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.

Instead of a reading this week, I'm sharing a post that I put on the free page of my Patreon about what's in your stewardship. It felt like something that could be really supportive this week, given that this episode comes out on the Solar Eclipse, and we are very deep inside of Eclipse Season. I hope it's supportive, and you are welcome to join me over on Patreon and get posts like this for free or to one of the paid tiers because I post a lot of really supportive content over there.

Anyways, I hope that this conversation about what's in your stewardship is supportive for you on the Eclipse and all throughout Eclipse Season.

So, in Episode 647 of my twice-weekly podcast, I said something—it was a great reading. If you haven't watched it and you like watching the readings, definitely check it out. But there was something I said to the querant, which was, "You are the ship, and you are the anchor, and you are the sail that catches the wind."

A couple people commented on that in the comments on Patreon and asked me to talk more about this analogy and how to move towards this kind of grounding or centering. And I wanted to kind of unpack that a little bit here. To me, this is central and core to what I do, what I try to teach in general, whether I'm using astrology or Tarot or psychic shit.

I really want to encourage you to consider accountability. If you are the ship and you are the anchor and you are also the sail, that does not mean that you are the wind. It does not mean that you are the water. It means there are things inside of your stewardship. There are things that you can control and navigate. You have things that you can control, and then you have choices you can make. And the wind will be at your back or at your front. The waters will be choppy or they will be calm. And those are two things that are outside of your control.

As an astrologer, this is really important to me. As an astrologer, I am looking at one's nature, the nature of your boat, the nature of your anchor, the nature of your sail. I can look at, or we as astrologers or astrology students can look at, where the wind is, how hard it's blowing. We can understand that there is sun or darkness. There is rain or clouds. There is water.

And deep beneath the water, there is ground. We understand that there are these circumstances that are vast and outside of our control, and then there are things in our stewardship.  And the more that you regard your birth chart, astrology in general, your life, your psyche, your relationships, environmental collapse, the rise of fascism—things that are wildly out of your control, and things that are not so wildly out of your control—like your relationship with your mom is out of your control, but not as wildly, maybe, as forest fires, right?

That's your stewardship. That doesn't mean it's in your control. It's not in your control. It's in your stewardship. So what does it mean to be steward? It means that you are entrusted with the care of something or someone. You are the primary source of care for yourself. So, if you are the primary source of care for yourself, if you believe that, how does your life change? Do you start being a little nicer to yourself? Do you maybe ask for help when you need it?

The reading that I did and the thing that I said was in context, and I am speaking to this concept, this analogy, as something for you to take with you and to get used to the feel of it. What does it mean to be the steward of your own life? What does it mean to be accountable to how you navigate your choices, how you treat yourself, how you treat others, what you do, what you don't do? It's yours. That's your stewardship.

What's not in your stewardship is me. I'm not in your stewardship. Your best friend is not in your stewardship. Maybe you have children or pets. They're in your stewardship. And at a certain point, your children will become adults, and they may no longer be in your stewardship. Now, sometimes adults remain in stewardship, right?

Stewardship is a really important concept to explore. In fact, let me get a definition because I love a definition here and there. I did it. Okay. I did it. Yeah, yeah. I did it. I did it. So Merriam-Webster told me that it is the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care. That's your job. You are the steward of your own welfare.

And so is it possible—because Caitlin had said this is a wonderful visual, but it feels a million miles away. When self-stewardship feels a million miles away, most of the time, what that means is you have not started with the very basic, exceptionally difficult foundation of acceptance.

Now, I just taught a five-week series on alignment, and it started with acceptance. And I'll tell you what. I did two-hour classes on all the topics, and I could have done ten-hours classes on each of the topics because it is really hard. It's such a simple concept, except it's not consent; it's self-awareness. You've heard me say it a million times, right? It is not consent; it is awareness.

What is awareness? Awareness without resistance is acceptance. So simple, but it is exceptionally hard because when I taught this class, I got a million questions, which I expected. "Well, what about if my cat's wearing a hat? What if my cat's wearing boots? What if my cat's not in the room? What if my cat is in the room? What if my"—like a million questions of context. "How do I accept this? I shouldn't have to accept that."

Acceptance is simply awareness. And if you struggle with the stewardship of your own life, your body, your mind, your heart, your choices, you are entrusted with the stewardship of the things that are important to you. The shitty job that wouldn't be important to you if you didn't have to pay bills—that's in your stewardship, not the whole job, but how you engage with that job.

Whether you put the work down at the end of the day—that's in your stewardship. The amount of power you give people in your mind, in your thinking, right? Because, to a certain extent, bosses have power. Right? They have power. Coworkers have power. But the amount of time you spend thinking about them—that's power you've given. You never had to.

What's in your stewardship is your welfare. But it's hard to feel like that's true when you don't start with the foundation of acceptance. It is very challenging to live and to live well—I remember when my sibling first had a child. They said to me, "It's not hard to be a parent. It's hard to be a good parent." And I was like, "Well, that feels really true. That feels really true."

Living life—I mean, we just fucking power through. We push through. We react to things that force a reaction. We show up for the things we have to. But when we take stewardship really to heart, it gets harder, in a way, because you're accountable. And I don't know—I have faith in your ability to be accountable to yourself. I don't have faith that it's going to be easy. I don't have faith that you'll always choose it. I don't know you, but I still have faith in that. And I always have.

Since the internet—because, you know, I'm a grown-ass lady. I was an adult before internet. But since internet, I have come to understand how many people do not feel a sense of agency in their lives and, as a result, do not take the work of stewardship, of self-governance, very seriously. Or maybe it's not that they don't take it seriously; it's just like it feels impossible. It feels so impossible.

And I think it's so exceptionally important to know that being self-possessed and being in healthy relationship with self is a practice that takes many years, and it doesn't always feel good because it is hard to be in a relationship with anyone, including one with yourself. Every relationship you have, someone will disappoint you.

You're in relationship with yourself. You will disappoint you. How are you going to handle it? How are you going to handle it? Do you stop trusting yourself altogether? Do you rebuild trust with yourself? Do you punish yourself? Do you some combination of it all, something else? We are all trying our best. Maybe some people aren't trying their best. That's not my stewardship. What's in my stewardship is how I choose to be, who I choose to be, and that's also in yours.

I know that it's hard for a lot of people to go against the grain, to push against convention, to stand out or to risk standing out. And I have a lot of empathy for that, and I would simply ask why. I would encourage you to ask yourself, if you struggle with those things, why. Why? Is it for fear of having to answer to other people, to defend yourself?

Some things aren't for some people. When I encourage you to ask questions of yourself, like I just did and I do in many ways in many contexts, it's not meant as a gotcha or a scolding or anything like that. It's meant as a genuine piece of advice. Ask yourself questions. Sit with the discomfort of not knowing. That's the practice that brings you to knowing.

The only way you're ever going to see a beautiful view at the end of a hike is if you take the fucking hike. The thing about the period of life that we're in is that there's a lot of room for growth. There's a lot of energy for growth. And there's a lot of room and energy for—how will I say this—expanding on what you're already doing, including the unconscious, unhealthy, or stuck parts.

So what we need now is intention. And intention requires stewardship; does it not? If I'm intentional about any number of things, my stewardship is required to protect and promote and guide that intention, to redirect when I realize I fucked up. If you demand perfection from other people, then you probably demand it from yourself. And it's inhumane.

It's okay if you make mistakes, and it's okay if I make mistakes. We don't have to like it. But those mistakes are opportunities for us to learn—learn from the thing, learn how to cope, learn from, what is it that you said or did when you found out that you made an error? Project that out. What if somebody you trust makes a mistake? How do you metabolize that?

Asking these questions helps you bring awareness. Awareness empowers you to accept, to have your awareness not met by resistance so that the awareness can open up and you can benefit from it. That's acceptance.

We're in really exceptional times, and there is so much that is in your stewardship within that—not in your control, but it is in your stewardship. You are the ship. You are the anchor. You are the sail. But you are not the wind and the sun and the water. Can you work with that? I believe you can. And if you don't believe you can, that's okay. Start from there. Start from where you are. That's the acceptance bit, okay?

All right. Okay. Let's talk about this more, should you want to, which I'm happy to. Okay. Bye.