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

M:                   Okay. I'll just read you my question.

Jessica:            Perfect.

M:                   How do you dream? After being driven to burnout from ambition and goals and, quote unquote, "chasing my dreams," I found solace from the ensuing nihilism by not having hope but instead looking for meaning in the immediate work I do. But it's left me with no clear vision for my future, and it's just not fun. There's so much talk about staying in the present and also about how Queer dreaming and speculative futures are so important. Jose Esteban Munoz wrote that the here and now is a prison house, but I feel like the future can also feel so oppressive by its unattainability. How do I think and feel a then and there without the desperation to escape the here and now or the devastation of an unattainable imagined future? Grateful for all your service.

Jessica:            Your question is so deep. I'm going to pull up your chart quickly. But first thing I'm going to say—it's really funny to ask a triple Capricorn how to dream, because I don't have dreams. I just don't dream. I mean, I dream at night, but I don't have, like, dreams. Part of what drew me to your question is I was like, "That's the craziest thing to ask me of all people." But okay. That said, you used to have dreams. When is used to? How long ago was that?

M:                   I mean, you know, within the year, I've been on a recovery journey that is very much focused on staying in the present, taking things one step at a time. And so that has been really helpful, where in the past, childhood was spent in a fantasy world, and then once I kind of saw a future for myself, it became very overachieving and just like, make it happen—and so very striving. And in—I think in the last ten years, the guarantees that I thought would be there for all the effort, the reward, just haven't been there. And so I've tried to pivot and pivot and clue in to what I want. And I think I know what I want, I go for it, and then plans blow up in my face. And so, just this last year, I've just been like, "Neh," just, "Neh."

Jessica:            And are you talking about work, or are you talking about everything?

M:                   Everything, it feels like.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   Work, relationships, where I'm living—yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Hold, please. Pulling up your chart. We're not going to share your birth information, but are you comfortable  with sharing your age?

M:                   Yes.

Jessica:            How old are you now?

M:                   I'm 42.

Jessica:            Okay. 42. Okay. We got so much to talk about. We got so much to talk about. So ground me—is the question you're really asking me, "How do I dream?" Or is it something else, actually?

M:                   I guess it's like, how do I have a relationship with hope? And is there a point to have a relationship with hope? Or is it just—yeah. It just feels like when I—

Jessica:            What is hope?

M:                   I've had a lot of trouble defining it because, in the past, I think I've seen hope as either something you work for that's tangible that you can achieve, or a delusion.

Jessica:            Okay. So you're talking about goals. Something that you can achieve is a goal, not hope. I mean, you might have hope around the goal, but what you're talking about is a goal. And then the other thing you're talking about is fantasy.

M:                   Yeah. I guess the hope is that things will get better, you know, just a better future.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, a cheat that I will share is that whenever I walk up to a wall and I'm stuck at a wall, or whenever somebody comes to me with a question like you are where it's like, "I've been stuck, and I can't have hope.  I don't know how to have hope," the first thing I like to do is pressure you or me—whoever I'm dealing with—to define the word because we get really hung up on our descriptions of things. And we have a lot of emotions around it, but we don't necessarily know what we're saying.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so I'm going to give you, separate from everything else we talk about today, the homework to not just look up several different definitions of the word "hope," but also—this is another trick I have when I get stuck—look up the word "hope" in several different languages. And look at the definition in different languages because culture frames language, and language frames thought. So it can be just good food for thought. That's what I'm trying to say.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But that's aside. Don't worry. I'm not going to leave you there. That's just homework in your own time, okay?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            There's so much for me to say, but the first thing I'm going to say is that you're going through your fucking Neptune square to Neptune. You're on the heels of your Pluto square to Pluto. You're in your midlife crisis.

M:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Saturn is sitting on top of your Sun. It's been opposite your Midheaven. It's square Jupiter. You are at this early middle age—right? You're in your middle age now. The astrology of what happens at this time is really confronting, and it's confronting because it's fucking hard but also because you're at this age that most of us have expectations about what our life "should" look like, quote unquote, and because we have fears, because we are looking ahead and it's not as clear as looking behind. There's something about the way that our lives go where it's easier to imagine 30 than it is to imagine 40, and it's easier to imagine 40 than it is to imagine 50, and on we go, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, that said, I just want to tell you a little bit about this Neptune square to Neptune. Neptune square to Neptune is a really challenging transit because everything in your life that does not feel like it gives you a sense of meaning and purpose starts to make you feel empty and anxious. It's very hard. I do not enjoy this transit at all. I have never met anyone who's like, "This is a great transit," because we all struggle with this. How do you find meaning? How do you make meaning out of your life? And Neptune is related to idealism and ideals, so not exactly hope, but that might actually describe what you're describing.

M:                   Yeah. When you talked about the different languages, immediately, I thought about Spanish because I speak Spanish, and the word esperanza, which—esperar means to wait. And so there is this feeling of, "Wait. Do your work. Do your job. Do your part. And things will figure themselves out." And I mean, I do know that I'm in my early 40s now, but this feels like it's been going on for the past decade, this—

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Let's get into the nitty-gritty. Let's get into the nitty-gritty. What parts of your life has this been active in or—yeah. Let's start there.

M:                   Well, it's hard not to point everything towards a certain commander in chief just kind of changing a lot of my perceptions of this country in general and the work I do and what impact it can have. And then, around that same time, just seeing the lack of accountability within my own industry, in media in general, and then I think moving in with a partner and just immediately—almost immediately—feeling like, "Oh no. What did I do?"

Jessica:            And was that ten years ago or more recently?

M:                   That was ten years ago. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   And so it was just this moment of, "No, no, let me just do the right thing. Let me keep going. Let me do my work to try to make these things better," and just getting so exhausted and burned out by all of them, which really hit its apex, I think, at the start of the pandemic. And then I think I just burned everything down. And I've been trying to rebuild and fix and starts, and it's just, yeah, this feeling of  I don't know how to build something, or maybe there's a lack of trust in myself of having goals or dreams or aspirations. But it just feels like it's not going to work.

Jessica:            That's a terrible feeling.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So you're out of that relationship?

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And your job is the same industry but maybe a different job?

M:                   Yeah, I guess same industry but radically different role.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.

M:                   [redacted].

Jessica:            Okay. And are you single currently?

M:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. And kids?

M:                   No, but that's also just this, like, oh, I realized I wanted to have kids, and now it just feels like that's not going to happen.

Jessica:            When did you realize you wanted kids?

M:                   37.

Jessica:            Okay, so late 30s. So recently.

M:                   Yeah. Yeah. In the last—yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   And I suppose I also, like—recently out of a relationship that was short-lived, but I think whenever I do try to, "Okay. Let me sit and dream," and just let my mind wander, it immediately goes to, oh, us getting back together, or me having a fight with him.

Jessica:            Interesting. Okay. There's a lot of layers here, right—

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —because one layer there I think is a really deep one—because it looks like it's the foundation, but it also looks like it's the tarp over everything—is the world, is how violent and racist and mean and sad the world has become so quickly. And maybe it is always all those things.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But the combination of the shift in politics, the pandemic, but also the internet, has confronted most of us with that. And it did poke holes in some of your idealism. I'm not going to call it optimism. I'm not going to call it hope. I'm going to call it idealism because you—and please stop me if I'm wrong about any of this, but you knew about the world. You just didn't emotionally orient yourself towards it.

M:                   Yes.

Jessica:            And now you're dealing with what looks to me really like your heart got broken, and then the world's heart got broken, and everything kept on happening—and good things happened in this period, but shit things happened in this period to you as well. And through it all, it's like you did that thing that is really classic to do in your 30s.

And I should say—let me just pull back and say a very common thing I have experienced in my practice consulting with—especially women—is you fucking go hard in your 30s, and you push yourself, and you try to do everything, and you try to prove yourself, and you try to be an adult in the best way you can. And then there's this really intense burnout and exhaustion that occurs in the early 40s, and it can coincide with perimenopause, which is a whole other fucking thing which you may or may not be dealing with.

M:                   Oh yeah.

Jessica:            But you are not alone, right? It is common because it's a response to systemic problems in the world. And they're very personal, but they're also collective. So I want to just name that messiness and come back to say I think this is an emotional issue, primarily, for you. And the way that you have handled your emotions historically has been soldier on. You have your Moon in Aries, and you power through things, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And you're particularly good at powering through hard things. That's one of your skills. And I say this because you have this Moon in Aries sitting in your fourth house just doing its thing. You know what I mean? It's just like, "I'm going to handle this. I'm going to move through it." The problem is you're not really clear what you're pushing towards anymore. You don't have energy in your tank to pull from. And you're having a hard time having enough faith, actually, to speak to your reflection on hope in Spanish, to actually slow down and recover. So I'm seeing in this last decade you've not created a lot of space for recovery. You have created some space for exhaustion, but that's not the same thing as recovery.

M:                   Yeah. I mean, I really try to recover, and the word and the ideas certainly—and I think that is the more analytical side, and yet—yeah. I know about the world. I know about recovery emotionally. It's in the last ten years that I feel like, after having started therapy and opened myself up to emotions, it was like, "Oh no. There's a reason I was running."

Jessica:            Totally. There is a part of your nature which is very strong, and that part of your nature is optimistic. You are an Aries, Sun in Aries. You've got Jupiter in the first house square to your Sun in Aries. This actually makes you pretty lucky. It's easy for you to be like, "It'll be fine. I'll deal with it later." It's a form of hope or optimism. It's kind of like writing checks today that maybe you can't cash, but you hope you can cash it tomorrow, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And that is something that is a lovely thing to have in a birth chart. It's a lovely thing to have in your nature. But it also means that you can take on too much, go too far in the wrong direction. So you could be like, "Oh, it's 2016, and I moved in with my partner. And I know I shouldn't stay with this person, and I know I'm not happy. But it's okay. I'll power through. It'll be fine tomorrow."

And so part of what you're going through is that the way that you cope—cope. I'm repeating the word because I really want you to hear it. The way that you cope needs to change, and it needs to evolve because your coping mechanisms, you have proven to yourself in the last decade, aren't great for you anymore. And they were great for you, but they're not great for you. And there is this part of you that's like, "But it was good, so why isn't it good? I should make it good." It's this soldiering kind of idea that you have, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            There's also this larger question of, what do you want from life? Right? Not just given how the world has changed, although for sure that. But also, what do you want from life? You decided in your late 30s, "Okay, I do want a child." But when you said that, it's weird because the energy behind what you said did not match what you said.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            It's the only thing you've said that I've been like, "Oh, that doesn't match at all."

M:                   Yeah. I think in the last year, I kind of have tried to be around children more often to actually see, oh, I want this. What would this actually be like?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

M:                   And there have been moments where I've really enjoyed it, and I have that desire. And then just physically, I've had so many health challenges. And then, even in this last dating experience, it's not something he wanted, and it was like, "Okay. Well, we're just dating." But it did kind of make me think, "Well, it's not something I've ever pursued," because I know I don't want to be a bad mom. And I don't know. Just—yeah, this spring, I think being around so many babies, having all of my health issues—babies just are popping up everywhere. I was just like, "Oh, I don't think this is going to happen for me." And I grieved it. And I'm sure there's still a little bit more of it there, but it's just sort of like, "Oh. These things that I realized I want—it feels like I can't have them."

Jessica:            So—okay. I'm going to slow you down a little bit because there's layers to this here. So it was in your late 30s that you realized, "Okay. Maybe I actually do want kids." Were you single at that time?

M:                   I was single. And I don't generally get high, and I got high.

Jessica:            Okay. Now it's coming together.

M:                   And it was like, "Oh, wow."

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. But it stuck, right? Then, when you were no longer high, you still wanted kids?

M:                   I realized, oh, I've been lying to myself, yeah, every time when I was like, "No. I don't want to give birth."

Jessica:            I don't know if that's true that you were lying to yourself. Maybe you changed your mind.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But when I look at your chart, I do not see a whole lot that screams, "I want to be a mom. I want to give birth," or, "I want to parent or co-parent." I actually don't see a lot that screams that. So I'm not surprised that it wasn't until you were high in your late 30s that you're like, "Huh. Maybe I've just been being Scrooge but life is Christmas." This is what I want to kind of interrupt here, is that I'm seeing that you do this thing with narrative.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You tell yourself a story, and then you're like, "Okay. We have to override the old story. This is the story now."

M:                   [crosstalk] yeah.

Jessica:            And so, when I look at you in your teens, in your 20s, and in your 30s, up till that point, you didn't want kids. I don't look at yourself and be like, "Oh, you were lying to yourself. You secretly wanted kids." I think that things maybe changed. But when I look at it, I can't help but wonder, is it that you wanted children or you wanted your life to have—be a caboose on a track? You didn't know who you are, where you were, what you were going to do with your life, what you were going to possibly do with your life. And then there was this perfect answer. When you become a parent, well, then you're a parent of a toddler, and then you're a parent of a preteen, and then you're a parent of a teen.

And when people ask you what you're doing with your life, even if you have no fucking clue, you're a parent. And in a way, it's like it solves a lot of the problems that you have been feeling really badly about at that point in your life where you were like, "What am I doing with my life? What is the point of life?" And so I'm not trying to convince you you don't want kids.

M:       Yeah.

Jessica:            But I am trying to say be wary of telling yourself that you were lying to yourself your whole life until you got high. Sometimes people do wake up one day, and they're like—whatever—a later age, and they're like, "Fuck yeah, I want kids." But when I look at you energetically, it doesn't look like what you really want to do is spend your days parenting. Now, it doesn't mean that you—

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —would be against it if you chose to have a kid with somebody, or alone. But—

M:                   So I guess I had this experience when I was eight years old where I freaked out on my stuffed animals, but then had—because I was trying to line them up. And I had this thought of, "Oh, I should never have kids."

Jessica:            Because of your temper at the moment?

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Yeah, sure.

M:                   And because of, like—

Jessica:            You get really [crosstalk] by things sometimes.

M:                   Yeah. I don't see myself as a full-time mom. I don't think I would enjoy that. But I do think I would enjoy parenting as part of a larger, richer life. I feel like chosen family is so dreamy.

Jessica:            Yeah. It is dreamy. And I can understand why you would say that for lots of reasons, one of them being that Pluto/Mercury opposition, because the way that you navigate your mental health and your mental intensity is by going into solitude, whether that's disappearing in your head, in a book, whatever it is. There is this way that you kind of can insulate.

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And there's a bunch of other things in your chart as well, which we don't have to fully go into. But I do want to say, in relationship to this larger question around hope, around figuring out what this world is and what your life is—which is kind of how I'm hearing your question. Is that right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. The part associated with kids feels very big and very—there's so many circumstances that need to fall in place that I want to kind of put it to the side and stick with this larger theme if that's okay—

M:                   Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            —because you are in a fucking time. Let me just start here, okay? You are in a time. Saturn is fucking with your chart. Neptune is fucking with your chart. You got a little touch of Pluto still. And what this means is that you are being forced—it's like the Universe is saying, "Sit down and deal with it."

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            It sucks. It sucks. I’m so sorry. It sucks. The reason why this happens and the reason why this happens at this age is because you're still really young, but you will not be young for long. You still have a lot of options. There's a lot of room for pivoting. And we can pivot into our 90s. It's harder, right? And because the world is ageist and ableist, our options really shrink. And forget the stuff about what it means to be an aging woman.

                        But you are still young. And I say this as an astrologer. I'm not just saying it like, "Oh, girl, you're young." That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, when the midlife crisis happens, we are still young enough to completely tear it fucking down and rebuild it. There's time, unless something gets in the way. But that could always happen, something getting in the way. And so the vision of, "What do I want for my life? Who do I want to be?" requires that you come to some measure of acceptance of where we are.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And I see you getting stuck there—not only there, but I think that that's an important thing for me to name because it's hard to envision what you want for yourself when you're so heartbroken over what the world is and the state of the economy and all these other things that directly impact your ability to get housing you like or build a life in whatever way.

M:                   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm going to ask you some specific questions here. Do you want to stay in your industry?

M:                   I mean, the industry, no, but the work, yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So is there a way, practically speaking, to do the work and not be in the industry and make a living?

M:                   That is what I'm in the middle of trying to figure out. And I seem to have cobbled just enough to survive. And part of me thinks that maybe why I wanted to ask you this question now is because I just had things slot in where, for the rest of the year, I'm going to be okay—not great, but okay enough to breathe.

Jessica:            Right. Survival level.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   And so it's just sort of in this now—since I'm not scrambling the way that it was, it's just sort of this bigger question of, "Well, what's the point or what are we even going to be able to do?"—

Jessica:            Right.

M:                   —is coming up.

Jessica:            Will you say what the work is that you do?

M:                   Yeah. I'm [redacted].

Jessica:            So we can just very broadly say you are in the media-reporting space.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Reporting/recording space. Okay.

M:                   And I guess the thing, too, is that I do a lot of nonfiction, and I had wanted to move toward fiction. And I was working on more creative writing, but it just feels as I laid plans for that, everything—that industry also caved in under itself, and those opportunities went away. And so, at this point, yeah, it's just like—

Jessica:            I mean, the world that you're in is not the only one affected by AI and by all kinds of other terrible things, but it really is.

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            Let me just sit here for a second and look inside of this.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You are kind of faced with, "Am I willing to hustle for a living?"

M:                   Oh God, no.

Jessica:            Okay. The answer's no. That's really clean.

M:                   No. No more. No more.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   Yeah. I hustled so much.

Jessica:            Yeah.

M:                   I'm just so tired, and I have a chronic illness. And I just—

Jessica:            I'm sorry.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So then it becomes, what are the options that are inside of your skill and your integrity that actually pay bills and leave room for your creativity so that you can side hustle, not for survival, but for the richness of the work?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And have you ever thought of teaching kids?

M:                   Yeah. I was—yeah. I've done that. Yes.

Jessica:            Didn't like it? Did like it?

M:                   No, but it wasn't the kids. It was the administration, and it was—

Jessica:            Totally.

M:                   —what I was teaching. And I have thought about teaching but going, maybe, specifically into being a media teacher as opposed to a generalist, as I was [crosstalk] at a certain point.

Jessica:            Okay. And in teaching media, are there jobs? Because I know for professors, there's so few jobs and they pay so poorly. Is teaching media something that could be like a full-time job?

M:                   I think it could. That's what I'm trying to angle myself toward right now.

Jessica:            Okay. This is my advice.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            This is my advice. That doesn't look wrong or bad, but you've given yourself one fork to eat the whole meal. And if that fork isn't what you need for every bite of the meal, oh well, use your fingers. What I'm trying to get at is I think that's a good idea. I want to encourage you to think of a couple other ideas, not to pursue everything all at once, but to have other ideas of what jobs exist that you might like because—

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —you are really good at teaching, and it is a job. It exists. You don't have to create it, right—

M:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            —which is really important because your creativity shouldn't go into—this is why I don't know that self-employment is really what you want to do because it's like you have to constantly be creating infrastructure, and you have to be maintaining it, and you have to be advertising yourself. And I think you really do best when you can go in and then talk to people about the thing that you're interested in or that they want to learn or whatever it is.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You're really good at that. And so tutoring—have you ever done any tutoring?

M:                   Yes. It's funny. I did apply to one of those kinds of jobs. But I do have—so those types of job that are temporary part-time pay, I set those up.

Jessica:            Wonderful.

M:                   But it's also just like it's inconsistent, unfortunately. It's working with nonprofits. And so it's not secure. And I'm good for the end of the year, but then winter is just sort of like—

Jessica:            It's like a dead zone—

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —without work. Yeah? As we're talking about this, you have figured this out. I saw it. Okay. Great. Pat on the back. We figured out the thing that could work. It's not the thing that's going to give your life meaning.

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            None of this is about giving your life meaning. That's the problem, right?

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            It's that it's exhausting to do because It's not your work. And okay. I'm going to give you really such annoying—I'm going to say such annoying things. I apologize, okay?

M:                   Give it to me.

Jessica:            Okay. So one thing—I keep on hearing that you want me to look at your ex and you don't want me to look at your ex. And you want me to look at your ex, and you don't want me to look at your ex. I just want to acknowledge I can hear that. We will come to it, okay?

M:                   Okay. Wow. I wasn't even realizing that's what I was thinking right now. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.

Jessica:            Not in this exact moment, but your energy is holding this bubble of, "Will she talk about it? Should I ask about it?" And I just want to say I popped the bubble. We'll talk about it in a minute.

M:                   Thank you. Okay.

Jessica:            You're welcome. You're welcome. But there's something larger at play here, which is you are in a very real psychological and emotional and spiritual—one, two, three, right, three separate levels—crisis around whether or not you're willing to accept that this is what the world is and this is where you are in the world.

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You can't power through it, and you can't be idealistic. So you're being forced to accept. And when you start to accept, you feel so demoralized and so disappointed that it's awful, and it's depressing, and it's exhausting. And then the burnout feels worse.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And unfortunately—and you have a therapist, you said?

M:                   Not currently, because of insurance stuff.

Jessica:            Totally.

M:                   But I have insurance now. I'm also essentially in group therapy settings.

Jessica:            Great. You're in a kind of therapy.

M:                   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Great. Great. Okay. A group therapy setting is a great thing to have. If you can get yourself a shrink through your insurance, please do because you are stuck at this phase of development. You keep on winding yourself up to deal with things, and then you do, and then you get exhausted and demoralized, and everything's worse. And then you kind of pull back, and then you have to start all over again. And then you pull back. And it's really just so demoralizing.

And unfortunately, this is very normal for the Neptune square. I went through it. A lot of people go through this because the coping mechanisms that burn you out no longer work during the Neptune square. And that's the lion's share of your coping mechanisms, things that burn you out, right?

M:                   Yeah. [crosstalk].

Jessica:            I know. You're not the only one. You are not the only one. I was talking about this with a friend who's right around your age just the other day. It's really challenging. And the truth of the matter is we're not going to fix late-stage capitalism or the AI takeover of media industries. We're not going to fix that stuff in this moment. But what I can really help you with is to let you know that this is the time to feel like shit about these things, not so that you can wallow, but so that you can get to the other side of your grief, to get to the other side of your exhaustion. And there is another side. There is.

                        The question for you is—it's like are you going to let yourself get mad? So—fun fact—Chiron is just about to move into Taurus.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You have Chiron at the final degrees of Taurus. It's 29 degrees of Taurus. So you got years before your Chiron Return. Chiron Return happens at around 50 years old.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But what's shifting now is that Chiron will be entering into your fifth house, which is the house of creativity and giving birth—like children, giving birth stuff—also, your hormones. It'll be moving through that until it enters into your Chiron Return. And this process is building up towards confronting you with your relationship to anger.

                        Now, fun fact—another fun fact. Sorry. I'm trying to make it fun by calling it a fun fact. It's not fun. Mars in astrology governs anger and rage, but it also governs motivation, resiliency, and strength. Vitality is related to Sun and Mars. And so what happens with your Mars in the twelfth house in Scorpio is you're like, "Okay. I don't want to be too much. I don't want to be too aggressive. I don't want to be mad. I don't want to be mean. Push it down. Push it down. Push it down. Push it down." So what does it do? It expresses itself through health issues—

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —gets inverted against you, and it fucking hurts. So you are almost a decade out from having to deal with this. But if you wait until you're 50 to deal with this, talk about no bueno. So this moment in your development—it truly isn't about anger, but for you, it is about recognizing that the full breadth and depth of your emotions are all valid, and that has to include anger, my little Moon in Aries friend. It has to include anger.

                        And so part of what I'm seeing happens for you is this demoralization. And I've noticed myself yawning a few times during our reading. I'm not bored; trust me. But it's just I was like, "Oh. This is what happens in your body." It's just so overwhelming. It's so pressing on you that your body goes into exhaustion. And you mentioned you have an autoimmune issue. Does it also kick up exhaustion?

M:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

M:                   Fatigue. Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm sorry. Yeah. I mean, "fatigue" is such a pretty word. "I'm fatigued." This is not fatigue.

M:                   Malaise.

Jessica:            This is like this heavy, wet thing. It's heavy and you're kind of having to carry it around. This exhaustion is physical, and it's emotional. It feels layered. Does that track for you?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Do you cry?

M:                   Oh yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   I've been crying a lot. But I'm a recent crybaby.

Jessica:            Good.

M:                   I certainly did not as a kiddo.

Jessica:            Like a younger person? Yeah. And do you get mad?

M:                   Yeah. I mean, I feel like when I started therapy—this was around 11, 10 years ago—that was the emotion that I was most comfortable with, not the sadness. And yeah, I ended up just burning things left and right, so many burned bridges.

Jessica:            Yeah.

M:                   And I think that maybe part of it is like, well, anger didn't work.

Jessica:            Okay. So here's the thing. The pendulum swings, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            That's the thing, is we go from really, really mad to shutting the anger down. We go from, "I never cry," to, "I cry too much." Right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            The pendulum swings from extremes before it finds its center. But what happens is we pathologize our process, and we don't allow for the center to be found because we have such a hard time tolerating the process.

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, in this period of your life, what I'm seeing is it is wise for you to be really sad and for you to be really mad. And that could be in a day. That could be in a month. That could be really sad for three months, really mad for three months. It doesn't matter what it looks like. It's about recognizing that you are not the things that are done to you. You are not the place you are. You're not the time you live in. You are you. You are your choices.

And part of what the midlife crisis transits forces upon us is to be really intentional about how we are living and how we are choosing to be. And I think this is one of the—there's like three midlife transits that happen, and I think these three transits are very much about essentially reparenting in your adult life.

M:       Yeah.

Jessica:            When you catch yourself saying, "I just need a soft place to land. I just need this to not be so hard. I need to just figure this out," what I want to encourage you to say to yourself, "And I have a right to feel this way. And I'm not going to find the answers when I feel like this, and it's okay that I feel like this. I need to feel like this." That's what I want to encourage you to do, okay, because when you're doing good parenting, when adult you is doing good parenting of sad little-kid you—which is a lot of what gets triggered when we're in major activation—the best thing you can do is be a good parent to you.

                        So make space for the feelings. Make it a little cozy or comfortable to have upset feelings. And look for the problem when the feelings are not so activated. If you're taking notes, write those three things down because—you know, I've been, throughout the conversation, peeking around corners psychically to be like, "Okay, well, where's an answer here? Where's an answer there?" And there's not answers.

M:                   I know.

Jessica:            There's not answers.

M:                   And I want answers so much.

Jessica:            I know you do. I know.

M:                   And my career was built on finding answers.

Jessica:            Literally. Literally. Like, literally.

M:                   Literally.

Jessica:            Yes. But there aren't answers. And that's not because the answers are bad. It's because if life was mountain climbing, you are at this part of the mountain where you can't see around the corner or above you. All you can see is behind you. If life was a garden, all you can see is that maybe some things were planted in some places, but who knows fucking where? There's brambles, but you can't see the new growth yet because it hasn't come up because all the work is underground. That's where you are. And that doesn't mean, therefore, things will be bad. It means the work is interior. It's internal.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Isn't that a bitch?

M:                   I also just had a question of—

Jessica:            Please.

M:                   —like, Chiron in Taurus and seeing it, it's going to be right on my Mercury opposite Pluto.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Sure is. Yep. Mm-hmm.

M:                   So that's exciting.

Jessica:            Well, Chiron sitting on top of your Mercury has everything to do with the mental health stuff I'm talking to you about. Chiron is our core wound. When Chiron sits on top of a planet like—oh, I don't know—Mercury, it challenges your beliefs, your values. And do not get it twisted. I am not talking about your beliefs and values around media and the Trump regime. I'm talking about beliefs and values about what it means to be a person, how to treat yourself with kindness or not when you're sad. You have Mercury opposite Pluto. That means your coping mechanisms are mean.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Mean. And I want to be clear. That doesn't have to mean that. I means that you learned that, right? Pluto—survival.

M:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            The work is to be able to give yourself the breath and the space to sit with and let things kind of come to healing. Do you garden at all? Do you have house plants or anything like that?

M:                   Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   I don't have house plants, but I weed at the local park.

Jessica:            Okay. Fun.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So a plant metaphor will work with you.

M:                   Yep. Love it. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So, if you've ever seen a shoot start to grow, it sometimes—it comes up out of the ground kind of folded in on itself.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And it looks, oh, like a stick. It doesn't look like it's going to do anything. And it takes time for it to kind of unveil in the sun, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            That's called growth. There are ugly stages and stages where you can't tell what it's going to look like.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            There are stages where you're tucked into yourself before you can come out. And what most of us do, especially those of us with hard Pluto placements, is we say, "Either I get mowed to the ground, or I'm a fucking glorious flower. I am nothing in between." But if you've done any amount of gardening, you know that flowers only happen in season. And they don't. And then they die.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Quickly, actually. The real story is the roots. And so, as Chiron sits on top of your Mercury, as you go through this Neptune square, you're dealing with your roots. You're dealing with not trying to redo your past or turn yourself into a magically perfect person—none of that shit. It's, instead, meeting yourself in the moment as the adult you are and doing your best to show yourself the kindness that you deserve with the wisdom that you've earned because, with that Mercury/Pluto opposition, you have had enough relationships in your life that were confronting to you, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And that pattern does not need to perpetuate. It perpetuates because it's the way you've given yourself permission to be intense.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, if you truly believe that it is okay to be intense—because intense is not bad. One can be intense and fucking terrible, but one can be placid and terrible, too.

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            Intensity—this is a Pluto word, right? And you've got your Pluto in Scorpio. It's big fucking Pluto. Intensity is not good, and it is not bad. What intensity is is powerful energy or emotion or thought, or energy, emotion, and thought. Right?

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's all intensity is. It can be used for creating something beautiful, for tearing something down that needs to go. It can be used to abuse yourself, abuse others, or to heal. Energy is energy. Energy is not good or bad. It's just energy. And so you are in this place where it's like your chart is just pushing on you. It's pushing on you so that you choose yourself or not. And what you're trying to do is fix life. And I mean, I did the same thing during my Neptune square, to be honest. It was a really stupid choice in the end is what I decided. But that's what I was trying to do because it's what made sense.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            What you're trying to do is to fix life. And there's lots of things that need fixing, so I'm not going to tell you that's a mistake. It's just the energy with which we create a problem is not the energy that we will find the solution with.

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            And you're so in a state of activation and reactivity that you're not finding yourself, and then, therefore, you're not finding the answer.

M:                   Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm sorry. It was a fucking annoying thing to say to a person. I apologize. I really deeply apologize. It's terrible. Okay. Hold on. February of 2027, your Neptune square is over. She's moving so fast. And then your Neptune opposition to the Midheaven starts in the summer of 2028.

M:                   Okay.

Jessica:            I don't need you going off into the future, but I do want you to know this: the foundations you lay inside of yourself are the most important foundations at this time.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You—and I know that this is going to sound fucked up—are actually pretty lucky. You have had, in many ways, things come together at the last moment. You've had assists. So I'm not saying you haven't had a lot of problems, but you've had assists with your problems when you've needed them a lot of the time, eh?

M:                   Yep.

Jessica:            Yeah.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Sun/Jupiter square. That's why people want it. That's a great aspect to have in your birth chart. And that's not going to go away. This is not a time for shaping reality. This is a time for interrogating, sitting with how you support yourself through the difficulties and the wonderful parts of reality, okay?

M:                   Yeah. That's with everything.

Jessica:            Isn't that annoying?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            I know it's awful, and I apologize.

M:                   Are there specific tools, though, to my chart on how to do it? Because I'm just like, how much more journaling can I do?

Jessica:            Don't do the journaling. You're very good at—

M:                   Really?

Jessica:            Journal all you want, but that's not going to fix it.

M:                   Okay. Right. No.

Jessica:            It's not going to fix it because—

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —that's a head thing. It's emotions. The work is emotions for you.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            That's why I talked about crying and anger. Listen. Most of us, when we go through our midlife crisis transits, are confronted with the ways that we stopped evolving as children emotionally. We're confronted with our lack of emotional coping mechanisms because, in this world, in this culture, we are encouraged to be intelligent but to be smart enough to not linger on our feelings.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, unfortunately, the midlife crisis often triggers major emotion stuff. And this is when people get really stuck in their lives or really get unstuck. So having you sit with your emotions, fucking sit in your emotions, is awful. It's terrible. Just fucking sit in your emotions. I just think it's awful. I wish I had a good—I wish I had something beautiful to say. But it's hard, you know?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            It's hard to just sit with your feelings. I am a fan of very gentle movement, like touching yourself in a self-contained way slowly and with care—that kind of careful—as a method of staying connected to the emotions which live inside of your body.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Is that going to help? I mean, a little. But what's it going to help you with? Sitting with your emotions. That's terrible, right?

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so I am basically saying, if it feels awkward and uncomfortable and slow, you're doing it right. I'm sorry. It's terrible, but it's true. It's true.

M:                   [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. Now, I know you want me to speak to the ex, so—

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —we have to, with time, shift in that direction. But before we do, something that I often say and that helps me in my life is I am personally not a hopeful person. I'm not at all hopeful, but I am very determined. And so I thought, at some point in this conversation, I was going to say that to you. I was going to say, "Well, if you can't be hopeful, get determined." But that's actually not your way. It's just not your way. Part of you is seeking idealism and fantasy.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And to that part of you, I want to encourage you to read fantasy books or something. Go into a genre of fiction that you haven't gone into before, and let it captivate you and fill up something inside of you that needs to be filled. And related to hope itself, which is not idealism but something else, what I'm being shown is that you've pointed all of your hope outside of yourself. "I hope I get this. I hope I can do this. I hope that works out."

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And now you're being called to point it inwards. Your hope is meant to go inside. How can you hold hope for your capacity to move through this emotional block? How can you hold hope for your relationship with yourself? This is not a "I pray at night so that God gives me what I want" kind of thing. It's a "I sing to myself so that I sleep well at night" practice. Does that make sense, the difference?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And I encourage you to sing at home alone.

M:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? Because singing is a really great way for you to get out intensity and emotion that doesn't trigger you. I'm not saying you should join a band, because that's actually not it either. This is more about singing as a way to access feelings that are in your body and release them without having to excavate. You know what I mean?

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's like you don't have to go to therapy always. Sometimes it's just karaoke at home. Do you live with other people?

M:                   I do. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   But I love karaoke.

Jessica:            Okay. And do you have a car?

M:                   Not where I am right now. But I can create kind of a soundproof—

Jessica:            A sound booth? Okay. Cool, cool, cool.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Just as a way to release emotion when you're feeling really stuck. So, the next time you're feeling really stuck, try to remember you need to sing. Like, give it. Like, loud. And see if that helps pop something out of you because it looks like that might really help.

                        Now, I know we need to go to your ex. And it's the most recent ex, not the ten-years-ago ex?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   Yeah, the most recent.

Jessica:            And what's the right pronoun to use, you said?

M:                   He/him.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Cis guy?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            What's the question about him?

M:                   Are we going to get back together?

Jessica:            Really? You want to get back together with him?

M:                   Oh, Jesus Christ. I mean, that felt so like, why do I want it, because—

Jessica:            Why do you want to get back together with him? Seriously, why?

M:                   Because, when it was good, it felt so good.

Jessica:            How long were you with him total?

M:                   Not that long, like four months.

Jessica:            And how long was it good for?

M:                   Three.

Jessica:            I was seeing a month and a half.

M:                   Oh, you're right. Sorry. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's okay. That's okay. Again, your idealism tends to be pointed outside of you.

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            He is boring. He is not available. He's not particularly kind. He's very nice. Why do we want him? We do not want him. Girl, girl, girl. It's because he seemed safe.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            He's not safe. He just seemed safe. If he was safe—I mean, he's so boring. But if he was safe—sorry. Am I wrong, though?

M:                   I thought he was fun. We had so much fun.

Jessica:            Really?

M:                   There was so much banter. There was so much creativity there.

Jessica:            The whole time or for the first month and a half?

M:                   The whole time.

Jessica:            Interesting.

M:                   Yeah. There was so much goofiness.

Jessica:            Hmm.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            It's interesting because I'm not looking at your dynamic; I'm just looking at him.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And when I look at him, it looks to me like he is flat. It doesn't mean he's not intellectually stimulating. It doesn't mean he's not clever. But his energy looks flat.

M:                   Yeah. I—yeah.

Jessica:            Did he end it? Is that the story?

M:                   Yeah. Very abruptly. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

M:                   And something that early on felt like, "Oh, this might not really—might not work for me," was he's good with happy emotions and overwhelmed by challenging emotions.

Jessica:            Anything else. Anything else.

M:                   Yeah. Anything else. Yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You might not like to hear this, but I hope for your sake you do not get back together with that man.

M:                   Thank you.

Jessica:            That is not a happy life. That man would not make you happy.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            He is like a fun activity partner. He's not somebody you could need.

M:                   Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            So I don't know if you will get back with him, but I sure fucking hope not, for your sake, okay?

M:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            You're welcome. But you're kind of shopping for immediate ease and safety. And instead, what I want to encourage you to be shopping for is spark and compatibility. You had intellectual compatibility with him but not actual compatibility. Dating compatibility should be emotional at its core. That is not what you've been seeking, and it's not what you had with that man.

M:                   Mm-hmm. Yeah. Correct. Yes.

Jessica:            So do you primarily date cis dudes, or is it just who you were dating at that time?

M:                   No, yeah, I primarily date them, too.

Jessica:            Interesting.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But you're Queer identified, so you do date—

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —other genders as well, yeah?

M:                   Yeah. Yeah, I have.

Jessica:            Okay.

M:                   Yeah. It just always seems to be those are the ones that pop up.

Jessica:            Well, sure. Heterosexuality is very aggressive that way. Also—I mean, not saying that you're heterosexual, but yeah, straight dynamic is easier. It takes a lot less work to be the guy, a straight guy.

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            But also, if you're not great at being in emotion, it's a good motivation to not actively pursue dating women. It's not like it's always that different in any sort of way, but I am going to encourage you, if you do actively pursue dating—which I don't know that you're really ready to do yet, but I'm going to encourage you to really take steps, go out of your way, to put yourself in a position where you can meet women.

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Oh. Did you feel that? You pulled back. So I recommended it, and you pulled back. And again, this is only the second time I've clocked you doing something like that in our conversation. And so that fear may be a result of—maybe you don't actually want to date women. Maybe Queer is an idea instead of something you really want to do. Maybe it's scary to you because it sounds like something you do want to do, and therefore, it's scary. Maybe it's something else altogether.

Again, this is an interior time. I want to encourage you to really explore that because I do see there's this part of you that just wants safe and normal so fucking bad, and it's really hard to be Gay, safe, and normal, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, it's not, but it is. That's where it is for you, and this is where you're at with it.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, again, there's room for gentle inquiry around this. But I do see a lot of resistance to that inquiry. And so I don't know if that resistance, again, is internalized shit you need to deal with, or maybe you just actually don't want to date women; it's not really it for you, which is totally cool. But it is worth sitting with—hold on. What is that? Hold on. This is the only things I've said that have activated you in this particular spiky way, which is really interesting. Have you dated women?

M:                   I've gone on dates. I'm an immigrant, and as you said, I was reminded of Matthew Shepard. And I grew up in a place that was very similar, even smaller than Laramie. And I think I felt so unsafe visibly already for being Brown that it was just sort of like, "Well, I can't be Gay and Brown."

Jessica:            Right. Pick one. And you can't pick one, so you pick one. Okay.

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            Got it.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But now, do you live in a place now that that's not the case?

M:                   Oh, yeah, I feel totally safe here. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

M:                   And I could explore that. Yeah. And I feel like [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            But it's the emotions. It's the emotions. It's the emotions.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like when I kind of do a little push, you have a pushback reaction on an energy level. I don't think it's intellectual. I think it's more emotional, like, "I can't. That's not it." And I just want to encourage you to, again, sit with that, not because I'm trying to get you to date women, necessarily—

M:                   [indiscernible 00:59:24].

Jessica:            —but because the old reactions from childhood that—and in this topic and in a myriad of other topics—that were good survival mechanisms for you at that time—if they don't get revised, then what ends up happening is what happens to a lot of people as we age. Your life gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

M:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so these terrible, fucking annoying fucking transits occur to force us to be in crisis so that we ask these questions, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And it is worthy of your emotional energy, not your mental inquiry. This is not journaling. This is sitting with. And that might translate to you [indiscernible 01:00:11] and putting yourself in sapphic spaces specifically, and not with the intention of hooking up or dating, but with the intention of being honest with yourself about what comes up, because you don't need to push yourself. But the room where our sexuality lives in our psyche houses a lot more than just who we want to fuck or who we fall in love with or who we get crushes on. It houses our creativity, so much of our vitality.

                        And so, if you've been using one of those half doors, crawling through the bottom, not really exploring the contents of the room, then there's a lot that you're missing out on of your own creativity and of your own vitality. So this is a good time—I feel bad because I would love to give you practical, "Do this. Do that. This will happen." But you're really being called to sit in the unknowing. Give yourself permission to have whatever emotions come up around that without attaching a narrative to those emotions because the emotions need to come up so that they can get flushed out. And then you can figure out what's on the other side. You cannot figure out what's on the other side without going through the emotions.

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            I'm sorry because that sucks, because who doesn't want to fucking know the answer before you go through terrible emotions and confronting self-inquiry? But that's the assignment.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Sorry.

M:       Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And your mind is probably going to return to this guy. That's okay.

M:       Yeah. I mean, it's a—

Jessica:            May it not work.

M:       Thank you for saying that.

Jessica:            Pluto opposite Mercury in the birth chart, which you have, tends to coincide with having a really hard time with letting people go.

M:       Yeah.

Jessica:            And so it's okay that you grieve the potential that could have been if only he was a different person.

M:                   Def—yes.

Jessica:            You know? That's fair. You're allowed to have that. I don't want you to take that from yourself. But don't tell yourself, "I'm grieving what he was because we were good together." Instead, be honest. "Oh, the guy that I thought he was is not a guy who would just pull the plug on a relationship without a whole lot of context," or, "The way that he handled emotions would never be a safe place for me to land."

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            "So, wow, now I know this kind of banter and intellectual chemistry was such a yes for me. I'm going to add it to the list of things I want for whoever I end up with." What I'm encouraging you to do is hold it differently. There are things you learned about what you want. Hold that clearly. You know what I mean? But then it's okay to also acknowledge, "Yeah, I wanted him to be something he wasn't," because even if it didn't work out between the two of you, if he was who you thought he was, he would have really sat with you and shared why.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But he's not who you thought he was.

M:                   No.

Jessica:            Therefore, he didn't fucking do that, this fucking guy.

M:                   No.

Jessica:            I'm sorry. Do you listen to guided meditations?

M:                   I have, yeah, in the past. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I feel like this might be a good time for you to use your analytic mind to sort through different kinds of guided meditations. See which ones feel hokey, which ones feel life-affirming, which ones feed that fantasy part of your nature, which ones kind of speak to your healing process. And see if you can collect—I don't know—three, four that really seem life-affirming that you can then have on a playlist so that you can not work so hard analytically but have something that engages you emotionally and spiritually. Does that make sense?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            I think that will help you because this journey really requires a lot more patience than you have. And so something like that—it's kind of like "sitting with your emotions," quote unquote, is easier to do when somebody's talking at you—not for everybody, but for you, you know?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Because your brain is just like zing, zing, zing, zing, zing. So it's nice to have a distraction that is life-affirming and speaks to the heart of what's important to you at this time.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So, hopefully, that will work.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, we've talked about a lot of things. We've gone in a lot of directions. Just take a moment and check in with yourself and see, have I answered your question? I know it was a really big question. But have I answered it?

M:                   Yeah. I mean, how do you dream? Like, you go within.

Jessica:            Unfortunately. And also, part of what you're identifying as dreaming is fantasizing. So I think it's also about taking your question and branching it off into—there's a part of you that needs fantasy, and then there's a part of you that needs hope. And these are actually two different things that you have kind of smooshed together because when you were in your powering-through-it years, you could smoosh them together.

But now that your body and your age and your life is calling for more presence and mindfulness, you're like, "Oh, I actually have to pick these two things apart. They're not the same thing." And fantasy is easier to satiate than hope. But if you're satiating fantasy consciously, it might be easier to start to eke out where hope lives, what it feels like for you.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Good. Yeah.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not easy. And I'm sorry. And the good news is you've been going through this Neptune square to Neptune—by February of 2027, it'll be two years.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So you've gone through the worst of it. And your Uranus opposition is not for a little while yet.

M:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Years. It's a couple years off. So you got the work that you got. We've got that Chiron/Mercury—you know, you got some shit going on.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But again, everything points internal. That's where you're at.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you have an animal?

M:                   Yeah. She's not with me. She's staying with family, but I miss her so much. And yeah, that's been part of just—yeah, I have a dog.

Jessica:            Is it your housing? It's a dog. Okay. Is it your housing that is not okay with having your pet?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think it's hard for you to live without animal love.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            It just makes life a little harder. So, if you have friends with animals, hang out with them. And if not, get ye to a dog park, or go to a cat rescue café or something like that because it does something soothing to you.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm just looking for little actionables to send you off with. But I really—I wish you well through this.

M:                   Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. Be really gentle with your progress.

M:                   Yeah. I just want to be perfect now.

Jessica:            Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Well, if I had a magic bullet, I promise I'd shoot you with it. You're welcome. Yeah. I'm so sorry. It's a terrible thing. But you're doing the work. It's just like this is how it feels. I know. I'm sorry.

M:                   No, it's nice, though, to get some affirmation of, yeah, this is—

Jessica:            This is what it feels like.

M:                   —this is it. Yeah.

Jessica:            This is terrible fucking transit. It's a terrible fucking transit. I'm so sorry. It's my least favorite one. No, it's not my least. It's on the list of my least favorites because you're like, "How do you even know if I'm making progress?"

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            You know when the transit is over. You can't know while it's active. And so you have about six, seven more months.

M:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. You can do that.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. The last thing I'll say to you is this. You only have six or seven more months, and this will never happen to you again. This is the time to excavate hope from fantasy. This is the time to seek what in your life gives you meaning and where you want more meaning to live. This is the time to be in the messiness of not knowing. And this time will pass, and you'll never get it back. And so, as awful as this transit is, there's gifts in it, right?

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, if you can lean into that because you're at the end of the transit—I can never lean into that kind of shit at the beginning of a transit, but at the end, I'm always like, "Oh shit. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I gotta lean in." So maybe that would help you as well. This is your moment to do this work, and this moment will not reoccur. You know?

M:                   Right.

Jessica:            When it's over, it's over. So lean in.

M:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

M:                   Thank you so much.

Jessica:            It's totally my pleasure. I'm so happy we did this.

M:                   Me, too.

Jessica:            And I hope you take really good care of yourself.