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

Lolo:               Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. And I'll just read my question. I wrote, "Dear Jessica, since the birth of my second child five months ago, I have woken up to our current climate catastrophe as something that is happening now, not 100 years from now, and that is only going to get worse. I feel like I'm trying to raise my children at the end of the world. I'm committed to doing my best for them and to continuing to work for a, quote unquote, 'better' catastrophe, but it's heartbreaking. It feels like an impossible task. How do I parent at the end of the world?"

Jessica:            Congratulations on your second child.

Lolo:               Thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. And also, yeah, very real question. And I feel like so many parents are struggling with that and also how to live at the end of the world, how to—

Lolo:               Exactly.

Jessica:            Yeah. How do you make plans for five years from now with what we're looking at? It's very frightening. So I'm going to pull up your chart in just one moment, but did these feelings really kick off in light of the wildfires and floods and all the other environmental things that have been happening in recent months? Or was this in your mind before?

Lolo:               I mean, it's been coming up in different ways. I think the emphasis on the climate has been on the periphery, but it definitely has been kicking up in light of the recent wildfires. And we had a moment over—well, it's been kind of recurrent moments over the last few months where we've had problems with our air conditioning and it's been 100 degrees out, and I have a little baby. And that just, you know, makes it personal.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Let me pull up your chart. So you were born June 5th, '92, in 1992, in Nashville, Tennessee, at 8:03 a.m. Correct?

Lolo:               Yes, that's correct.

Jessica:            Now, are you partnered?

Lolo:               I am. Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Lolo:               I have a spouse/co-parent.

Jessica:            And what's the right pronoun for me to use?

Lolo:               They/them.

Jessica:            So do they share this feeling or this fear?

Lolo:               They do. They're better at staying in the moment and not getting inundated by it, and sometimes I think that is because they're just better at that. And sometimes I think it's also because it's overwhelming for them, too.

Jessica:            So sometimes it feels like they're being avoidant, and sometimes it feels like they have skills.

Lolo:               Yes. It's both.

Jessica:            Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, whether we're looking at world war or environmental collapse, it's impossible to not be avoidant—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —to an extent, right?

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            I mean, otherwise, you fall apart. It's untenable. And are you staying home with babies right now?

Lolo:               Part time.

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

Lolo:               Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            So what is your question really? Is it a parenting question, or is it more how to cope with the impossible?

Lolo:               I think it's all of the above, right? I think parenting already feels like an impossible task under the best of circumstances, and that's just put on blast by living in the times we're living in. And I think it's—everything's all so tangled up together, it's hard to untangle.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And when you're actively parenting—and you have a five-month-old, and how old is your other child, your first child?

Lolo:               He's three years old.

Jessica:            Three. Okay. Teeny, tiny little—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But also very verbal age.

Lolo:               Oh, and he is so verbal. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. That's fun, and also, it's exhausting, right? It's both.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So I'm going to start with parenting.

Lolo:               Okay.

Jessica:            Is it more about parenting day to day or planning for their future and thinking about their future?

Lolo:               It's—I have defined concerns, but again, it feels like all of the above. And the day to day—I worry about exposing them to too much of my distress, and it's something that I am very conscious of keeping my finger on the pulse of. So I think I'm doing an okay job, but I guess I want confirmation. I would love confirmation of so much in my parenting, but that's one thing that's coming to the surface a lot right now.

                        And I think what really gets me in the gut, though, is trying to imagine their future when they're my age and things like that, what that's going to look like, what kind of future they'll have.

Jessica:            Yeah. There's layers, and let's start with the first one. You have a Neptune/Uranus conjunction in Capricorn, like a good old millennial, and it sits opposite your Ascendant. And Neptune squares Mars. Both of them square Mars. And so this is not your first time experiencing anxiety.

Lolo:               Oh, no.

Jessica:            No. Okay. To say the least, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So anxiety is not a stranger to you. And I imagine that before parenting, you had a habit, looking at your chart, of working really hard on something else that—kind of as a way to divert from intense anxiety; is that right?

Lolo:               Yes. I study.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Great. It's career-oriented, right? Somehow [crosstalk].

Lolo:               Yeah. Right.

Jessica:            And that's because this Mars in the tenth house in Aries, and it's just like, "I know. I can't control this.  I don't know what's going to happen. I'm panicking. I'll just do something. I'll do something hard."

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And the problem with that coping mechanism is that it's such a great coping mechanism. It's such a high-functioning coping mechanism that will get you praise. It can even improve your relationships because you will take on things for other people, do them for them, because you're just like, "I have to do something."

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And it's very hard to apply that to parenting because you can't really run the kid as a way to make your anxieties feel better. It doesn't work. And I want to just acknowledge I'm holding this separate from the specifics of your concerns, which we will get to. But this coping mechanism is a good old one for you to be working on now because, when they get older, if you hadn't already worked on this coping mechanism, you might try to tell them how to live or get too involved. And what you'll get is pushback because they're kids and you're parent, not because of anything bad beyond that, right?

Lolo:               Yeah, and that's something I've worked on a lot. So I'm trying to be more embodied. I think that's a big thing for me.

Jessica:            "Embody" is the perfect word for it.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Exactly. And that you have worked on yourself very hard and made progress with this—clear as day. The problem is this particular stress, on a scale from 1 to 10, is like what, a 50?

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            And I don't think anyone could convince you that you're making it up, that it's not true, right?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And it's a fear not just for the world or for yourself, but it's for these teeny, tiny little humans that you—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —heralded into this world. And so it makes sense that it would activate anxiety and activate old patterns in ways that, yeah, nobody's going to have coping mechanisms for this that are great, right?

Lolo:               Yeah. That's real.

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, right?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So we want to just acknowledge that this is the landscape. And your worry about experiencing worry is something that you have had before you had kids.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And powering through isn't a reliable tool. However, if we take that energy of Mars in Aries and we adapt it, it brings me to something you may have heard me say before, which is action is the antidote to anxiety—not anxiety disorders, obviously, but like situational anxiety.

Lolo:               Yeah. Sure.

Jessica:            And so recognizing, "Oh, I am anxious about this because this is a real problem, and it's out of my control," and identifying, "What are the things I can do"—not to fix the problem, because it's too big a problem, but to advance some sort of solution in some sort of corner of the world.

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            Not only is this using your birth chart, using your nature, to work with your nature, but it speaks to this question inside the question of, "Is my anxiety harming my kids?" which is not how you worded it, but I heard it right, right?

Lolo:               Yes. Yeah. That's correct.

Jessica:            Yeah. And it's okay to be anxious about things, and it's okay to let your kids know that it's okay to be anxious about things. But how do we cope with anxiety? To a three-year-old, we don't say anxiety, necessarily. To a three-year-old, we say, "Oh, Mom feels worried about this. So you know what I do when I feel worried? I find one thing I can do to make things a little bit better. And sometimes it makes me feel better, and sometimes it doesn't make me feel better immediately. But in the big picture, it makes me feel better." And being able to model that for your child is modeling this massive network of coping mechanisms that will have a life of their own in your child, potentially.

Lolo:               Yeah. That takes it from this—the world, you know, the huge, overwhelming macro, to the next step.

Jessica:            Yeah, the next step. And the next best step, not the best step, right? Because you have a Neptune square to Mars, you can get kind of locked in perfectionism and saviorism. If it's not the perfect thing and if it's not going to fix it, then why bother, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so having mindfulness around—that is a coping mechanism that you got from your childhood and your parents, and you're going to keep on bumping up against those feelings. And you have grown up to give yourself a lot of tools and a lot of skills. And you can feel those feelings, stay in those feelings, and then do the next best step. This theme of anxiety and uncertainty—it's so deep in your birth chart.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I'm not shocked to hear that your partner has kind of an avoiding coping mechanism around this kind of big stress because that's like your family of origin, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So it's familiar. It feels like home.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so the best possible thing you could do to break this ancestral pattern of, "Everything's fine. Don't look at it. Don't talk about it. It'll work out"—right? That kind of waiting for things to magically get better or to pass—there's a wisdom to it. When you look at something like the environmental collapse, people who have a better time being hopeful in the face of no hope—they might actually be able to do more actions because they have the energy.

                        Now, for you, something happens somatically, right? Something happens in your body in the presence of overwhelm and anxiety, and it can—do you have the experience of depression?

Lolo:               Yeah. Less now, but that's definitely been there as well. And it still comes from time to time. Yeah.

Jessica:            When I look at your birth chart, there's—I'm not speaking clinically, of course. I'm speaking just experientially—anxiety and depression, and you just don't like being stuck.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So, when you're anxious, there's something you can do about it. And if you don't find something to do about it, that's when you're more likely to experience a bit of that depression, which is why parenting is so tricky for you—

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            —because the self-soothing has to happen in between caring for two tiny human lives that you obsessively love and being a person and being in a marriage and having a career and all the things.

Lolo:               Yes. Right.

Jessica:            And that's a setup, right?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's not realistic to do all the things really well all the time.

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            And I will tell you that you are currently going through a Neptune conjunction to your Midheaven. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and what it does is it has you questioning what you're doing with your life, the world itself, and your place inside of it. And Neptune does govern anxiety, but it also governs a concern for the all. And I am not in any way suggesting that we should explain away your concern about the environment and the world that your children will inherit as an anxiety. And also, it is likely landing in your system in the style of anxiety.

Lolo:               Yeah. That's for sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's really intense, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            A Neptune conjunction to the Midheaven—it has you questioning meaning and purpose, like in a deep spiritual sense—

Lolo:               Yes.

Jessica:            —and looking at the planet and seeing it burn and—I won't name all the other things, but there's a long list, right—

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            —of all the other things—it's organized to dysregulate and promote anxiety. That's how it works. And so what's really required for you in this moment is boundaries, which is always the damn lesson with damn Neptune.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's boundaries. And so it's not about the news you consume. I mean, how do you ignore that you don't have anxiety and you do have 100 degrees and you have an infant?

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            You don't need the news to tell you that sucks. And I'm not a person who believes being uninformed is a good mental health strategy or a good parenting strategy or any of that kind of stuff either. But I do think having boundaries around it is really important. And that might mean being intentional about your news sources and a little more streamlined than you've been.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It might mean being more intentional about the specific hours that you consume news. And it might mean that you impose upon yourself a once-a-week sit-down—I'm giving you homework, okay?

Lolo:               Yes.

Jessica:            A once-a-week sit-down where you bullet-point—not a novel, not a poem. You just bullet-point, "What are the things that I am having the most stress or anxiety about this week? And what is an action item I can have for each thing?"

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so one of the action items might be, "I need to damn breathe. I need to get present." Right? Because you might be worried about 2045. Okay.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Maybe the best thing you can do is get present. So not all action items are going to be like grab a sign and hit the streets or whatever, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Some of the actions are about self-regulation. Some of the actions are going to be about education, which is in your wheelhouse, luckily.

Lolo:               Yes, for sure.

Jessica:            And some of them are going to be about action. But the action is the third, not the first most likely, because the action comes as a result of emotional regulation and education and intention-setting as opposed to your old pattern, which is reacting out of chaotic emotions and thoughts.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think I'll often hit on all those things you listed, but I'll try and do it all at once.

Jessica:            Correct. Yes, which is an anxiety action, right?

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            Doing something constructive is a really good coping mechanism if it's one of many.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But when it's one of three or one of one, it becomes more of a problem, especially in a capitalistic world, right?

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            I want to encourage you to explore a coping mechanism because you're correct in having these concerns. "I don't know where the water is going to be. I don't know." It's really scary. But you don't need to cope with this for yourself alone. Your kids are going to have those questions. Their peers are going to have those questions.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So developing the education now so you can answer a question of a nine-year-old and of a 16-year-old is an investment that you can really get behind. You have the personality where you can do the work for when you need it.

Lolo:               Yeah. That makes a lot of sense because I think it also puts into perspective why I am compulsively looking for books to read. I think I had a hard problem knowing, okay, I'm reading all these books and trying to educate myself, but what is that going to do?

Jessica:            Right, because the coping mechanism is everything all at once.

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            But what it's going to do is it's going to empower you to, as an adult in the world, find solutions, co-create strategies. It's going to empower you to parent your kids through these anxieties, which they will have, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I think it might even—not this month, but down the line—empower you to be able to talk to your partner about what you need from them around this issue—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because right now, it's chaos. And so you can't really be like, "Listen. This is what I need from you," because it's more like putting-out-fires energy as opposed to something really that you're clean and clear about.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But the more you give yourself space to be in a longer process with this, the more clarity you'll have around, "Hey, I just need you to listen to me about this. But if I'm bringing up the same thing more than once, maybe more than twice a week, I need you to tell me that."

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Asking them not to make you feel better but instead to help you help yourself feel better—because they can't make you feel better about this.

Lolo:               I know.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm sorry.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You have a T-square that hits Pluto, and it's Saturn opposite the Moon. You've got your Pluto in the fifth house. And you said you fuck with astrology, and you might use a different house system.

Lolo:               I do.

Jessica:            Do you see Pluto in a different house in your system?

Lolo:               No.

Jessica:            Okay.

Lolo:               The Moon is in a different house. I use whole sign houses predominantly. I'm all self-taught, and that's what's all around the internet these days.

Jessica:            Totally. Yes.

Lolo:               So, yeah, Pluto is in the fifth house.

Jessica:            Okay. And then you have your Moon in the second and—

Lolo:               Yes.

Jessica:            —Saturn in the eighth?

Lolo:               Yes. That's correct.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. In Campanus houses, I'll just say your Moon is in the first house, which—one of the primary tells for that is you can't hide your emotions. It's always on your face. And also, because your Moon is in Leo, there's a tendency to flush with emotion.

Lolo:               Oh yeah. That's real.

Jessica:            Yeah. First-house Moon. That'll do it.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But it is hanging out 2 degrees from your second-house cusp. So it still vibes as a second-house Moon as well. But when we have planets in the first house, it shows on the face. It shows in the body. So that's fun or not fun, depending on the moment.

Lolo:               [indiscernible 00:20:12].

Jessica:            Yeah. But back to your T-square, you have Saturn opposite the Moon, and they both square Pluto. And so you have very intense issues about accountability and responsibility.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I would imagine you did not enter into parenting lightly or completely easily.

Lolo:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. But it was planned, eh?

Lolo:               Oh yeah. It was very planned.

Jessica:            Very planned. Okay.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So, when a person has Pluto in the fifth house, those Plutonian survival issues, like life-or-death issues, tend to come up around parenting.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so I didn't look at your chart before I chose your question, but when I saw it, I was like, okay, that tracks. That tracks right away because this placement can really activate something inside of you with this T-square around a driving responsibility to provide for these children that didn't ask to be here.

Lolo:               Yeah, exactly.

Jessica:            And now your hypervigilance, which is deep in your nature, is so fixated on all the things that could take them out, harm them, traumatize them, hurt their feelings, give them a tummy ache—like, everything, on all the levels, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            The thing about parenting for you—and would you say you have a 50/50 parenting dynamic or 40/70—

Lolo:               Oh, yeah, it's very even.

Jessica:            Great.

Lolo:               Yeah. I mean, it waxes and wanes, but yeah.

Jessica:            But it's 50/50. Great.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. Of course, it waxes and wanes. It all does, right?

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            I am really glad to hear that, because parenting is so hard for you—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because it pushes on that nihilistic part of you that feels like, "Everything's fucked, but I have to fix it anyways."

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so what do you do? What do you do? I have a theory. You accept your nature. You accept that you have really heavy and intense feelings and thoughts, and you aren't terrible at ignoring them, for better or worse.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I would advocate for the ways in which that's actually great, but—

Lolo:               Yeah. Me, too.

Jessica:            Yeah. You know, but for better or worse—and that your coping mechanisms have brought you to this point. And now that you're here, you're motivated to soften them up—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you can see that if you treated your children the same way you treat yourself, you would be a very mean mom.

Lolo:               Yeah. Yeah. That's so true.

Jessica:            Yeah. In order to—and this is the thing that we all know when we think about our childhood, but it's hard to remember when we are the parent. What you believe, how you treat yourself, models for your children what is possible, what is real, in some ways more than the way you treat them.

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            In your childhood, you had a parent who was like, "Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's—are you smiling? Keep smiling. Everything's fine."

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that was your mom, yes?

Lolo:               It was actually my dad.

Jessica:            Your dad?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I love it when the genders get flipped. Okay.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It was your dad.

Lolo:               Uh-huh.

Jessica:            And his coping mechanism was put in place because he believed it was the way to keep himself and everyone around him safe.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            And he let shit happen that shouldn't have happened, and he didn't deal directly with your needs and some of your realities because you can't keep smiling and everything's fine and do that. So, again, the way we end up treating our children really comes from the deepest parts and goes out. Are both your parents still with us?

Lolo:               They are. They are not really around in my life right now, though.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And is that recent?

Lolo:               It's been happening around the birth of my son, so the last few years. Yeah.

Jessica:            Your first child.

Lolo:               My first child. Yes. The three-year-old. And I was trying really hard to find a happy medium with them in my life, but they were actually the ones who ultimately were kind of all or nothing about it.

Jessica:            I'm really sorry.

Lolo:               Thanks.

Jessica:            And was this about—we don't have to talk about it if it doesn't feel relevant, but—

Lolo:               No, that's okay. Yeah. I think it's very relevant because I think a big part of how I relate to parenting or just my experience of it is feeling parentless while parenting, which is really difficult. I don't have anyone to go to who's a parent to me. You know, I have parents—like friends who are parents. I don't have my parents who are a parent to me. And part of that, too, is that I had people who filled that role, but they all died around the time I was becoming a parent.

Jessica:            I'm so sorry. I was feeling that someone had passed, so—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —I'm really sorry about that.

Lolo:               Thank you.

Jessica:            So this Saturn opposition to the Moon square to Pluto—you don't get that by having a super accepting, loving childhood.

Lolo:               Right. Right.

Jessica:            You get that by coming from a family of inherited trauma.

Lolo:               Yes.

Jessica:            Whatever the details of why your parents opted out, which—what? I'm so sorry. That is incredibly fucked—I imagine was a way to control and punish you for not being specifically what they wanted, how they wanted.

Lolo:               Exactly. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. That could be cruelty, but when I look at them deeply, it's a lack of adaptability.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's really a lack of being able to see the world any way but their way.

Lolo:               That's so true. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And I mean, the irony is you don't get a Sun/Venus conjunction if you weren't a loved and wanted child. And you have that, too.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You were loved and wanted, but you had to be exactly the way they were. You had to feel what they felt. You had to disappear when they needed you to be quiet. And they needed you to show up with bells and whistles when they wanted you to give them attention.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            There was a lot of demands and conditions.

Lolo:               Yes. Yeah. That's 100 percent accurate.

Jessica:            Yeah. What you have done is what we all do. You heal. You reject it, right, to the best of your ability?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And then you have your interjected perpetrator. Now you've taken on that same directive as a parent. And you are trying to fix the world for your children, which is not possible, right?

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            It's not possible. You're trying to feel the feelings for them. But that—I was going to use the word "narcissistic."

Lolo:               It's grandiose.

Jessica:            Do you have a narcissistic parent?

Lolo:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay, because that was what your narcissistic parent needed from you.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Your narcissistic parent needed you to feel her feelings for her—her? We got the right gender on this one?

Lolo:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. Yeah. And so this training you have of, "I have to absorb impact for the people I love"—it's a trauma pattern. And the truth of the matter is there are moments and times where absorbing impact for your children is totally appropriate. And the way you're doing it now is more of a trauma pattern than actually helping your kids.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it doesn't feel like that, because there's guilt when you don't absorb the emotions of other people or try to absorb any potential harm from the people you care about. But what I keep on seeing is you weren't given tools. You were given rules. You were given consequences. You were given chaos.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You weren't given tools and instructions, "These are how you use tools."

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            But you're actually really good at doing that for people. You don't always do it for yourself, but you're good at doing that for people, eh?

Lolo:               Oh, yeah, I think so.

Jessica:            I mean, you think about it and you try.

Lolo:               Yeah. Yeah. Right. I think about all the time how I can equip my kids to do that. Yeah.

Jessica:            Good. That is all you can do because what we don't know is, is where you live going to get hotter? Is it going to get wetter? Are there going to be fires? Are there going to be tornadoes? We cannot predict that. We cannot predict what will happen in terms of any number of factors from the environment onwards. But you do have children.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you can give them tools. And those tools will not insulate them from danger, from bad ideas, from hot days and no AC—there are so many things that it cannot insulate them from. But it can empower them to identify, "This is how I feel right now. I feel out of control. Okay. I feel out of control; what can I do? Is there something I need to do to make myself feel better, or is there something I need to do to better protect myself or change where I'm sitting?"

                        Sometimes it's hot outside, and you sit inside in the hottest room of your house. And someone walks up to you and says, "Go in that room. It's cooler." And it's like, "Okay. Hadn't occurred to me because I was melting." Right? Teaching children those kinds of skills is in your parenting tool kit—

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —which is why I was a little stumped at the start. I mean, this is a really big and hard question, obviously.

Lolo:               Right. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So yeah. But the question about how to parent—I just don't exactly see that that's the real question because you seem to know, like, you're doing all the things. Am I wrong? Am I seeing that wrong?

Lolo:               Yeah, I mean, that's what I hope for.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Lolo:               Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think it's a much more how to be in myself as a parent. And that's a slightly different question. Maybe it sounds the same on the surface.

Jessica:            It's a meaningfully different question—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you are good at being like, "This is the time we have to wake up. We have to eat by that time. We have to get this done by this time." Correct?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're also good at play.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You're good at imagination. You're good at constructing stories and toys and things, yeah?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            You also like education. You like thinking about, like, "What's enriching in this moment? How can I turn this into a teachable?" Yeah?

Lolo:               Oh, yeah, for sure.

Jessica:            You're a fan of consent. You teach your children consent.

Lolo:               Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            I mean, these are like the biggies. You feed them well. You know?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You hydrate them, all the things. In terms of the parenting—just going to tick all your boxes. Do I think you're perfect? No. Do I think you'll make mistakes? Yes. But that's the job. You don't get to be a parent and not make mistakes—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you don't get to be a person and be perfect. That's the only reason why, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            That said, I want to bring you back to self-regulation. Do you breathe?

Lolo:               When I remember.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. That's a good answer. It's a very honest answer.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So, when you're thinking about—when you're consuming news, when you're thinking about the environment or your children's future, another piece of homework I'm giving you is to be intentional about your breathing so that you can notice when you stop breathing because, when you stop breathing, you stop being accountable emotionally. And so, as a parent, you're kind of abandoning yourself and modeling for your children how to overdo it and keep on going.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. There's motivation. So this is a practice that I actually think you can engage in because, with this Neptune conjunction to your Midheaven, you have a larger purpose. It's being as healthy as you can for your kids as long as you can in a world that's scary.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Can I take a peek at them psychically?

Lolo:               Sure.

Jessica:            Okay. Give me your little baby's name, the five-month-old, first.

Lolo:               Okay. [redacted].

Jessica:            Is she teething right now?

Lolo:               Yeah. Oh yeah. She's just starting. I've been wondering because nothing's coming through yet.

Jessica:            Yeah. It feels like a top.

Lolo:               Yeah. That's exactly where you're pointing. Uh-huh.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's where it feels like. And is she a screamer?

Lolo:               She doesn't cry a lot, but she barks. She'll get frustrated and make a barking noise. Yeah.

Jessica:            Because she feels like she's about to find her voice with this teething, okay?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So I don't know that she's experienced a lot of pain yet.

Lolo:               No.

Jessica:            So I don't think she's really going to like this.

Lolo:               Yeah. I don't think so either.

Jessica:            I mean, it's like immediately what I see is the teething.

Lolo:               Oh. Poor baby.

Jessica:            So recognizing that her pain—even though you know it's teething and it's like every other human child does it because we have this barbaric body that just—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —I mean, so crazy that there is a part of you—it's like the only relationship where it might be appropriate is with a child, but it's a pattern of you see somebody you desperately love suffering, and you just pour all of your energy and yourself into them.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Does that make sense?

Lolo:               Yeah. Definitely. I just want to envelope her.

Jessica:            Envelope. And so practicing noticing doing that and regulating it, bringing some of that energy into you so that you can be a strong, present parent—which your dad was not able to be, even though he was loving—and some of it into her. Practice regulating it because you were taught to empty all of yourself out on the table for whoever needed it.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That is something that, if you can learn how to moderate it, is an amazing skill. But if you can't learn how to moderate it, then it's just emptying yourself out. And it's not really modeling love. It's modeling a form of anxiety, actually.

Lolo:               Yeah. No, that's so real.

Jessica:            And so practicing with teething is going to be so great because teething is not the end of the world. Teething is not like, "Oh God. My kid has a fever. Is she okay?"

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's super manageable. I mean, it's still really stressful, but it's like, again, every human child goes through it—or most human children, I imagine. Does that seem like something you could practice doing?

Lolo:               Yeah. I mean, my initial thought is, oh, I don't know the difference of what that will feel like in my body. So I think I'm going to study that.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that's it. It's just to study it by being present.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I think some of what it will feel like for you is that you'll be sad.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Again, it's like this "I'm going to do something with my sad feelings" is "I'm going to pour myself into my beloved." So, in this moment, we're talking about your child. It's like a way of overdoing something, and that is a way of emptying yourself out. It moderates anxiety and sadness, and it also makes the other person feel better. Everybody wins.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            But if you were to actually feel your own feelings, then you'd be like, "Oh, I'm so sad. And I know that it doesn't make sense, and I know that it's going to pass. And also, I experience sadness alongside this beautiful being." And the power, the capacity, to experience sadness with sad things teaches a child something that is really hard to relearn in therapy later as an adult.

Lolo:               Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's such a core thing that most of us don't have modeled. You just get to have your emotions. And you get to struggle with them. But other than that—I gotta say, other than this teething thing that's bubbling, she's great.

Lolo:               Good.

Jessica:            I mean, she's only five months, but man, that's going to be—you have talkative children. This is going to be a talkative little girl.

Lolo:               Oh yes. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. She's got a real—I can just feel her brain just being ready for language.

Lolo:               Oh, wow.

Jessica:            Does she make verbal—she's too little, isn't she?

Lolo:               Well, she's blowing bubbles. Yeah. And she's actually—she's less verbal than my son was at this age, so that's kind of fun to hear.

Jessica:            I think you're going to have a little talkative family.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So let me take a peek at your son because he's, of course, the one who would—if there was anxiety in the child, we'd see it more at three. Can I take a peek?

Lolo:               Sure.

Jessica:            What's his full name?

Lolo:               [redacted].

Jessica:            Fun, fanciful little boy, yeah?

Lolo:               Oh yeah. Yeah. So much fun.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So neither of the kids are showing any sign of being negatively impacted by your anxieties.

Lolo:               Good.

Jessica:            Yeah. I wanted to check. I didn't want to just—you know, "Oh, you're fine." He feels very protected and safe, and he's kind of in his own world.

Lolo:               Oh yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. He likes imagination, eh?

Lolo:               Oh yeah. He's constantly pretending to be different characters. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I see that. He's got dimensions he plays in. And so, when it feels appropriate and when you have the emotional capacity to do so in a healthy way—and this might not be for a couple years, depending on how you determine his age and what—again, all the things—you can explore worlds, like stories, where there's environmental issues. And how do you handle it? And point him away from heroes and villains because little kids love that, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Heroes are great, and sometimes it's all little kids can do. And that's fine. But being able to be like, "Well, what can we do to help?" will give him tools that, again, are really a lot harder to develop in adulthood.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So just doing it through the form of play as opposed to letting him know that this is coming will be really, I think, consistent with your skills. You can do that. And it won't fuck with his head because he's already in play land. He's already experiencing things in his imagination, which is cool.

Lolo:               Yeah. Yeah. And that makes so much sense because we have a little book about Greta Thunberg that he actually just pulled out the other day, and he's been Greta the last few days.

Jessica:            That's amazing. And that totally tracks with how I'm seeing him—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because he is willing to dip his toe in lots of worlds. And talking about—what's his name? Mr. Rogers has a quote—

Lolo:               He loves Mr. Rogers.

Jessica:            Oh, he does? That's great. I love that. So Mr. Rogers has a quote, "Look for the helpers." And so you may reference that with your son and also say, "If we want to be the helpers, what could we do in this situation?" as opposed to, "If we want to be the king and the queen, if we want to be the savior and the fixer"—which is how you were raised, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's instead, "How could we be the helpers? What little thing could we do to help the person who's the savior of the story or the person who's struggling in the story?" because doing something is doing something, right? And learning how to live in a very imperfect world is really a skill set for empathy as opposed to trying to colonize it and capitalize on it and get the most you can, while you can, where you can. I mean, that's not your family ethos, and that's not your kids. But that's the world.

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            Do you have any questions about your son?

Lolo:               I don't think so. I love the reassurance that he's not picking up too much of my anxiety—

Jessica:            He's not.

Lolo:               —and he's doing well.

Jessica:            He's not. Listen. Does he see that you're anxious sometimes? Yeah. But does he see that every adult is anxious sometimes? Yeah.

Lolo:               Yeah. Right.

Jessica:            He's not internalizing it.

Lolo:               Okay. Good.

Jessica:            And the reason why you internalized it as a child was because that was by design.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Emotions were shoved into you.

Lolo:               No, that's true.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's important for you to hold that difference. And I want to acknowledge I really—I heard what you said about the heartbreak of not having parents as you're parenting.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to say, if they were around, they would not be helping you parent.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            The real heartbreak is that they are who they are.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not that they're there or they're not there.

Lolo:               Right. Right.

Jessica:            I'm sorry.

Lolo:               Yeah. And that's—you know, I've been feeling my way through that, and I think it goes to the heartbreak of—my father-in-law was the other real parental figure I lost. And I know he would be—you know, he would be helping me parent. But I just gotta have faith that he is, you know, wherever he is.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. I want to speak to something else on a more stressful level if that feels okay.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you have a go bag?

Lolo:               It has been in my mind to make one, and then I talk myself out of it.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's talk you into it.

Lolo:               Okay.

Jessica:            So some people feel like putting together a go bag, which is—if somebody doesn't know, it's basically a backpack you can grab and go—that's why they call it a go bag—if there was a calamity, an emergency, a reason to get the fuck out, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Because I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 30 years, I always had a go bag. And I am such a fan of a go bag because it makes you more self-sufficient. It makes you more resilient. And it also helps you to be a better community member, friend, parent—whatever it is, whatever your situation is. And so some people feel that putting together something like a go bag is investing in calamity. But I'm willing to guess that you have medical insurance and car insurance.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            This is just a different form of preparedness. Why do you talk yourself out of a go bag?

Lolo:               I think because I've dealt with anxiety so much, it's hard for me to know when to listen to it.

Jessica:            Because your anxiety is what tells you to get a go bag?

Lolo:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. So this is where I want to bring it back to those lists I recommended because if you're anxious about an environmental calamity, then there are things that you can do, purchase, or organize in the case of an environmental calamity. So I want to kind of point you away from thinking, "It's either my anxiety or"—you can be anxious about real things.

Lolo:               Sure.

Jessica:            You know what I mean? I mean, I think you are anxious about real things. Also, you're talking to the wrong person if you want me to talk you out of thinking the world is ending because I'm with you. I mean, I don't literally think it's ending, but also, like—calamity. Calamity. Yeah.

                        Okay. I'm just going to say, just broadly—go bag. Should be a backpack you could put on your back, your partner could put on their back, and maybe even one for little three-year-old so that they had the ability, right?

Lolo:               Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You would want to have identification, cash, medications, and then the basics, like underpants, socks, medical supplies, like first-aid kit kind of thing, copies of important documents—anything you'd have to grab and go. Does that accelerate your anxiety level?

Lolo:               Yeah. I mean, it does thinking about my son. He needs a nebulizer sometimes, and, like, oh my gosh, how would I fit the nebulizer in the bag? You know, things like that. But I feel like I can hold this level of anxiety.

Jessica:            Okay. So I want to hang out with you in the anxiety because I see it's—tell me if I'm right. It's in your lower stomach and in your chest, in your throat?

Lolo:               Yeah. Yeah. It's like this sort of rising sensation a little bit.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, that's what it feels like. Okay. So let's just take a deep breath into the feeling in your stomach. And now take another deep breath into the chest/throat area. Did it change anything? It doesn't have to.

Lolo:               It took it down, like, a little notch, like—

Jessica:            Like .5. Like .5. Something like that.

Lolo:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Great. Okay. Breathing is really simple, free, hard to remember to do, and really helpful for you. I think bringing it down .2 is magical for you, right, because that's one breath with me kind of watching you, right?

Lolo:               Right. Right.

Jessica:            So breathing into it is really valuable. I am a believer that if there are things to prepare for, you might as well prepare because maybe you won't ever need it—yay. You wasted your time. But think of all the other things you've wasted your time on.

Lolo:               Yeah. True.

Jessica:            And if you—God forbid—should need it, man, will you be proud of yourself.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            Something I keep in my go bags is Sharpies because I have let people that I know and care about know—because, again, I'm thinking earthquake because that's where I've lived most of my life. I'm thinking, "Okay, there's an earthquake. I'm going to take a Sharpie. I'm going to write on the front of my building, on the sidewalk in front of my house, where I went or that I'm okay." And having a pen that you can write with—so valuable. And it's something that you might not think about.

                        Some of it is thinking about, like we said, medicines and things that are like, "Ah, how do I put that in a backpack?" And then some of it is a pen, your ID—like a photocopy of your ID. Right? It's like the more simple things that you could treat as busywork and kind of self-soothe as you do it.

Lolo:               Yes.

Jessica:            This part of the conversation is you and me speaking as adults about how you can honor the wisdom in the things you're anxious about. You have a pattern of belittling yourself and saying, "Well, if I'm anxious, then"—insert whatever narrative of the moment. But your anxiety on this topic is justified.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that doesn't mean that terrible things are going to happen, but it's reasonable to be concerned that they're going to happen. And it's reasonable to be fucking anxious about that. I want to just validate the mess, right?

Lolo:               Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. You've come to the right place for validated mess because I get it. But being able to recognize, "Okay. So I can't control the climate. I can't control fucking Bezos and Musk. What are we going to do about it?" But you can be mindful that your gas tank, if you can afford it, doesn't go below half. You can be mindful that there are jugs of water in your car, maybe in your house. You can be mindful about little things that you could do to prepare that hopefully you never use, you never need.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Do you do any emergency preparedness stuff?

Lolo:               No. I mean, I have, like, fire extinguishers.

Jessica:            Okay.

Lolo:               That's about it.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm not going to call that emergency preparedness. I think that you—

Lolo:               No. No, it's not.

Jessica:            —really have to have that. Okay. So okay. I'm going to give  a couple pieces of advice here. One is to look into, in the city or town or community you live in, if there are any emergency preparedness classes. A lot of times, they're free, and they're in a community center somewhere. That might stress you out, but it will definitely educate you and empower you. I'm kind of encouraging you to do things that I understand are an engagement with your anxiety, but they're a constructive engagement.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            There are so many things that you know and that you think about and that you worry about, but emergency preparedness is a skill that—may you never need it, but if you do, you'll be glad it's in the noodle.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Because you have a Saturn/Moon opposition, you are wired in such a way where you can see preparation as a form of love. And so I want to give you that framing.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You're not investing in calamity. You're investing in knowing how to handle situations should they arise, which doesn't only make you a better parent and person but also—God forbid your neighbor needs it, right? You're there. You've got it. You've got skills. And that's valuable.

                        Now, this question was so big and, of course, impossible to answer. But I want to just take a pause and see if any questions are kind of remaining in your head, if there's things that we haven't gotten to that would be helpful for us to speak to.

Lolo:               I think one thing that has been coming to my mind—and I think it is sort of tangential to what we're talking about—is planning for the future because, of course, I'm thinking about, well, where is even habitable? And the answer will be probably nowhere. But then I come back to this point in myself where, like, this is where I am, and this is my community. And I don't know what's going to happen.

So maybe I shouldn't think about moving to Vermont or whatever, like, quote unquote, "climate haven," which I don't really fully believe in anyway. But I guess I'm wondering if there's a middle ground there that you see.

Jessica:            I think a lot of us who think about the climate crisis think about where in the world, right? And when you think about a place—maybe you're thinking Vermont. Maybe you're thinking the Midwest. Maybe you're thinking a different country. Whatever it is, any place that is survivable will have its own problems—

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            —because there will be climate refugees within the United States, outside of the United States, inevitably. So it's really important to be thinking about that, like, "Where is inhabitable? Am I living in a place that I don't feel like I can survive?" That's a fair question.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But if, in reality, you and your partner are not moving states, then it's not a valuable course of thought.

Lolo:               Yeah. That makes sense. And I think we could, but it would uproot so many things, including, like, potentially livelihoods that—

Jessica:            A super big deal.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And does your partner want to move? Are they open to moving?

Lolo:               They're more open to it than they have been in the past. So it's in flux.

Jessica:            I don't think there's a safe place on Earth from the Earth.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I have pursued this line of logic a great deal—I'm not going to lie—because I try to follow—because I am anxious about the world, I try to educate myself about the world. And so I'm like, "Finland"—you know, all these places that I've heard about that there are arguments for how it's going to be safe there.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            If the Earth isn't okay, then no one on the Earth is really okay.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So, within the community that you live in, you have choices. If, as a parent, you ultimately decide you live in a place that, let's say, is drought-stricken and you're deeply concerned about water, and you believe that there is a place that you could have a job, that you could have a safe enough community as co-parents, and you want to live in that place and there's not a drought—okay.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But when I hear your question, I hear it more as an anxiety about, like, "Oh my God. Where should we go?"—

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —and less of a, "I'm willing to uproot my life because I believe it's necessary."

Lolo:               Mm-hmm. That's very true.

Jessica:            Yeah. To me, this brings me back to emergency preparedness training.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            What region of the U.S. are you in?

Lolo:               We're in the Midwest.

Jessica:            Midwest. Okay. There are arguments for that's one of the safer places. I mean, there's—I could argue against that in an instant and with passion.

Lolo:               Yeah. Right?

Jessica:            That's the problem. There's nowhere that's safe.

Lolo:               Yeah. Exactly.

Jessica:            But I think that it is perfectly reasonable to make a list. What are the environmental concerns of your region in the Midwest as you understand it at this time? Not what do you think is coming. What is the environmental concern? Maybe ticks are on the list. Ticks. Oh no. So what are you doing to protect yourself and your family from ticks? Okay. That's a thing you can do.

Lolo:               Yeah. Definitely.

Jessica:            Okay. I want to encourage you to be thinking—oh. Wait. What did that kick up? Do you have a weird thing about ticks?

Lolo:               Oh, my son had a tick on him that we didn't notice for a couple days.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So—okay, because I was like, "Oh, that really just dysregulated something."

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And is he okay?

Lolo:               Oh, yeah. I mean, we were monitoring it. It's been a few weeks. We haven't noticed anything. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm sorry that I picked up on ticks and I named it. That's like the perfect stress—

Lolo:               Oh, yeah, that's okay.

Jessica:            —for you right now. And do you guys use tick—like, any kind of repelling for ticks?

Lolo:               Yeah, I think that's something that I could put on the list. We were just in a suburban backyard and weren't thinking about it, but you know, [indiscernible 00:54:11] why we need to.

Jessica:            The reason why I brought up ticks, other than I maybe psychically picked it up—I'm sorry. In the Midwest and on the East Coast of the U.S., there's a massive spike in the tick population because of the environment.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so—whereas you might not have had to really think about ticks as much, or maybe only in a couple months and now it's double that. There are so many things to consider, right? But okay. Ticks is a great one, researching how can you avoid DEET. Or maybe you don't want to avoid DEET. Maybe you're like, "Fuck it. Let's do chemical warfare here." Making choices from an educated place is your—it's your sweet spot.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Right? When you allow yourself to have some anxiety instead of acting on the anxiety, you educate so that you can mobilize with clarity. That's like, when you're at your best, you're really good at that.

Lolo:               Yes. Right.

Jessica:            Yeah. So that's what I want to encourage you to bring to this issue because you can't fix the planet, but you can acknowledge the very real issues that are at play, and you can deal with them. This is a terrible metaphor I'm going to use. I don't think it's going to work, but it's what came up in my head, so watch me go, okay?

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It used to be, when I was growing up, that kids would just hang out on the streets until all hours of the night. And at a certain point, we were told, "That's not safe," people coming and scooping up your kids. And so everyone's kids had to be in the house before dark. And that was a cultural change, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So it was a change based on the world not being as safe as it once was. And at a certain point, it's not something that people really question or think about too much. Whether or not that's terribly sad is a whole other conversation. But we adapt. We adapt. And the only way you can adapt is if you are aware of what's happening, which is why I kind of applaud your anxiety.

I just want to empower you to embrace your anxiety, not so that you can have a full-blown panic attack, but embrace it like embracing yourself. "Yes, self, it's okay that I'm anxious about these things. They're scary. And now I need to name them so that I can deal with what is in my stewardship." So tick spray is one of those things.

Lolo:   Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah, for—not just for you. For everyone in the family, right?

Lolo:   Right.

Jessica:            And if your child gets bit by a tick, it's part of life.

Lolo:   Yeah.

Jessica:            Going into self-blame—I think it's just inevitable for a parent because you're like, "God, how could I have stopped this from happening?" But you can't stop all the bad things.

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And when a new bad thing happens, you're like, "Oh shit. Now I gotta be aware of this new bad thing. Okay. I'll put it on my list, and I'll prepare." You can't get ahead of everything. And I look at your chart, and I see that you love to get ahead of everything.

Lolo:               I do. I do.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And you're good at it in some ways, but that's not what a parent can do.

Lolo:               Right.

Jessica:            Yeah. Not without getting real weird.

Lolo:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. I think we did what could be done for such a big topic. But I just want to add one more data point for you. You're not only going through a Neptune conjunction to the Midheaven at this time, but Uranus is squaring your Jupiter. And Uranus square your Jupiter is a transit that can spark big change, big growth. And so it's really valuable for you to try at this time.

Lolo:               Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? Because Uranus square to Jupiter can change your circumstances all of a sudden. It can bring you luck. It tends to be easy come, easy go. It can bring you opportunities. It can expand your education. Ultimately, what it is is a transit where you change in ways you weren't planning on changing. And so much of what you and I have been talking about is me encouraging you to actually do things that you've labeled as an action of anxiety as opposed to an action of containing myself and handling myself, right?

Lolo:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's like a very Uranus left turn for you, but it's on time astrologically—

Lolo:               Okay.

Jessica:            —for whatever that's worth.

Lolo:               Yeah. No, that helps.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I'm so glad it helps. I'm so glad it helps. Also, Saturn is currently trining your Moon, which is—and before too long, it'll square your Ascendant. That's a whole other topic. But the Saturn trine to the Moon is stabilizing. It's good for preparation. If you're going to put together a go bag, the best time to do it is Saturn trine your Moon or your Mercury.

Lolo:               Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. Get in there and explore it. Yeah.

Lolo:               Okay. Will do.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. Wow. I know this was a lot. But I wish you the best of luck with baby teething.

Lolo:               Yes. Thank you so much. We'll need it.

Jessica:            I feel like you're going to need it. I mean, babies—they're so cute. They're so cute.

Lolo:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But also, yeah, they scream because—why? It's so barbaric that our teeth break through our soft little skin.

Lolo:               I know. I know. It's so hard to be a baby.

Jessica:            It is so hard to be a baby.

Lolo:               Yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Jessica:            It is so my pleasure.