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

B.:                   Hi, Jessica. I'm so happy to be here. I'll just read my question that I submitted. So I said, "Hi, Jessica. I am so Gay. My relationship could use some guidance as we newly navigate parenthood through an Indigenous customary care agreement. We've been through some amazing highs and some very deep lows. Please bring some guidance to my Gay life. Gaily yours, B."

Jessica:            So Gay, and I love, love, love it with all my Gay heart. Okay. So lots of contextualizing questions. So you're doing this with your partner, and how long have the two of you been together?

B.:                   Eight years.

Jessica:            Oh, wow. Such a long time.

B.:                   Yeah. June 28th was our anniversary.

Jessica:            Congratulations. That's wild because you're only how old right now?

B.:                   28.

Jessica:            28. Your whole 20s, your whole Gay 20s.

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah, since we were little babes.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's impressive. Okay. And will you give me some context for what this parenting setup is?

B.:                   So Indigenous customary care—it's a child welfare system that's kind of been decolonized a little bit. So, instead of children coming into care and being deemed foster children or taking avenues for adoption, they decided to do customary care, which puts a lot of the power back into the Indigenous communities' hands to—

Jessica:            Wow.

B.:                   —make these agreements for people. And what it does is it empowers the communities to make sure that the children stay connected to their culture, stay connected to family members. Openness is very important in customary care agreements. And with these, there's a hint of uncertainty in it just because it's not mainstream like adoption or a Children's Aid Society. There's no guarantees, if that makes sense.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   So we could have our baby four, five years. We could have our baby for 18 years—you know, like, life.

Jessica:            Right.

B.:                   And it really helps the communities that have really experienced a lot of trauma from the '60s scoops.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   So it really is like a better process for these children.

Jessica:            It sounds like it. And are you in any way connected to the parents of the child?

B.:                   No.

Jessica:            Okay.

B.:                   No.

Jessica:            And is that by design, or is that just what happened in your situation?

B.:                   So that's what happened in our situation. So my partner—he's Indigenous. So, when they're trying to find homes for these children, they'll usually start off with immediate family, extended family, community, and then if there's nobody in any of those, then they reach out to other Indigenous communities as well. So my partner is a part of a different community.

Jessica:            Okay.

B.:                   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And do you have a—a baby, does that mean an infant?

B.:                   Yeah. So we've had him for several months now. He came into our care at four and a half months old.

Jessica:            So tiny.

B.:                   Tiny. Little, tiny babes. And he just had his nine-month yesterday. So [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Oh. Happy birthday, baby. Okay. So I'm going to pull up your chart in just one second, but ground me into what you could use help with around this. What are the questions inside the question, if that makes sense?

B.:                   Yeah, for sure. So I guess I'm kind of curious about a couple things. One, there's obviously the astrological side of things. I would love to know—

Jessica:            Always.

B.:                   —those details. But I think what I'm mostly searching for for guidance is my relationship. Things are pretty okay right now. They were rocky for a couple months after the baby came into the picture. And I know a lot of that is normal, just adjusting to being parents and not just us in the house. But I'm just—there were quite a few arguments. Some of them stepped out of good faith, you know? And I'm just really wanting to find the sense of security that I had in my relationship before all of this kind of unfolded.

Jessica:            Yeah. And had you ever argued before?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. I mean, I would hope so in eight years, but some people are bananas. Okay. Hold on. Let me pull up your chart. So you were born November 18th, 1997, somewhere in Ontario—people don't need to know every damn thing—at 3:30 p.m. So there are so many layers of what I want to talk about. So I'm pulling up my ephemeris. The problems that you are having in the relationship happened, May/June being a particularly rough time; is that correct?

B.:                   Yes, but also, I'd say it kind of started—end of March is when it got most difficult.

Jessica:            Oh. Okay.

B.:                   But the effects were definitely, like—

Jessica:            Okay.

B.:                   It's been weighing heavy on me.

Jessica:            So Saturn is a bitch. And you are currently going through your Saturn Return. And starting in late March, Saturn started to square your Mars. So it squared your Mars in the end of March, but it was all April, and then it came for your Venus by the end of May. May/June was Venus and the Midheaven, and then it—now we're in your Saturn Return as we speak in July.

B.:                   So I've been through it.

Jessica:            You are still going through it.

B.:                   Yeah. That's right.

Jessica:            Nothing is resolved. Nothing is sorted. And so there's a number of things that I can say, but I want to start with the first, which is, when Saturn squares Mars—Mars is what you do. It's sex, but it's also what you do and the energy with which you do it. And Saturn—cockblock. Saturn—responsibility, obligation, and immovable force.

                        And so, when we go through a Saturn square to Mars, generally what happens is circumstances come in that you are responsible to, and it feels like you have no freedom, and it feels like there's nothing you can do. And so frustration occurs. And so I'm guessing that is what happened in the relationship where the way you navigated the seriousness of this responsibility was not fully consensual between the two of you and didn't feel right to you. So I'm not looking at this chart, but it didn't feel right to you. Does that track with what was happening?

B.:                   It does.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   It does.

Jessica:            And so good news/bad news—it is not over. I am so sorry. That transit kicks back in in November. You will be feeling it November through mid-January 2027. So let's go back in time. I promise this is going to go somewhere. We're going back in time to the first year of your relationship. Did you guys move in in the first year?

B.:                   We did.

Jessica:            Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did.

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But this was nothing psychic. This is just—I know this because I imagine, in that first year when you moved in together, you also hit a similar difficult period when you first lived together.

B.:                   You know what? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And when you hit that wall, did the two of you fight?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And how did you resolve it?

B.:                   I guess time. Time, and there were—

Jessica:            You just waited for it to get better?

B.:                   Well, there were conversations, but I think mostly time is what kind of helped things. Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm going to translate with a question mark because you were like 21, right? You were young. And is he your same age?

B.:                   He's 30, so two years older than me.

Jessica:            Okay. So around the same age. So here's my little red flag. Because of the time you just had when Saturn was squaring your Mars, my guess is shit hit the fan when you first moved in together. You kind of struggled around it, and then it passed, and you're like, "Huh. I guess we're fine." And then the issues that, at core, were activated when you first moved in together got reactivated in a more intense way in April/March and on. Does that make sense to you?

B.:                   It does. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So tell me, is this around time, responsibility, cleaning, shit like that? Is it around that kind of stuff?

B.:                   Our arguments?

Jessica:            Yeah. What are you fighting about?

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I guess there's two different categories in my head. So there's our arguments where it's kind of—I'll call it innocent bickering, you know, like—

Jessica:            Totally.

B.:                   —who's going to do the dishes next. Like, "Oh, I did them last." You know?

Jessica:            Yeah. Stupid shit.

B.:                   Yeah, stupid shit. And then it kind of bleeds into the second category where a lot of the arguing kind of stems from how we communicate to one another, and it just kind of snowballs, whether it be him or myself taking something in a way that the other person says they didn't mean it, and then it turns into a conversation about tone and then—

Jessica:            A whole thing.

B.:                   You know? Yeah.

Jessica:            Yes. Okay. I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.

B.:                   So my name's [redacted].

Jessica:            Now say your partner's full name.

B.:                   Absolutely. It's [redacted].

Jessica:            So the fighting about shit is not something I'm not going to talk to you about because every couple that is honest with each other gets annoyed with each other and fights. If you're with somebody for eight years, you're going to fucking fight about stupid shit.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm not going to talk about that. That's not what this is about. The two of you spend a lot of time together, eh?

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And do either of you have a best friend outside of each other?

B.:                   You know what? I have a couple close friends that I hold dearly. I might refer to them occasionally as my best friend and stuff. But when it comes to true best friend—like I remember having a best friend in my childhood, and I wouldn't say it's necessarily the same. And my partner—I would say he doesn't have a current "best friend" best friend [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, I'm seeing that. I'm seeing that.

B.:                   Uh-huh. But he does have some online friends, and I know him and his friend that he was super close with—they still default to, "We're each other's best friends."

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Part of what I'm seeing is a through line between then, seven years ago, the last time you went through a Saturn/Mars connection, and now is that you both kind of made choices in the relationship that made your lives super dependent on each other. And there wasn't enough space, for whatever reason, then and now, to really be like, "Okay. I'm going to get some of my needs met from someone else."

                        And so some of what started to happen in this past couple months is you needed each other so much for literally everything, and that means every single annoyance, every single frustration, was about the other person. And because this transit is not done—you have months of it left, sorry—I'm going to say—and does he know you're getting a reading today?

B.:                   He does, yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And is he cool with it?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So the advice I would give to the two of you is to really take efforts to cultivate friendships with other people and to encourage each other to go off and have breaks—whether it's just blowing-off-steam time or actual closeness time—with friends, like actual friends, not just people you can be around. So it might be family members, but it's somebody that you can truly be yourself around because the first thing that shows up is just this feeling of—it's not about being trapped. That's not it. It's not about being trapped, but you can see why I would go for that word, right? It's kind of being penned in a corner.

You could walk out into the center of the room, but you both feel penned in a corner. And it kicks up larger, kind of dormant resentments and frustrations, some of them about real things, some of them about real annoying things but not the deepest thing in the world, like one person does the trash more than the other one or something like that. And it's a real thing, but it's not worth fighting over in a major way. But it's the underlying issue of how you share responsibility, how you feel taken care of.

So that's the first thing that I'm seeing. Now, the other thing I'm seeing—did you both equally want to have a kid?

B.:                   So, initially, I thought so. So, obviously, before we got to the point of having a child in our care, there was a bit of a process we had to go through.

Jessica:            I bet.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            A big process. Yeah.

B.:                   Although it didn't last too, too long. It started at the end of last year. So I mean it was long, but it wasn't, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah. It wasn't years.

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Right.

B.:                   And I know when we went into it, the conversations we had with ourselves and with family, we were really going into this, the mentality of growing our family, like taking a kid into our home and loving it like it's our own, right?

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   And then we had our baby with us, and we had a couple nasty fights. And in those discussions, it started to come to light that his view on it wasn't necessarily the same as mine, where he was kind of keeping an arm's length, you know—

Jessica:            Oh.

B.:                   —just to kind of protect himself is what he says it's for, just because the nature of the placement—there's unpredictability, right?

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   That doesn't mean I wasn't surprised to hear things that were coming out of his mouth and hear that we weren't in the same place. So that's been challenging, I guess, to answer your question.

Jessica:            And I imagine he has different inherited trauma around a child being placed outside of their home and all kinds of things like that. Is that something the two of you have talked about?

B.:                   So he actually has a brother that's adopted, and lots of his childhood, his home was a foster home taking people in.

Jessica:            So his parents foster children?

B.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            And did they do it in the same way that you're doing it, or was it more through the Crown?

B.:                   Yeah, it was more through the mainstream, like Children's Aid Society, the government.

Jessica:            Okay. And so did he like growing up with foster siblings?

B.:                   So the stories that I've been given—he didn't mind it. You know, he wasn't bitter. I know he felt like there was, at times, responsibilities put on him to kind of step up in ways that, like—you know, he's still young, and I think he balances school and working and coming home and having to kind of help take care of these children that are coming into your home, right?

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   And it's not like it was his decision to foster at the time, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah. So was it his idea for the two of you to foster?

B.:                   So it was both of our ideas. We talked about having a child, but it was little conversations throughout our relationship. And an important thing for me was waiting until we were in a house. And we moved into a house last year, and that was important to me, just—my own childhood stuff. I wanted stability. I wanted to be able to offer a home.

Jessica:            Yeah. Let me just pause you right there to say you have a Moon in the fourth house in Cancer opposite Neptune in Capricorn. Being in a safe—energetically safe—home that is like a sanctuary is so important to you, and it is such a healing from your childhood. And I just wanted to not skip over that to say, yeah, I'm glad that you were clear that that was an important thing for you as an adult—you in your marriage, but also you if you're going to go into parenting.

B.:                   Thank you.

Jessica:            Yeah. Absolutely.

B.:                   I appreciate that. Thank you.

Jessica:            Absolutely. Yeah. So you talked about it? The two of you talked about it?

B.:                   Thoroughly. And we decided to go through an Indigenous agency because my partner is Indigenous, and his brother who was adopted—it was an adoption through an Indigenous agency, but things were so different back then, it was still mainstream, kind of government run and decisions being made. But it was still through an Indigenous agency. So that's kind of what encouraged us to go that route.

Jessica:            So what I see the two of you have done I see most couples do however they end up having children, which is you didn't talk through the nitty-gritty; you talked through the high level. And it is what they call the devil is in the details. It's division of labor, yes, but it's also emotional labor. This is triggering for him in a way that it's not for you. And I see that. He's feeling feelings he didn't expect to be feeling.

B.:                   Wow. Thank you for sharing that.

Jessica:            Yeah, because he's going through a lot right now. I'm looking at your chart, and your chart is fucking lit up by Saturn. But he's also just going through a lot. And the thing I'm seeing about the marriage is that slowing things down, hanging out, getting food you both like, sitting down, eating some nourishing food or some fun food—whatever you want—and just asking him, "Hey, this has been a big transition for both of us. I want to talk to you about how it's been for you. And then, another night, we can talk about how it's been for me. But I want to just talk to you about how it is for you. Where are your fears? Where are you feeling differently than you expected? Where are your hopes? Where are you right now?"

                        And my advice to you is to ask him questions; listen to the answer. Don't take it personal. Don't defend. Don't push back. Instead, just listen. And then, another day, require him to do the same for you because what I'm seeing is that what happened seven years ago when you first moved in together and what's happening now is you're both so committed to working through it, and neither of you know how to work through it, so you're just waiting for it to pass because otherwise you do get along really well, and this doesn't—

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            This is not like your whole relationship. It's just what's happening now. But you're co-parenting, and there's a really important need for the two of you to not lose track of your relationship inside of the co-parenting. This is why so many couples break up by the time the kid is seven. Do you know what I'm saying? Because it is hard on a relationship. You've gone from just being the two of you to being the two of you plus a very tender, vulnerable, beloved little pooping and eating machine, right? It's a lot all of a sudden. Do you have an animal in the house?

B.:                   I have two.

Jessica:            Okay. What are their names?

B.:                   So we have Maze, short for Mazikeen, and Ella.

Jessica:            Longhair Mazikeen?

B.:                   So Mazikeen is the bigger dog. She's like a mastiff mix, kind of a rottweiler pattern to her.

Jessica:            So she's—so shorter hair?

B.:                   Shorter hair. Yeah. And then Ella is a cockapoo. So her hair is short because we cut it, but it will grow.

Jessica:            Okay. But she has long hair. Okay. So I flipped who's who. Okay. Ella is chattier, but Maze is more dominant or assertive. Am I seeing this correctly?

B.:                   Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay. That's why I flipped them. That's why I flipped them. And is it like Maze from the show Lucifer?

B.:                   It is. Yeah.

Jessica:            It is. Of course it is. Love that character.

B.:                   Yeah, and so is Ella.

Jessica:            Which one is Ella?

B.:                   I don't know the name of the job, but she takes all the pictures, the—

Jessica:            Oh yeah. Ella.

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Oh my God. That's very well named. Ella is very well named. Okay. Hold on. Let me get back into these dogs because I'm having a hard time seeing into the family, so I'm going to ask your dogs to narc on you. And Ella is—

B.:                   Yeah. Please.

Jessica:            Ella is the opening voice. Okay.

B.:                   She would.

Jessica:            Okay. So are you sleeping through the night?

B.:                   I have not the best sleep habits right now.

Jessica:            Okay.

B.:                   Just with how little me time I'm getting, that tends to be nighttime for me.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   So I've been staying up most times to like midnight. Baby wakes up around 8:00—

Jessica:            Okay.

B.:                   —which—I'm still getting eight hours, you know, when you think about it.

Jessica:            But it's not the kind of quality of sleep you're used to. And is your husband also staying awake late, or is he going to sleep early?

B.:                   So, most of the times, he goes to bed early. This past little while, he's been having a hard time sleeping, so he's been going to bed later.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   And right now, we are in separate rooms. I'm room-sharing with the baby, and so he's in our room.

Jessica:            Okay. And is that a decision you made or the two of you made?

B.:                   Well, I initially made because when the baby came into our care, I was hypervigilant 24/7. And at this point, I did mention transitioning back into our bedroom, but then he voiced a preference of waiting until the baby was 1.

Jessica:            Okay.

B.:                   He did his own reading on [indiscernible 00:22:04] and stuff.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   And he's right. It's safer to room share.

Jessica:            And that's three more months, right?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So Ella pointed me straightaway to your sleeping stuff. So, again, love a narc. Love a narc. You know what I mean? I don't love a narc always, but a dog narc always I do love.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So she's saying that there's a couple of things going on. Husband is—is he on his phone all the time or playing video games all the time or something?

B.:                   All the—pretty much all the time.

Jessica:            All the time. And it's like he used to do it a lot, but now it's excessive, yeah?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So this is his coping mechanism. It's a bad one.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay? It's not good for your marriage. It's not good for his mental health. It's not good for co-parenting. It's just not great. He's not doing it because he's a bad guy. He's doing it because he's overwhelmed. Have you talked to him about this?

B.:                   The amount of time spent on his phone playing online games and stuff, yeah. I've talked to him about it.

Jessica:            And he's just annoyed?

B.:                   He's done a little better the last, I'd say, three weeks, couple weeks. But he's still—

Jessica:            Ella says that's not true.

B.:                   (laughs) He's still—he's still, like—yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            He's on it all the time.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, when he goes to sleep early, he's actually going in his room and just on his phone.

B.:                   Yep.

Jessica:            So he's not really going to sleep early. He's unplugging from the family dynamic.

B.:                   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. So you don't want to separate parental care and roles so starkly—

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            —because if you do, it's really hard to feel close to your partner. Now, I know for some people, that works. That's not working for the two of you.

B.:                   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's like he doesn't know how to handle it. You're getting hypervigilant. There's nothing in the middle.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. So hold on, Ella. So she says that even if you're sleeping separately you could be spending more time intimate. And she's not talking about sex exclusively. She is talking about sex a little, but she's talking about being intimate. She's talking about lying down together. She's talking about being normal together.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            She says that you're both—the way she's showing it to me is like your nervous system is all wack-a-doodle. You know how dogs get really shaky? She's showing it to me like you're both being shaky dogs.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            And we don't have to talk about sex. Are you comfortable talking about sex?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So, before baby, was sex compatible, mutual, working well?

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah, and happening often enough and enjoyable and—

Jessica:            Yeah. All the things that we would want after eight years. That's amazing.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But since baby, it's really different, yeah?

B.:                   Yep.

Jessica:            Ella says it's, like, gone.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And it's like you both don't know how to have an active sex life with a child in the house is what it is, but it's not just that. It's that you've both kind of turned away from each other. Your other dog thinks this is none of my fucking business because she is Maze. So it's pretty fun. It's pretty fun. Okay. But—

B.:                   I love her.

Jessica:            Yeah. She's just like, "None of this is anyone's business. We should not be talking about this." But Ella has no boundaries, so we love her.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. But I agree with Ella. This is not going to age well, this way of coping. You've both kind of hardened to each other and turned your backs on each other in this way that is not making you happy as a team. It's not great for the child. Children do thrive, not anywhere around sex or—you know, but children do thrive with love and happiness and ease and flow. And listen. Nobody's ever gone through Saturn square Mars and had super fun, active sex life or been super easy in their body. Same thing with Saturn square Venus.

You're also in your Saturn Return. So the problems that exist between the two of you are activated. And the problem isn't sex. The problem is that when you don't get along, you both shut down physically.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's not exactly that you're not getting along. It's that you're coping in triggering and opposite ways with the responsibility of having a child.

B.:                   That sounds right. Yeah.

Jessica:            Will you say your partner's name again?

B.:                   Yeah. [redacted].

Jessica:            Your mother-in-law is so happy to have a child, though.

B.:                   My mother-in-law?

Jessica:            Your mother-in-law. His mom.

B.:                   Oh my God, yeah. She's like my biggest—

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   She's all over him. I have so much appreciation for her. She's really—out of all the grandparents, she's [crosstalk].

Jessica:            She's all in. She's all, all, all, all in. And that's also triggering for your husband.

B.:                   Oh.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            I don't think he's ever really unpacked what it was like having kids come and go in his childhood.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            I think he's thought about it. I think he's talked about it. But I don't think he's really rooted it out and worked it out. And so this is activating him in ways he didn't expect. Does he hate his job?

B.:                   I know it's not the job he saw himself in when he was younger, and it's like an office job, which—I think there are aspects of that that are enjoyable. Would I say he loves his job? No.

Jessica:            No. And do you work as well?

B.:                   Right now, I'm on parental leave, but—

Jessica:            Okay. So you're on parental leave from a job that you'll return to?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. But he's not on parental leave?

B.:                   No.

Jessica:            Yeah. I think, all of a sudden, he's in a job he's struggling with. He's got a kid. He's got a partner who's—I mean, you're really falling down gender roles, right? You're really doing boy/girl gender roles right now. You know that, right?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. And that's not bad, and that's not good. But it's, all of a sudden, you're in something that you've seen your whole lives, everywhere you've turned. And it's not what you planned on. There are certain plans you had, but none of it feels the way either of you thought it would feel. You thought that you would take the role that you're taking and have more emotional presence and support from him and that it would be lovely. He thought that he wouldn't feel burdened by work and child and partner. He thought— I don't know what he thought, actually, when I look at him.

B.:                   Oh. Okay.

Jessica:            I don't know what he thought. But he was just excited to have a child with you, and now there are so many parts of the reality of it that are really frightening for him. And I want to be clear. This is normal. This is not abnormal. But it's happening, and it's happening right now, and it's happening to the two of you. And you're talking about things instead of feelings; is that correct?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And it's time to talk about feelings. I'm not saying instead of things, but it's time to talk about feelings. And this is true in all couples that have kids. "Okay. I micromanage a little. I have to kind of get you to do shit"—whatever. But then there's a kid. And all of a sudden, I don't have the energy to micromanage you and get you to do shit because I'm focused on my child, our child. Right? This is a very normal thing, but it changes relationship dynamics on a dime.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            One minute, the two of you are one thing, and the next minute, you're something else. Does he have time where he's bonding with your child?

B.:                   He's recently started engaging a lot more with the baby and taking those opportunities, like feeding the baby. At first, when he was keeping that distance, it was hard to get him to do those things, the bonding experiences. But now I really do see the efforts and attempts that he's putting in to get those moments with the baby.

Jessica:            Hold on. I'm going to talk to Ella for a second. Okay. Wait. Maze is coming through and saying—because Maze is very much his dog, eh?

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Or very much like him.

B.:                   Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            And so—oh my God. You're like Ella, and he's like Maze. I get it now. Okay.

B.:                   Interesting.

Jessica:            Yeah, according to Maze. According to Maze.

B.:                   Yeah. Oh, wow.

Jessica:            So Maze is really protective of him. Is he always like this? Is he always kind of hard to reach emotionally, or is this just what's happening now?

B.:                   It's kind of consistent.

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, I think if it's usually—on a scale from 1 to 10, it's usually like a 4 or 5; now it's like a 7 or 8. It's dialed up, but it was always kind of there.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I'm just going to be totally frank. He is sad. He is scared. He is overwhelmed. Everything feels so important, and the care of his child—and I know he doesn't really—he's having a hard time saying "my child," but the care of the child, the co-parenting with you, the being in a relationship with you—all these things are so important to him that it's like he's becoming frozen and shut down and doing that classic perfectionist thing where he's self-sabotaging.

B.:                   You say that, and what happened a couple months ago was he tried basically to say, "Get out." You know?

Jessica:            Like, "I can't do this"?

B.:                   Yeah, like, "We'll call this a break," like a—

Jessica:            Wow.

B.:                   —space. It was hard. And I feel like I had to walk him off the ledge a little bit with that, just because the reality of—I was like, "You can't just drop this on me on a Saturday and expect me and the baby to be gone Sunday." You know?

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   I was like, "That can't be reality or how this works." You know?

Jessica:            Have you guys come back together or just put it on a shelf?

B.:                   I'd say it's mostly on a shelf.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'll answer that immediately. Sorry. It's on the shelf. You did not handle it. So here's my advice, okay? If possible, have your mother-in-law watch baby maybe for a night or two nights, and the two of you really talk about your relationship and about the care you hold for him and your investment. And really listen to him about what's going on. He might not show up for that because he's kind of in something and on something.

                        You are going through your Saturn Return right now. Saturn Return is when we get married, get divorced, have a baby. Big life things happen. And you have Saturn in Aries, which speaks to lessons around asserting your truth, living directly. And your Saturn is in the twelfth house, which teaches major lessons around cultivating a backbone, if that makes sense.

B.:                   Call me out. Jessica, it makes my life problem. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Sorry. And so, when I say to you be assertive, be direct—I mean, you talk a lot, but you're not the most assertive and direct, right, with real shit?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You have this beautiful Mercury in Sagittarius, and it's sextile to Jupiter. And so that means lots of words, so many words. But you'll tell stories or talk around things. When shit's really important, it's hard for you to be assertive because you're scared of what it'll cost.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You're scared of being isolated or shut out, which is your own family shit. And of course, you chose the perfect man for you because he's shutting you out and isolating you. I'm sorry. And also, here you are. Here you all three are. And you and your husband have all the control, right? Baby doesn't have any. And you can't fix or save your relationship. That's not a good goal.

A good goal is to meet this man where he's at, to get to know him in this new context, to meet yourself where you're at, to be honest with yourself about what you're feeling, because you're so focused on baby that you're willing to just let the relationship stuff work out.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And he is so—he feels like everything's moving really fast, and he doesn't know how to keep up with it. I think he's really activated around how much energy and attention and care you're giving baby and not him. Stuff you just used to do for him—you didn't even think about it.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And there was a lot of room for him to be on his phone too much or do stupid shit and be connected to you and have space for himself, and it didn't harm your relationship. But now it actually kind of does harm the relationship. And that feels like a huge burden on him. He's really activated. And I am not sure that he's really aware mentally of how activated he is.

B.:                   I don't think so—

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   —because that makes some conversations hard, right, because I think there are times where I feel like I'm maybe understanding where he's coming from, like when he was like, "Get out." I kind of knew that was from a place of overwhelm, thinking if he got rid of that, it would all quiet down and he would be able to become better, right?

Jessica:            I think if you ask him, "What are you feeling and what do you need?" he might get agitated and might have a hard time.

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And unfortunately, that feels like a real risk. There is value in—you know, you'll share the reading with him. And you can listen to me and pause it, and he can say, "She's fucking wrong. She's a fool." And I'm okay with that, you know?

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            He's a caring, responsible, kind guy. And he doesn't like it when he feels competitive for someone's attention. He doesn't like it when he has a no where he thinks he should have a yes. It is really triggering for him. And you've kind of tip-toed around his shit in your relationship.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And that worked when you didn't have a kid.

B.:                   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But it doesn't work as well when you have a kid.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Period, right? And again, the specifics not particularly, but the broad strokes of everything I'm discussing with you is the most common thing I see for couples upon the first child. All of a sudden, your coping mechanisms don't work anymore in the relationship. All of a sudden, division of labor becomes stark. This shit is real. And the best move you can make—and because of the transits you're going through—so you're going through a bunch of outer-planet transits, from Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto all aspecting each other, and then there's also your Saturn Return and your Saturn transits. So you're going through four Saturn transits.

B.:                   Nice.

Jessica:            Yeah. I know.

B.:                   Party.

Jessica:            Such a party. But because of all of this, there's so much energy here for you to honestly show up for what's happening and deal with it. And there's just as much energy for you to dig a hidey-hole and tell yourself a story that you hope is true and wait for it to pass. The problem is that won't work. The latter won't work. It won't work well, anyways, because now you're going through your Saturn Return. And the Saturn Return wants you to be an adult. That's the whole point of the transit, is you become an adult. And it's depressing, and it's burdensome. And I'm really sorry for that. Do you garden at all?

B.:                   Oh my God, Jessica. Since we've been in this house, it's one of my favorite things to do. I've been tending to my garden in the front and my plants in the back, and it's taught me little life lessons I didn't expect.

Jessica:            Absolutely. Yes.

B.:                   And I love it.

Jessica:            And that's pure Saturn stuff. Now, does your husband garden with you?

B.:                   He has a couple plants that he asks that I keep an eye on for him, yeah, like some cucumbers and tomatoes. He does the vegetables.

Jessica:            Totally. Okay. Great.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So is he into it at all?

B.:                   He doesn't seem to be that into it into it.

Jessica:            Okay.

B.:                   He says he likes what I did in the front.

Jessica:            Okay. But it's not his thing, because there's something of what you're going through that is so well suited to gardening. It's so well suited to planting seeds, nurturing growth. That's where you are right now. He doesn't thrive on that kind of consistency. That's not his vibe. So I was going to be like, "Is there any way you could use the garden as a metaphor for the relationship that you're nurturing the growth between you and that you're willing to tend to some things that he's not able to tend to, but it's ultimately both of yours?

                        Your relationship has a very strong foundation. You love each other. But has he ever been as shut down as he is right now before?

B.:                   When I look back, I can think of maybe a couple times where—

Jessica:            Ella says three times.

B.:                   You know what? Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

B.:                   Yep. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And how did you get out of it? Did you just wait for it to pass?

B.:                   Yep. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So it's really important—I really hope you guys listen to this reading together so that you can hear what I say, pause it, talk about it, okay? Because that coping mechanism doesn't age great. You're almost in your 30s. He's in his 30s now. Things are different. It's like carrying a heavy backpack feels different in the first hour than it does if you're doing it for a week.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            By the end of the week, it feels heavier. The two of you need to talk about it. It's okay that this is his pattern. You have your own shit. I'm not talking about your shit here, but we can talk about your shit. Saturn squaring all that stuff can get you to be really hypervigilant, and it can lead you to micromanage and to really be on things, which makes you a great gardener.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But it can also have you doing shit for him and around him because he's not doing it right or he doesn't do it the way you would expect or maybe because you're trying to do it for him.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So Ella is showing me that he's really angry. He's just—he's really angry. Your husband is angry. And I'm not sure—when he was like, "You need to leave," was he telling you what he was angry about?

B.:                   My understanding, from what he told me what set off him telling us to get out—it was March 21st. He had an uncle that passed away about a week, week and a half, after our baby came into our home. And at the time, I gave my place of employment a couple weeks' notice. So I was working full time and primary caregiver, like, up through the night. So I was—exhausted is an understatement.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   And his uncle had passed away. He's explained to me how—not in these words, but I wasn't able to meet him in that moment. And one of the points that really pushed it over the edge, from what I heard, is—so there's the day his uncle passed away, and I had previously made arrangements with my mother to come over, which would be the following day, reason being because I'm exhausted and I needed help. He's working full time also, you know? I just needed help.

And he had asked me to tell my mom not to come over. He just wanted to be alone. I was exhausted. I felt like I really needed help. So I pushed back, and I was like, "I really need my mom's help with this. I'm exhausted." And that argument kind of exploded, and there was yelling, you know, nasty things being said.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

B.:                   And at that point, a couple days go by. Things are kind of back to normal. And like you kind of spoke to earlier, that's kind of like what our pattern's been, right?

Jessica:            Right. Yeah.

B.:                   Forget about it, and then it's good. But then he came up to me a few weeks later. It was almost midnight on a Saturday. And he just comes out and just drops it, you know?

Jessica:            Wow.

B.:                   From the conversations we've had and the conversations I've tried having around this, that keeps being identified as the—

Jessica:            As the thing he felt really awful about.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Thank you for sharing that. And I'm really sorry because both of you are totally right. You know, the problem—

B.:                   Right? And that's how I feel about it because I feel like he's justified, obviously, in—

Jessica:            He's completely justified.

B.:                   —wanting time to himself, right?

Jessica:            Yeah. And you're justified in being like, "Well, I can't ask you to help, and I need help." And it being done imperfectly—like could you have been like, "Hey, Mom, can I bring baby to you?"—sure. Imperfect. Everything is imperfect. But it makes sense—Ella is showing me how angry he is. It's like it's his grief, right? It's his grief. It's his overwhelm. It's his feeling trapped and not being able to do what he wants the way he wants when he wants, and not being able to get his needs met by you.

                        Honestly, even if you had done exactly what he asked for, he's in a rough spot. And Ella is showing me in a dog way—with dogs, you can't just walk up to a dog and start petting the dog, right? You have to let the dog sniff you; make sure the dog is comfortable with being touched first. And she's saying that he is like an angry—she's not saying this, but she's showing me this. He's like an angry dog. If you come at him fast, if you come at him when he's not ready, he's going to bite.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            That's where he's at. And so it's really important that you, when you come to him, say, "Hey, I really want to talk to you about this. Is this a good moment? If not, do you want to schedule something for the next couple days?" Ask him. And honestly, I don't think he's going to be in a great state for talking because he's not processing his—he's not grieving. He's not processing his emotions. Therefore, when you go and talk to him, you're asking him to tap into feelings he hasn't been tapping into, he's been disassociating from, and then the anger comes up because the anger is a scab for the sad.

                        I might recommend asking him if the two of you can listen to this reading together and talk through it as—listen to something. Something gets activated. You pause. You talk. You don't have to listen to it all in one sitting—because you're not in couple's counseling, right?

B.:                   No. I wish we were.

Jessica:            So do I.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But I can tell you're not. So use this as kind of a couple's counseling tool, right—

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            —this reading. And there's nothing wrong with the two of you listening to it and being like, "Okay. Jessica was right about five things and wrong about five things." And the two of you can talk about it, and you can assess one of you thinks I'm right about something that the other one thinks I'm wrong about. Great. Talk about it. Talk about the feelings. This is not about being right, and it's not about fixing things. It's about listening to each other so you can identify what the actual problems are because the actual problem is not that, as a pattern, you're not there for him. Right? That's not what he's saying, is it?

B.:                   I don't think so.

Jessica:            I don't think so either. I don't think that makes sense. What's actually happening is he's overwhelmed, and you hurt him in a moment where he was feeling really vulnerable. And he doesn't know how to process it, and so he's not moving on. In the meantime, you're like, "But, girl, look at all these years, and look at what's happening right now. And let's keep moving." And as much as you're capable of doing that, that's not good for you, either, because you having to tip-toe around your home is exactly what you were trying to avoid by being in a stable home situation before bringing in a child. Am I right?

B.:                   Yeah. You're right.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's like what's happening now is the exact thing you never wanted for a child.

B.:                   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            Or for yourself. And so you're both being really triggered around your own childhood shit, and neither of you are fully able to sit with it, so you're naming it. So you're not helping each other through it. And so you're, if I may say, kind of acting like your mom did.

B.:                   Yeah. Okay. Woo.

Jessica:            Yeah. Sorry. Sorry, but yes, you're acting like your mom did. And he's just really sad and mad and shut down, which may be like his dad. I don't know. I'm not reading him right now. But the circumstances in your home mirror his childhood in ways that activate him worse than he expected. And within all of this is a child which the two of you are committed to caring for, yes?

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And is he still committed?

B.:                   Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. I have this instinct that the dogs are encouraging—Ella is encouraging, I should say; Maze is just kind of watching—to respect the energetic space of the child and to not really pop in. But I also do want to just check on the welfare of your child. Does that feel okay?

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Will you say his full name?

B.:                   Yeah. Absolutely. [redacted].

Jessica:            But he does respond really well to you, eh?

B.:                   He does.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you're really enjoying—I mean, you're tired, but you're really enjoying parenting, eh?

B.:                   My absolute favorite thing on Earth is that baby.

Jessica:            Yeah. I see that. Your husband needs a lot more patience, and you're scared that he won't find it, right, the ability to really show up as a dad?

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so you're compensating, just like your mom. You're compensating, and I want to encourage you to hold back a little bit and leave space for your husband to get it wrong or to not be great at it. Don't rush to be like, "Wait, wait, wait. Do this. Do that. Do this. Do that," because your husband is not doing anything that could harm baby. Nothing. He's just not doing things as perfectly as you are because you're so well suited to it.

B.:                   I'm literally such a helicopter.

Jessica:            Yeah. I see it. I see it.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            I see it. And listen. You're a natural, and the two of you, you and baby, are finding this love connection. He feels really safe with you, and he feels very loved and cared for. And that's the most important thing.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. Sorry.

B.:                   That's okay.

Jessica:            But it looks very healthy and good. But for the investment in your marriage, the investment in your husband figuring out how—what kind of dad he's going to be, what kind of co-parent he's going to be, you need to leave more breath, more room for him to show up in his way and to do it his way, which is not perfect. Yours is; his isn't. That's fine.

                        Leaving space means noticing how you get hypervigilant, that you get micromanagey/helicoptery, and just breathing through it. And maybe you need to do a little bit of latch hook or sewing or something with your hands while you're leaving space for husband and baby to get to know each other.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            He's going to be a really different kind of parent than you, and it's going to take him more time to figure out what kind of parent he's going to be. And he doesn't want to be a parent like his dad was a parent. You know that about him, right?

B.:                   I wasn't confident, but I'm happy to hear that.

Jessica:            Yeah—well, because he is being like his dad. He is. It's like the more I sit with it, the more I'm seeing that.

B.:                   Wow. Yeah.

Jessica:            And he doesn't want that, but he's stuck. And as his life partner, you can't unstick him, but you can hold space for him being stuck. Ask questions. You can't fix that you made a mistake. You both made mistakes in that crisis moment, right? But you can really listen to—the loss of his uncle was a huge loss for him, and the grief was profound.

And you weren't able to be there the way he needed. And you can have empathy and care—not panic and guilt—empathy and care for that, taking responsibility for it so that he can have faith that this is not a pattern that's beginning now that you have a child, because the care that he got changed based on how many kids were in the house and what kids were in the house. And then that happened in your marriage in this moment.

B.:       Wow.

Jessica:            And I just think it just—you know when something activates you in a way where you're like, "I don't even know why I'm reacting at a 10 right now, but I could fucking kill somebody"? Like it's drama? I think he just—he got activated in ways he did not see coming, and it's just been like that ever since. He hasn't recovered.

                        And so hold on. Does baby have a cough?

B.:                   Sorry. I'm just so amazed. Wow. He had—when he first came into our care, he was recovering from RSV, and he had bronchiolitis. His wheezing just finally stopped maybe three weeks ago, and his cough is still [crosstalk].

Jessica:            It's still there. Yeah. He's got some lung issues. It is possible that he will have—I don't know if he has allergies or if I'm just seeing complex issues in his little immune system, his little lungs. But there is, like—in there.

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah. And you're doing that—I'm like—it's exactly what you're saying.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

B.:                   And we have been suspecting environmental allergies because we noticed my partner is allergic to, like, the outdoors [indiscernible 00:53:13] season.

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   And some days when his allergies are particularly bad, we'll notice baby sneezing a little more, you know?

Jessica:            I think he has allergies. And I don't know if he'll have allergies forever or if his immune system hasn't recovered from the physical and emotional traumas that he's gone through. But I do think you want to, as a parent, be mindful of his little lungs and the patterns. So I'm not saying be hypervigilant. You will figure it out over the months and years, not over days and weeks, okay? But I am saying that's still not great, and I think it sometimes is very hard for him, so he cries extra hard because he's not getting the full breath he needs. Does he have crying fits, like maybe when he's trying to sleep or something like that?

B.:                   You know what? There are some times, yeah, when it's before sleep—because he's a very easy baby. You know what I'm saying?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

B.:                   Putting him to sleep is never really a challenge—

Jessica:            Amazing.

B.:                   —except for sometimes, right? And then—

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   —but sometimes it's the crying that kind of won't stop sometimes until he is out. Right?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

B.:                   He'll sometimes wake himself up from naps from the cough, and that's what wakes him up [crosstalk].

Jessica:            That's what it is that I'm seeing.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            It's the waking himself up.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So, in those moments, I am seeing that he's—it gives him panic when he can't catch his breath, which it would for any human.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's something to just watch out for. Again, I do see some kind of allergies, but again, I can't tell if they're real allergies or if he's just still recovering. Is he starting to teeth? I don't know when babies teeth.

B.:                   Yeah. He, just a couple weeks ago, popped his two bottom teeth, and he has some on the top that are getting ready to—

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it.

B.:                   They've been bothering him. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So, if he doesn't yet have something to chew on or however it is that you're going to—you know those chew toys that they give babies? Do you have one for him yet?

B.:                   Yeah, we have. We have a couple. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I don't know why, but I'm seeing that your husband would actually be—it would be a great thing if that was his job to get him the—like, to pay attention—

B.:                   Like buy him something [crosstalk]?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah, because he's—I don't know why, but that's what I'm seeing. I'm just checking out his health really quick. Let me see if there's anything else. Do you guys listen to music in the house?

B.:                   Not religiously, but when it's just me and baby, he does have a little playlist that I play for him.

Jessica:            Okay, that you do play for him. Okay. Great.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            He does respond really well to certain kinds of music and really poorly to other kinds.

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            There was music in his home where there was neglect or harm.

B.:                   Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            There was music really loud in his home, and so there's—he has a strong physical—

B.:                   He does.

Jessica:            —reaction to some music.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            I would encourage you to just honor that—

B.:                   Yeah. We can—

Jessica:            —whenever you can, however you can. You can't control it all the time, but—

B.:                   —because we've been wondering, because we've noticed loud noises kind of really—even ones that he kind of should be used to by now—

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   —like pouring food in the dog's dish, right? It's a loud tink, tink, tink, tink.

Jessica:            It's from trauma. Yeah. It's from his early developmental—I mean, he's still in his early developmental phase, but it's from trauma. And so talking it through while it's happening, like, for instance, if you're throwing food in the dog bowl, being like, "Now I'm going to make a loud noise. It's for food in the dog bowl. Oh, wow. That was a loud noise. How does it feel? Do you notice anything? Did anything happen? Notice the dogs. They're coming to eat"—talking it through, even though he's probably not fully understanding it—

B.:                   Talking helps him so much.

Jessica:            It does.

B.:                   [crosstalk] noise, I'll point, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah.

B.:                   [crosstalk] and I will point and identify where that's coming from for him.

Jessica:            That's great. It really helps him. The trick with Plutonian babies—now, I'm not looking at your child's chart, but whenever there's trauma, there's Pluto. Not all trauma is Pluto, but a lot of it. And with Plutonian babies, it is always wise to talk them through, "This is the thing. Now it's happening. How does it feel? Are you okay? I'm still here."

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            So, even if you're leaving a park or leaving somewhere that the kid really wants to be, being like, "Okay. It's time to say bye-bye. Say bye to the park, bye to the day, bye to this, bye to that"—it's walking them through closure and helping them to be an active, present participant in what they're experiencing. I mean, he's really bright. He's going to start talking soon, it looks like. He's ready to talk, eh?

B.:                   He said "Ella" yesterday.

Jessica:            Oh, that's so sweet.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            That is the sweetest.

B.:                   Uh-huh.

Jessica:            And was your husband able to enjoy that with you?

B.:                   He wasn't home [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Oh. But you told him about it?

B.:                   —but he has—yeah. Yeah. I texted him about it.

Jessica:            Okay. He was able to enjoy it?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Good. I think having a talking baby will be easier for him, honestly, than a baby he can't really connect with, quite. But anyways, Ella says that you're too nervous and that—basically, what she's saying is you need to sit in the corner with your toy.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Do you make her do that?

B.:                   No. She sleeps in a crate still, but—

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. And does she have a special toy in her crate?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's what she's talking about. She's showing you not that specifically, but she's like, "You need to find your safe place and sit down and calm yourself down." She's saying, basically, you need to do for yourself what you've created for her.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            And I agree with her, but I'm going to speak in human terms instead of doggie terms, okay? You are nervous, and so you are trying to skirt around things. You're not totally at home in your own home. I mean, you're at home with your baby, but you're not at home in your home.

B.:                   Wow. Yeah.

Jessica:            So the advice I'm going to give you is very simple and very challenging. I'm going to give you the advice to sit down and to let yourself feel sad and freaked out, sad and scared—whatever it is. Let yourself feel it. Hang out with it. You don't have to fix it. Feeling sad, feeling frightened doesn't mean that things are bad or going to get worse. It just means you're having feelings.

                        And modeling for your son it's okay to feel sad and bad, it's okay to have feelings, it's okay to be exhausted and scared—feeling like things are falling apart and things falling apart are actually two different things. Sometimes they happen at the same time; sometimes they don't. Sometimes things fall apart and you think they're fine. Sometimes it feels like things are falling apart, and they're not; they're just changing.

                        And if you're going to ask your husband to be present with his emotions more, I'm afraid you're going to have to lead that charge. Okay? So Ella's point of reference of sit in your crate with your toy to self-soothe—you don't have to parole the whole house. Now you're just in this crate; this is the only place to parole—is great advice. She's just saying it like a dog.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Does that make sense, what we're talking about?

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think so, like just put more effort into finding a spot to just kind of put myself to sit in my feels.

Jessica:            To sit in your feels.

B.:                   And I guess I haven't been taking as many baths lately. I used to sit in the bathtub a lot.

Jessica:            The bath is a great—and asking your husband to hang out with baby while you take a bath is actually perfect because you need to let him find his way and develop his own relationship when you're not there, and you're not leaving the house. So—

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —I see that. You're, like, in.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            So taking a long bath, playing music—and if your husband needs you, you're right there. But letting him do this in his way on his own, I think, is going to be really important. Yeah. It looks really important. Do you guys camp?

B.:                   We love to camp. We haven't been in years, but it used to be a special thing we did in June to celebrate our anniversary.

Jessica:            Okay. So what I'm being shown is you might consider—because you have a backyard now, right?

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Put up a tent in the backyard, and the three of you have a camping night.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            It might not be the best night's sleep. It might be a bust. But it's an investment in your relationship.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, and it looks like you would actually like it. You could glamp. Am I right?

B.:                   Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Just glamp in the backyard, and it would be a great experience for baby, too, right? It would be sweet. And again, maybe you plan it for a month from now. But also, maybe you plan it for this weekend. It doesn't have to be a big deal because you have all the camping stuff, right? You have—

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So talk to him about that as a potential option. Or maybe you don't bring it up and I brought it up, and now you guys talk about it—whatever works.

Now, I'm going to just pause, and I want to encourage you to take a minute. Did I answer your questions? Is there anything kind of wiggling in your brain wanting to be spoken to?

B.:                   So this has definitely been very helpful with perspective on my relationship and kind of a blueprint on what to do next. I felt really stuck in that regard for quite some time. I guess mostly answered my question. I am just a little curious, Jessica—I don't know if we have the time for it. I've never had an astrologer look at my birth chart before. Is there one or two things that really stick out from my birth chart as, like—that's noteworthy?

Jessica:            Let's pull her back up. Are you talking like light astrology, just like this, that, the other, or are you talking about a couple deep things?

B.:                   A couple deep things, I think, would be cool.

Jessica:            Of course. You're a Scorpio. You're a Scorpio. So there's a number of things worth saying. One is that your North Node is in Virgo in the sixth house, intercepted in the sixth house in Virgo. And this speaks to how important it is for you to have a lifestyle, like daily, day-to-day lifestyle, that is in alignment with your own welfare, right? Which is why you garden. You parent. You want that life. That's really important to you. So I want to validate that for you.

                        Also, you have a Moon/Neptune opposition, which I've mentioned before. And this placement makes it really hard for you to have emotional boundaries. It inclines you to be really devotional towards people you love and sometimes do too much. This can make you not totally honest with the people you love because you would rather keep the peace—

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            —than risk being the bad guy—

B.:                   Guilty.

Jessica:            —or telling somebody something wrong. Yeah. Then you have all this fucking Capricorn. You've got Mars sitting on top of Venus sitting on top of the Midheaven. So whatever work you do, you work with people, right?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And because of Saturn in the twelfth squaring all that stuff, yeah, you run yourself hard. You take responsibility very seriously. And again, you're very connected to your matrilineage, to your mom, your mom's side issues. And there is a risk that you will live your life kind of around people instead of really being yourself with people.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            This is strengthened by your Chiron, Sun, and Pluto, all—Pluto is in Sadge because Gen Z, but that Sun and Chiron in Scorpio, your Pluto in Sadge, all in the seventh. So relationships are really intense for you. You really are very deep-feeling person, and it is very hard for you to navigate the intensities that come up in relationship with other people because you want to keep things even-keeled, right?

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But you're not even-keeled by nature. You're intense. And so that Saturn comes online, and it's like, "Well, I'll just do everything perfectly the first time so we'll never have a problem." And your Moon/Neptune says, "Well, I'll just give you what you want so you're never disappointed."

                        And so the conflict that you had with your husband recently where you didn't give him what he wanted, and what he wanted was reasonable, eats at you. It's not comfortable for you. And you probably vacillate between being super guilty, like, "Oh my God. I can't believe I didn't give him what he needed," to really angry—"I can't believe he didn't recognize that what he was asking was impossible situation at an impossible moment." Right?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And they're both true. And learning how to sit with messiness is part of your work. It's, yeah, this is not perfect. You were both right. You were both wrong. And also, you were both totally right. It was more of a fucked-up situation than either of you doing something with any kind of intent to harm. And it wasn't really a pattern. The pattern is more he asks you for what he needs, and then you do it. It's unusual for you to insist on what you need, but you do micromanage.

B.:                   Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            So you're not an angel. None of us are angels, right?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You do micromanage. But you don't insist on what you need. You just kind of work around to kind of make it happen.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You both have some resentments built up.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            But all to say Mercury, your cutie-pie Mercury in Sagittarius, forms a cutie-pie sextile to Jupiter in Aquarius May 11th. You get along well with people. You've never met a stranger you couldn't talk to. You really love having people to connect with. But that doesn't mean you love super deep friendships. This is part of why, at the start, I was like, "Do you guys have friends?"—because you both do need real friends in addition to—you need people you can just "Blah, blah, blah" with. You need people who you can run around town and do stuff with that you don't necessarily have all that depth with. And then you also need one or two people that you actually have the depth with. And I actually think your mother-in-law is—could be one of those people for you, like a really deep connection.

B.:                   Yeah. We really are close.

Jessica:            I can see that. You're quite similar in core ways. You really care about each other. But all of this to say you are a Scorpio with a fucking Moon in Cancer. Your feelings have feelings, and those feelings are hidden in a journal of some other feelings. It's very emotional in there. Then you have a fucking Aries Rising, and that Aries Rising is, "I need things to happen quickly. I just need to handle it." Right?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            And so sometimes you act, and then you're like, "Fuck. But my emotions." Right? And this is one of those times because Saturn is in Aries. It's moving through your twelfth house. Your unconscious motivations are getting activated. And this is, at core, what's happening right now for you. What's happening for him is something else, but the two of you are in it together. You're in it for the long haul, hopefully.

B.:                   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And that means you have to real deal with your individual deepest shit in order to meet the other person. And I do think it's very possible for the two of you, but it's going to take a willingness to do it, and then it's going to take work. And it's going to take honest conversations. And for you, it's going to take stepping back a little, giving him some space to breathe. And I'm not saying not asking more emotional questions, not asking him to do more. It's, once you've asked him a question, let him take the space and time he needs to speak—

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            —because you can talk fast. Somebody asks you a question; you have a fucking answer. Right?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            He's not that way. He's not that way.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            And so, if you ask him to do something, let him do it in a way that you think is the wrong way or the slow way.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Let him do it inefficiently.

B.:                   Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that's really hard for you. It's really hard for you. But that's where the two of you are at right now. It's the work of the moment. So, in other words, I was reading your birth chart the whole damn time, but that's more of the astrology details. You're in Saturn transits, so it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be quickly resolved. But that doesn't mean that you can't do the work.

                        The thing about Saturn transits that I love is that you can make the changes you need to make to mature, cultivate wisdom, and reshape your life in the way it needs to be. That's the best part of Saturn transits. The worst part is the exact same thing because it fucking sucks.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            It's scary, and it's hard work. But this is the time the two of you are at. This is the time you're at. And having honest conversations about the feelings and not just the things—that's an important part of your work moving forward, and noticing where and how you act like your mom.

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            Sorry.

B.:                   Yeah. No, it's—yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And you know exactly what you don't want to do based on that, right?

B.:                   Yeah.

Jessica:            You need exactly what needs adapting when you think of it in the context of your mom.

B.:                   Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So that's a great thing to learn from and to share with him, even. "I recognize I'm doing these things, and it's putting you in this position. And I don't want that. How do we create something different?"

B.:                   Thank you so much.

Jessica:            It is so my pleasure.