The Thinking Other Woman

Although astrology sort of hamstrung me in getting over this relationship (for, oh, EIGHT YEARS), I still value it for the perspective it helped me reach on not only this but the entirety of my life and why I've spent so very much of it unhappy.

To Explain ...

I'm not sure things like Santa and Disney are good if a child lives in an emotionally unhealthy family. I grew up in a family rife with mental illness and childhood abuse, handed down generation after generation.

Life was so grim as a little kid that I kept that Disney mentality much, much longer than I should have. A kid in an unhealthy family doesn't have great grounding in reality anyway. Decades and decades later I had to let go of some fantastically unrealistic dreams I had made up about my life, largely because I never really got that exuberant magic of childhood and still needed to have that experience years and decades later. When maybe if fantastical stories like Santa Claus and "When You Wish Upon a Star" and "You can be ANTHING you WANT to be!! This is AMERICA!!!" didn't exist, I could have lived a much more realistic life and not ended up so, so disappointed and badly, badly let down. 


Oh, let's not forget the sick, stupid "The Secret" and personal responsibility ethos that tells everyone that YOU are the only thing responsible for everything that happens to you, so if you are not happy with your outcome, it's all your fault for not thinking right, not believing the right way, not being able to force yourself to feel the right feelings, or not working hard enough.

In The Yod Book, astrologer Karen Hamaker-Zondag writes that the yod is symbolizing where three different self-concepts inside a person go to war with one another in a way that is not obvious to the person. As soon as the person tries to do something, another part of their self-concept, or, quite possibly, a bit of fate the person preplanned, gets in the way, and the experience is so confusing the person can't figure out what's wrong or what to do about it. The issues aren't obvious at all. The life gets all pulled off course and zigzagged all around, and it isn't until many years later that it's clear what the purpose was or what the person gained by it. Often we have plans that get stopped by some outside event and we just have to abandon those plans. (Fuck knows I sure have.) Yod holders often end up thinking, "Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?" People end up in very harsh circumstances and feel totally rejected and let down by life. What happens isn't anything they can do anything about.


She writes that with a yod, what the person is trying to do doesn't fit with responses from the outside world, and the person loses confidence and trust. They end up not trusting either themselves or the environment, and if it continues, the person feels as if they don't have anything to hang onto anymore. The person ends up in situations they really didn't want--many times something shocking or scary--or that have consequences they couldn't possibly ever have foreseen. People run the risk of getting stuck in the calamity of broken dreams and can't see that the tragedy is offering them a chance to do something else they may discover suits them much better. There's supposed to be some other new beginning, but some people just remain bemired in sorrow and never find it.

Especially in romance, "people fall in love with a partner who turns out to be very different than we anticipated in our wildest imaginings, or a partner who drags us into a world that is very problematic."


One client, she writes, who had Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in a yod (same as me) went looking for a stable partner who could be a fundamental support for her. She ended up with a strong man, all right, but he turned out to be a mob guy, and her and her children ended up in danger because of his dubious business activities. (In my case, I went looking for support and ended up with one waffler who couldn't leave his marriage, and one guy who got cancer and died.) The yod-holder's inner problems blind them to things about the beloved someone else might have seen. (I guess we Saturn-Neptune-Uranus-es must not have had a lot of emotional security in childhood, so we go looking for someone to be the parents we needed and didn't get.)


Before a yod-holder can do anything in their life, says this author, they have to not only fix their own issues, but deal with a lot of handed-down generational trauma, and the presence of a yod in the chart is a sign that this person is here to clear generational trauma. People with yods often show up in some circumstance where a situation has reached a turning point. One example is Princess Diana, a yod-holder who showed up at a critical point where the British royal family desperately needed to modernize and become more human and humane. The yod-holder may not be able to affect the needed change, but they're there trying. The yod-holder often ends up functioning as a person who is there to break some kind of log-jam. 


Don't forget that the person this website is about is also a yod-holder. Often when a yod shows up in a chart, the holder ends up in a situation that can't go on and has to change, and the person has to choose, but none of the choices look good and the person feels as if they can't make a choice. (Boy, does that ever apply here.) In short, a yod reflects that impossible situations will occur in the life. Anything at a critical stage or at a turning point is likely to get a leader with a yod or an unaspected planet in their chart. Sometimes a yod activated by a transit will reflect an important fateful or positive event in the life. A person can get overwhelmed and do something unrealistic and really stupid at this time; an escape route that doesn't lead you into balanced development.

Yod people feel insecure and too different from other people, but undergo a turn in mid-life that makes the last half of the life very different from the first half in a way that expresses something unique. They don't recognize their own talents.


People with yods often feel dissatisfied with whatever they got in life. Many, many, many times, plans don't work out, and it's very important not to stake all one's happiness on plans working out. "Is that all there is?" "It's never any good anyhow." "It will all go wrong again anyway." (Boy, is that me.) Those with Uranus in a yod are always searching for information. 


In perusing the coming Jupiter transit over my yod, I looked at some aspects I hadn't studied much before (largely because hardly anyone writes about them and info is hard to come by.) But I saw things like: 

Saturn inconjunct Uranus: reflects that misfortune and hard lessons restrict who I would otherwise be. I fall back on patterns that don’t work because I am insecure and need predictability and stability. I try to seek status or approval because I don’t have any self-worth. I could throw away an existing pattern with no clue how to build a more suitable lifestyle and find myself living in a void. (Which sounds just like me the past eight years.)

Saturn inconjunct Neptune: Restriction, limitations, the way I was brought up, and the way I was taught are inhibiting my imagination, creativity, and dreams. I have an overactive imagination which lacks suitable channels for a healthier release. I end up feeling inadequate, incompetent, and inferior. This may not actually be the truth, but I think it is, so I don’t want to do anything, and the negative results of that reinforce the idea that my creative ideas aren’t much good. Which is exactly what’s happened in my life. I wind up cutting off my own imagination and being a self-defeatist. I am supposed to just be myself and stop comparing myself to others.

What I see looking at all that over the course of my whole life ...

I was born to a very unhealthy family and didn't get the needs a child has for exuberant fun, awe, magic, and to be the very apple of their parent's eye met. I got rejected at every turn, first by parents and then by cruel schoolmates. I ended up believing something was terribly, terribly wrong with me because other people didn't like, love, or accept me the way I saw other children being liked, loved, and accepted. Because I had a mother who constantly transmitted that if only other people would treat her differently, she could feel and act better, and the only hope and guidance I got was that Disneyland mentality, I settled very young on a mentality that I would prove myself very special by doing things that have turned out to be way, wayy, wayyyy beyond my actual capabilities. At every turn, I was setting goals for myself I never had the talent or the opportunity to reach, and telling myself other people would like me, and I would like myself, once I proved I could do this or that.

Look at the ridiculous goals I've had: Becoming a bestselling author. Writing screenplays. Winning over a hopelessly codependent man and experiencing him becoming something he wasn't with/because of me. Just the way I tried to do with my mother many years ago.

The trouble was, I don't have the talent to write a bestseller. I don't have any avenue of opportunity to get anywhere writing books or screenplays. I worked with my late husband's agent on his books, but he thinks I am an idiot, and so does everyone who read the last novel I tried to write. Who did I think I was? I have no talent. I just wished I did, because as a little kid I realized I'd have to be some kind of star or no one would ever like me.

The fact is, to have that kind of blazing, runaway success, every last star in the sky has to line up perfectperfectperfectperfect. Not only do you have to have blazing, runaway talent, far superior to anyone else's, but then you have to hook up with exactly the right help--who thinks you're marvelous and wants to help YOU--at precisely the right time. Just the right and perfect time that whatever genius thing you've done is brewing in the population anyway and will touch the right and perfect nerve in people. After never would have been a thing if One Direction hadn't been a popular band.

And I don't have anything like that. I can't possibly ever do any of those things; and it isn't possible to heal someone else's emotional problems. Only they can do that, with their own decision, the right genes, something conducive in the background, and tons and tons of their own hard work.

All I've ever done is set utterly impossible goals for myself, trying and trying to be liked, and basing my self-esteem on some vision of myself as I would be if I ever got there. It was so deep-rooted and I was so needy, I just kept on and on deluding myself for fifty-four years. I had to get there. I was no good if I didn't.

So I kept making up THE most impossible goal I could ever make up to chase after and chase after, and the universe kept dumping me on my ass so I would notice and STOP. Things were only fun if they supported this lofty vision of myself I had, and when they didn't ... they just turned out to be tons and tons of hard work I didn't want to do anymore.

That's all this attraction ever was ... yet another impossible goal that would make me feel like a million dollars if I ever got it to happen. Because it would prove I was special. Because growing up, who I really was was never special to anyone.

And little children desperately need to be special. When they're little enough that being swung up in Mommy's or Daddy's arms and adored just the way they are is enough to do it.

I need to understand that I'm fifty-four years old and not four anymore. I don't need the things a little child needs. I'm not going anywhere but the nursing home, where I will be all alone, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's the way life is and I will be okay. I can handle whatever happens. I will be fine. I don't need to secure a quarter-million dollar book deal and get written up in all the newspapers to finally prove to people I have a special ability so they will finally like me.

All I am is an ordinary little old fat woman. That's all every one of us will be someday, just an ordinary little old person sitting in a care home, and there's nothing wrong with that. We're all human and that's okay. I don't have to be Wonder Woman and do the extraordinary to make anyone like me or love me. I don't even need anyone to love me. I can handle whatever's going to happen to me and I don't need anyone to protect me from old age, illness, sickness, or dying. Those things are going to happen to me no matter what, I will be old and all alone, and I will be just fine. I don't need to pull some stupid stunt with some married man I've elevated to a status I thought was Better-Than-Me, just so I can feel protected and good about myself.

Basically, I can take every goal and every plan I ever had as a younger person and just throw them all in the trash. I never needed any of it. All I need to do is get up every morning and handle whatever daily responsibilities I have, and that is enough. That is fine. That is all I ever needed to do to be good enough as a human being.

All my life I strained and strained and struggled and struggled to be good enough to have things I saw other people around me effortlessly having. Someone who loved them. A happy marriage. A friend group. A decent home to live in. One of the reasons I was so happy being married to my husband is I finally felt like part of the human race! It may have been a family of one, but finally, FINALLY, I had a happy, healthy family!!

And part of the reason was, we both shared this same delusion that it was necessary to prove ourselves talented at writing in such a way that the world had to acknowledge us.

The difference was, at least he had real talent. I didn't.

And it didn't matter, because I didn't need to be Special at anything to be and feel okay. I didn't need anyone's love. I didn't need anyone's friendship. I didn't need to win this married man. I didn't need anything.

All I needed was to feel that just waking up and accepting an ordinary life and its ordinary ending was all I was ever supposed to do and that it was okay. And losing this married guy and toppling over into endless grief for eight years because I didn't get a miracle was a huge, huge part of me learning that. I didn't need all those things I thought I needed. I don't really need anything. I was just supposed to see that.

It was all I ever needed to do.

Anyway, it's a good thing I finally got there. Struggling to move mountains and believing in Santa Claus and trying to make him appear is a miserable SHIT-TON of work. And I don't have the energy anymore.

All I have to do now in my old age is sit and be ordinary and be satisfied with it and expect nothing, and that's about where my energy level is these days and all I can humanly do anymore.

So, I'm going to take that lesson, and live the rest of my life in peace. And I thank my married guy for the lesson.

I really needed it.