Planting Seeds of Self-Respect

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Hi, it's Dayna and I'm here with your divination for the new moon in sidereal Leo. The 2025 Sidereal Astrology Guide says, “Planting seeds of self-respect.”
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We are finally on to the next series of lunations, one of which is an eclipse, which means that we are in eclipse season. Eclipse season is always full of excitement and drama, particularly in the sense of the cyclical time periods where collective cultural shifts are happening.
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in ways that are very apparent. I always think about how, you know, prior to the advent of artificial light on a large scale, eclipses were major cultural events, not just in the astrological sense, but in the sense of the light that you are relying upon.
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to tell you what time and season it is, to illuminate your work of the day, to illuminate what would otherwise be hidden from you in ways that could be dangerous, it's disrupted. The eclipse will be in a couple of weeks at the full moon in Sidereal Aquarius.
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But I do think it is an appropriate moment to talk about Leo, to talk about Aquarius, and some of the themes that we are experiencing and themes that will surface. I want to read from a post, I'm pull it up on Instagram, because it is...
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top of my timeline now. I want to pull up a post that I put up earlier this spring on the eclipses in Aquarius and Leo because that's when this series began. So I'm just gonna read down these themes. The overall theme of these eclipses in Aquarius and Leo is whose vision determines what you see. We have privacy and surveillance, being known versus being seen.
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invisibility versus visibility, erasure versus humiliation, ignored versus perceived, dissociation versus hubris, and self-determination versus self-respect, and lastly, self-knowledge versus self-awareness.
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I've actually started working on the 2026 Sidereal Astrology Guide, which means that I have been writing about this eclipse series and what we will expect from it in 2026. And one of the themes that I think has been apparent in terms of everything that we're experiencing and everything that's going on now, on top of what I see in 2026, is this theme of privacy.
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and surveillance, privacy and surveillance. Privacy and surveillance is also deeply connected to the themes of being seen versus being known. And Leo for me is the sign of personal branding, whether you have a business or some other way that your identity is connected to your work. Or not, right? Even if we're talking about just our reputation.
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Leo talks about being seen. And when we bring in Aquarius, it's about being known. How do you want to be seen versus how are you known? I talk about Leo a lot on social media because it's one of the signs I've noticed over the years of me being a sidereal astrologer that people struggle the most with making the switch, right? So that means that people who are
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tropical Virgo often become sidereal Leo. And this is struggling, this is a struggle for them because the idea of Leo that is often talked about is vain and, you know, self-seeking, attention-seeking, drama-full, big personality. That actually fits perfectly with sidereal cancer.
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Right? But it actually does not fit for sidereal Leo. And so this is why people have a hard time making the switch in terms of believing that that's their sign. Sidereal Leo's biggest fear is humiliation in the Wounds and Gifts framework, which is the foundation of how I understand and interpret the signs in Divination for Liberation Sidereal Astrology.
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The wound of Leo is humiliation. And I really understand humiliation in this very specific way, which is to have attention or like a spotlight put on something about you physically or something you've done or your identity without your consent and often without your prior knowledge. So it's kind of like being off guard in the spotlight.
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A lot of times when there are child celebrities who are in the spotlight very young, they are often seen before they have the capacity to know themselves. And I think that this is a common experience for most people with sidereal Leo placements. Being seen before you have the opportunity to know yourself, which means that people are telling you who you are before you've even become aware that you have a self.
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before you've had the opportunity to experience that self out in the world, before you've had the chance to decide which parts of yourself you want to show and which parts you want to be seen. This humiliation is not always in the form of criticism or being scrutinized, although it often is that, right? I've had so many clients whose parents under the guise of
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trying to protect them from being caught off guard by how people will see them and judge them in the world, become that judgment, become that bully for them. know, bullying them for their sexuality or how they express and embody their gender, bullying them for their weight, bullying them for their skin color, bullying them for their hair. And it's almost like, I can't afford for you to walk...
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around or you can't afford to walk around not knowing how other people see you. But the problem with that is that Sidereal Leo's mind gets filled with images of anticipation of how other people will see them rather than how they see themselves and more importantly, overriding how they want to be known.
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They don't even get a chance to do that Aquarius work of self-determination, determining for themselves how they want to be known. Instead, they are fighting with the demons in their head that have been planted from a very young age that people are watching them and that people are judging them. And so you need to know how you look to people. This is not always physical appearance, but it can be. Maybe it is, again, parts of your identity or how you perform gender or race or class. This can also be on the
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other side in terms of praise. I know that like...
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We want to make our children feel proud of themselves and we want them to have confidence, but there is such a thing as too much praise, particularly when you don't recognize as a parent the power you have in shaping your child's self-image. That if you heap on praise for the things that you value,
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or you heap on praise for the you believe society will value in your child, it can have the same effect as the criticism and the bullying, in that, again, that child doesn't get to know themselves before they are seen in this very particular light. This is why this eclipse series, or in part why this eclipse series, is about whose vision determines what you see.
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Even if you do not have sidereal Leo placements, you still have the sun in your birth chart. And so when people talk about what is my sign or my sign is X, Y, Z, they are saying what their sun sign is, which is important to understand because there are lots of other signs. There's a moon sign, rising sign, mercury sign, and so on. What the sun sign or your sign is articulating in your birth chart
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is the process by which you have become aware of yourself and it's articulating your relationship with attention and validation. It can tell you what it is that embarrasses you. It tells you how you want to be seen. So let's take a moment this time and do some sun sign interpretations. And I always like to pull this up in my guide just to make sure I don't forget any signs, okay?
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So let's start with cancer, because we've already kind of talked about Leo, but let's start with cancer. Cancer is the feeler.
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On August 16th, the sun entered sidereal Leo, and in the 2025 Sidereal Astrology Guide, I wrote, focusing on projecting confidence. This is a way that we interface, I think, with authenticity. We think authenticity is like showing who you are and what you think and what you feel and what you believe all the time, and I just think that's stupid.
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I think that context is so important in that there are certain contexts where I want to be felt and other contexts where I want to be respected for my knowledge. There are certain contexts where I want to be taken care of and catered to. And there are other contexts where I really want to be believed. I want to debate and, you know, joust with ideas, right? So context is really important. And the son in Leo,
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Focusing on projecting confidence is going to activate the sun in your birth chart, which is why I went through and did all of the meanings of the sun in our birth chart based on its sign. Projecting confidence is really about that personal brand thing, our reputation. How are we seen and known by other people? What is the image of us that exists in the minds of other people and how does it align with
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or how is it in misalignment with how we want to be seen and known by people, right? One of the really interesting things about social media, which for me is always tied up into eclipses and transits in Leo and Aquarius, because Saturn was in Leo in around 2005-ish when the social media platforms really, really, really took off.
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when the mommy bloggers really, really took off and we went on this mad dash to share as much about ourselves as possible because it became a third place for us to find community, to be validated, to make money, to make connections with each other, so on and so forth. For me, social media is such an integral part of these eclipses, integral part of this new moon, and any Aquarius and Leo transits because it is where we...
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create avatars and personas that we project out into the world. Social media brands and influencers is about how much space you take up and how much your self-image is respected and what you are known for in a way that makes people flock to you, gets you more attention. And most importantly, in this society, to be able to monetize the attention
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that you garner. I think that we have reached this tipping point of what some people have called the attention economy, but I think more deeply it is about the ways that we have prioritized the perception or sense of sight over all else. That the narrative shaping, the
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battle over making meaning, which I think is at the root of every political struggle. It is the fighting for the right to determine what things mean, right? What your body means, what your behavior means, what your tone of voice means, what your skin color means, what your gender means, what this historical event has meant. That's at the root of every political struggle for me. So as we are at this tipping point where
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the sense of sight has reached like its peak in dominating the way that humans engage with each other and the world. Now the tables are turning and part of why the sense of sight can no longer dominate is because of AI.
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If, and this actually really connects for me to the Pisces Virgo eclipses that are wrapping up. The last of that series is on September 21st and it's a new moon solar eclipse in Virgo, which when we get to that, we've had four of those. If you read in the guide for September, you'll see how I broke that all down. Or you can come to next month's astrology meetup, which will be on Wednesday, September 8th.
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I'll make sure to update the link for that in my bio on Instagram and in the description of this podcast episode. But what AI has done, it has made it such that you really cannot trust your eyes. What did I literally just say about Virgo Sun? And if you didn't hear it, then you know where to go hear it. But to be able to trust that people and things are what they appear to be.
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And the South Node has been in Virgo during the duration of this eclipse series, and the North Node has been in Pisces, which is to say, no, you cannot trust that what things appear to be are actually what they are. And the North Node in Pisces is saying, actually, you need to tap into your ability to recognize patterns and the role that your emotions and bodily functions
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play in sniffing out discrepancies and contradictions between things. Right? So this perception of sight is on the decline. AI is the ultimate peak of human perception of sight dominating because now there is absolutely no way to blanket trust your eyes and not to say that it's always been that way.
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But at the very least, if you were looking at a video, you could tell if it was a real person, a deep fake or animation or CGI. As time progresses, that's going to be harder and harder and harder to discern and some people already cannot tell the difference. This also goes along with something that I've talked about a lot on social media and in other episodes of this podcast, which is the decline of the written word.
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because the written word and the perception of sight go together. Where that puts us is in having to use other means of interfacing with the world. This is the moment of the rise of the meaning makers. This is the moment of the rise, I've talked about this before, of the psychics, of the oracles, of the spiritualist. I don't think that this is the rise of clergy in the traditional sense of organized religion.
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but I do think Kirk clergy in a redefined form in non-formal or informal ways is also on the rise, right? So focusing on projecting confidence with the sun in Leo right now is happening in a really interesting climate or interesting context because skepticism is at an all-time high and getting higher. I've talked about this being the season and time of the skeptic.
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But the reason we're in the season and time of the skeptic is for two reasons. One I just talked about, which is you cannot trust your eyes and you cannot trust what you read. But what is connected to that is that because we don't actually live in a meritocracy, I talked about this before, because we don't actually live in a meritocracy, we do not have a society where we can trust that someone with the label expert is actually an expert.
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We can trust that it was their race or their class or their gender that got them into a position of authority, but we cannot trust that they actually know what they're talking about. In these situations and times, it leaves room and a vacuum for all types of skeptics to flood the social town hall or whatever you call it, to offer their...
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understandings of the patterns and what things mean. So this is weird for Leo because it's like you can project confidence, but are people going to believe what it is that you're projecting? Remember, Leo is the projector, which is to say, look at me this way. I think this is going to be really interesting for Donald Trump and his bravado and hubris, but also he is being handled and used.
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He is not in good health. And I truly wonder if at some point over the next few weeks as we are in these Leo and Aquarius lunations that, or just Leo Aquarius transits, because after this we still have Mercury in Leo and Venus in Leo in September, October. So planting seeds of self-respect. If you did not listen to the Sun sign interpretations, go do that. But...
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Planting Seeds of Self-Respect is really about becoming aware of what triggers us into embarrassment and humiliation, and also just accepting on a baseline that everybody needs attention and validation. Anybody who is telling you that you don't need external validation, anybody that is telling you without nuance that you should not seek external validation,
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is trying to make you go crazy and I will not recant that or take it back. They do not understand that everybody has a need for validation. It does not always mean being on stage or in front of the camera or it might not be at your job. Everyone needs to participate in the relational work of sanity making, which means to have a witness to how we perceive ourselves in the world. They don't necessarily have to agree with us, but...
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to have a witness and for someone to come stand where we're standing and look and see us as we see ourselves and see the world the way that we see it, everybody needs it. And that is what self-respect is about. It is about the experience of having a witness to your own perception and not have that overtaken by thoughts of how other people are perceiving you and a real acknowledgement
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of what it is that you are seeking validation and respect for. Let's pull some cards.
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The card on the bottom is going to be our context for this reading. And we've got the Seven of Pentacles, which is a card of waiting, but it's waiting after having already planted seeds, after we have done the work of preparing the ground for what it is that we want to plant, which at this time is planting seeds of self-respect. How do we plant seeds?
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of self-respect? Well, as I said before in the astrology divination portion of this episode, we plant seeds of self-respect by first acknowledging the need for respect and validation and coming to terms with what that looks like for us, but also understanding who we want to be respected by, who we want to be seen by. That's a loaded question. I'm not going to get into it now, but the...
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The card, the Seven of Pentacles, is about maintaining the ground in a way that supports the rooting of those seeds and eventually a harvest. It's really not much to do when the Seven of Pentacles comes up. It's just like you gotta let things play out. You have to let nature take its course.
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in a certain way and hopefully you planted at the right time and nature cooperates with you. All right, we've got The Fool, which we have seen a lot on the Divination for Liberation podcast and The Night of Wands. Oh, this is really, really, really interesting because The Fool has come up historically on this podcast in relation to Pisces transits and Pisces lunations. And The Fool in these contexts has often meant
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releasing baggage, letting go of assumptions. The full in our relationship with the tarot on this podcast for the past year plus has been about releasing previously held assumptions so that our belief systems can change, right? That's been related to the eclipses in Pisces and Virgo and now Saturn in Pisces. And of course, if I've said before,
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We've got that eclipse in Virgo, the last one of this series on September 21st. So the Fool is reminding us that we are still doing the work of changing our belief systems. We are still releasing assumptions. We are still letting go of ways of interpreting things go. We are still recognizing what we have been indoctrinated to believe, and we are letting that go.
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We are making room for new patterns to emerge. We are making room for new interpretations to surface and understanding that it is a part of human evolution that we cyclically change our belief systems. We question our indoctrination. We have skepticism when contradictions become too unbearable.
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to smooth over with our existing assumptions. The Fool with the Night of Wands is really, really interesting to me because both of these cards together offer a statement about the Seven of Pentacles, which is to say we have been tilling the same ground over and over again, expecting the seeds we planted to bear fruit.
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And there is a sunk cost fallacy in that we feel like if we stop now, we will miss this inevitability that they will bear fruit. But I think the full A Night of Wands is just like, nah, actually, that's not going to bear the fruit that you think it is. It is not going to materialize in a harvest.
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And as a matter of fact, there are some assumptions you've been holding about yourself and there are these specific ways, I don't know who this is for, because I'm about to give a word, but there are some specific ways that you have been avoiding embarrassment that have not led to the impact that you want to have in your relationships, the experiences you want to have in your relationships. It has not led to...
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the career path and trajectory that you want. It has not resulted in professional validation and respect. It has not resulted in changes in your community that you are longing for and craving. It has not changed the behavior of people who mistreat you. It has not convinced anybody to see you as human. And as a matter of fact, you've been wasting your time. But this is nothing to judge yourself harshly for.
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because you are just doing what it is that you're supposed to do. You plant the seeds, you water, you fertilize, you protect it from inclement weather, and you feed it and hope that nature cooperates with you so that it can bear the fruit that you planted. But the fool and knight of wands is saying, like, it's no judgment if you give up on that now.
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What is it that you have been pouring and pouring and pouring and pouring so much into because your ego and sense of self-worth is attached to it? What is the self that you have projected into the world that you have been committed to being seen as that no longer aligns with the self that you are now?
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Think back to 2016 and 2017 specifically. What is the self that you were coming into awareness of, that you took steps to create an image and story and reputation around, whether that is professionally, whether that is in your most intimate relationships? How was it that you just needed to be seen in 2016, 2017, 2018? And how is...
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the you that you are now or the self that you're wanting to be seen and known as, no longer in alignment with that. Again, this can be professionally, this can be in your relationships, but I very strongly encourage you to go and listen to the Sun sign interpretations that I offered because for each of those, I talked about what makes each Sun sign embarrassed. Everybody gets embarrassed, everybody feels self-conscious.
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Self-consciousness is knowing that you're being perceived, knowing that people are looking at you and the mental gymnastics we do to try to perceive what it is that people see when they look at us. But more often than not, the thing that we perceive or believe people see when they look at us is not actually rooted in the reality of what's going on in that moment. It's often rooted in our own insecurities.
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The very thing that you're insecure about is the thing that you often think people are thinking about you. And everybody has a projector in them. Yes, Leo is the projector, but everyone has a projector in them. And it is to protect us. It's not wrong, you know, if you were parentified Capricorn son and you had to take up as little space emotionally as possible because there was no emotional space for you in the bodies.
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and emotional experiences of your caregivers, of course it's going to trigger you to be perceived as being in need. Of course you are going to avoid emotional displays of vulnerability because it did not elicit care from your caregivers, right? But the fool in the night of wands for whatever your sun sign is, saying, hey, there are some assumptions that you've been imposing onto people.
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and your relationships that are not in alignment with how you actually want to be seen at this time. And the Night of Wands is about taking advantage of opportunities. It is about responding to the moment. It is about spontaneity. It is about having no preconceived notions. It is about being able to be fully present to who you are now and the person in front of you. Remember, a few episodes ago, I talked about
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the meditative potential of divination for liberation, sidereal astrology, in that aligning us with the times and seasons as they are now is an opportunity for us to really reprogram our nervous systems and to do that healing work of saying, hey, you are not there anymore. You are not in the environment that parentified you. You are not in the environment that humiliated or abandoned you anymore.
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But as long as you continue to project that reality onto your present moment, your nervous system is never going to tell the difference. Leo transits are really a fascinating time. The new moon in Leo is full of possibility for us because we can truly become present to who we are now. We can see ourselves more clearly and we can see the people in front of us clearly as we are planting seeds for self-respect.
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Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Divination for Liberation podcast. I'll see you in a couple of weeks, which will be a full moon lunar eclipse inside Dario Aquarius. I hope to hear your comments and your feedback on this episode, whether you are listening on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Please make sure to comment and like and subscribe.
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Y'all be listening and not subscribing. Y'all be listening and not commenting and not liking. And since we are in this Leo thing of attention, give me my attention so the algorithm can make other people look. Thank you so much. I love you so much. You guys have been writing with me for so long and welcome to all of the new folks. If you would like to support the Divination for Liberation podcast, join the podia. I'll drop the link that'll give you access to bonus content.
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like the sun sign interpretations for your sidereal sun sign in Divination for Liberation that I offered in this episode. You'll be able to access that via video on the Divination for Liberation Podio, which is like Patreon, but it's not Patreon. Other than that, continue to mask up as we are still in a COVID surge. You know when the children start going back to school, the cooties start getting spread around and they come back. Make your children wear masks.
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And if they're afraid of being embarrassed of being the only one who wears a mask, you gotta gas them up. You gotta tell them how good they look. You gotta tell them how proud you are of them for protecting themselves. You have to give them the knowledge to arm their self-image. Why are you wearing a mask? Give them the details. Make your kids wear a mask so you and your family can stay healthy as we are starting back school. I will see you all soon. Take care now. Bye.