June 10, 2026
635: Complicated Relationships
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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: Glow, welcome to the podcast.
Glow: Thank you so much.
Jessica: What would you like a reading about?
Glow: I would like a reading about a crossroads I'm struggling through and into in life. I have a roommate who I've been platonic life partners with for a couple of years. She's seven months pregnant.
Jessica: Oh my.
Glow: Mm-hmm. Exciting, but also, I've been worrying about it more than I would like to. I want to talk to her more about our partnership, but I'm feeling afraid and stuck as to how. And then I have a sweetheart who also has a platonic husband and a teenage daughter. The sweetheart is feeling threatened or stressed about the upcoming infant. And as for me, I've been feeling a lot of stress and anxiety about these dynamics. I'm noticing they're bringing up past feelings, like as if I have feelings from my parents' acrimonious divorce. Can you please give me advice about navigating these complicated relationships, figuring out what I want to do, and finally get an aligned path forward?
Jessica: I hope so. The answer, I hope, is yes. Okay. I've got questions. We're going to pull up your chart in just a second, but I have a couple questions. So you and your sweetheart—are you monogamous?
Glow: Yes, except for we each have these platonic partners. So we're sexually, romantically monogamous.
Jessica: Okay, outside of these specific platonic—kind of sounds a little romantic platonic.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay, like tender—
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: —platonic. Okay.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: What is the pronouns for the sweetheart?
Glow: She/they. Yeah.
Jessica: She/they. She/they. Love that. Okay. And your roommate is she?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. Is your roommate Queer?
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: Is your roommate partnered?
Glow: No.
Jessica: So the roommate's not with a person.
Glow: No. My roommate—she is non-partnered.
Jessica: Okay. And the reason why I'm asking is simply to kind of get some context to her at-home support, her intimate support, because your sweetheart is like, "Eesh, this is starting to feel a little, maybe, unsafe, a little uncomfortable for me."
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And if your roommate had a partner, that would be, really, a different context for your sweetheart's discomfort, right?
Glow: Right.
Jessica: So has your roommate asked you to, in any way, co-parent?
Glow: Not lately, she hasn't asked.
Jessica: When you say lately, do you mean the last seven months?
Glow: Yeah. It's in the last, like, seven to ten months. But we've been talking about our platonic life partnership for many years, and co-parenting was always part of those discussions. So, at previous times—she's always been clear, "I'm going to have a baby. I'm going to become a grandparent. That's my number-one life goal."
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: And I've, in the past, said, "Yeah, I'd like to have a baby, too. Don't want to do it alone. Let's team up." And then that changed for me about a year ago, and then a couple different factors—
Jessica: Did you communicate that to the roommate?
Glow: I did, yes.
Jessica: And did the roommate consult with you before getting pregnant?
Glow: Not really, no.
Jessica: Just want to double-check. "Not really" and "no" are such different sentences. So was it not really, or was it no?
Glow: I think no.
Jessica: So, at a point, there was mutual conversation, "We would love to co-parent."
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And then at no point did she say—and when I say "at no point," I mean right before getting pregnant—did she say to you, "Hey, platonic life partner, this is something I want to do now. Are you on board?"
Glow: No. That did not happen.
Jessica: That's a no. That's a no.
Glow: Okay.
Jessica: Even if there's other waters, if we think about the importance of consent for—I don't know—hugging, then we might also assume we apply the same demands and rigor of consent for procreation and co-parenting.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Therefore, I am to understand that you and roommate have not had a sit-down conversation about, "We live together. We have this intention to be partners. And now there's going to be a baby." You have not had a really to-the-point, direct, "Everybody in the room is a Capricorn" conversation?
Glow: It's funny because she is a Capricorn Sun.
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: No. And I know that I'm equivocating, but we have had some sit-down conversations since she got pregnant about, "Okay, there's a baby coming. What's that going to look like and not look like?" For me, I would like it to be more direct and to the point and thorough.
Jessica: Yes.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. And it hasn't been, because you haven't brought it up and she hasn't brought it up?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. And I'm assuming sweetheart would love for you to fucking bring it up.
Glow: Yeah, she would.
Jessica: I am on team sweetheart so far.
Glow: You're not wrong.
Jessica: She's not wrong.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: But don't worry. I'm going to help you. Okay. So I'm going to pull up your chart right now, okay?
Glow: Okay.
Jessica: We are not sharing your birth data because people like privacy, especially people with stelliums in Scorpio, it turns out.
Glow: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: So listen. Boundaries—not your forte. Is it because your Sun is in Libra? No. Is it because your Sun is in Libra in the twelfth house? No. Is it because your Sun is in Libra in the twelfth house and the focal planet of a T-square between Uranus, Neptune, and Mars? Now we're cooking with yes. Yeah. So, for you, you have borne witness to the dynamic of people expressing their boundaries and their needs in impulsive or chaotic ways and it having really negative consequences in relationships.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Does that seem right?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And this is like a dynamic of your childhood, your parents' marriage, but I imagine not exclusively your parents' dynamic. Is that correct?
Glow: I can't think of any other examples right now.
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: That's the big one, but—
Jessica: That's the biggie.
Glow: —could be correct.
Jessica: And we can leave it be there. I'm guessing you've experienced it in your social life, seeing people chaotically be like, "I'm going to do this thing. Pew, pew, pew, pew," and then everything explodes or implodes. Somebody leaves. Somebody gets hurt.
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: And so, when all common sense says, "Oh, I know. This is my best friend and my platonic life partner"—which—I have questions about what that even means, but that will come later—"and of course I could just sit her down and say, 'Hey, there's lots of things for us to talk about. Let's talk about them,'" there's something that comes up in you psychologically, emotionally, and physically that stops you and is like, "No, you gotta do it right, or you shouldn't do it at all."
Glow: Mm-hmm. Exactly.
Jessica: And then you have this really fun thing that you do because Neptune sits opposite your Mars and square your Neptune, your Sun, where you put it off, and you procrastinate, and then you procrastinate, and then you procrastinate, and then you procrastinate. And then you do it impulsively in the end, or it just comes out and it's not your fault.
Glow: Sure. Well, sounds like it would be my [crosstalk].
Jessica: I mean, we're not judging. We're not judging. We're just saying it comes out, and "it's not your fault." How about that? I put air quotes on it.
Glow: Okay.
Jessica: That's better. Yeah. So there's a number of things I want to say about this, but I want to first ask, when you say platonic life partner, do you mean you have the current intention to spend the rest of your life with this person?
Glow: No.
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: But I have in the past.
Jessica: Yeah. Sure.
Glow: So that's where—and I like to make up cute relationship titles, so that's—
Jessica: I'm pulling that. Sweetheart, platonic life partner. I'm with you.
Glow: And a husband-in-law, too.
Jessica: Oh, that's fun.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: That said, this title is super dangerous because you have the indication of a promise that people can make—it's called marriage, right? People make that promise all the time. But that's quite a commitment for somebody who's got a monogamous sweetheart.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So do you want to co-parent this child in 2026 and 2027?
Glow: A little bit.
Jessica: You a little bit want to co-parent?
Glow: I want to co-parent for a limited time, which is essentially into, like, early 2027.
Jessica: And then what happens then?
Glow: And then I'm not sure, hence the crossroads. And also, the changing of my commitment to this partnership is—that's part of the crossroads, and it's part of what I have not clearly communicated to this person.
Jessica: Does she know that you want to leave in several months?
Glow: I'm not sure. What I've managed to communicate is that I don't want to live with a baby in the house that we currently share, which is all shared facilities. There's one outside bedroom that I could go to for some free preservation. But I've told her that I'm interested in the option of selling the house that we co-own together, which comes up for us—in January 2027 we'd be able to do that—and that I at least want a separate suite from her and her baby.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Do you think it's possible to live with someone and not co-parent with them?
Glow: Yeah, I think that's possible.
Jessica: And do you think that's possible for you?
Glow: I don't know.
Jessica: So the fact that you haven't, in seven months, had a really direct conversation with this person about, "Do you envision me getting up in the middle of the night with you? What is the financial obligation you see me playing?"—there are so many factors that you have not talked about with this person.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: I worry that the level of negotiation of boundary that is required for a child—
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: —you don't seem super on board for that level of—
Glow: No, that's true.
Jessica: It's not just process. It's saying no to someone in need all the time.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: That's actually what it is. Let's say there's four people taking care of an infant. It's an exhausting amount of work. One person taking care of an infant is really an amazing amount of work. It's exhausting. We don't know what her hormonal experience will be of pregnancy, of post-pregnancy, right? There are so many variables. And so for you to be in the house and to not be available to help on a moment's notice seems super unrealistic, right?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So I want to say you're going through—Saturn is fucking with your T-square, okay? And so what this means in English is, if you want to know what the hell is going on in your life, it's themes around accountability and responsibility. And so, if what that translates to with the roommate is the need to say to her, "I love you in all of these ways, and had we talked about it in advance, I would not have been like, 'Yes, let's go. I'm ready to do this now.' And that's because I am not ready to do this now, and that means we probably shouldn't live together because I can't be there for you at the level that you're going to need someone there for you."
Okay. I felt your energy do some stuff when I said that. What came up for you when I said that?
Glow: Honestly, I'm distracted—in my head, I couldn't feel that energy shift. I'm distracted in my head by a couple things I want to circle back to.
Jessica: Okay. So write them down on your little piece of paper. And just as a hot tip, as a boundary-obsessed girlie, when talking to people in a charged way, which—getting a reading is charged. When you talk to the roommate, when you talk to the sweetheart, it's charged. Having a piece of paper and jotting down little things that you need to remember so that you can really be in a state of receptivity will help you a lot because you do get really flooded with things. And what I just suggested may or may not be good for you, but what it was was a recommendation that you be really direct and you say, "I don't want to live with you and co-parent a child." And the fact that you're saying that didn't have an emotional reaction—that's clearly not—that can't be—
Glow: Oh, no, I believe you. I just can't—I don't know.
Jessica: You can feel it.
Glow: I'm not aware of it.
Jessica: Right.
Glow: But see my neck? This is a tell.
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: It's turning red. It's hot. There's emotions.
Jessica: Okay. We're getting there.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: We're getting in there. But what happened in this moment with me and you is what happens with you a lot. It's that your brain is like, zing, zing, zing, zing. It goes in other places.
Glow: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Jessica: So, while your body is having one experience, you're not on the bridge. You're not hearing your emotions. You're not listening to your body because you're so engaged with your brain. And so then you might show up in the conversation and, quote unquote, "say the right thing." You might say the right thing, but you might walk away being like, "Wait. What did I say? What did I just promise?"
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. That happens to you.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So let's come back, okay? What I'm basically saying to you is this. And I want to just have you be—okay. This is what you're going to do. Are your feet on the ground?
Glow: Yep.
Jessica: Flat?
Glow: Now they are.
Jessica: Now they are. Can you actually feel the contact of your feet with the ground?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Okay. I'm going to ask you about your butt. Can you actually feel your butt in contact with the couch?
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: Okay. Can you just kind of put energy and push down on your feet, put energy and push down on your sit bones on your butt? Just be here; you know what I'm saying?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Okay. Great. You're not breathing. So that's a good, interesting thing. I asked you to notice the body, so you started to hold the breath. Very classic Mars opposite Neptune behavior. So, if you can, just take a breath, however you like to breathe. Yeah. Okay. Okay. A little better. Try to notice your breath if you can. It will distract you from your head but keep you to your heart, okay?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Okay. Now I'm going to ask you a question. And this question is, what do you think of saying to your roommate, "I can't live with you after this housing is up because I'm not prepared to co-parent at this time"?
Glow: It's embarrassingly simple, and I wish that I had already said it. [crosstalk].
Jessica: Okay. So it sounds like the right thing to say.
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: So it feels like the correct—okay. So it feels like the truth.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Great. Sometimes it takes a fucking a minute because, all of a sudden, your platonic life partner is pregnant. And then you're like, "What?" And you're reacting instead of really tuning in. So, if that feels right to you, then I've given you the words and it's really simple. And she has the right to be hurt and upset and confused.
Glow: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: And your job in that is to own what's yours and also own what's yours, right? Own, "Yeah, I should have talked about this sooner. And I didn't have the clarity because I've been trying to just show up instead of really figuring this out for myself." I haven't gotten to your sweetheart yet because you can't really decide to clarify this for your sweetheart without first clarifying for yourself what you want with the roommate.
Glow: Right.
Jessica: And you still want to be close with this person?
Glow: Yes. And I may even still want to live near her in a Queer commune type of way where it's like a separate—
Jessica: Love that.
Glow: —structure on the same property.
Jessica: Love that.
Glow: And I'm not sure about that, and I—
Jessica: I'm not sure that that's right for her, because a Queer commune may or may not be what she really wants and needs. This is the thing. You just don't know until you have the baby, right?
Glow: Well, that, we've talked about a lot. The Queer commune—
Jessica: The Queer commune?
Glow: —we've talked about a lot. Yeah. We've been to meetings about it recently. I'm pretty sure that she is really interested in that model. And then, for me, I'm—
Jessica: Can I have you say—
Glow: —still kind of interested and not too sure and—
Jessica: Not sure. Okay.
Glow: —[crosstalk] about it all.
Jessica: Can you say her name out loud?
Glow: Yes. It's [redacted].
Jessica: Does she work?
Glow: Not right now.
Jessica: She has the capacity to earn enough money to raise a child?
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: Okay. Are you sure?
Glow: No.
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: I'm not entirely—it's one of the things that I worry about, and I'm like, "Well, it's not exactly any of my business because I'm not a full co-parent." So—
Jessica: So she doesn't expect you to financially contribute?
Glow: That's right.
Jessica: Great. So that has been discussed?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. There's a lot of things I can see, but what's important for me to say is the lack of communication is—oh my God—the biggest red flag, like I'm holding a flag—
Glow: Yeah. For me, too.
Jessica: —but it's so big that it's like a pole in my hand—that neither of you have had these conversations, right?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So it's not a red flag about one of you. It's both, right?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And the red flag to me is, if you're not communicating now when there's no child and everybody's sleeping, then what is going to happen? And so, within that, I just want to name this week isn't the best week because the astrology is shit in a bag. But—
Glow: Okay.
Jessica: —tout suite—like this weekend, great time to just sit down and schedule it now. Sit down then, and just be straightforward, to the point, one sentence, "Can't do that." And in terms of living in a collective situation, what's really important from what I'm seeing is that you meet the situation and make a choice. And within that, what I'm seeing is you're needing to figure out what you want for you as opposed to coming at it as partners. And so you might need another cute label, a new cute label.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: I think "besties" is fine, but you don't like "besties."
Glow: I don't?
Jessica: Or maybe you do. I mean, you just—you skipped over it is all I'm saying. You skipped really far over it. If you like the term "besties," why'd you go so far over there? Very far. So maybe you do like "besties." If you do, again, so simple. "Besties." That's a good one. But I do see that this looks really tender and that both of you have made a lot of assumptions, and the other has allowed for those assumptions. So this is clearly a dynamic, right? And she's not trying to be romantic with you; is that correct?
Glow: Yeah, that's correct.
Jessica: There's some form of attachment that I am seeing that is what I typically see in romantic dynamic. That might just be the promises that you've made each other or the fantasies you've held together and her being in a state of needing it more now, and you not being in a state where you need it more now. Because I am seeing that, I just want to hold space for—she might surprise you with some of the things she feels and says in your important conversation. And your job is not to fix things, but to be honest about everything you know and everything you don't know. Don't go in with a fixing attitude.
Glow: But I love to do that.
Jessica: I know. That's why I brought it up. That's where I was coming from. And maybe even set the intention of, "We need to have a really direct conversation." And maybe the suggestion is, "We just name things. This is a microphone. This is a hair. This is me not being willing or able to live with a child that I'm not raising, and I'm not ready or able to raise a child. That means we can't live together." Point to things and name them. Point to things and name them.
And then open the conversation to, "Do you have questions? How do you feel about that?" And do your best to not interrupt each other, and just listen. Think of this more as a data-finding and data-collecting adventure that is likely to be emotional as opposed to, "I need to explain this to you, and I need to fix this for you."
Glow: Right.
Jessica: Do you have any questions or concerns about that?
Glow: Yes. I have concerns—it's more feelings, and it's to do with being really honest and also even something like bringing it back to preconception and saying, "Had we talked about this, I would have said I feel something clampy inside, and I feel guilty." And also, I've been trying to let go. I got your forgiveness workshop, and so trying to, like—"Okay, that's in the past. I can't change that."
Jessica: Yep.
Glow: She can't change that.
Jessica: Yep.
Glow: I'm excited about the baby. Can't wait to meet the baby. It's like her ultimate life's goal. I don't want to rain on her parade. So this is like a concern about, I guess, me overcoming that kind of emotional anxiety hurdle to still say the true thing.
Jessica: Yeah.
Glow: So I'm working on all of it, but—
Jessica: It's really hard. I mean—
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: —looking at your birth chart, with that T-square pointing to your Sun in Libra in the twelfth, when somebody is direct with you, sometimes it feels great. You're like, "Oh, finally, I know where I stand."
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: And sometimes, you're like, "Why are you punching and kicking? Why do you hate me?" And so you similarly sometimes are just very direct with people, and then, the rest of the time, you believe what you just described, which is like, "If I tell her the truth, I'm punching and kicking her when she's down." And what I want to give you language for is, "I want to be a special adult in this child's life. I want to know this child. I want to be there for this child. I want to get to know them as they grow. I want to take them places, do fun things. I want to figure out how to burp them. And I don't want to parent them, and I can't live with them and have that boundary."
That might sound less like punching and kicking someone, right? It's because what you're saying is like, "I don't want to shit on this magical thing that this person's life goal is to have a child." But I don't think it's shitting on it to say, "This is your life goal, and it's not mine. And this is your time, and that doesn't make it mine. And this is how I can envision being that special adult." What was that?
Glow: Oh, I felt a lot of tension in my jaw, so I—
Jessica: Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Glow: —stretched it.
Jessica: And do you tend to feel a lot of tension in your jaw?
Glow: Oh yes.
Jessica: Yeah.
Glow: Even when I'm not aware of it, I clench it at night. I wear a night guard.
Jessica: You do. Good. So that Mars/Uranus opposition in your birth chart, also the Mars square to the Sun, gives you a lot of jaw and head things. So people often, like—what you reported of getting red, that's very classic fucking Mars shenanigans. And also, jaw tension, head tension—it's all—it's in your chart. But it has a tendency to come up when you feel stymied, when you feel blocked, when you feel stuck, when you feel challenged and not free.
And so there's something about the idea of saying to someone you care about, "I can say yes but only in this way, and I can say no in those ways. And here is my bucket of maybes." Right? You're allowed to say, "Here's my bucket of maybes. Here's my bucket of 'I don't know yet.'"
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: "But my 'I don't know yet' means it's not a yes."
Glow: Right.
Jessica: "My 'I don't know yet' means I can't make a commitment. But it doesn't mean that I won't show up in that way." And I'll say an infant is a really different beast than a toddler. And have you met a teenager?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Completely—you can't believe they're related, right? And everything in between. So there's a lot of space and time in the context of this child's evolution for you to show up in a meaningful adult role, like a complementary to the parent/child relationship role.
Glow: Mm-hmm. I think the part that I still feel a great deal of discomfort about is the living arrangements because I have explained to roomie I'm down to change diapers, hold baby. Great. Can't wait—feed adult roomie. And then an "I don't know," for example, is, well, how much sleep am I going to get? How much work am I going to have to go to? What's my real capacity going to be? And then, when it's about whether or not or how we live together in the future—and then there's also what I've been thinking about with the sweetheart, and—yeah. That Saturn down in the fourth house—right? Like home stuff. And wait. Was Saturn part of the T-square?
Jessica: Don't you worry about the astrology.
Glow: Okay.
Jessica: I'll tell you all about it. Don't worry. Don't you worry about it. So what you were just doing was you started off by saying, "Okay. I'm concerned about this." And then your concern kind of went from roomie to baby to sweetheart.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And then you went into astrology.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So that is a great example, again, of the emotions started to get hard to stay with, so your brain went, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Right?
Glow: Totally.
Jessica: So, when that happens, you may say and think smart things, but you always create chaos for yourself. So the hot tip I'm going to give you for that is put your feet on the ground. Put pressure on your feet. If you're sitting, feel your sit bones sit, sit, sit. Breathe through your nose, your mouth. Breathe. You're abandoning the body in those moments because the body is experiencing things that you're like, "Aah." And that is a direct quote, if I may quote your body. "Aah. I don't want to do this."
My advice to you is to practice noticing these little moments as they emerge, especially when you're having important conversations with yourself, with roomie, or sweetheart. We haven't gotten to sweetheart. We will. I promise. But let's stay with roomie for another minute.
Glow: Sure.
Jessica: What you've said to your roommate is, "I will help you co-parent up until early 2027." So that means six months, right? For six months. Do you want to be doing that?
Glow: I don't know. I think so. My brain is ping-ponging around to all the other things that it would entail, like a series of dominoes that is feeling overwhelming.
Jessica: Yeah. Okay. As your psychic, I'll say you want to want that in certain moods. You want to want to co-parent in that specific way. Infants are zero to six-months-olds. They're intensely boring and high maintenance. It's just like your two least favorite things, right?
Glow: I don't like being bored. I like high maintenance in certain—
Jessica: Do you like high-maintenance, boring things?
Glow: No.
Jessica: That's what I just said. Mm-hmm.
Glow: No. Okay.
Jessica: Yeah. I agree with me.
Glow: The combo sounds like a bad combo.
Jessica: I agree with me. You haven't spent a lot of time with children, I'm assuming.
Glow: A little bit. I feel something pushing back where it's like, I love holding infants.
Jessica: Sure.
Glow: I got loved ones who just visited. Love spending a bit of time with the infant and then being like, "Here's your infant back."
Jessica: Okay. So your experience with infants is hanging out with your friends who have infants, and the friends are there and you're there, and you're all hanging out and having a nice time, and you're holding the baby?
Glow: Yeah, more or less.
Jessica: Okay. When I did childcare for a period of my life—and I remember a couple times I had a really hard time with infants myself because you can't talk to them. You can't do anything. They don't do—they're little burritos that cry. And you really don't want them to cry because they look so sad.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And then they poop. There's a lot of things. There's spitting up. And then you have to move them. Their development is so important, and also, they're like helpless, little flip-floppy burritos, right?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: So it's lovely and it's magical for the people who it's lovely and it's magical for. And it's a lot of work for everybody.
Glow: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And so I want to just kind of pull you back to say you're good. When somebody is like, "Look. This needs to be built," you're like, "Okay. Where are the tools? Why don't we fix it? What's my role going to be?" And so you once had this fantasy with your roomie about, what would it be like to have this Queer, magical co-parenting friendship extravaganza?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And then roomie got pregnant. I mean, a million things happened, and then roomie got pregnant. And instead of really checking in with yourself, what you've been doing is like, "Okay. This is the fantasy. This is how I do it. I'm going to show up. I'm going to do this thing." And you're kind of pulling yourself up out of your system to have that. And you can be with that. I'm not saying you wouldn't enjoy any parts of it or that you would hate it or resent it. But I am saying you're not really allowing yourself to sit in the messiness of the question. "Oh, is this really what I want? Is this what I'm doing?" because, as we're about to establish, it's not going to come without a cost.
Your sweetheart is not comfortable with it for very good reason. There are no boundaries here, and there's no clarity. And that puts your sweetheart in a position where she's doing what, exactly? Because it's going to consume your life if you're living with a baby and you're taking on a co-parenting role for six months.
I want to just really ground you into—as I started to say before, as your psychic, I don't really think this is what you want to do. I think you are open to filling this role for a period of time. It's not what I'm seeing you're like, "This is my yes."
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: It's more, "I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this." It's more of that. And if you make that choice, that's a choice to make. But my red flag is you're not exactly making a choice; it's that the roommate's made a choice, and now you're reacting to her choice.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And that pattern has played itself out in your life, not usually well for you, because then you have to extricate yourself. And to extricate yourself from somebody who's, like, your bestie who you really deeply care about, who also has an infant—it's going to be harder, right, than other kinds of extrications you've had to participate in.
And so I want to just really ground you into, as hard as this conversation will be—and it will be hard because it'll be real, and neither of you really want to have this conversation, obviously, because you would have had it. This is the time. It doesn't get easier from here to have it.
Glow: I know.
Jessica: And you are allowed to have wanted something in July of 2024 that you don't want in June of 2026. You're allowed to evolve, right? You're in your early 30s?
Glow: Yep.
Jessica: Yeah. You're very young. Hopefully, you will continue to evolve and change your mind about meaningful things. And that's part of growing and being dynamic. I do want to hold space for—you have both misled each other and been misled. And this is not out of malice. It's out of neither of you really knowing how to have a really direct conversation about things that are scary.
And so either of you might, in this conversation, get upset or defensive about that. And the best way to approach it is with honesty, being like, "Yes, I have been misleading. Yes, I have not been direct. And it wasn't out of malice. It was out of me doing my best to cope as I could. And I know you've been trying the same."
We gotta go to the sweetheart. Is that okay?
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: Do you feel good about that? Okay. So sweetheart lives with platonic life partner bestie dude?
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: And is it their kid together?
Glow: It's her biological child, and he's the stepdad—
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: —of many years.
Jessica: Okay. And they all live together as a family?
Glow: They did until pretty recently, and then the teenager has moved out.
Jessica: Okay. So the teenager is still a kid, still in high school?
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: Okay, and is now living with a third parent?
Glow: She's living with boyfriend and boyfriend's parents.
Jessica: Okay. And your sweetheart and her bestie are living together.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Do you have any kind of feelings about her relationship with him?
Glow: Sometimes.
Jessica: Okay. And is it because they are intimate and connected, or is it because there's some romance or sexual tension?
Glow: Neither.
Jessica: Say more.
Glow: It's because I had a moment with that guy, who I otherwise really like, and then it was like, oh, not a great moment between him and me. And then I talked to him about it. I'm pretty happy about how the repair went with him. And I was really upset by my sweetheart's reaction/response to that situation.
This is like a part of my difficulties—our difficulties, me and my sweetheart—is I have trouble letting go of these things that still kind of hurt or I haven't finished—practiced letting go of. And then I'm kind of having a trust issue about the future, so then I'm like, "Well, why would I change up my whole situation, now, that I've been committing to for all these years?"—feeling insecure at times in that relationship. What do I do?"—lost in thoughts again.
Jessica: So is it kind of like you had some sort of beef with him; she didn't exactly take your side, and she hasn't handled it in the way you would prefer, and so it's giving you trust issues with her?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. And how long have you been with her?
Glow: About a year and a half.
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: And I just wanted to clarify nuances, like—just to bring it back to me, too, it's like, yes, I do have a bit of a trust issue with her there because when I do dig into my deep emotions about this, that situation really tapped this whole—like T-squares, triangles in the middle, where I'm in the middle or she's in the middle. And that whole thing is really activating for me, and I get flooded about it. So it was like I didn't think that she needed to be on his side. He didn't think that she needed to be—I was like, "There are no sides here." And then she was like—
Jessica: But she took his side anyways.
Glow: —"Oh my God"—yeah. She was threatened, and she was like, "I'm taking his side." And then I was like, "Well, fuck."
Jessica: Will you say her name?
Glow: It's [redacted].
Jessica: She always feels—okay. You have something in common with her. You're like, "Oh, something has to be built? I have to do the building." And she's like, "There's a conflict? I have to fix it." And so her idea of taking sides is not exactly about taking sides. It's about what is the least bumpy path, in a way. And whatever it was that he did, she wanted you to know that he didn't mean it in the way that you experienced it, and therefore, don't worry; you don't have to feel bad about it, because he didn't mean it the way you think he meant it. And so she didn't think of it as taking sides. She thought of it as trying to make it go away, trying to make it better.
Glow: Yeah. True.
Jessica: Right? And so, if there is a trust issue there, that's fair. But the reason why there might be a trust issue with her is the same reason why there might be a trust issue with you, is that you're both so conflict-fucking-avoidant that you're willing to burrow into holes and jump over streams and do crazy shit to avoid conflict. But it's not like one of you is more reliable than the other in this context.
Glow: Right.
Jessica: So I wouldn't really stress. Now, that said, you don't forgive him. You have the Scorpio death grip of, "You will be my enemy on one level or another until the day I die."
Glow: Oh boy.
Jessica: "My children will eat your children."
Glow: Bro.
Jessica: It's just a feeling. It's not a real thought. It's a feeling inside of you.
Glow: I'm not even aware of that.
Jessica: It's a really interesting thing because you're fine, and you're fine, and you're fine, and then a feeling comes up, and you're like, "Oh, I can feel this feeling." And then you're like, "No, no, no, no. I don't want to feel this feeling, because we had a great conversation. We worked it out. I totally trust him." And so then you push it right back down again. And what I would encourage you to do—not just with him, just as a practice. When someone pisses you off, when someone crosses a line, when someone hurts your feelings, after the important conversation—you can try it even before. I would encourage you—and you can do this shit on a Full Moon, but you can do it any time of the year. Get out a piece of paper, and you write down every petty thought and feeling, every cruel, vengeful, immature, violent revenge fantasy—whatever it is.
You have a Venus/Pluto conjunction in Scorpio. You've got your Rising and your Mercury in Scorpio. Go at it, okay? The worst things you can think, the most unhealthy, immature—whatever. It doesn't matter. Write it all down. And then hang out with your breath and your body, and see if you're ready to let it go. And if you're not, put it on an altar. Put it somewhere that you're not going to lose track of it, that you're aware of it. It's yours. Those are your thoughts. Those are your feelings. Those are yours.
And every once in a while, you can add to it. If you're like, "I wanna"—then you just add to it. And then, every once in a while, you check in. And if you feel in your body, "Okay. I can release it," then what you do is you get black paint or a black Sharpie. You black it out. And then, in a fire-safe way, you burn it. Or you can put it in a shredder, and then you can burn it—whatever's easier for you. You want to destroy it. You don't just want to cut it up and throw it in the trash. We're talking about destruction. You black it out, and you destroy it. It is no longer here. It is gone. Ashes. Phoenix. Flame. You get the theory, right?
Glow: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: What I'm talking about is creating a practice of externalizing your emotions, allowing yourself to safely have feelings that you don't really identify with; they're not your wisest parts—
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: —and then ritualistically releasing them because the truth is, yeah, you don't completely forgive him. That's okay. That's yours. If you're managing it in a way that's aligned with your integrity and how you want to be in community, it's fine. You don't have to fucking forgive everyone for everything all the time. It's not your job. Your job is to be accountable to your own emotional capacity and to navigate that responsibly so that—let's say you go over and you have dinner with your sweetheart and her bestie, and he just says one little, stupid thing, and it just fucking—and then she laughs, and you're like—and it just kind of activates it.
Okay. Cool. You put a note in your phone. Go to the bathroom. Put notes in your phone. When you go home, you're going to write that shit on that piece of paper. And there's a place for it. You're like, "This is mine. I'm going to fucking write it down." And there's a satisfaction. "And then when I'm ready, and only when I'm ready"—it's okay if it's in a year. That's when you let it go. And this is why it's good to have an altar, to have a place where there's things that you're tracking but you don't want to hold all the time, right?
So it's there, but you're not grasping it because part of what happens for you is—it kind of came up in the reading already—is that you're so scared that you're going to forget or that you're going to lose it that you grasp it really tight. So, when we were talking about one thing, you were like, "Oh, but there's other things I have to ask." And so it distracts you from the present. If you know you're tracking something, you don't have to grasp it as tightly. It's how our brains work. So it's something to fuck with.
Glow: Yeah. That sounds nice.
Jessica: Now, does your sweetheart want to live with you?
Glow: I'm not sure. In some ways, yes. In some ways, we've talked about it, and in other ways, she's like, "How can I possibly commit to that at this time? I couldn't even imagine." And she doesn't want to move her house. Like, she doesn't want to—
Jessica: She likes her house?
Glow: Yeah. And then it's into logistical things. But yeah. She likes living with him and her house. And I don't want to move into a house that's their house—
Jessica: Totally. Yeah.
Glow: —and neighborhoods and whatnot. So—
Jessica: Totally.
Glow: —maybe in the future. I think we're both on the same page about, like—
Jessica: But it's not like you would leave the roommate and then go live with her.
Glow: I don't think so, but that is a thought that crosses my mind and—
Jessica: Of course.
Glow: —and kind of stresses me out.
Jessica: Yeah. I could see—I mean, I could feel the thought, right?
Glow: Okay.
Jessica: So what's happening with the sweetheart feels secondary to the roommate because the roommate is like ticktock, ticktock, ticktock. Right?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: There's nine months, usually, in a pregnancy. So—not always, but you know. So okay. So I think being able to say to your sweetheart, "Hey, I'm going to have a really clarifying conversation, and I'm not going to report back to you right away, necessarily, because I'm going to try to digest it. But I want you to know this is in process, and I know that I need to be accountable to you as my sweetheart because you've expressed discomfort. And I haven't been able to handle it, but I am handling it." And that will be valuable for her.
And again, what I'm encouraging you to do is be like, "I'm not fixing this, but I'm in process. I can't give you an answer, but I can give you a commitment that I'm working on it actively today in a different way than I was yesterday." That is sometimes all a sweetheart needs, okay? And that will be like gold for her, I think.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: So do you have any other questions about sweetheart?
Glow: Yeah. Maybe you have a hot tip—you know, these practical things, write down the vengeful, the petty thoughts, release them—maybe it's the same practice, but I felt disoriented when her teenager moved out of her house. That was—brought up a lot for her. She kind of told me, just demonstrated to me, that she needed space to process that, that I believe that I'm the anxious type of attached, so then I was trying to be cool and normal about it and just deal with my not cool, not normal, anxious feelings myself. So still practicing that.
But yeah. Then I've kind of been keeping a bit of an arm's length when she since moved closer to me because I'm not still feeling like—not totally secure for me, and—
Jessica: I'll tell you this. And you are not going to like it.
Glow: Uh-oh.
Jessica: Another conversation to have—and not this week, only because of the astrology; otherwise, I'd be like, "Do it today"—is to sit her down and say, "I'm going to share something with you. And if you have feelings about it, please share them with me. If you have something else you want to share with me, you're welcome. But when this thing happened with your kid and you pulled back because you clearly needed space, my brain was like, 'That makes sense.' And emotionally, I was like, 'No. Are you leaving me? What's happening? I feel sad I can't be a part of your process. What's happening?' And even though I can see that you've kind of tended to your wounds a little and you're coming back closer, I'm having a hard time softening the self-defense I put up."
Glow: Mm-hmm. I think she knows that. I could reiterate I'm having a—I'm not softening my self-defense, did you say?
Jessica: Yeah.
Glow: But the rest, I think, she knows.
Jessica: And I would just add a little extra this, then. "Next time you need space, could you maybe—could we agree on an emoji you text me? Like this emoji means, 'I need space,' so that you're communicating it to me and I'm not inferring it?" Is that something you would do?
Glow: I would love to. I have asked for that in an earlier, smaller-stakes situation. And she said no.
Jessica: Why?
Glow: She said she felt like she didn't have the capacity for that. Maybe it was because I framed it as, like, "Hey, I feel a lot of really intense, anxious feelings come up in those times. I know that it's a lot. I would like a partner—I would like you, as my partner, to help me cope with that by giving me an emoji or something." That was one reason she was like, "Whoa, that's a lot. I don't think I have the capacity for that."
Jessica: Is she saying she doesn't have the capacity to text you an emoji or she doesn't have the capacity to think about your feelings?
Glow: I don't know.
Jessica: That's a good question to ask her.
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: That's a really good question to ask her.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: But what else were you going to say?
Glow: And then the other reason she gave me was that she isn't even aware—like I've got a hypervigilant thing.
Jessica: Oh. Yeah. And she's nowhere.
Glow: So I'm like, "Oh my God. You're pulling away." And she's like, "What are you talking about? It's been 18 hours. What? I need to process."
Jessica: Yeah. But you're just—you're feeling her energy. It's not just about her behavior. It's like you see that she's curled her energy inside of herself, right?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And that's a problem with being energetically sensitive. When I was like, "Oh, I can feel you really react," and you're like, "I didn't react," it's like you can't ask somebody to be aware of something that they're not aware of. That's just not—
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: That's not a thing.
Glow: Right.
Jessica: But you can say, "Okay. So I've asked you in the past to text me an emoji, and you were like, 'I don't even know I'm doing it. I can't text you that I'm—of something I'm not aware of.'"
Glow: Right.
Jessica: "So, in those times, when I feel you pull back, I'm not sure what to do. And then I end up being a little crusty and harder to reach myself because I go into self-defense mode. And I don't know what the fix is, but I want to name it because it's a pattern. It's a dynamic between us. And maybe you have an insight. Maybe you have a theory that I don't have." So instead of being like, "This is actively happening right now, and I'm really hurt by it," being like, "I see that this happens. And it kind of hurts my feelings, and then I can see that I kind of hurt your feelings because then I react and I'm pulled back, and you're like, 'What are you even reacting to? I didn't do anything.'"
And so it's just, "Do we need to talk more? If I ask you questions, would you be more comfortable with that? Would you be less comfortable with that?" You don't need to fix this for the two of you, but what you do need is to name things. I know it sounds so small, but like, "Glasses, T-shirt"—that actually helps. Naming things really helps. And the amount of energy we put into not naming things in our intimate relationships—not just romantic, all of our close relationships—is proof that it's really powerful to name things.
And your sweetheart is saying to you, "I need you to name for me what you're doing with your roommate and with this child." And it is important context that she's saying this when her kid just moved out, is old enough to have moved out.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And now you're potentially at the very beginning of a journey that she's reeling from and having a little bit of space from. I'm imagining a very little bit of space if her kid has just moved out and is still a teen. That must be very activating for her.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Right? So okay. Just naming, "Hey, sweetheart. I know this must be activating for you, and I'm sorry I don't have answers and I don't have clarity. And I want to just name that it is also making me really uncomfortable, and I'm working on it. And I don't have answers, but I care about you and I want you to know I get it. And I can't fix it, but I am working to not make it worse." You get to say all that to her. You don't have to come with a fix. Just coming with the naming of all the uncomfortable parts actually makes most people more comfortable.
Glow: For me, too. It makes me—
Jessica: For everybody.
Glow: —so much more comfortable.
Jessica: And that's the thing.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: It's like a big part of what I do with my readings is actually just naming things. I'm just like, "Look, you're emotional. Look, you're not emotional." Naming things has what feels like a revolutionary impact on our emotions because it's like affirming that they exist and that they have a right to exist. Right? Your feelings have a right to exist.
And when I look at the thing that's going on with you and your sweetheart, I just am not seeing a major problem. I'm not seeing a major problem. I'm seeing both of you are in big moments. And so it's not like the most important relationship, on a level, because it's not in turmoil. So it just gets to be like your sweetheart's, and it's lovely. And I think she's still very much stressing about her child—
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: —situation, like very much.
Glow: I think so, too.
Jessica: It's a consuming thing. And what's happening with your roommate is taking so much energy from you because it's taking conscious and so much unconscious energy from you.
Glow: Yes.
Jessica: And so naming things to the sweetheart of, like, "Let's talk about this, but just so you know, I'm working on that," I think, will help you and sweetheart. And then you and roommate—have you ever lived alone?
Glow: Yeah, briefly.
Jessica: And do you like living alone?
Glow: At the time, I think I was having fun. But now, I wouldn't want to. I don't like the idea of that. I thought about it as, I guess, maybe, but—
Jessica: You just gave me literally almost all the answers. And that was very Libra of you.
Glow: [crosstalk].
Jessica: It was peak Libra. It was peak Libra.
Glow: [crosstalk] what's going on.
Jessica: You're like, "Yes. Maybe. No." Okay. So you're leaning towards—and you're not trying to stay in your current place? You're not trying to buy out your roommate and stay in your current place?
Glow: No, I don't think so. No, I would not want to do that.
Jessica: Okay. That was a clear no. Great. And it's a maybe for the collective Queer living situation.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Is there a name to the collective?
Glow: No. Not yet.
Jessica: Okay.
Glow: No, not yet.
Jessica: Okay. So it isn't an existing collective; it's a potential collective?
Glow: That's right.
Jessica: Is there a location associated with it?
Glow: Nope.
Jessica: This is very TBD for an infant, right? When do you have to decide about your living situation by?
Glow: We don't have to. It's like a—I guess if I need to find that boundary for myself. But we have the option of selling our house without incurring a big penalty.
Jessica: I see. And that's as of, you said, January?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. My sense is that in this conversation of naming things, it's also important for you to really be direct about the living situation because I really do hear a lot of ambiguity from you about—it's not like you're like, "I know I don't want to live together. I know I want to do x, y, or z." You don't really know what you want yet. But if you do know that you're not trying to co-parent, I want to ground you into what the reality of living with a child is. It is exceptionally hard to live with a child and not assume responsibility for that child.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Especially if you're close friends with the parent. I've not heard of that. So I have heard of people being roommates with somebody who has a kid, but not of being platonic life partners and not co-parenting. So I want to just ground you into that, because my worry is for you to be in a position with somebody that you love to have to say no to them all the time when they have need. That's not realistic for you.
Glow: Right.
Jessica: If you know your capacity is not to co-parent, then even though you're not really sure what you want or when, what you're saying is that you don't have the capacity to stay in this living situation at this time.
Glow: You're right.
Jessica: And I think that being able to communicate to your roomie, "I don't know much. I do know this one thing, and I think that it means something else"—right? Being able to share, "I have ambiguity, but this is the best clarity I can come up with. We need to talk about this," because having these conversations when she has a three-month-old is going to be a lot harder on both of you.
Glow: For sure.
Jessica: And my best advice is that you make decisions before the child comes—those decisions are finalized before the child comes—because it will be much harder on both of you otherwise. So that gives you two months tops.
Glow: Yeah. In like a full-scope, nitty-gritty, as much detail as we can come up with kind of way?
Jessica: Yeah, because it's not going to be reasonable to expect her to be able to get into nitty-gritty with you—
Glow: Oh, for sure not.
Jessica: —with a newborn, right? Or for you—if you've had enough discomfort asserting these kinds of conversations with her now while she's pregnant, I cannot imagine you being like, "I'm going to need you to put the baby down so we can actually talk about the housing."
Glow: [crosstalk].
Jessica: You're not going to do that. You're not going to do that. And then what? And then your sweetheart is uncomfortable because you've slipped into this co-parenting role, and you're not even happy. A child's life is long. Years of childhood—they drag along. They're longer than the years of adulthood, in a way. And within that, the reason why I'm saying that is because there are many years within this child's life where you can show up as a person, like a close person. It doesn't necessarily have to be now.
And if, in your body, the answer is, "I can't take this on at this time in this way," that doesn't mean you're saying no to the kid forever, no to the roomie forever, right? I want to affirm that I can see that. I know you've kind of said that, but I can also see that. You might be like, "Oh, this seven-year-old. What a fucking magical weirdo. I'm in," and take a really active role of picking them up from school and shit, hanging out with them on weekdays when your roomie, who might not be a roommate anymore, is at work. Or a million different things can happen, right?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Just because this isn't the moment and this isn't the way doesn't mean that there won't be a moment and there won't be a way. And you just want to hold space for—you don't need to know everything. You just need to know the next steps. And I'm going to bring it right back to you to say you're going through a bunch of fucking Saturn transits. Saturn is in Aries, and you're going through a bunch of fucking Saturn transits. And what this means in English is the choices that you make now will be heavily consequential in your life.
And so, whether or not you make the choice to go out for dinner with your sweetheart on Friday or stay three months longer with the roommate or three months less long with the roommate, that's not it. The thing that's it is how you make decisions, how authentic they are, how honest you are with yourself, how honest you are with others, the behaviors that you employ around accountability and how you navigate your reality. Those are the things that will be deeply consequential.
And so some of the choices themselves might also be consequential, but I want you to know you don't want to be perfectionistic in your actions. Instead, you want to be rigorous in your approach. That's what Saturn wants. If I was good at woodworking, which I'm not, I would have a metaphor for you. And the metaphor would be something like this. This is not the time where you're doing finishing details. This is the time where you're picking the right pieces of wood. You're figuring out the essential architecture of the piece you're going to build. This is not finishing details. This is not installation. This is creating the right foundations to build the best possible piece. That is a woodworking metaphor I just came up with for you.
Glow: That was good. It made sense.
Jessica: You're welcome. Okay. Great. That's great. It's very Saturn transit heavy. What that means is, in conversations with both of these women that you care so much for, you're allowed to get it wrong, as long as you're trying. You're allowed to say it wrong or not say enough and come back to the conversation and be like, "I said yes to this, but I realized as I slept on it that it's actually a maybe or it's actually a no." You're allowed to do all that, just like you can select the perfect piece of wood and then sit with it for two weeks and be like, "It's not right for the project." Just because you picked it doesn't mean you have to use it. You actually get to change your mind. You want to allow room for process, right?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And within that, there's guilt and there's emotions and there's things. And you just be accountable to it. "Okay. I feel guilty. I feel guilty. Why do I feel guilty? Okay. is it because I did something wrong, or is it because I hate it when other people are unhappy?" You want to understand what's underneath it because, as you understand what's underneath it, you can then make choices that reflect the person you want to be instead of your compulsions and your childhood shit, right?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And this is the beautiful thing about being in your early 30s, is you're old enough to get it and you're not old enough to have a pattern of having applied it yet. It's like that "I am post-Saturn Return only but barely." And so this period of your life is fertile, but it's fertile in a pruning-the-garden way. It's fertile in a "I'm collecting all the tools" way. It's not fertile in a "I've invited everyone over to sit on my new table that I built" way. We're not having a party yet. We're getting the pieces together. Are there any final questions you have about this topic?
Glow: With you mentioning the Saturn transits being deeply consequential, I've been feeling a lot of pressure with all the choices that I feel like I need to make. So I'm like, okay, shoot. I'm feeling that as pressure.
Jessica: Yeah.
Glow: And under that, there's fear. And earlier, when you were saying that I'm allowed to be direct with somebody that I love and say, "It's an 'I don't know,' which is not a yes, and so I'm probably going to have to extricate myself in a certain way"—
Jessica: Yeah.
Glow: —there's a lot of fear there for me to do with regret. And now I'm like, oh, it's clicking me—at the beginning, you said it's not the only kind of T-square thing.
Jessica: Yeah.
Glow: I did that once before with somebody that I really loved. It went about as poorly as it could have gone—not my fault, but it's still my deepest regret and something that I'm collecting the tools to be able to forgive myself for and let go of, hopefully in this lifetime. And my roomie is vulnerable in totally different ways, but I see her as vulnerable like my ghost girlfriend, talking of fun labels—in ways that my ghost girlfriend was. And so I feel like struggling to permit myself to have a boundary and be like, "It's okay. I'm just using material," because I got a loud voice inside being like, "But what if somebody dies?"
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question, and it's an impossible question.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: It's a perfect setup, right? So, because people could die at any point—this is, again, very deep Scorpio stuff, right? Twelfth-house stuff as well. Because a person could die at any point—they could have a mental health crisis. They could have a physical health crisis. A million things could go wrong that would put them in such a state of vulnerability that—how dare you have said your needs? How dare you have said no? That setup puts you in a martyr/savior position, right? And while what you're saying is true and real, what I'm saying is true and real, too, right?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: You and your roomie are grown-ass adults making grown-ass choices. And anything could befall anyone at any moment, and it's out of your control. But what you can do is say to her, "You know I'm so fragile because I have this thing in my past with my ghost girlfriend," because she knows about it, obviously, right?
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: "And so I think that's been underlying why I've been putting off being really direct with you. I don't know why you haven't been direct with me, but for my end, this has been like a major thing. And so I'm terrified of saying no or saying maybe because I'm scared of something catastrophic happening." And it's not like you're thinking, "Oh, a catastrophic thing will happen." It's a feeling in your body.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And that trauma was like a very different version of what happened with your parents. There's this fucking terrible and final kind of consequence to trying to have a boundary. And this pattern lives inside of you. And unfortunately, the only way through it is through it. You can't go around it. You're trying. Look at you. You're trying so hard. You're doing such a great job. And it's not—I mean, you know. Then it puts you in this position where you're always reacting to your life instead of living inside of it, which is what most humans do, to be honest. And it sucks. And it's just—it's not your truth, right? It's not your truth.
You can name for roomie, "I have all these fears. The last thing I would ever want is to hurt you or for you to get hurt. And also, I don't have a yes for something that deserves as yes." And this is something that I—whenever it comes to parenting or co-parenting children, if it's not a yes, that doesn't make it a no, but it's not a yes. And that must be adhered to because—you know how you know when your sweetheart is not thinking about you or feeling you because she's obsessed with her child—
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: —and how it feels like—you've had that sensitivity inside of you since you were a little child.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: Children are psychic sponges. And so being an adult who's not really down to be there—
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: You don't want to be that adult.
Glow: Mm-mm. I really don't.
Jessica: You really don't. The child deserves better. Your roomie deserves better. And so, while this terror that you hold is real and valid and I can't promise you that nothing bad will happen—it's super unrealistic; I won't promise you that—I can say that the most loving thing for the child that lives inside of you, as well—and I mean your inner child, as well as the child that is coming into this—
Glow: [crosstalk].
Jessica: I know. I was like, "No, no. You're not pregnant. You're not pregnant. You're not pregnant." It's like the inner child that went through the childhood that you did—
Glow: Right.
Jessica: —and the child that is coming into this Earth by way of your roommate—both of these children deserve to be able to say no to things that are noes, to be able to say, "I don't want this," to be able to consent to their own lives, your little kid part and this little kid. And part of parenting, part of showing up for children, is really being there. And if you can't really be there, which—I think it's okay to say that you can't right now; maybe you will, but right now, it's not a yes—then it's a kindness to be able to hold that as the adult and say, "Yeah, that's not what I can do."
And your roommate is allowed to have whatever emotions she has. She's not allowed to say any old thing. She's not allowed to do any old thing. But she's allowed to feel any old thing. And your job will be to let her have her feelings without trying to make it better for her. You can't fix these feelings, just like she can't fix that you wish that things were different, that you don't want to have to have a fucking boundary. And you don't. You don't.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: You wish that this all happened exactly as you fantasized it a number of years ago. But that's not what it is.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And that's the thing about fantasies. A lot of our fantasies belong in our fantasy life and not in our reality. And you never know until you try, right? I mean—
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: —there's this thing that happens when you're moving through a pattern, when you're moving through a deep pattern like the one that is getting activated now, like the one that was activated with the ghost girlfriend, where you have this deeply held belief from childhood trauma. "Trauma" is a big word; it's a big umbrella, right? But I'm using it.
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: And you start to work through the trauma pattern. You work through the trauma pattern so that you're not always trapped in it, playing out the same role, experiencing the same outcome. So you start to move through it, and you make progress. And then we often get smacked down. And in that experience, you can easily tell yourself, "I knew it. There's only one way that reality works. This is the one way." But there are so many places in your life where you don't do that, where something doesn't work and you say, "Oh shit. That didn't work. I'm going to have to try a different thing." And this trauma pattern is the scariest place for you to do that.
Glow: Yeah. For sure.
Jessica: It just is. I know that there are several really difficult things that you've done in your life that, when they didn't work out the way you wanted, you were like, "Okay, I'll adapt. Okay, I'll try something else." It's not that you don't know how to. It's that this is the place where it's most terrifying and most triggering, and it's where—when we experience trauma, we splinter as kids. We splinter off. And so you keep on growing and maturing, but this splintered-off part stays little.
And there is this part of you that experiences, "If you're in my sphere, if you're in my heart, you always know what I'm doing. You always know what I'm feeling. I always know what you're feeling. I always know what you're doing." That's part of that attachment pattern for you. It's, "Don't leave. No consequences." "Don't get mad. Don't get mad. Don't get mad. Don't leave. No consequences." That's what that little part of you is seeking. And so, when you're the consequences, when you're the one who's like, "I might leave," it's inconceivable to you—
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: —because it's the thing that you fear the most.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But what it also does is it kind of has the adult part of you saying to the little kid part of you, "Sometimes leaving is actually the right thing to do. Sometimes saying no to, let's say, an unhealthy marriage is the best way of saying yes to a healthy childhood or a healthy rest-of-your-life-hood as an adult," right? Sometimes things need to explode so that we can deal with the fucking rubble and rebuild. And sometimes it does not have to be that bad, but it just is. And in this situation that you're in now, it's triggering all this fucking shit, but it is not this shit, right?
Glow: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: It is healthy, safe, consensual relationships with people who genuinely care about you, that you genuinely care about, that know you and that you know them. And it's not those same situations. But the triggers say, "Yeah, this is the end of everything. This is the worst thing that could happen." And so being able to hold space for, "This is what's in me. This lives in me. And not only am I going to take care of roomie, and I'm going to even do right by unborn child, I'm also going to honor that I can parent my own little kid. And this is hard. This is not going to feel good."
And it also is the literal best thing you could possibly do for yourself and for your future because Saturn transits build. So the next time you encounter this pattern in a little way, like your partner is—whatever—emotionally off on a tangent and you can feel it, or in a big way, like a crisis occurs in your personal life—you will have different tools. You'll have lived experience of, "I set a boundary. It was a fucked-up, uncomfortable conversation. And we worked through it." Having lived experience of that is something you can refer back to. And I cannot tell you how essential that is.
And that's—when I said, "Okay, you're in your early 30s. You're past Saturn Return," that's what I'm talking about. It's having the first adult—you're actually astrologically an adult now, post-Saturn Return. And so you can do things for yourself in the post-Saturn Return years that just aren't as possible pre-Saturn Return years. And you're ready. You've been doing work. You have a shrink?
Glow: Yep.
Jessica: Okay. Great. Yeah. I was going to be like, "You have years of therapy behind you," but then I was like, "I should ask first."
Glow: It's true.
Jessica: Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's not your first rodeo, right?
Glow: Yeah.
Jessica: If you don't already do somatic process with your therapist, you may want to ask them—she? What's the right pronoun?
Glow: The one I've been seeing most lately is he/him, but I do have a she/her that I could probably return to for—
Jessica: I'd be curious about which one of them is better at somatic process or has a relationship to it because I think, for you, you can outrun therapists. You're great at that. So this is why I'm like—as somebody who can be like, "Okay, but where are you in your body? Let's regulate the breath and then come back to the feeling before you run off on the story"—that would be really helpful for you. So that's what I would recommend.
Okay. So I'm really glad we got to that last bit because I think it was really necessary. I love astrology, as you know.
Glow: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Big fan. Huge fan. I'm glad you fucks with it. And also, when you're feeling emotionally activated is not the time to go to astrology.
Glow: Okay.
Jessica: And it's the most common time that people go to astrology. It's because we want answers. We want to soothe our nervous system with, "Look, there's a pattern. Look, there's a plan. Look, there's a reason." But what that is is trying to talk yourself out of emotions. It's trying to explain away what you feel. So I would encourage you to feel your butt. Feel your feet. Notice your breath. And I want you to notice I go from the ground up. It's like, if you have twelfth-house planets, that's the fucking move. Always start with the feet.
Glow: Okay.
Jessica: So, if you're sitting somewhere or if you're walking around, you can wiggle your toes; feel the contact of your feet with socks. Feel the contact of your feet with shoes—whatever it is. If you can try to practice feeling the layers, it's just like bringing more and more awareness into that twelfth-house grounding. And it can be really helpful for you because you have really sophisticated chutes and ladders to get away from your feelings in your body—like, very sophisticated. So developing a practice of returning to body, which is where the emotions live, will give you a lot more resources—like, a lot more resources—
Glow: Cool.
Jessica: —to operate from, which you could use.
Glow: Oh yes.
Jessica: I mean—
Glow: I could really use that.
Jessica: You could use it. You could use it.
Glow: Some more different resources.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. So I think we've done our work here, unless you had a final final.
Glow: Mm-mm.
Jessica: I think we did it.
Glow: I'm good. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Jessica: It's so my pleasure. I'm so happy we did this.