to be better aligned and better friends—

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            —which is interesting because it's not about you. I mean, it is underneath about you, but it's not actually about you. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

TW:                 Yeah. You just put a finger on all the work I've been doing for the past year, maybe especially three months, you know?

Jessica:            Yep. Yes. Yep.

TW:                 But yes. Everything is externalized. I have a difficult time having a self, you know?

Jessica:            Yes. So let's—

TW:                 I look at my chart often to try and figure that out, too.

Jessica:            To try and figure it out? Well, I'm here for you, girl. So we're going to get there in a minute.

TW:                 Yay.

Jessica:            We're going to pull up your chart in a minute. But the reason why I often start without the chart and why I'm definitely doing it with you is because we are so quick as astrology lovers to turn our felt experience into a pathology. We do that with psychological diagnoses. We do that with Myer Briggs. We do that with Tarot. We do that with lots of things that actually are helpful, but then sometimes we use the tool in a way where it just perpetuates the problem. Right?

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            And so I'm hanging out with you in your question because your question is not the question I would have asked. If my husband said to me, "I fantasize or imagined our dog dying," (a) I would stop right there, but okay. And then (b) I don't care. It wouldn't be bad for me. I would be like, "Does that make me like him less? Does that make me trust him less? Do I feel safe? Am I feeling supported in this marriage in such a way that my partner is 50 percent parenting the lives we steward in this house?" Those would be the questions I would have, right?

TW:                 Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. But your question is how you can get your husband and your dog to like each other. And I'm not going to answer that question. Instead, we're going to focus on the you part.

TW:                 Yeah, good for you.

Jessica:            Good for you, too. Good for us both. Good for us both.

TW:                 I was expecting it.

Jessica:            Okay. This is what we're doing. This is what we're doing.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            So, before we go to your chart, I'm going to check in with your dog, okay? Will you say your dog's full name to me?

TW:                 Gronya.

Jessica:            Does she kind of look like a goat in the head? That's a weird reference, but that's the one I got.

TW:                 A little bit, I guess.

Jessica:            Okay. Like not a floppy dog, but more of a smooth-headed dog? I'm a cat person, so forgive me.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Just making sure I see her.

TW:                 It's okay.

Jessica:            And is she like a lighter color?

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

TW:                 She's more like a red heeler coloring.

Jessica:            Yeah. I was going to say wheaten. Yeah. Perfect.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm seeing her. Okay. Great. She doesn't spend a lot of time alone with your husband, eh?

TW:                 No. Yes, she's more with me at home all day.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Also, he just doesn't—in the course of you walk into a room and the dog comes with you and you're just kind of alone together—he doesn't have a lot of that with her. He kind of had this attitude where he was like, "She doesn't like me right away. Okay. Fine. I don't have to need her." That was kind of his—he just went quick into, "I don't have to need this dog. If this dog doesn't need me, I don't need her."

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And she heard it, and she was like, "Okay. Game set."

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            She's just like, "You don't need me; I don't need you. You don't need me"—I mean, they're kind of similar in this way.

TW:                 Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            She is not chaotic with just you.

TW:                 Yeah. She's not chaotic.

Jessica:            She's not chaotic with just you.

TW:                 With just—

Jessica:            When there are other people around and you feel activated, she gets chaotic.

TW:                 Yes. I would agree with that. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you get activated and don't say anything or do anything about it a lot. She's telling on you. And therefore, she has to get really loud. So the more you repress, the more this dog gets a little—squirrelly is the best way I could put it. She gets squirrelly.

TW:                 Jeez.

Jessica:            Does that track? Yeah?

TW:                 Not necessarily when it comes to strangers coming in, because it's more of a reaction that gets me up. But I will say that I—real talk—am personally working so much on not trying to harmonize all the energy around me, right, that's not mine.

Jessica:            Yes. Right.

TW:                 And that is fucking hard, okay?

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. Yeah.

TW:                 It is.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 But I also have—my main person is working on getting to know their own feels, you know? I like to say it in a generous way. So, to put it in astro speak, he's Aries Rising, so there's a lot going on for him right now, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

TW:                 And he gets really stressed out by her reacting to people, especially the housemate that's been around for at least nine months. It's like, you should not be startled by this person anymore, right?

Jessica:            She's super startled. She gets startled by everyone but you.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            She does. The thing about squirrels is that, one minute, they're just sitting there eating a nut, and the next one, they're twitching and weird. And you're like, "What's going on?" And also, they have this habit of kind of hiding things. And she does this, but it's more emotional. She's like, "Okay. I'm going to be safe with you right now," with one of your kids. And then something will happen and she'll be like, "I don't know about you."

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's not like she's aggressive, although it looks like she can at times be aggressive because she's really unsure of her grounding. But it's more just that she's like, "I don't know what's up. I don't know what's down.  I don't know what I'm supposed to do here." You communicate very clearly what you want from her, and then you communicate the exact opposite thing to her because you do that to yourself.

TW:                 Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. So it puts a complex dynamic at play because—let's pull your birth chart, okay? So we have you born June 2nd of '76 in Seattle, Washington, at 9:45 p.m. And do you also use Campanus houses when you look at charts?

TW:                 No, I've used whole house before, so what would be different about this—

Jessica:            So much is different. Whole houses [crosstalk]—

TW:                 Okay. [crosstalk].

Jessica:            —different. The most different from Campanus, the house system I use, is whole signs. And in particular, whole-sign houses and equal-sign houses both don't give you interceptions. And you have an interception.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            And it's in your first/seventh-house axis. So you have Capricorn intercepted your first and Cancer intercepted your seventh, which speaks to why—I'm guessing you've been married for many years, eh? You've been with the same person for a long time?

TW:                 Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. You are good at sticking it out, man.

TW:                 Oh God, yeah.

Jessica:            You really understand duty and responsibility to other people. You've got that Saturn in anaretic Cancer intercepted in your seventh house.

TW:                 Wow.

Jessica:            But when I pulled up your chart—do a little studying; do a little checking in—what really struck me is your Chiron Return. Now, have you heard of Chiron?

TW:                 Yes. I'm familiar with Chiron, not as much Chiron Return.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. It literally starts on May 27th of 2026. It lasts about a year and a half. It's a once-in-a-lifetime event that happens to everyone at around 50 years old. So, for some generations, it's very late 40s or very early 50s, but it's right—and you're about to turn 50?

TW:                 I'm about to turn 50 next month—or June 2nd.

Jessica:            In June.

TW:                 Yep.

Jessica:            And like a week before that, your Chiron Return begins. Now, the Chiron Return is different than the Saturn Return in many ways, one of which is Saturn Return happens two, three times in a lifetime. Chiron Return is only once unless you live over the age of 100, which most people don't, right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            In your birth chart, you have Chiron in the fourth house. And this is part of why I asked about your childhood and feelings of safety in your childhood, whether or not you felt like you could be yourself in your childhood home, and I also asked about pets in the home, because what the Chiron Return does—and it is a wallop banger of a transit, okay?

TW:                 Oh, joy.

Jessica:            Yeah. So this is why, the last three months, you've been feeling it building up.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            So what this transit does is it kicks up core wounding, okay? Now, in the birth chart, Chiron speaks to the wound that never heals. So it's the wound that we get in our early development, in our childhood. And you may do lots of therapies and lots of work on yourself and come to greater evolution and healing with this wound, but it doesn't go away. You just reorient to it.

                        And within that, Chiron also speaks to where we can be both deeply healing towards ourselves and towards others and even the planet. It's the wounded healer.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            So it is our pain that points us to where we need to heal, okay?

TW:                 Wow.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 Okay. So, when you speak of this, here's what comes up, because the wound that never heals, the one that I probably discovered 15 years ago and have still been working and working and working on, is I was born with a broken collarbone.

Jessica:            Oh, literally a wound.

TW:                 Yes. I was born with a broken collarbone that was not noticed. Normally, they notice them in the hospital and they'll fix it. But my parents would always talk about how I was a very colicky baby and I was upset all the time. And at some point, like 10, 15 years ago, I was in therapy, and it dawned on me that it was like, oh, I was being shushed all the time—

Jessica:            When you were expressing pain.

TW:                 —like everyone was frustrated with me. And I learned to not trust my body and my pain and to attach in ways—and that is so—that was so hard because it's like, from the moment I was born, I was being asked to repress my own knowing.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm so sorry.

TW:                 Thank you.

Jessica:            And—big fucking "and"—you just described your dog, too, for the record.

TW:                 Oh my God. Yeah.

Jessica:            Like literally.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the Chiron Return is, again, a little bit of a bitch. It is such a profound healing opportunity. I just finished mine in the last year, and I will tell you I was like, "Oh. Oh. Oh my. This is much more confronting than I want it to be," but also, "Oh my God. The healing. Oh my God. The healing."

TW:                 Good.

Jessica:            This stuff that I never thought I could work through, I did. And I didn't [crosstalk] 100 percent—

TW:                 Oh, good, because it's really damn confronting right now.

Jessica:            It's awful. Oh my God. And you're just beginning. Girl, it's awful.

TW:                 Oh no.

Jessica:            So let's hang out here because you are coming into embodiment, right? You're like, "Okay. I'm aware that this is a pattern that I was weaned on. It's a pattern in my life. And here I am, and I'm in this marriage." Pros, cons, highs, lows—whatever. It's marriage.

TW:                 Yep.

Jessica:            Okay.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            "But my partner has said, 'This being is too high maintenance. Her pain bothers me. And now I don't care about her.'" That's why you wrote me.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            You actually didn't write me because of your dog.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            You didn't write me to matchmake your dog and your husband. That's the coping mechanism that you have used because it's in Taurus. It's in people-pleasy Taurus, right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            That's the coping mechanism you've used. It's, "If I make my parents happy, then it'll be okay that I'm not happy. If I make other people comfortable with me, then it'll be okay if I have a bad day."

TW:                 Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So this coping mechanism is one that is incredibly deep, and it is time to heal it. But the only way we heal things is by feeling them. And so this trauma, this wounding, is being activated, and it's being activated in the fourth house of your birth chart, which is your home.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            It's your home life.

TW:                 It's being activated everywhere, if I'm honest.

Jessica:            Yeah. Well, that's—I mean, but that's the problem, right?

TW:                 [crosstalk] everywhere.

Jessica:            That's how it goes. That's how it goes.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            So let's just hang out in this, and I want to ask you a question. Do you feel that your partner, your husband, takes good care of you?

TW:                 The body says no.

Jessica:            Okay. All right. That's okay.

TW:                 And then it wants to parse out the where's, because there's certain spaces—

Jessica:            Okay. So let me slow you down.

TW:                 —and then there's certain—

Jessica:            That's your head. I could feel the—can you feel the difference [crosstalk]?

TW:                 Yep. Damnit. Damnit, damnit, damnit.

Jessica:            Okay. No, don't damn it.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            It's, instead—there's this total difference. You tuned in. Body says no. And then you thought about it, and you're like, "No. Let me contextualize it." And well, we can contextualize it, but the body says no is the honest answer. Right? So we're just going to hang out with that.

Now, listen. You have Chiron in the fourth house, and you're about to go through your Chiron Return. If you had said yes, I wouldn't have believed you because this is part of the—this is the work, right? This is the work. And so the thing I want to extrapolate from this for you is that there's this sense of unsafety, right? Is it that he doesn't care when he doesn't show up?

TW:                 No.

Jessica:            Okay. That's good. Here's the problem. You have very established excuses for the people that you're close to that allow you to stay in dynamics where you don't feel particularly safe, where there's a lack of reciprocity, where you're doing all the labor—that kind of stuff.

TW:                 Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Now, I want to be clear. You're not a martyr. You have a Neptune opposition to your Venus and Sun, so you may sometimes act like one. But you're not perfect is what I'm trying to say.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm not trying to suggest that he's a bad guy and you're a good guy. That's not what life is. That's not what marriages are, usually. But I do want to acknowledge that what I can see here is that this dynamic of not really being cared for in a way that is consistent and reliable is a very deep one between the two of you, and it's not exclusive to the two of you. It's kind of a trauma pattern that you had before you met him, and it's also a trauma pattern he has separate from you.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Right?

TW:                 Absolutely. I would agree.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

TW:                 I just—it's so much easier for me to see other people's perspectives than my own.

Jessica:            Yep. And—

TW:                 Always trying to find my grounding, but—

Jessica:            And when you try to find your grounding outside of yourself—so you try to find your grounding through your husband. Even if he's a super grounding force in your life, what you've done is you've abandoned yourself to find your grounding outside. And that literally never works.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Doesn't mean it doesn't feel better short term, but it doesn't work. Your grounding happens from inside of the meat suit.

TW:                 Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            That's the rule. It's the rule.

TW:                 And that's the work that I literally just started, and I can feel it. Like, I could feel it viscerally. It's like any time I start overexplaining anything—

Jessica:            It's like a disconnect in your system.

TW:                 —that's when [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Good. Okay. Good.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            This is great. So much of your chart speaks to the need to practice being in your body. But when you're in your body, you're irritable, sometimes excited and passionate and like, "Yeah," like you've got lots of energy, and sometimes exhausted—just exhausted, right?

TW:                 Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            There are different things that humans feel that you have kind of tried to only let yourself feel those things in reaction to doing too much for other people, because then you have an excuse or there's a "defense" to it, quote unquote.

TW:                 Yes. I can feel that.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. There's layers I want to pull at here. So one layer is Chiron Return hasn't even begun. So, the next year and a half, you are working on this core wound. And what your husband does or doesn't do is not your work.

TW:                 Right.

Jessica:            What your dog does or doesn't do is a little bit more your work because your dog is a dependent.

TW:                 Mm-hmm. She also amplifies what I feel, it sounds like.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. She does. But that's not a reason why she's your work a little bit, right? She's your work because she's a dependent, because he might amplify your emotions too, but that still—he's not your work. You're your work.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And is he the same age as you?

TW:                 No. He's six years younger.

Jessica:            Younger. Okay. So he hasn't gone through his Chiron Return yet. Okay.

TW:                 No.

Jessica:            Okay. This whole process is going to challenge you to go through your core wounding and not project the past onto the present while also not deflecting the present onto other people or situations.

TW:                 Okay. I need you to repeat that—

Jessica:            Sure. Sure.

TW:                 —just [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So your work is to not project the present onto the past so that, if he does something that references what your parents did, you don't come at him with the force of your parents; you only come at him with the force of the marriage.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Right?

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Which is really hard work because, when we get activated or triggered, it's like everything that's underneath the button gets pushed. It's not just the top of the button, right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And so it takes a certain amount of self-reflection, self-care, and a practice of being present and in the body.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            So okay. You're in that. You're in that. Are you also in perimenopause?

TW:                 Oh yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So you're also in the high—

TW:                 Let's add all the things.

Jessica:            You have the high/low, high/low, high/low. Exactly. Exactly. The hormone high/low, high/low is a big deal. A big part or what this period of your life the next year and a half is going to be about is you feeling a lot of the stuff that you felt as a kid. And the challenge here is to recognize that you are a 50-year-old woman and not a kid.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Children don't have choices. They don't, right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Kids are really—you can't walk down the street in the middle of the day without somebody being like, "What are you doing out of school?" Right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            An adult can do all manner of things. Now, just because you're an adult doesn't mean you can do anything in the world, but you have choice.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            And part of what happens with the Chiron Return is, because of the age that it happens at, you are dealing with the consequences of a lifetime of choices.

TW:                 Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            And that's a real punch in the gut because Chiron confronts us with ways that we have made choices out of insecurity and kind of an abandonment of self and uncertainty of self and core wounding, as opposed to out of clarity of self, out of, "Oh, this is what's right for me."

TW:                 Yes. I'm unraveling the insecure attachments—

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

TW:                 —and then also having to deal with looking back and seeing all the places, all the different choices, things I would have done differently.

Jessica:            That's fair. But what you want to do your best of is staying here now because the past is unchangeable. Literally, there's nothing that you can do to change three seconds ago. It's done. So what you can do is stay present. And in the present, my honestly deepest concern for you is not your dog. Your dog is fine. Could she use, maybe, a little more training from a trauma-informed dog trainer? Yeah, she could use that. I mean, it's probably expensive.  I don't know what access you have to it in the region you're in. But yeah, that could work. You could commit to watching YouTube videos from somebody who does that and maybe—you know. But other than that, your dog seems fine.

TW:                 Yeah. She had some bad things happen, but it's—yeah. She's okay.

Jessica:            But dogs are—

TW:     She's happy enough.

Jessica:            Yeah. Dogs aren't like people. They don't hold on to trauma in the same way that we do. And so she's not reliving her trauma, right? So she's impacted by it, but she's not reliving it. Humans relive in a way that I've never encountered a cat or a dog who does, right?

TW:                 Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's a good thing to know. That's a human thing. That's an analyzer problem.

TW:                 Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, again, when I keep you nice and slow here, what I imagine this is really about is your marriage, your home life—

TW:                 Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            —and your need to have a partner who makes you feel safe, who cares for you, who you're not scared is, if you become too high maintenance, going to not care.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And he literally told you that about the dog. Dogs are different than wives, and also, he's the same, right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think that's why it activated you enough to be like, "Jessica, what do I do with this?"

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm going to take a peek at him, if you're okay with that.

TW:                 Yes, I am.

Jessica:            Okay. You'll say his full name out loud.

TW:                 [redacted].

Jessica:            Does he have, kind of, hair here—it's, like, light brown?

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Does he hate his job?

TW:                 No. He loves his job.

Jessica:            He loves his job.

TW:                 But there's a difficult thing with it right now.

Jessica:            Okay. So that's what I'm seeing. The stress I'm seeing is situational.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. And is there any kind of correlation between the stress at his job and him being like—saying this thing about your dog?

TW:                 Possibly. Yeah, I mean, he's just having very much stress in all of life. Maybe this gives a broader picture. Both of us are deconstructing—when we first met, we were Christian, and he came from a very conservative family.

Jessica:            I see. Did you guys have a very traditional boy/girl married dynamic? She maintains home; he maintains finances. She's the nurturer; he's the provider—that kind of traditional?

TW:                 Yes. Yes. That's how it's fallen recently.

Jessica:            Okay.

TW:                 I mean, at the beginning, I supported him while he started his business. But ever since then, it's flipped, and I'm more of the stay-at-home person, although I have my own personal business. But since having kids, that's kind of been its own journey, of course.

Jessica:            This is kind of what I was asking about because—I don't know if this is part of what you're deconstructing for yourselves as a team and also as individuals, but the roles you play emotionally in your marriage—it looks like old, brittle plastic from the '70s. It's sturdy. It's there. But it's not bendable.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            So it's becoming a little bit of a problem, you know?

TW:                 Oh yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            And both of you are kind of becoming burdened by the weight of this emotional dynamic, but it's like you can't change the dynamic without both of you changing as individuals. And that just takes time, and it means that the marriage goes through a period of messiness as you start asking for things and he starts asking for things. And everybody does things messy when we're first learning, right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            The pendulum doesn't swing from one extreme to the middle.

TW:                 Absolutely.

Jessica:            It goes—right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            It flippity-flippities. Okay. So—

TW:                 Yeah, and I thought of this, too. It's just that when enmeshment is the pattern, that's why people break up.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 It's very hard to get un-enmeshed in—

Jessica:            In marriage.

TW:                 —[crosstalk] of the enmeshment.

Jessica:            Yep.

TW:                 Right? So that's the messy that we've been in for like the past two years.

Jessica:            I think it's going to last a little longer.

TW:                 Oh, I believe that.

Jessica:            So I'm going to give you a couple pieces of advice, okay? And do you have time at all? Like when you stay at home, are the kids with you home all the time, or do you have time to yourself at all?

TW:                 No, I have time when they're at school.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Good. Okay. Talk to him before you do any of it, so even though you might be the person executing these things, it's an agreement the two of you make.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            Move the bed to a different wall.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            Even if you have matching side tables, switch out the side tables. I'm just advising you to shake things up in the bedroom.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            And I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about move things around in the bedroom.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            The two of you are in such a mode, and that's both of your coping mechanisms. So, if you change things that you reach for and it's a little unsettling on purpose and by consent with both of you, then it creates the energy of change, and you could use every little help you could get. So that's like one little cheat, okay?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            But if you do it and he comes home to it, then it doesn't work, because it's you changed something. So you have to talk about it. Even if you have a duvet cover, maybe even flip it so the side that you always have facing up is now facing down—just little things that you can do to change things up. That's one—

TW:                 Or even switch sides of the bed or something—

Jessica:            Literally. Literally. Yes.

TW:                 —like which side we sleep on.

Jessica:            Anything you can do. If you have glasses here and mugs here in the cabinet, switch them. So it's like nothing that messes with the flow of your life but that interrupts assumptions—that could really help. Now, say your full name out loud.

TW:                 [redacted].

Jessica:            Do you still talk to your parents?

TW:                 Yes. They live about 25 minutes to a half an hour away, and we see them once a week.

Jessica:            Oh, wow. Okay. So you talk to them a lot. And are they pretty good at leaving space for your emotions and letting you be whoever you choose to be and all that kind of good stuff?

TW:                 I don't know if I've ever thought of it that way. I mean, I think the body says no. They're really wonderful, nice people, but as far as space for emotions—

Jessica:            They're like this. I really see that when you say your last name. You go and you sit at the table, and you have a round of a certain kind of conversation. It's like one of a couple things. And you spend a certain amount of time, and if you don't spend a certain amount of time, there's kind of like, "Well, why didn't you stay longer?" There's a rigidity there.

TW:                 I call it the checklist.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

TW:                 I call it the checklist generation, right?

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 It's like, "Do you go to church? Do you this? Do you do this?" And there's not a lot of desire underneath to know what's really functioning. It's just like if the checklist—if you have a job, if you're happy, that's all they want to know.

Jessica:            Yeah. Well, okay. So let's pull back, not that I disagree about what you're saying about the generation, but I'm not interested in the generation, because I could actually give you a lot of cultural context to why that is, right? But instead, let's focus on your family that you live inside of. You spend a lot of time in a dynamic that is pretty rigid, and you're so used to it that you just meet that rigidity and you hang out in it, right?

TW:                 Fuck yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And so maybe all that's possible with your parents is that. Maybe that's true. But actually, you have no way of truly knowing because you haven't practiced being different. You've had outbursts of different, but that's not the same thing as practicing being different.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Practicing being different would be something you do really on purpose. And so that's something for you to play with, like could you try pulling your mother aside and having an on-purpose conversation with your mother that has nothing to do with your father that just fosters an interest that your mother and you might share? That would interrupt the dynamic, right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And if you did that, you would be met with confusion. Oh my God. You would be met with the same reaction that your dog has to surprises. Oh my God. Your dog is totally like a magical creature who's just embodying all of this intense stuff for you. Okay. And all the more important that your partner is like, "I don't like this person. I wouldn't care if they lived or died," because your dog really does reflect so much of you and your family of origin.

So I want to invite you to explore ideas of what you could do differently with your parents, maybe even true deviations from the conversations that you usually have. And it doesn't have to be that deep. Maybe you never talk about the zoo with your parents, but watch some videos or read an article about something at the zoo, and then have an authentically passionate conversation with them about something you learned. And let them be rigid and uninterested and to shut it down, and don't let it affect you the way it historically has. That's how you get in there, you know?

TW:     Yeah.

Jessica:            It's about bringing in newness, understanding that they're not different; you're different—

TW:     Yes.

Jessica:            —and then playing with different ways of being different with them. The old way is needing them to approve, needing them to agree, needing them to meet you. That's not going to happen. That's not realistic.

TW:                 Yeah. I feel like I'm halfway there. The new thing that you've mentioned is the showing up and the sharing of, like, "Hey, this is me," and then not caring about the reaction. I feel like my mom is usually just like, "Are you guys ever going to go back to church?" where I used to hedge it, and I finally was like, "No, Mom, I don't think so." You know?

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 And that was hard. Right now, I'm at the space where just not acquiescing or not fixing whatever the feeling is is hard.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 And so I hear you saying that there's an extra step beyond that and that, like, taking up space and being myself and then—

Jessica:            Let me just make one little correction to what you said. It's not about not caring what they say or they think or they feel. That—it's never going to happen. You're always going to care.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            Caring is not a bad thing. It's caring about how they feel. Oh, it hurts their feelings that you're not going to church, or you thought the pandas were really interesting and they thought it was stupid, and that hurts your feelings. You can care. Caring is good. It's more letting that be information about them instead of information about you. Oh, your parents are attached to your relationship to the church, not, oh, there's something wrong with you for disappointing them because you're not going to church.

TW:                 Oh God. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you see the different way of holding that?

TW:                 Yeah. It's hitting something. It's this old belief of agreement equals love, right?

Jessica:            Obedience equals love. Yep.

TW:                 And I have a hard time with disagreement, even in my marriage. My husband's like, "It's okay to disagree with me." But I just feel it so viscerally. It's very difficult.

Jessica:            So you have a Moon/Mars conjunction.

TW:                 Oh my God.

Jessica:            You also have a Sun/Venus conjunction that's opposite Neptune. So the Sun/Venus conjunction that's opposite Neptune is like, "I always want to get along, and the only way for me to love is devotional. And that means that I agree with you, no matter what you say, no matter what you do. I can't help myself. I'm just—that's how I love."

And then the Moon/Mars conjunction says, "Everybody annoys me 100 percent of the time," and it is a part of your nature that is argumentative, that is easily agitated, that has quick flare-ups of emotion. Sometimes it's excitement. Sometimes it's anger. It can be really positive; it can be really negative. But it's big emotion. And all the other parts of your chart say, "Shh," right?

TW:                 Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            And so what you're going through now is recognizing that what's stopping you from being big in your emotions is actually you and not your circumstances, and not even your partner. Now, he might not always like it. He's a big talker. He's like, "Yeah, yeah, give me your opinions."

TW:                 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But he doesn't always like it. I mean, nobody does, you know?

TW:                 Yeah. Yes.

Jessica:            But that said, he's not going to be punishing or cruel if you have big emotions.

TW:                 No. No.

Jessica:            He's not.

TW:                 Before I got married, before I had children specifically, I was in bands, and I wrote songs. And I was very creative. I realized after I had my second kid—is that I was not okay anymore. And I realized that I was transmuting things by singing. Singing was—

Jessica:            So you had stopped singing when you had kids.

TW:                 Yeah. I'm trying to get back into it, and it's so freaking difficult. I feel like I have to harvest my Mars without it getting muted by that emotionality piece because I feel like the Mars/Moon conjunct just makes me dampen my feelings. But what you're saying is I've got other things that are going, "Shush, shush, shush," in there.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mars/Moon conjunction is not a dampening force. It's the opposite. So the Moon is your emotions, and Mars is passion and combativeness and anger and motivation. So it is the opposite of dampening. The dampening that you experience in your body, which is why you're associating it with Mars, is that you have a Sun/Venus conjunction in the sixth house opposite Neptune.

                        So what happens is that you experience sensations, thoughts, feelings, in your body, because you've got that Sun in the sixth house, and then Neptune pulls at it, saying, "Shh." Neptune says, "Don't hurt anyone's feelings. Don't rock the boat. Don't be upsetting. Don't say something controversial. Maybe you're wrong about this. Maybe don't do this."

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And so that's not the only thing you're contending with, though. You've also got Uranus square to Saturn, which makes it really hard for you to know, "Am I trying to take too much? Am I trying to do too much? Or should I do less? Should I do more? Should I try something way out there, or should I be more conventional?" It really—

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            It's hard for you to gauge that. And Chiron is in the mix. You have a Chiron opposite Uranus, and it forms a T-square to Saturn. And this is part of why your Chiron Return—you're already feeling it because what's happening now is you've got Pluto forming a square to your Chiron. You've got your Chiron Return coming. And Pluto is also squaring your Uranus. There's a lot going on. But the thing to know is that your coping mechanism is to go rigid, like your parents do.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And you don't instill rules on other people. You don't tell other people what they can and can't do. You tell yourself, and you call it different. You have a way of telling yourself what you are and aren't allowed to do, which is a restrictive action. It's an act of, "Okay, well, I've had kids, so enough singing. No more bands."

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            "Okay. I'm married now, so I have to do x, y, and z." It's keeping yourself small and in a box that you actually don't have to be in.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            But because it feels like—it's almost like an apology for having big needs or a big personality. Left to your own devices, single, you're just big and weird and trying things out.

TW:                 Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            But when you're partnered, because that Saturn is intercepted in Cancer in the seventh house, you're like, "Okay. Now I have to just be like a normal woman, and I have to do the things that normal women do."

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            "I have to be nurturing. I have to put those things aside, and I have to focus on your needs." So, again, it's this compression of self.

TW:                 Yeah. That does land, definitely.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

 TW:                This feeling of even just—I would be encouraged to join mom groups and stuff, and I was just like—there's a part of me that's like, "No. Those are not for me at all. Can you not see that?"

Jessica:            Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, this is a period of your life where your marriage and your family life—so, when I say your family life, I mean you, your kids, your partner, and your parents, and if you have siblings—your whole family life, which exists on lots of planes—are being activated. And you are being called to embody who you are in different ways than you have been doing, in more whole ways.

And so, even though I'm an astrologer, I'm going to say you have a lot of astrological knowledge, and you have a lot of—you mentioned Myer Briggs and neuro-spiciness, and all of these things are really important. But I want to kind of point you away from overexplaining, because for you, it's a way of almost defending.

TW:     Yes.

Jessica:            "I love to sing because I have Pallas Athena on my Mercury." No, no, no, girl. You love to sing because you love to sing, and you don't need a reason. You don't need a defense. You don't need an excuse, right?

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, on one level, having that astrological insight might be like, "Oh, that's a validation that speaks to something that I feel."

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            But then, when we overidentify, what happens is you lose the feeling and you focus on the identifying, right?

TW:                 Yes. That's true. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

TW:                 And I very much am just drawn to lenses upon lenses upon lenses upon lenses upon lenses—

Jessica:            Yeah. I picked up on that.

TW:                 —like Tarot.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, I picked up on that. Yeah. You like your lenses. And there's nothing wrong with having various lenses to pull from. However, it's the same thing as I said to you earlier. When you anchor yourself, you ground yourself, into something or someone else, you will never be truly grounded. The anchoring needs to happen in the self.

                        And so perhaps a practice for you is to take a week off of referencing in your thinking or conversations any of these systems. Once a month, take a week off. Maybe every Wednesday, you take a day off, whatever's easier for your brain.

TW:                 Wow. Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is not going to be a practice that you're going to be able to be successful at, because it's so ingrained in your thinking at this point.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            It's a practice you're going to return your thinking back from. It's like meditation isn't about not thinking thoughts; it's about pulling yourself back from your thoughts.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            That's essentially what I am advising because for you—this is why I almost didn't want to show your chart to you—because, for you, there's this way that you're like, "Oh, right. I can explain this." "Oh, right. I can defend this." "Oh, right. There's a reason why I'm like this."

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And what I want you to know with your beautiful Chiron at zero degrees of Taurus is that your value is because you are. You don't need an excuse. You don't need a defense. None of that is necessary, just like, honestly, you feel that way about everyone else.

TW:                 100 percent.

Jessica:            Your husband doesn't need a reason to be the way he is. You accept him for who he is—

TW:                 Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            —even when he drives you nuts.

TW:                 Yeah. And he does.

Jessica:            And he does. And he does. And we respect him, but he does.

TW:                 Yes. Love him.

Jessica:            And so it's about recognizing that when you love others in ways that you don't love yourself, there's something either wrong with the way you're loving them or the way you're loving you, right?

TW:                 Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, for you, it's, "Let me empty out my cup so that yours is full." Very Christian.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Very beautiful.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            But the problem is you don't need to do that. You actually—

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            You don't need to do that. You can keep your cup full, walk over to the tap, and fill up their cup. You don't have to pull from yourself all the time.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And similarly, you don't need to pull a system of knowledge to bolster your self-knowledge, right? You can just know you.

TW:                 And I've been looking that for years upon years upon years upon years, like, something explain to me why I have trouble knowing myself and why I have trouble being grounded.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 And astrology did that for a while.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 But it's good that it was even just like that disorienting shift that you talked about. You showing me the Campanus house system felt like that.

Jessica:            Yeah.

TW:                 It's like, oh shit, I don't know this.

Jessica:            Right.

TW:                 This looks like—

Jessica:            And that's the thing. You don't have to know it.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            You just want to know you. And so let me just say one other thing here. Because you have Neptune opposite the Sun, I want to give you this reframe around grounding because you're not grounded. Girl, nobody with a Neptune opposition to the Sun is grounded. But your Neptune is in Sadge, and your Sun is in Gemini. So it's fire and air. Where's the ground? Instead, what you want to—

TW:                 There's no ground.

Jessica:            There's no ground.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Instead, what you want to do is focus in, that archer bow. Find your center.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Seek getting centered instead of grounded because you are somebody who's capable of locating your center. If you're a singer, you know where your core is.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            You know how to find your core.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            That's part of why you like singing, because your core gets engaged, because you're tapping into your power.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            It's also fun. It's also beauty. It's creation. But it's also tapping into your core. So find your core. Bring all your energy into your core. Don't feel guilty. Bring it in. Okay. Okay. So I just want to acknowledge, as I see you doing it, you also are, through the back, checking to make sure you're not missing something.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            So you don't have to be good at it. You don't have to worry about anyone or anything. This cannot harm you or anyone else. I'm only giving you advice that cannot hurt or harm.

TW:                 That's so—yeah. I needed you to say that, though, because there's always this feeling of, when I take up space, I'm afraid I'm going to be all X-Men Phoenixy and destroy everybody, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah. That's real. And some of that is—

TW:                 That's how powerful I feel, sometimes, too.

Jessica:            Yeah. And also, some of that is from religion, right? It tells you that you're not—

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            —supposed to be big. You're supposed to be, essentially, subservient, really, and as small as you can be.

TW:                 Yes. Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            So there's no harm you can perpetrate by being aligned, being centered. There's no harm to you or anyone else. And if you do it poorly, you also can't hurt yourself or anyone else.

TW:                 Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            So let me just be clear about that. Practice centering instead of grounding. And you might try grounding after you center. But prioritize centering over grounding because you tell yourself, "Oh, I have to get grounded. Oh, I have to get grounded." And then you can't get grounded, because you're not a super grounded person. But what you could be doing is saying, "Oh, I have to get grounded. Oh shit. Let me try centering instead." As a singer, you already have the literal muscle.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Tap into that muscle, and play with being present with that, noticing what you feel and [crosstalk]—

TW:                 So we're talking about diaphragm and kind of the center of the body as opposed [crosstalk]?

Jessica:            Yeah. It's the center of the body. That's the center.

TW:                 Absolutely. Yes.

Jessica:            That's centering.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And there's that archer's bow. It's in your chart, right? You've got Sadge Rising. Just focus your energy in. You know how to do this. You're good at this. This is in your nature. It's in your body already.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            So what I'm doing is I'm giving you the quickest and easiest way in because, guess what, it doesn't always have to be so hard, girl.

TW:                 Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have this habit of making things like, "If it's not the hardest way, it's not the right way."

TW:                 Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. So this is a practice of centering. And then what you'll find is that chaos that you were feeling went from a—on a scale of 1 to 10, it went from an 8 to like a 4. Okay. from a 4, you may not need to ground anymore, or you might be able to ground because now you're centered.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's really good work for you. Now, one other thing I'm going to say—do you and your partner play board games?

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. I'm going to give you homework to ask—well, first of all, you have to ask him if he's into this or not because, if he's not, then you can't do it. But if he is into it, getting adult board games—and I'm not talking about sexy ones. I'm talking about the kind of adult board games where you learn more about each other. You learn about, "What do you think? What do you feel?" kind of board games.

                        I love this game called The Transformation Game. Have you ever heard—you've never heard of it. It's like a—

TW:                 I've heard of it.

Jessica:            Oh, have you? Okay. Great.

TW:                 I have heard of it, yes.

Jessica:            The Transformation Game—it's like an interactive Tarot reading. It's like you decide you want to work on something in yourself, and you have to play it with somebody else, but you're both playing your own game, but you support each other through the game.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            It's a really powerful, transformative experience. It's a little bit of a time sink; it's like a longer game. But if he's open to that, you might look into doing that together.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            I want to give you easier ways of getting to know who you are today and communicating with each other than just being like, "We need to talk about this," because that doesn't work for either of you, really.

TW:                 Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Neither of you really are that way. And so these kinds of games might just interrupt things.

TW:                 He says that he wants to just—that's what one of our conflicts recently is, or over the past couple years is, that he really desires, Mercury in Scorpio, really wanting intense conversation. And I—my nervous system can't handle it. I shut down a lot and then gets frustrated for him. And then I, in the past, have been taking up all the emotional space, so he can't just be frustrated that—

Jessica:            I see.

TW:                 —his partner shuts down.

Jessica:            These games might really help you, then.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            This might really help you.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And learning how to self-regulate so that you can be like, "Okay. I'm really overwhelmed"—but this is why you get overwhelmed. I'm going to make this very simple for you. You get really overwhelmed because you're like, "Well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that."

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And your practice is to stop hearing everything as an assignment, right? You do. You hear everything as an assignment.

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            So he tells you how he's feeling, and you're like, "I don't know what to do about this.  I don't know what I'm supposed to think about this. What am I supposed to give him?"

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            And all you need to do is practice saying this. I'm going to give you a gift right now, okay?

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            "Do you want me to listen, or do you want advice? Do you want me to listen, or do you want feedback?" That's all you have to ask him. And if he says to you, "I just want you to listen," oh my God. Then all you do is shut up—not emphatically—smile, put your hand on his knee—whatever's appropriate. You don't do anything. Then this whole nervousness that you have about, "Oh shit. What am I supposed to do?"—that's why you get overstimulated—

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            —can kind of pull back, right? It won't magically go away, but it'll pull back.

TW:                 That [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. Just ask him.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And if he says, "Hey, I need advice," then you can check in with and say, "Okay. I'm feeling really overstimulated now. Can I take notes on what you say and then think about it and give you advice later?" You're allowed to do that.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            You're a weirdo. You can totally do that, right? You like taking notes.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Take notes.

TW:                 I do.

Jessica:            Yeah. I see that.

TW:                 I do.

Jessica:            And he might be like—but also, if you actually follow up with thoughts, he would love it.

TW:                 Yes, he would.

Jessica:            And then you would feel like you weren't being pressed to respond in the moment, but you were actually giving him your response.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            Your Mercury is in Taurus, and its motility is slow. Taurus is the cow. You chomp and chomp and chomp through ideas. You get there, but you need to really chew and then digest. You know what I mean?

TW:                 Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Digestion is aided by saliva. We need a lot of chewing. And so this pressure that you feel is because your Moon/Mars conjunction is like, "Let's go. Let's go. Let's go." And your Mercury in Taurus and other parts of your chart, actually, are like, "But I need a minute to process this." And so—

TW:                 I also feel like—isn't—the Gemini piece, too, is fast-moving as well.

Jessica:            It is fast-moving, but Neptune slows it down.

TW:                 Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            So Neptune, even though it's in Sadge—think of it this way. Gemini is air, and it is fast-moving air. It's air. It's mutable air. And then you have the most mutable planet in the zodiac, Neptune, sitting opposite, and it's fog. So it's like fog and air.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            And what happens is things dissipate in a really intense way. And so, even though your thoughts are spinning and going in all these directions, it's—if you don't practice getting centered—not grounded, centered—what ends up happening is you're pulled in too many directions, and then it becomes panic because you have too many ideas, too many feelings, too many—

TW:                 Yes.

Jessica:            —things you've assigned yourself to do. And now you're panicking. So Neptune is—

TW:                 Yeah, other people's and mine's and—

Jessica:            5,000 percent. Yeah.

TW:                 —all of this. Yes.

Jessica:            5,000 percent. So Neptune is panic. Uranus is like, "I can't focus. I have too many ideas." There's different kinds of anxiety. You have both pretty strong in your chart, so lucky you. But all to say these are things that you can practice within your partnership, but keep in mind that your work is your participation, your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors. It's not what he does or doesn't do. It's not how he feels. Your work—I mean, parenting is different. It's a different conversation. I'm happy it didn't come up because it allowed us to really focus on you.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            But your work is not to make your parents feel some kind of way about your life choices. Your work is to give them the space as grown-ass adults to feel whatever they feel while you live your merry little life. Your life is to let people feel what they feel, and guess what will happen then. Then you might actually believe that you get to feel what you feel. You see how the thing that has kind of been done to you—yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's really just like cracking open this shell that you've been living in. And it's a painful process. The Chiron Return is a painful process, but it is a powerful, evolutionary, transformative process that really can allow you to come into greater embodiment so that you're living in ways that better reflect your values in your most personal life especially.

TW:                 Thank you.

Jessica:            It's so my pleasure.

TW:                 This has been such a beautiful 50th birthday gift.

Jessica:            Yay.

TW:                 It felt like a big deal, but I didn't want to do a big thing this year. But it just—I feel like—thank you for also naming that this is a big deal.

Jessica:            It's a big fucking deal. And I will also say, for whatever it's worth, I'm a big fan of making a big deal of 49 or 51 instead of 50. When you cross decades, it's loaded. So I feel like make 51 a big deal. Don't worry about 50, because that just gives you a little more space to emotionally and mentally adapt to this shift, because it is a shift. The world treats you different. The body is different—you know, all the things.

TW:                 Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            And then there is the Chiron Return that lets you know, "Hey, now. You gotta figure this shit out from your childhood." And it is really confronting.

TW:                 Yeah.

Jessica:            So, yeah, I'm really glad we got to do this. And I am happy to say I think your dog is just fine.

TW:                 Thanks.

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

TW:                 Slightly disappointed, but also excited about that. But yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. She's just fine.

TW:                 No, I mean, she is just fine.

Jessica:            She's fine. She's fine. Yeah.

TW:                 Oh, good. I'm so glad. She's liking her life, you know?

Jessica:            She actually loves her life. She used to have a chewy thing, like a thing that she used to carry around with her.

TW:                 Uh-huh.

Jessica:            Do you know what I'm talking about? Was it with you or was it in her other life?

TW:                 It might have been in her other life. She destroyed it, I think, pretty well. It was like a little frisbee or something.

Jessica:            Okay. She likes having a thing that's her thing to steward, like a baby doll, basically.

TW:                 Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            So it might be a frisbee. It might be—so you might want to just be a little bit on the lookout for an object that you can give her that's hers to carry around. It soothes her a lot. So that's one thing you could give her that she just showed me.

TW:                 Yeah. I mean, the mama wanting to—missing her puppies or something, like mother instinct.

Jessica:            I mean, I think it's also just like she likes tracking things. And so it helps her brain to be like, "This is what I take care of. This thing is my thing to watch out for.

TW:                 Okay.

Jessica:            And it just soothes her anxiety. It's kind of like having a thing that you—you know, like a ring that you twirl on your finger kind of thing. It's like a self-soothing tic, in a way, for her.

TW:                 Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So, yeah, finding a thing that's her thing is a good idea.

TW:                 Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            But that's the only dog advice I have for you. You're fine otherwise.

TW:                 That's great. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. Totally. Totally. Totally.

TW:                 Thank you.

Jessica:            My pleasure.