July 22, 2026
647: How to Truly Break a Pattern
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Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.
Jessica: M.G., welcome to the podcast.
M.G. Hi, Jessica.
Jessica: Hi. What do you want to do a reading about?
M.G. I would like to do a reading about the future. So here's my question. How do you make a five-year plan when the future feels fake? I've spent the last decade inside of, working my way out of, or healing from a long-term relationship where I experienced intimate partner violence. I'm a few years out from that dynamic and grateful to say my life is freer, healthier, and more stable than it's been in a very long time.
But now that the worst is behind me, I find myself struggling to imagine what comes next. After spending so many years focused on survival, I can't seem to bring my long-term thinking back online, and my brain's focus on the day to day is only made worse by how scary our world is.
I feel that I have meaningful work to do in this world, but I don't know how to trust my vision or instincts about where to begin. So I find myself looking for signs, permission, and direction out there instead of moving from a place of personal power and self-trust. I would so appreciate any advice and astro wisdom you could offer on where to start in reconnecting with my agency and planning for the future when it just feels so darn fake.
Jessica: Okay. It's a really deep question. So I've got a number of things to say and a question before we pull up your chart, which I'm going to do really quickly.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: The first is I'm really sorry that you dealt with partner violence. I'm so sorry. Is that important backstory, or is that something that feels relevant that you want to ask about or talk about in this reading?
M.G. It's important backstory. I don't think there's much to talk about anymore—
Jessica: Great.
M.G. —thank goodness. But if it feels relevant to you and there's context that you need or if something comes up, I'm absolutely interested in going there.
Jessica: Okay. Great. Good. And I'll say just intuitively at the onset—and this can evolve and shift—I don't sense that it—like, it feels in the past.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: I mean, not divorced from you, but it feels in the past.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So that's great. I'm glad that I'm hearing that right. I just didn't want to move past it without checking.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Actually, let me just pull up your chart. Okay.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: So you were born in 1991—not everyone needs to know everything—in Santa Clara, California, at 8:00 a.m. And there are so many things that you named that are so important, but I want to have you ground me into—I don't know if I'm oversimplifying it or missing major other pieces. Is it how to plan for a future when it feels like things are so unstable, or is it something else?
M.G. I think it is about planning for the future when everything feels bananas. But I do just feel this larger sense of—not chaos, but, like, fuzziness.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. Things just feel fuzzy. And it took so long to get out of that relationship and to rebuild my life, like to get back to a baseline. And I feel like I'm finally there, and that is massive. And for so long, that was the shore. That was the sight that I had set my vision on. And now I'm there.
Jessica: I see. So it was like it was your goal.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And now, goal achieved. "What the fuck do I do?"
M.G. Exactly. What the fuck do I do? How do I even imagine the future? I'm in the future that I was hoping for, and now I've arrived, and yeah, I feel like I have a lot more to do. But it just feels really hard to imagine next steps.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And when we talk about next steps, are we talking about love life and relationships? Are we talking about family, family planning? Are we talking about career or work in the world?
M.G. I think career work in the world.
Jessica: Mm-hmm.
M.G. Relationships are complex, and I'm not into them right now. Maybe something to talk about later, but—
Jessica: Oh, no, wait, wait, wait. No. Uh-uh.
M.G. Oh. Okay.
Jessica: Sorry.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: I'm going to be a pain in your buns.
M.G. Okay. Yes.
Jessica: So Saturn is currently in Aries, and it crossed your Midheaven. And it also sextiled itself. And so let me just see if it comes back—it does come back to your Midheaven. Does it go all the way back? And it does go back to sextiling itself. So we have to talk about both.
M.G. Both my career future and love life?
Jessica: Career and relationships.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: I'm sorry.
M.G. No, it makes sense. It's okay.
Jessica: It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. You have a number of things I want to say to you which are super, super important. The first one is you have in your birth chart this beautiful Venus/Jupiter/Mars conjunction in Leo in the first house, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so that part of you loves to have something life-affirming, values-driven, to be actively engaged in and moving towards, yeah?
M.G. Absolutely. Yep.
Jessica: Saturn sits opposite your Venus, your Jupiter, and your Mars. And so, if it's not hard, it doesn't count, eh?
M.G. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have to work for it.
Jessica: You have to work for it. And if it just comes easy, it's like, "Wait a minute. No. Wait. Wait. What's the catch? What's going to go wrong? I have to second-guess it. I have to comb over it. I have to make sure it's okay."
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: There's this "no pain, no gain" element of Saturn in the seventh house, which I should name is really important because you've got your North Node in Capricorn conjunct the Descendant. For you, learning how to share of yourself authentically in intimate relationships without abandoning your work in the world or responsibility to yourself—so sorry.
M.G. Ugh. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. Sorry. This is really important work for you. And you've heard me say probably many times before I don't like to encourage people to focus on their Nodes until 40-plus because it doesn't really make sense until 40-plus. But you are going through a Saturn sextile to Saturn. That's where I'm going to start with you. And Saturn sextile to Saturn in your birth chart—because Saturn is in the seventh house, the house of intimate relationships—it's when you set the dynamic for what will then come when Saturn hits Taurus and it squares itself.
So how you handle Saturn now sets the stage for what happens then. That's how transits work. And Saturn being fucking Saturn is such a reliable planet to track your own progress with. So the foundations that you lay in yourself of accountability to self, showing up for yourself, with others—they're exceptionally important. They're not pressing. They're not calamitous. They're just important right now. Okay?
M.G. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: We'll come back to that. We'll come back to that.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: Don't worry. I won't start there.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: But it had to be said.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Now, Saturn crossed your Midheaven this year, and it's going to come back. And what this means is it's like a 29-year pinnacle point of Saturn's movement through the houses. So it's at the highest point of your chart. And this has you questioning, "What am I supposed to do with my life? What is the meaning of life, and what is the thing I'm meant to do with it?" Yeah? That's like the crux?
M.G. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Jessica: And you have this beautiful Midheaven in Aries. So you want to do something. You want to do something. And Saturn sextiles it in your birth chart. Venus, Jupiter, Mars—they all trine your Midheaven. You've got lovely aspects to your Midheaven. So you have great capacity. Sometimes opportunities just—boop, they show up, and they're exactly what you need.
M.G. Yeah. Yes.
Jessica: Lovely. Everybody's jealous.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But when it comes time to face adversity, frustrations, blocks, because you don't have natal oppositions or squares or even conjunctions to that Midheaven, it's such a foreign energy that it fucks you up. It's just like, "Oh my God. What do you mean? What do you mean? Wait. What?"
M.G. Yeah. "Clearly, it wasn't for me [crosstalk]."
Jessica: "If it didn't flow, I'm not supposed to do it."
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Which is not inherently true, and also, there is a truth to it. We'll come back to that. And then one more thing I want to point out is you have a Sun/Mercury conjunction in Gemini in the twelfth house.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so this feeling of things—of basically getting defeated, of being demoralized, of being tapped into where you don't have control, where the world is careening out of control—it's not intellectual for you, although it's in Gemini. Mercury is there. So you got thoughts. You got ideas. You got words. But it's like you feel it in your cells. It's very deep.
And this is part of why people with these placements in the twelfth will often experience demoralization, because you're feeling fucking everything. And what could you possibly do about anything when you're feeling everything?
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. The way that I kind of organize as a fellow twelfth-house person, as a person who is purpose driven or values driven—something that I do that might be helpful just at the start of our conversation is, I don't know what's going to happen in the world. We can't plan on things that haven't happened yet. You can assess potentials and risks. But ultimately, when you don't know—is the world going to blow up? If the world is going to blow up, why am I planting a garden? What is the point of planting a garden if there's going to be a wildfire that's going to come right in front of my house?
M.G. Exactly. Yeah.
Jessica: And you can't know. That's the thing, is you can't know. I mean, I'm a psychic. I'm an astrologer. I read Tarot. I don't know. We can't know until the experience of retrospect. And that means—well, it can mean a million things, right? We can hold that in many ways. But what I want to suggest is that there is a wisdom in making choices that are aligned simply because they're aligned instead of making choices because they're going to work or they're the, quote unquote, "right" choices because—
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Does that make sense?
M.G. Yeah. Yeah. Making the choice because it feels values-aligned, true—like it's what I want versus because I know it will give me the desired outcome.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: If you do what's right for you and it doesn't work out because the world blows up, you're not going to regret having done that.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: If something happens in your personal life that throws you off course, having done something that was in alignment before you got thrown off course—you're not going to regret that. You might regret the world exploding. You might regret something throwing you off course. But you won't regret choosing what's in alignment because when people—and a lot of people do this throughout their lives, but it really kicks in in your 30s. When people start being like, "Well, there's no point because people are awful," "There's no point because there won't be a safety net for me," "There's no point because"—insert potential/theoretical/possible calamity—then you stop living in the present, and you're living for a potential future that you don't want.
M.G. Right.
Jessica: And it fucks you up.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And it just fucks you up, right?
M.G. Yeah. One thing that I've been kind of thinking on lately, which feels connected, is agency, and I am really good at adapting and responding to my environment. And so, when an obstacle is thrown at me, I'm like, "Great. I'll shift. I'll change. I'll adjust. I'll adapt," instead of thinking, "Oh, I can shape this outcome"—
Jessica: Yes.
M.G. —"I can shape what is coming," which is something I'm rewarded for in the world, right? I am incredibly adaptable, and I can brush it off and get up and keep going and revise the plan, and it'll be fine; I'll make it fine. But that feels like it is a very old coping mechanism from a time when I was a child and I didn't have any control over the world, and I just internalized, "I don't have control over the world, but I do have control over myself."
So I think part of what feels like is maybe under this question and under this conversation is permission to shape, permission to—yeah, just change the conditions instead of change myself.
Jessica: Yes. Okay. So let me add to that.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: It's not just permission to shape. It's not just permission to change conditions. It's permission to fail.
M.G. Oof. Yeah, it is.
Jessica: Sorry. That's the problem.
M.G. Yeah, it is. Yeah.
Jessica: If it was just about shaping and changing, you'd be on board already.
M.G. Yeah, I would.
Jessica: We wouldn't be having this conversation, okay?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: It's about permission to fail. It's about permission to make a mistake in what you choose. It's about permission to choose something because it feels aligned, get several steps in, and then be like, "Oh shit, this isn't aligned," or, "This was aligned, but now that I'm in it, I've been changed, or it changed, and therefore it's no longer aligned." It's permission to fail.
M.G. Mm-hmm, or maybe not have the thing that I feel like I need to do it. I think that's the underlying fear, is like, what if I actually can't just do the things I want to do?
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. [crosstalk].
Jessica: That's a different way of saying fail.
M.G. Yeah. Exactly.
Jessica: I just want to just say fail, fail—
M.G. Yeah. No, it's fail.
Jessica: And I'm saying the word "fail" a lot because I have a belief that—and I know you have a fucking Sun/Mercury conjunction in Gemini, but I'm going to still double down on this—that when we keep it really simple—"Oh, I'm scared of failing"—there's seven million ways you can fail. There's a million levels on which you can fail. So we can explain them. We can defend them. We can unpack them. We can contextualize them. But if we recognize, "Oh, I'm just scared of failing. That's a very human thing," then you can work on that. And if you work on a fear of failure, then it applies to all the contexts and all the levels and all the layers. But if you focus on each individual context, level, and layer, you get lost in the sauce.
M.G. Yeah. I mean, I do love to focus on each individual layer—
Jessica: Yes. I see you.
M.G. —and all the contexts.
Jessica: I see you. Yes. I see you.
M.G. But that does also make sense. Yes. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. I'm not saying don't do that if that lights you up or if it's your nature. But when you're in times like you are now of just, "I have too much energy, too much noise, too many thoughts, too many goals, too many worries all at once," that's when you simplify, right? That's when you simplify. Sometimes I don't know what I'm going to cook, so I just start doing the onions because they're going to be the base of my meal. And that's just like, "Okay. That's what I know." And then I start messing with whatever's in the fridge, and I go.
M.G. Whoa. I do the opposite of that.
Jessica: You do the opposite? Tell me what you do.
M.G. Well, I mean, that makes so much sense. But what I don't know—I'm like, well, clearly, I need to make a list of all the things I could make, and I need to look up recipes with that one thing, and then I need to make a plan.
Jessica: Yes. Okay.
M.G. And I need to make five things because, if I'm cooking now, I might as well just cook for tomorrow, too, and—
Jessica: Oh my God.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: This is peak Gemini behavior, by the way, peak Gemini behavior, because—and this is not bad. It's just, sometimes, that gets you to organize, get shit done, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And then, other times, it means you don't do anything because you set such a high standard with so many details that it's unrealistic, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So the reason why I will sometimes just start with the onions is because, once I've cooked onions, I have to choose something. I have to do something. I've put myself in a position where I'm cooking for myself so that I eat. And so that's how I eat weird things sometimes. I'm just like, "Okay, I cooked weird shit together." And sometimes I end up making something I never would have made if I hadn't put myself in a position where I had to work with what I had.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: It might be a fun experiment—I don't think you'll have fun, but a fun experiment for you to, the next time you're like, " I don't know what I could possibly make," just start. Just start because, when it comes to your work, your sense of calling, you're totally willing to work. You're down for labor. You're down for effort. You're down for innovation. You're down for follow-through.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But what you had spoken to before is what I would call a maladjusted coping mechanism. It's just like it's high-functioning. It serves you because it serves others, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so you kind of move through the world a little more easily. But at the end of the day, when your goals and ambitions don't come from inside of you, you end up feeling similar to how you're feeling how, like, "What? Wait. What? Why? Is there a point? Like, why?" So I want to—let's whittle this down. Is the work you're doing now connected to the work you want to be doing?
M.G. Yes, in a very short-term way.
Jessica: Okay. And what's the work you want to do?
M.G. It still feels a little fuzzy. I know that I want to be in the therapeutic healing space, maybe with some art inside of that. The sort of plan that I've built for myself is going to school for the therapy path, but I actually don't really want to be somebody's therapist long term. I think I'm much more interested—
Jessica: Why?
M.G. —in research and writing.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. Yeah. I just feel like I want to make a contribution on a bigger level than the one-to-one. And I think the one-to-one is so draining for me, and so I won't actually be able to stay in my gifts in the one-to-one. But I'm not 100 percent sure on that.
Jessica: Okay. You have Pluto square Mars, Jupiter, Venus, from the fifth house, right? Your Leo stuff is all in the first, Pluto and Scorpio in the fifth. Research—fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Research. Yeah. Writing? Research? Gemini? Pluto? Fuck yeah. Go.
M.G. Cool.
Jessica: Except, when you're not working with people, you get disengaged.
M.G. Yeah. It's true.
Jessica: You get bored. You get bored. You get disengaged because people are hard for you, but it's partially because people are your work.
M.G. So will you say more about that?
Jessica: Yeah, I will. Everything in your chart points to people are your work.
M.G. Oh.
Jessica: I am so sorry. I am so sorry. But you have Saturn in the seventh house. So where we have Saturn are our lessons. And you're Queer identified, yeah?
M.G. Yes.
Jessica: Love it. Love it. Happy Pride. So, yeah, Saturn in Aquarius—not the most traditional Saturn in town, right? Sits in your seventh house, teaching you that learning how to build with someone is a huge lesson for you. You know how to build for someone. With someone is a different conversation.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: That Pluto square to your Venus and your Mars with Jupiter sandwiched in the middle—you take big swings or no swings. Am I right?
M.G. I think so.
Jessica: Do you date casually?
M.G. What does that mean?
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. Casually?
Jessica: Well, that's an answer on its own. So, when you date, do you get into relationships right away?
M.G. Yeah. I mean, historically. I'm really working on changing that right now.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. But historically, I have gotten in many relationships, and then I'll take little breaks—
Jessica: Just immediately?
M.G. I'll take little breaks, and I'll have my whole phase, and it's great and fun. And then I, you know, [crosstalk].
Jessica: Big swings.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: That's big swings.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: It's not just, "I'm single for a period of time." It's [indiscernible 00:21:31], right?
M.G. Of course.
Jessica: You go hard in whatever direction you're going, right?
M.G. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Jessica: Big swings.
M.G. Okay. Big swing. Yeah. Heard.
Jessica: Yeah. Big swing. So fucking Pluto, right? Plus you've got all that Leo and a Cancer Rising, so you're just like, "Love me. Care for me. Love me. Care for me. You can't love me or care for me? Are you my enemy? Or can I fix you so that you love me and care for me?"
M.G. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. I do love being loved.
Jessica: Yeah. Sure.
M.G. I joke with my friends that my toxic trait is what I find most attractive about somebody else is them being really attracted to me.
Jessica: Yeah. That's totally—that is very honest.
M.G. I'm working on it, though.
Jessica: No, it's very honest.
M.G. I'm working on it, yeah, healing it.
Jessica: The key is keep it in the sheets, not in the streets. Keep it at kink—
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: —in a traditional sense. Let that be what's happening in bed and an all-sexual dynamic. That works, somebody who's literally obsessed with you on that level; that's their vibe. That's what they enjoy. That's what you enjoy. When it's a whole relationship dynamic, it's not sustainable for you because you have Saturn opposite Venus, Jupiter, and Mars.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so Saturn is like, "We're two old people fighting on a porch." You want to go straight there. You are attracted to intensity and profundity and really not completely easy dynamics. And then you make them permanent right away, because fucking Saturn, right? So we're back on your love life, notice. We were talking about work, and now we're back on your love life.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But I'm actually going to swing it back to work.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: I'm still going to get you with love life more, but the reason why I'm swinging it back to work is, yeah, people are draining for you because you don't have training. You are imminently trainable because you have Saturn in the fucking seventh house opposite Venus, Jupiter, and Mars. And so, were you to have training—in whatever modality—for being in relationship with other people where your role was perfectly clear—because in a relationship where you're a therapist or doing some sort of consulting, the role is perfectly clear. You're Saturn. It's appropriate for you to be Saturn, right, because you're holding space. You're accountable. You're watching the clock. You're helping people through the wisdom of your study and expertise. Saturn. You're being Saturn.
You get fucked up when you don't know your role. You get fucked up when people dip and dive between roles.
M.G. Yeah. I hate that.
Jessica: Yeah. It's not your strength. It's not your strength.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so I would actually say—and I'm not trying to convince you to be a therapist, but I actually don't think how individual people are draining for you is a reason to not be a therapist for you. The Sun and Mercury in the twelfth house—that's your vulnerability with people because your energy boundaries are not great.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: You throw out your energy really, really, really, really, really wide—like, so wide—to every person you've ever met. It's across America from land to sea. You're wide.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And you're just like, "I need to get all the information because I can use the information to keep me safe."
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: What ends up happening is you get flooded. You are not able to use the information, but you get a lot more anxiety, a lot more dysregulation. And then you're feeling around in the dark trying to figure out, "Okay, well, what do I have to fix? What pieces of Lego do I have to click together? Where's the light switch?" You're not quite sure what you're looking for, but you're trying to fix everything you come in contact with.
M.G. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: Now, in personal relationships—I got a lot to say about that. That's really—it really gets you in trouble. As a therapist, not so much.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: I mean, as a therapist, you energetically shield, and then you stay focused on the person while you're with them. When they leave, you do energy clearing so that you give them your energy back; you take your energy back.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: And you just do it ritualistically.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: Now, that's a skill to learn, right?
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: It's like it's a skill to learn. It's a habit to develop.
M.G. Yeah. I think that's what scares me about therapy, is because I already know that I'm energetically way more in everybody else's businesses than I should be.
Jessica: Yes. Yes.
M.G. It's not helpful to me. It's not helpful to them. And then I'm responding to their energy instead of them and trying to be in three different conversations at once because I'm in the energetic conversation and then talking to them and not sure who's—it's messy. And I already know it's messy, and I don't want to do it. And so I'm worried that if I am somebody's therapist, I'll just—it's also exhausting.
Jessica: They would be overjoyed if you were doing that. You love it that I'm doing that with you.
M.G. But I'm so tired. It's so tiring.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. So the way you're doing it is tiring, and you're doing it with everybody. But I would suggest that the reason why I give good readings is because I'm in all the conversations and I'm listening on all the levels. You want that from your consultant—your therapist, your counselor. You want that from that kind of person. You don't want that from your friend. You want your friend to just fucking listen to what you are saying and then to butt out of your business otherwise. You don't want that from a date, God forbid. But you do want that from a therapist.
M.G. [crosstalk].
Jessica: Okay. Okay. So—but I do want to say—and this is really important. We're separating out kinds of relationship, and this is really important because inherent in your question is, "I'm so overwhelmed by everything, I can't figure out what to do about anything."
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And what I'm trying to pull apart for you is personal relationships versus professional relationships, personal roles versus professional roles. I'm not pointing you away from doing research. I am suggesting that you would be bored by that if that was your full-time, everyday living. Some people can lose themselves in research. You can for a period of time, but then you come back to a need to talk to people, to make eye contact with people, to be engaged with people.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And you got Saturn opposite Mars. You're a real "Tap me in, coach" kind of guy. You want to get in there and coach people, right? You want to help them figure out the way. And again, as a date—not actually ideal unless somebody's asking for that, whereas as a therapist, it's implied and inherent.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So I'm encouraging you to go the direction of exploring what it would look like to counsel or do therapy. And there are many ways to counsel, right? Therapy is not the only way. And I know there's a lot of ethical and other kinds of issues with therapy.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And also, I know that it's a career. You can take insurance. You can age. You can be in your 50s and 60s and working as a therapist. It's not against you to be an older woman as a therapist, whereas for a lot of other jobs, it's very hard to be older.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And again, I wouldn't typically, to somebody in their 30s, name that. But you're going through Saturn transits.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so, in 14 years, you're going to be how old?
M.G. I'm going to be 45—44.
Jessica: Okay. 44.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. Don't ask a Gay to do math, Jessica.
Jessica: I know. I know. It was a hate crime. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm actually glad you put it that way because I couldn't do the math; that's why I asked you to do the math.
M.G. We got there together.
Jessica: We got there. Okay. So you're going to be 44, still young, but old enough to encounter ageism.
M.G. Absolutely. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah, in particular as a woman, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so all of this to say I am pointing you towards considering what career moves you're going to make, assuming the world isn't going to explode, trusting that the world is going to change. That's an inevitability. We know that. But the world end, the world explode—that's a different thing that we don't know.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Am I encouraging you to take on a bazillion dollars in debt and go to school to become a therapist? Not exactly.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But I am saying there are many ways of counseling that require the world to be a certain particular way. Being a life coach or an astrologer, well, people have to have disposable income, whereas being a therapist—it's on insurance for a lot of people, so it's not inherently something fully out of their pocket.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So that is worth considering, right?
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And is this speaking to the question?
M.G. Yeah. If I'm being really, really honest, I think there's also something about the one-to-one in therapy that doesn't feel like the impact is worth the effort.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. I want to be making an impact. I feel like I'm supposed to make an impact, and not on some, like—
Jessica: What does that mean? What's impact? What does that mean?
M.G. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question.
Jessica: Thank you.
M.G. It's not about a claim or status. But I think it's knowing that the effort changes things. I mean, of course it changes things one-to-one—
Jessica: Changes what? What things?
M.G. I feel like there's a lot that I know and have learned and will continue to learn about how to be in relationship with each other. I feel like I learned a lot from all of the really hard shit I went through around intimate partner violence and Queer love and Queer relationship and healing and sort of generational violence that a lot of Queer people of Color inherit and how to do it differently. And I just—I want to be a part of giving our communities better options. And I know I can do that at the one-to-one, but I feel like I'm supposed to be a part of doing it at a bigger scale.
Jessica: Okay—
M.G. And I'm a little bit afraid to say that, because I feel like there's maybe some ego in that, but then it also feel—
Jessica: It's okay that there's ego. You have a lot of Leo, and then you have an Aries Midheaven. So there's going to be some ego in it. Ego is not bad. Thank goodness for ego. We want ego. We want our ego to help us do the things we want to do instead of to drive us to do something that's not aligned; that's all. You can have ego. Best of luck having all those planets in Leo and not have ego drive you, okay? So I'm going to push back a little bit, though, because you keep on saying change on a big level. Are you talking about politics? Do you want to go into politics?
M.G. No. I did that. No.
Jessica: Okay. So it's not politics. You're not talking about legislation. You're not talking about being a lawyer?
M.G. No. I think more culture-shifting work. Writing feels like the thing that makes the most sense to me. But maybe it's like—
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. —healing offering with my writing that is then done at the group level.
Jessica: Interesting. I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.
M.G. Okay. I have lots of names.
Jessica: I want all of them.
M.G. I've seen you do this before, so I thought about all my names.
Jessica: Yeah. So you know. Yeah. I want all the names.
M.G. Okay. [redacted].
Jessica: Oh, look at you hiding all that stuff. Okay. Hold on.
M.G. Did I hide it again?
Jessica: Hiding lots of stuff. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. I want to say a number of things. The first one is you're really, really, really good at hiding. You do this—you're hoarding all of your feelings, all of your thoughts, all of your experiences. You're keeping them in your belly. You're keeping them in your belly. That's how I'm being shown it. And you try to hide it. You try to push it down so nobody sees it. And so you're carrying everything with you all the fucking time, all the fucking places you go. But you don't anyone else to see it or be burdened by it, so it gets to be a heavier burden for you, and it takes more effort and energy to carry. Does that make sense?
M.G. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. I'm feeling emotional [crosstalk].
Jessica: Yeah. I'm sorry.
M.G. Yeah. One of the things—I took bullet points ahead of time, and the first one is being seen because that's something I struggle with. And yeah. I hide a lot, but I don't want it to look like him hiding. I want people to—
Jessica: Who does?
M.G. —think—
Jessica: Yes.
M.G. —they know—they're meeting the Venus stellium.
Jessica: Yep. Not the Saturn opposition. Not the Pluto square, obviously. Totally.
M.G. No, or the twelfth house or any of that. Yeah.
Jessica: Totally. Totally. Totally. So—
M.G. The belly thing is interesting. Yeah.
Jessica: Do you have tummy issues?
M.G. No. I mean, I have a physical belly, and my relationship with my weight in my lifetime has been really complex. And I think that it's been a way for me to hide. Yeah. There's just childhood trauma when I was younger where I was—I felt really visible and scared because of that. And I think, after that, I realized that when I'm in a bigger body, I'm safer. I'm not as sexualized.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.
M.G. I feel safer.
Jessica: That makes sense.
M.G. And so, throughout my life, I've gone back and forth with, do I want to be visible or do I want to be safe? You know?
Jessica: So there's a number of things I want to say. The first one is, on an energetic level, you are safer the bigger you are. On a material level, walking through the world as basically every single one of your identities, being bigger and more visible isn't inherently safer, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And this is where having a realistic understanding of spiritual versus material is really important because on a material level, I'm not going to say to you, "Yeah, get bigger. What, are you hiding? Don't hide." But on an energy level, I am going to say that to you. Get bigger, not smaller, because when you're bigger, you're accessing all of your energy, all of your capacity, all of your guidance. And when you're smaller, you're living in a corner of your own capacity.
M.G. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: When you're energetically big—okay. Hold on. But you don't want to. See, this is a part of the problem, is you don't want to. I heard that. I heard that. But you don't want to, right? You do, but you don't, but you do, but you don't, but you do, but you don't.
M.G. I don't want to get big.
Jessica: You don't. No.
M.G. I do. I do, and I—yeah, and I don't.
Jessica: But you don't, but you do, but you don't.
M.G. And I do. And it's like I'm currently doing some somatics work—
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. —and part of the practice is, yeah, really grounding and rooting and feeling our depth and our length and our width, getting big and feeling—
Jessica: Yeah. Get big.
M.G. —the power of it. And I was just at a retreat, and my big takeaway was it only serves all of these violent systems when I'm that small.
Jessica: Literally.
M.G. And I don't want to ever act in service of the systems again.
Jessica: Yes.
M.G. And I just spent that whole weekend high off of my own energy and power when I let it run.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. And it was really beautiful, and it makes me really emotional because I've spent so long afraid of it. But I'm still afraid of it. And it feels really good when I let it run, and I also don't know how to stay there because it's just so practiced to get small. And it feels like everybody benefits except for me, but maybe I'm—
Jessica: Yeah, except for you, when you're small.
M.G. —wrong there. Yeah.
Jessica: No. When you're small, everyone benefits but you. I agree with that. And I think that the answer to how to stay there is that's not a good goal. A better goal is, "I'm going to develop a habit of returning there," not, "I'm going to make the habit of staying there." It's a habit of returning there. That's all. The whole world has told you your whole life and everyone who's come before you, "Be small. Do for others. Be small. Do for others. Be small. Do for others. Shh. Do for others."
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: You're not going to break that. That's a bad goal. I mean, maybe you will break that. I shouldn't say you're not going to break that. But you're not going to go from, "This is how I've lived my life," to, "I'm radically different in a heartbeat just because my mind understands it."
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: It's instead setting the intention, "I'm going to build this habit." So we're back to failure, actually, because what we're talking about is recognizing that your capacity to be in bigness on an energetic level—it's really just being in wholeness because, when we're whole, we're big.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And when you really get it the way you have this past weekend and probably a couple times before that, immediately comes the grief. "Oh my God. What have I been doing my whole life?" Right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: That's actually what comes up first. And we think to ourselves, "Well, I understand it now, so I should be able to fix it now." But we are not computers. We are complex, emotional beings. And what is actually happening for you is first the awareness, then the joy, then the grief, and then the old coping mechanisms come online. "Okay, well, if I'm aggrieved, if I feel bad, then I have to fix it. What did I do?" And then you are further from being in that bigness.
And so, if you say to yourself, "Okay. That's not a failure. That's the process. I'm going to just return to practicing being big," recognizing that when you're in a somatic healing weekend with a bunch of people working on the same thing, there's all this energy for you to tap into, and when you're alone with your patterns at home or interacting with somebody you're flirting with or whatever or at work, all your old coping mechanisms are going to be loudest and the devil you know.
M.G. Right. Yeah.
Jessica: And so recognizing, "Okay. I am going to have to practice remembering to use this approach. I'm going to practice risking being too much. I'm going to practice experiencing grief when I wake up in two weeks and realize I completely forgot to do this"—because all of those things happen to everyone who tries, not just to you. To everyone who tries.
I want to come back to something else that you said, which is your stated goal of wanting to do healing work and writing and one-on-many work, right, like one-on-group work, can be done as a therapist.
M.G. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: So I'm not saying these things because I'm trying to get you to be a therapist, but I am saying these things because you want to innovate your own path. You want to have skills accrued that you can share with groups. But it's hard to accrue those skills without using those skills and practicing those skills and getting trained in those skills.
M.G. Exactly. Exactly.
Jessica: So I'm not saying be a therapist, but I am saying being a healer is not going to inherently be a shorter path or even a very different path. It will be different. You won't have to go to conventional hierarchical schools. But one thing we do know is that we are, in the United States, in the rise of white Christian nationalism. So what I think is appropriate that not everybody is talking about—because it's not a concern for everybody, but realistically, what do you think happens to the occultists in the room? What do you think happens to the healers in the room?
And I'm not saying that to frighten you, but if we're having a conversation about the perils, the unimaginable perils that may or may not happen, is it possible that the more conventional path is the better match? Is it a social work degree versus a therapy degree? Is it doing some sort of training under a healing modality that's less conventional? Yeah.
M.G. Yeah. I will say that's actually the path that, in my head, is my, quote, unquote, "five-year plan," is the traditional route. Go to school. Do the MSW because it makes—like all of the structural reasons.
Jessica: It's that stuff.
M.G. And then practice in the short term so I can long term create that path that I want. I just don't exactly trust that vision right now. And I do also have the option of potentially just staying in the role that I'm in right now and maybe working my way up here. I'm pretty sure that's not what I actually—
Jessica: I agree. That's not what you want to do. I agree. That's not what you want to do. And when I look at this path that you're kind of like, "Okay. Short-term, five-year plan, do this damn thing," it's not 100 percent yes. You're right. It's not. When you have a yes, you know.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And you K-N-O-W.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. You know. And that's not what this is. And it's also the thing that is kind of glaring that is in front of you that seems like the next best step.
M.G. Yeah. Exactly.
Jessica: And you have a habit, my sweet Gemini friend, of thinking, "Well, the next best step is bullshit. I should have a clear yes." And this is not the first time in your life that you've had not a clear yes, you've made choices, and then they've actually been the right choices.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah. I will say I think because I've spent the better part of the last decade of my adult life, which—25 to 35—really underwater, I don't really trust how I've navigated my adult life in some ways.
Jessica: I see.
M.G. I feel like I don't know how to do it yet, you know?
Jessica: I see, I see, I see, I see, I see. So you don't trust your decision-making process.
M.G. No.
Jessica: And were you underwater professionally or personally?
M.G. Personally.
Jessica: That's right.
M.G. Professionally, I was doing pretty okay. But I—
Jessica: Correct.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: No, no. No buts. Let's just hang out with this, okay? Professionally is not actually your struggle. I'm not saying you don't have struggles professionally. Everybody does.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But you're doing a lot of conflating of one with the other, and it's—you're finally old enough that you have enough evidence to substantiate that that's wrong. That's a wrong way of thinking. You were underwater personally and thriving professionally—
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: —making good choices professionally.
M.G. I mean, barely, but yeah. No, I mean, I technically had a good career, but my whole life was on fire, you know?
Jessica: Totally. Totally. But you technically had a good career.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So the career is the thing you really want to talk to me about in our reading, but it's actually the thing you need the least amount of help with because you could be underwater and still be making good decisions professionally, eh?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. Okay.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So that's really important information. And that's why, no matter how hard I try, I keep on bringing it back to personal relationships—
M.G. Oof. Yeah.
Jessica: —because that's actually what you need help with.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And before I force you to talk about that, I'm going to say something else about career. I'm going to give you homework to seek several models of different people in professional capacities who created a life, a career path, that you think is maybe not exactly what you want but a similar path to what you want, somebody who's doing one-on-many work who's in some form of healing modality who helps community in a way that is—vibes for you, that is correct for you. Try to come up with three or four models of people who are doing it in their own ways. And I'm not talking about fictional people. I'm talking about real people.
M.G. For sure. Yeah.
Jessica: And what I'm guessing, based on your birth chart, you're going to find is all of them did behind-the-scenes or one-on-one work before they made a big impact in public.
M.G. For sure. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. That is one of the pieces of that arc or that path that I've imagined that feels true.
Jessica: Yes.
M.G. I'm like, yeah, I know I'll have to do the private before I do the public.
Jessica: I think, for you, it's true, and not—I don't think that's true for everybody, but that's in alignment with how you—you want that kind of substance and the experience of the individual to apply to the group, to the community.
M.G. Exactly. Yeah.
Jessica: And so, therefore—
M.G. I want to trust my expertise. I don't want to just be talking—yeah. For sure.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. You don't just want theory. You want practicum—
M.G. Yes.
Jessica: —because you've got Saturn, right? You've got your North Node in Capricorn. You need practicum.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So I want to assure you that while, of course, you'll have issues with people if you work with people because—people. That's not your problem. Your problem is your personal life, okay?
M.G. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jessica: So I don't think it's going to be so dramatic. It's your fucking personal life. Okay. So who are you dating right now?
M.G. Oof. I'm not. I'm not. And it's my big gold medal moment, is that I have been taking a break from dating for the last seven months. And—
Jessica: Congratulations. You're not hooking up with anyone?
M.G. No, I'm not. I—
Jessica: Are you sure?
M.G. In the last two and a half weeks, there's been this kind of flood of romantic interest. And I'm trying to figure out if I'm in the place where I can start taking suitors again or not.
Jessica: Okay, so people interested in you or a person interested in you?
M.G. There's people interested in me. There's one of whom who I'm pretty interested in, but I'm pretty sure they were both very emotionally unavailable. And then—
Jessica: When has that stopped a Queer before?
M.G. Exactly. But I'm—well, I'm trying to be different. I'm trying—
Jessica: Okay. Okay, okay, okay. So my question for you—can I look at this person? I'm looking at the patterns. I'm not going to make predictions about the person.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: Are you comfortable with that?
M.G. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I am comfortable with that.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. It's really new, but we have a lot of cultural overlap, which is super rare. They're from my cultural background, and it's really rare to be Queer in our culture and out, and they're Trans. And they have navigated—
Jessica: Uh-oh.
M.G. —our culture as a Trans person, which is, like—
Jessica: Uh-oh.
M.G. What?
Jessica: You're in so much trouble. You're in—
M.G. Oh no.
Jessica: This is your kryptonite.
M.G. Literally, all of my friends are so concerned. Yeah.
Jessica: This is your kryptonite. Okay. Tell me your full name and theirs, please, so I can look at it psychically.
M.G. Okay. My full name, [redacted].
Jessica: Thank you. And then theirs?
M.G. [redacted].
Jessica: Okay. So have you admitted that you have feelings to each other?
M.G. Yes.
Jessica: Okay. That—
M.G. But we decided we're going to stay friends.
Jessica: Of course. Yeah. Can I ask you a question? Have you ever decided to stay friends with someone and then stayed friends with them?
M.G. No, Jessica, I have not.
Jessica: I know you haven't.
M.G. This is my view of doing things differently.
Jessica: Sure. Okay.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. So your favorite thing in the whole, entire world—forbidden fruits.
M.G. Jesus. Yeah.
Jessica: Things you can't have, things that are wrong. Again, we want to eventually get you keeping that shit in the sheets instead of the streets. Do you know what I mean?
M.G. Absolutely.
Jessica: Eventually. Eventually. But now you have the perfect setup. Do you want to be partnered, like married?
M.G. Long term?
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. I think so, but I have—my relationship with love and romance has just been so purely destructive that if I can't do it well, then I'm totally okay just forgoing it.
M.G. I have [crosstalk]—
Jessica: Great.
M.G. —friends. I've had a lot of love in my life. It has really been my great challenge in my lifetime—
Jessica: Yes.
M.G. —is how I relate to love and romance.
Jessica: Agreed.
M.G. And it has really, really harmed me, and I cannot keep doing it the way I have.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. So I would love to be partnered, but not at the expense of my future or the life I'm supposed to have.
Jessica: Great. So have you ever written down what you believe to be the conditions of a healthy dynamic?
M.G. Not exactly. I do have a note in my phone that's what I would like in a partner.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Okay.
M.G. But—
Jessica: I'm going to give you homework.
M.G. —it's not the conditions of a healthy dynamic.
Jessica: Okay. Of course it's not. I knew that your answer was no because very few people do this, and it's the most effective thing in the world, okay? And you like lists, so I don't know what we're doing.
M.G. I love a list. I love a list.
Jessica: Yeah. So this is a list that you're going to work on until you feel good about it, and then you're going to write it out in a beautiful way with a nice pen, okay? What you're doing is you're writing a list of what is a healthy dynamic in the first three months of dating.
M.G. (laughs)
Jessica: Okay?
M.G. I'm not laughing because it's funny. It's just—
Jessica: I know. It's a tragedy.
M.G. —you're really, like, tracking me.
Jessica: I know I am. I know I am.
M.G. Specificity. The first three months. Okay.
Jessica: The specificity is what murders you. So okay. You're going to write out this list. I have a rule. If you're texting with or talking to a crush more than you talk to your best friend—
M.G. Oof.
Jessica: —in the first three months—yeah, I know. I see you. Then that's too much. Best friend should be the most frequent.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. So the compulsiveness that most people pursue in the first three months—it's not just you and your big Pluto dynamic.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: But it is not the pathway to a healthy dynamic and truly getting to know someone. Some people call it love bombing. We love being love-bombed. I've never met someone with Venus in Leo conjunct Jupiter that didn't want a love bomb.
M.G. Exactly.
Jessica: You're like, "Destroy my life with love."
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But the first three months' dynamic—so this is not qualities in a person you're dating. It's a dynamic. "I have healthy boundaries that I express. They respect it. They have healthy boundaries that they express. I respect it." That could be one, okay? Start exploring it. Talk to friends. Notice who has a healthy relationship to dating in your life. What do they do? You don't have to reinvent the wheel here. Other people have used this wheel before, even if you haven't. So there is that.
The next thing I want you to do is, "What is a healthy dynamic in a serious, committed relationship?" whether you're poly or nonmonogs—whatever. Just commit it, right? I personally believe there's the first three months, the first six months, the first nine months, and then a year. And at a year, now you're starting to really get to know a person—
M.G. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jessica: —because you really do need time to know a person. If we rush based on vibes and chemistry, the only thing we're guaranteed is vibes and chemistry.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Not safety. Not compatibility. Not being seen. Not being in a consensual dynamic, right? And so I want you to know that this person, of course, is kind of your kryptonite, super delicious.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But you've met them in a phase of Saturn, which means this is a test. This is a test. It's not about the person. When you think back to—you were 23 years old, and there was somebody you were super spun out on. Do you know who I'm talking about?
M.G. (laughs)
Jessica: Okay. You do.
M.G. Yep.
Jessica: Okay. You do.
M.G. I sure do. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. They were right there. Okay.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: How important are they to you now?
M.G. We don't talk.
Jessica: Right. Zero percent.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: They're not in your life. Doesn't matter.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: But it was the most important thing that was happening to you at the time, yeah?
M.G. Yeah. I almost moved.
Jessica: Yep.
M.G. I thought we were going to get married.
Jessica: Yep.
M.G. We looked at rings together.
Jessica: Oh my God. Okay.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So, if that's how that played out, this person—the intensity and the power of your feelings is not reliable data. Feelings are feelings. We don't want to intellectualize our feelings. But I want to say it's not data.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: It's not like data about compatibility. There's no, "I feel this way. All these things are aligned. Therefore, we should."
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Now, your chart seeks to disagree, okay? So, when you get spun out on someone and they're spun out on you, and you have these serendipities—which you always do because Jupiter sits in between Venus and Mars, so serendipity is your fucking thing, okay?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: You're like, "Well, that's the data. That's the data."
M.G. Exactly.
Jessica: "It's meant to be. How could I walk away from this when we have all these things in common or all these things aligned?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: It's just another rainy day in Portland. It doesn't mean shit. I mean, it means a lot, but it doesn't mean healthy. It doesn't mean meant to be. It just means you're in the room because, when you're in the room, there's serendipity. When you're in the room, there's big feelings.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: That's part of your power. And like all powers, it must be navigated responsibly.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so the excitement with this person—who, for reasons that you and I understand, is not an appropriate match.
M.G. No.
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. Not an appropriate match. Yeah.
Jessica: Not an appropriate match regardless of how many other things about this person make them a perfect, picked-by-the-angels match.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. But that's—
M.G. [crosstalk].
Jessica: That's the only kind of match you ever really vibe with because Jupiter sits in between Venus and Mars. "What a wonderful problem," other people will think. You always have something that's kind of magical, something that's—
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: —kind of, like, perfect, but it's not actually that great because you're like, "Well, what am I supposed to fucking do with that?
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: You're supposed—
M.G. Yeah, and it's often actually very toxic.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. It's never that exciting and gushy and electric if it's not a little toxic. It's not a wonderful thing. It's—
Jessica: Correct.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Because Pluto squares your Jupiter and your Venus and your Mars.
M.G. Exactly.
Jessica: Your most powerful emotions are not reliably your wisest ones.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: You have, to this point, trusted that your strongest emotions are the ones to trust, because why would they be this strong otherwise? But the truth of the matter is compatibility—you can only establish it over time. Getting to know someone when you're love-bombing them and they're love-bombing you is not actually possible because when bombs go off, it's distracting. There's a lot to deal with. And so, when we look at this person as an example of your pattern—like, a perfect example of your pattern.
M.G. They are the perfect example of my pattern.
Jessica: Yes. Perfect.
M.G. I will say, in my mind, I'm not pursuing them. We've established it's better if we're friends. [crosstalk]—
Jessica: How often are you talking or texting?
M.G. Like once a day.
Jessica: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
M.G. Well, it was way more than that initially.
Jessica: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
M.G. And I am in this place where I've put all of it on freeze. Romance has been put on freeze.
Jessica: Okay. I—
M.G. It's starting to thaw right now, but I've been very—
Jessica: This is your pattern. So this is the problem. This is why I'm interrupting you—
M.G. Yeah. Yeah. Please.
Jessica: —because this is your pattern. You start hot, say, "No, no. We couldn't. We have these feelings and it's meant to be, but we couldn't possibly." And then you cool it down, and then, "Oh God, we just couldn't resist because it was meant to be." This is your pattern, okay? So everything you're saying—I believe you. I believe you mean it in the moment. But because I'm your psychic and you're asking me to read you—
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: —I will tell you you've done this seven million times before. You're texting once a day with stranger danger who is a perfect match for you and you have great chemistry with?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: That's not walking away.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: That's keeping the pilot light on so you can cook sometime soon. Okay?
M.G. I mean, the idea is we have so much of this cultural overlap that we want to be in each other's lives, and there's a sort of sacred connection there. So can we deescalate it into a friendship? I mean, it's not even a deescalate thing because it hasn't—
Jessica: Sure it is. No, no. You're not friends. You've never been friends. You just have vibes. And you have other things, too, but that's your jam. You always have other things. It's never just chemistry—
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: —because you crave depth. So you—it's always something deep. If you have chemistry with someone—like, real fucking chemistry—it is unrealistic to ask yourself or them to be friends. That's not how friendships are made. Think about all your friends. How much sex do you want to have with any of them?
M.G. Absolutely none.
Jessica: None, because they're your friends—
M.G. Absolutely none. Yeah.
Jessica: —and not your crushes. The two of you are super spun out on each other. You're keeping each other in.
M.G. It goes both ways.
Jessica: Oh Lord.
M.G. No, I'm—that was—I don't mean that, but yeah—
Jessica: Yes, you do. You do. We cannot redact. How many times have you been rejected by people you have a crush on?
M.G. None.
Jessica: Zero.
M.G. Well—yeah. [crosstalk].
Jessica: Zero. I don't accept any other answer.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Zero.
M.G. No.
Jessica: Listen. The two of you have said that you have feelings for each other and you're just going to be friends. But you were never friends, so where did that come from? Where did that come from? Some people are always going to be your ex-girlfriend or your ex-whatever. Some people are always going to be strictly platonic—"I would not ever hook up with them."
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And some people are people you vibe with.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Could you maybe one day be friends with this person? Theoretically. Today? Absolutely not. Unrealistic. I know I'm being a pain in the ass—
M.G. It's important for me to hear.
Jessica: —being really direct.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But you're getting a psychic reading, so I'm just going to give you that psychic reading, okay—
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: —because this is the lie you tell yourself on repeat. This is your pattern, okay? Your pattern is how you interpret the serendipity. Your pattern is how you navigate, "Oh, I shouldn't, but I will." Your pattern is, "Of course I have to because of the serendipity." That's your pattern, okay? So it's not this person's pattern. It's not your ex's pattern. It's your pattern. So maybe they also happen to share that pattern. That's not your business. Your pattern is your stewardship.
M.G. Wow.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. I—yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. So—
M.G. There's always a reason.
Jessica: There's always a reason, and there will always be a reason. You will be in the nursing home, and then there will be someone. And then there will be a reason.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: There's always going to be a reason. This is just how you are.
M.G. Wow. Okay.
Jessica: And so, if you truly are interested in a friendship with this person, which—spoiler alert—you're not, but if you were, then you could say to this person, "Hey, let's touch base in about four months and see if it's a little bit more of a platonic vibe because, right now, I have a crush on you, and I don't think it's appropriate for us to date. And so I want to see if we can meet up again at another time and if we have more of a friendship vibe. If so, I would love to be your friend." Just put it in a text. You don't even have to say it to their fucking face. That would be you breaking your pattern. That would be you taking stewardship of your pattern, right?
M.G. Got it. Got it. Got it.
Jessica: And listen. You don't have to do anything. But—
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: —if you are taking accountability for your patterns, that's what you do. Now, let's say you were a therapist. Would you have a hard time breaking patterns with clients? No, you would not, because it would be your damn job.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But this is private. This—nobody really knows what you're doing. I mean, all your friends may be rolling their eyes and they totally know what you're doing, but they don't really know what you're doing because they're not there.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And everybody does weird shit with dates.
M.G. And everybody believes the signs. The signs are really believable.
Jessica: They're compelling. They're compelling.
M.G. I think that's sinking in of, like, there's always going to be a—
Jessica: There's always going to be a sign.
M.G. —magical twist.
Jessica: Yes. You have Jupiter sandwiched in between Venus and Mars in the first house. There always has been.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: There always will be. It is not an indicator of compatibility or fate. It's just an indicator that you're in the room. That's it.
M.G. Oh, that's so [crosstalk].
Jessica: It's magical. No, it's magical. It's what the astrology textbooks call lucky. See, I don't call it lucky—
M.G. You don't.
Jessica: —because I see the problems that it causes. But if all you wanted was a sugar daddy, attention, money, this would be fucking amazing.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: This would be a gift.
M.G. I mean, there's been times in my life where—
Jessica: Sure. And it's a gift.
M.G. —[crosstalk] really want those things. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And you get them, and then you're like, "Oops. That's empty," or, "Oops. It costs me things I don't want to pay."
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But because you get the perfect romance and the perfect story and the perfect justification for deep feelings and self-abandonment doesn't mean it's actually lucky.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: People who don't get those things will think of it as lucky. But for you, it makes it really hard to assess, what boundaries should I have when the Universe is giving me fairy dust? Should I actually have boundaries with fairy dust?
M.G. Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Jessica: And the answer to that is, yes, you should,
M.G. Oof.
Jessica: Not everyone. You.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: Okay?
M.G. Wow.
Jessica: Because fairy dust is just—is just like your thing.
M.G. There's been so many times where I have a plan for how I'm going to change my relationship with dating, and then something happens. And I'm like, "Well, I have to say yes to this.
Jessica: Of course. Of course.
M.G. Like my last relationship. Yeah.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. There will always be something, but that's only if you use the logic of Jupiter.
M.G. There will always be women in rubber flirting with me.
Jessica: Yes.
M.G. Yeah. Okay.
Jessica: Rubber, leather, linen—it depends on what phase of life you're in. Whatever.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But it's about embracing your Saturn. It's about embracing your Sun in the twelfth. You need—
M.G. How?
Jessica: You need consistency, reliability, accountability, authenticity. You need spiritual spaciousness. But you're not attracted to that, so you have to be that. And if you become that, if you practice being that, then what you're attracted to will evolve.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Right now, you're trying to be like, "Okay. I'm just not going to be attracted to people who are bad for me." Okay. That doesn't work. You have to change.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And then you organically will be attracted to different things. Evidence that you haven't fully changed is that you're still attracted to the same thing.
M.G. Mm-hmm. Well, I've been trying to just not be attracted to people and date, and I've been abstinent. And that's been working because I've at least just been able to focus on the other areas of my life, and they're growing. And that's cool. But—
Jessica: Yes, but that doesn't evolve this issue.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: This issue requires labor—
M.G. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: —intention, working on purpose on relationships, taking accountability for how you are and what you're choosing, consenting or not consenting. So, when you say, "Well, we're not dating. We're being friends," you are consenting to the romantic dynamic. You are calling it not a romantic dynamic, but the amount of readings I've given to people who are like, "Oh, I'm not dating anyone," and I'm like, "Okay. But you're fucking dating somebody," is so many because we tell ourselves stories, and we tell ourselves—
M.G. Well, I'm dating multiple people, then.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Probably. But this one is—
M.G. Oh boy.
Jessica: Yep. This one is an important part of your pattern. That's why I focused on it.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And I think what's really important about this is you. You want to be partnered. You want to co-parent. You're open to it not happening. Great. But you want those things. And if what you want is those things, then you don't have a great motivation for choosing your pattern because your pattern doesn't bring you compatibility and a healthy relationship. It brings you powerful experiences. It brings you transformative experiences. But it does not bring you compatibility and safety and stability.
And so what, ultimately, my greatest hope for you is is you find someone that you can play out this intensity with in a sexual context because Pluto is in the fifth house—
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: —and that it is consensual and on purpose and fun and just weird enough for you, but that same intensity and power struggle and almost magical thinking does not influence the structure of the relationship, how you navigate space, how you navigate relationships with other people, how you navigate what consent is, how you navigate the truth.
Romance is really important to you, and it's also not that important to you. And at the end of the day, you don't need to get this perfect. You don't. You don't need to get this perfect. You don't need to feel good about it. But you do need to practice being honest with yourself about what you're doing with the people you're not dating or you're dating. Sorry.
M.G. No. yeah.
Jessica: And to—this is, again, risking failure. It's risking missing out on a magical opportunity that—why would you not grab it? And it's also leaving space in your life for someone different to come through because, at the end of the day, when our pattern gets activated, we either work on healing it or we collapse into it. And the more you work on healing—and you already know this because you're old enough; you've experienced it enough—when you really are healing a pattern, it starts coming up fucking everywhere, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So you must have made some sort of progress. Now, all of a sudden, out of the fucking clear, blue sky, you've got all these people who are like, "Hello. Can I have some?"
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And you are back in your pattern. And you're navigating it a little differently but not substantially differently.
M.G. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.
Jessica: So the homework is to choose grief over ease and play. Isn't that terrible? Isn't that the most Capricorn thing I ever gave you?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: I'm so sorry. I know. It's terrible. I know. Your Jupiter hates me right now. So it's to choose—so let's say you were to tell this perfect match, "I'm sorry. Let's talk in four months. If I feel more platonically towards you, let's be friends. If not, I can't. I'm trying to break my patterns right now"—let's say you say that to them. You will feel awful.
M.G. Terrible.
Jessica: You will feel terrible.
M.G. I already feel terrible.
Jessica: I know. I can tell. I can tell. And so what this is about is recognizing, if you already will collapse and have grief and be devastated, that's not platonic.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: That's not being friends.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So you do it now based on recognizing your pattern, or you play it out. You know how this story ends. You have been here before.
M.G. I have. Yeah.
Jessica: So you have choices.
M.G. There's no secret third thing where we are friends, yeah, because I've done this [crosstalk].
Jessica: Because that's your pattern. That's not true. You've been friends with people before that you have vibes with. How long does it take? Three months? Three weeks? How long does it take before you hook up?
M.G. I mean, the longer I wait, the messier and more hot and steamy the dynamic is, you know.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, of course.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. You're not the only one. I mean, you know, we do shit, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And if you want to break your pattern, the only way to break your pattern—and this is going to blow your mind—is to break your pattern. I know. It's so annoying. It's simple.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: The simple stuff is what's most difficult.
M.G. How can I be more honest with myself? Because I thought I was doing it differently, even though a part of me knew I wasn't. And—
Jessica: Okay.
M.G. —I do know that I can really bury my head in the sand and hide things from myself.
Jessica: This is like a classic Sun/Mercury in the twelfth house issue.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: The reason why you're not able to be honest with yourself is because you haven't established what's true. For you, left is the best direction—oh, wait, no, right is the best direction. Wait, standing still is the best thing to do. Wait, running is the best. Oh, they're all true at different moments. Gemini.
M.G. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: So what you want to do is write down the pattern. I've helped you out here. What's the pattern? The pattern is spark of chemistry, synchronicity, impossible things that are a match between you and them, great chemistry but you shouldn't.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But you shouldn't. That's the pattern, right?
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Any time you have—if that was five things, you have four out of those five things or three out of those five things—that's your fucking pattern. You happen to have ten out of ten for this person.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: They are your perfect pattern. Write it down. Get more nuanced if you like. What are other things in the pattern? I am a big believer in, when we're writing out the notes of a pattern, of like, "What dynamic do I want to cultivate? What dynamic is healthy? What dynamic is the most common thing I've done with people I have vibes with?"—if you get too detailed, then you're like, "Well, all the other people I've done this with were wearing jeans, but this person is not wearing jeans. They're wearing joggers. So it's not the same." You don't want to get too detailed—
M.G. For sure.
Jessica: —because then you can convince yourself.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: So write it down. Then it'll be a lot easier to be honest. I want you to notice how simple the answers I'm giving you are. Pluto in your chart says, "If it's not complicated, it's not real. Don't listen." But Saturn builds a ladder out of wood and then climbs up, does something, climbs down, moves the ladder. Fucking Saturn. Saturn chops wood, carries water. Saturn. Saturn is about the actions towards the goal. And you're in a phase of Saturn.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Also, Uranus is squaring your Moon. That's a whole other conversation, but I've integrated it into our reading very much on purpose. You have the potential of making major changes right now based in your values. But it'll feel awful. Nobody's ever changed patterns and been like, "This feels great." It feels terrible.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: In a couple years, you'll look back and be like, "That was such a powerful time. I'm so glad I went through it. I learned so much." But that's only retrospect. In the moment, you're going to feel the reason why you don't let go of potential is because you don't like grief. You're attached to this person. You're attached to the potential. Otherwise, you would just stop being their friend because you're not their friend. There's no friendship to cultivate. You're not friends. This is a stranger person who you would like to have sex with or marry.
M.G. Yeah, both of those things.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I see you, and I respect you. And also, that's the pattern. That's the pattern.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah. I think what I keep coming back to internally is that I just have to let things feel bad.
Jessica: Yes.
M.G. I want things to—Jupiter, Venus. I like when things feel good. And I've also had many, many, many years of things feeling really bad, and I feel this sense of, "I just deserve for things to be fucking nice and sweet in my life." Yeah.
Jessica: So let me hop in on that. Okay. I want to ground you into the difference between joy and pleasure. Joy, like love, reverberates inside of your energy body, your physical body, your mind and your heart. It improves your life. Pleasure is delicious and dynamic, and we need it and we want it. And it happens in the moment, and when the moment's over, the pleasure's passed.
M.G. Oof.
Jessica: You're choosing pleasure over joy.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: You're choosing the potential for joy because you really want the pleasure. And on the other side is grief and sadness, and that's what you'll feel if you cut this person out of your life.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But—
M.G. [crosstalk] if I stop all of the intriguing and romantic—
Jessica: Yeah. Listen. I'm not completely against you having intrigue or romance with people, as long as you are practicing healthy boundaries. So what does that look like? It looks like having boundaries for yourself around how frequently you can be in text contact with people, having boundaries for yourself about what kind of self-disclosure you do with new people, having boundaries for yourself around where—"If this is a person who I know is just vibing and we're going to hook up, okay, then why am I talking to them? Why are we sharing personal details?" Is that because you need that kind of romance for sex to be good? There could be a million reasons. But it's about being honest with yourself about what you're doing and why and who you're doing it with.
M.G. Mm-hmm. So you're saying it's okay if I hook up and date right now?
Jessica: Fuck yeah.
M.G. Because I feel really like I shouldn't be; it's either on or off. The switch should be on or off.
Jessica: It's just that you're not a casual person.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so you telling me casual date—I'm just like, I think you can get in there, get some, and go home.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: I don't think you can casually date.
M.G. Uh-huh. Yeah.
Jessica: I think there's a really big difference, right?
M.G. It's—yeah—flirtation season or—
Jessica: Yes. Yes.
M.G. —none season.
Jessica: Exactly, or learning how to date. There's nothing wrong with you learning how to date right now. What you're doing right now is not learning how to date, okay? If there's any of these people that you think you can go home, get it done, brush yourself off, keep on moving, do that.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: But if there's somebody who you're like, "Okay, they're not my pattern. There's nothing wrong here," then try dating them in a different way you've ever dated anyone. This fucking person we're talking about is not the one, for sure.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: I don't know that any of these people are.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: But confront each individual as an individual and notice your stewardship. Your stewardship is your pattern. And make sure that you are accounting for what's in your stewardship, right? And that really does look like taking serendipity as evidence of nothing, taking the magic as evidence of nothing, taking chemistry as evidence of chemistry. That's it. And, "Do I want to get to know this person? Why?" Okay. Sure. Try. I know Queer dating can be so fast, but you're not capable of dating fast in a healthy way at this time.
M.G. No.
Jessica: So you have to date slow.
M.G. Yeah. So dating for my Saturn, not for my Leo stellium.
Jessica: Correct.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: And just trust that Saturn is directly connected to your Leo stellium. It's about recognizing that you're doing Leo stellium Pluto, and I want you to be Saturn.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: For now. I don't think it has to be that linear, but for now. You're in Saturn transits, and also, it's the role you haven't played.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah. I've always romanticized the idea of being the Saturnian person. I've always been like, "That's so not me."
Jessica: And then you end up dating people who are restrictive, constrictive, controlling. They play a limiting role in your life, or they try to shut your energy and your light down, yeah?
M.G. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. You're projecting out your Saturn. So we do this all the time. We project out parts of ourselves and parts of our birth chart onto other people so we don't have to embody them. But you can't stop living your chart. So, if you can figure out how to live your Saturn in a healthy, balanced way—"I am mature. I am self-possessed. I know who the fuck I am. I have boundaries. And I still have Pluto in the fifth house. I can still get going when I need to get going. I still have all this magical fire with Jupiter in the middle, so I get to have serendipity and magic and pleasure and joy. I'm not trading joy for pleasure. I get to have both." But that takes you being in the room, you anchoring your identity, your goals, your clarity about what's healthy and what's not healthy—yourself. Not in another person. In yourself.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: That's the fucking move.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: That's hard.
M.G. And it's—I'm only that full self—I'm only really embodying my Saturnian energy when I'm big—
Jessica: Yep.
M.G. —because the second I get small, I just get right into that cute little Jupitery Leo vibe. That's how I make myself consumable and—
Jessica: Yeah. Yes.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah. So it comes back to being big, I guess. Yeah.
Jessica: It does. It comes back to being big and recognizing that sometimes, in your bigness, you sidestep a dynamic. Sometimes, in your bigness, you're able to be like, "No. I couldn't possibly. Thank you. Goodbye." Right?
M.G. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: We get to behave on the material plain small, strategically, when we feel it's appropriate. So you don't have to put yourself in danger. You don't have to prove to yourself that you're being big. This is an energetic thing.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: It's about wholeness, right?
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And I think that's an important thing for me to remind you of because I see you can get a little extreme with your embodiment stuff. So you're allowed to fail. You're allowed to fuck up. You're allowed to forget. It's about returning to the practice.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: It's just about returning to the practice. Being accountable to yourself allows you to be truly yourself with other people instead of playing out little parts of yourself with other people.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Right? And my greatest hope for you is a pain in your ass. It's that you are able to see, "Okay, this person that I'm playing out my pattern with is a great opportunity for me to make a different choice." And I know that that'll hurt your feelings a lot. But it will help you. Now, this question that you asked me about the future and survival—I think it's very real on its face. The way you asked me, what you asked me, is very much—it's real for you on its face. And I think a lot more of that is about the uncertainty of the world and your permeability to it than maybe you even think it is.
But I want you to know that a big part of what I think is up and why the love stuff came in so hard in our reading is because you have historically anchored your sense of self and your sense of reality through a partner—
M.G. Oof.
Jessica: —or through dating, right?
M.G. Yes. Yeah.
Jessica: And you are changing. You haven't changed, but you're in this process of changing, and it's making you feel more unmoored than ever before. And that's fucked up and terrible but actually a very good sign.
M.G. Wow.
Jessica: It's a very good sign because you haven't done this before.
M.G. Wow. Yeah. Exactly.
Jessica: Yeah. Such a bummer.
M.G. Yeah. It's like, what is the future when I don't know where I am in time or space because I have used romances the way that I know where I am in time and space? And I don't think I really put those things together.
Jessica: Yeah.
M.G. But the way this sense of haziness about my life right now made sense was that I am coming off this massive decade. And so, of course, I'm going to be confused about where I go. But I'm also not dating for the first time in like—
Jessica: That's what it is.
M.G. —20 years.
Jessica: That's what it is. Yeah.
M.G. Oof.
Jessica: That's what it is. And that's great. Self-awareness is an important building block to change. You can't really change if you're not self-aware. I mean, it's why most people don't change. It's not because we can't change. It's because sitting in the discomfort of self-awareness without yet being able to execute change is not just painful; it's disorienting. Your whole identity is in fucking flux because you're not yet that, but you're not any longer that. And so what does that mean you are? You're not going to know for now. And that's okay.
Saturn will spend a long time, like three years-ish, in your tenth house. You are figuring out who you are. You are taking up space. And as Saturn moves past your tenth house and towards, eventually, your Ascendant, it's moving into integration of what you learn in this period of your life. You're not behind schedule. You're exactly where you're supposed to be, and where you're supposed to be is all fucked up and confused and dealing with these patterns.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: And so, whatever it is that you do with your career, you're going to be able to figure it out. You're going to find what's right for you. I'm not worried about the career stuff, actually.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: It just kind of—it keeps on unfolding at the time it's supposed to unfold. It's the personal stuff. It's the personal stuff.
M.G. Yeah. Yeah. I think I want my career to anchor me since romance has for so long, and I do feel so unmoored. So I think, internally, the solution is, oh, it's career; I just have to land it and stick it. And then that will be the ship that I can—
Jessica: Yeah. I mean—
M.G. —sail away on.
Jessica: —again, it's an improvement over, "I'm going to ground myself in the person I'm dating." "Now I'm going to ground myself in career." But the actual work is to ground yourself in yourself. You are the ship, and you are the anchor. You are the sail that catches the wind. And you are the one who has the anchor, who throws the anchor down, who pulls the anchor up. It's got to be inside of you. And in doing this, not only are you healing your ship, you're not only healing ancestral stuff, but you're also cultivating the chops to be able to help other people through this kind of thing because there's talking people through stuff, and then there's being able to hold the energy.
And as you navigate through this, if you really do navigate through this, you will have the capacity to see this energy at play in other people and to support them through making difficult choices and failing at making good choices. You'll be able to have the capacity to hold space for all of that. And that's really what is—what you've stated as your calling, right, as what you want to do.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: You want to be able to hold space for individual and community shift and change and evolution. Well, this is what it looks like. You start with you.
M.G. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So you're on the right path. It just feels like shit.
M.G. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with things feeling a little shitty if I'm working, if I know I'm working.
Jessica: You are working. You are.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: You're on the right path.
M.G. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. There's your reading.
M.G. Okay.
Jessica: We did a—we did a thing. We did a thing.
M.G. We did it.
Jessica: We did it. Yeah.
M.G. Thank you.
Jessica: My pleasure.