Episode #025 — Astrology with a Twist: Colleen Harrison’s Neurodiverse Universe

Melanie Branch: Hello and welcome to a very exciting episode of trailblazers rising with me today I have somebody that I've been following on social media For a period of time but time does not actually exist so don't ask me how long and she is the neurodivergent astrologer herself and I'm going to apologize and warn you ahead of time that we're going to talk about entrepreneurship but it's probably going to get real far into astrology with this one.

So buckle up let's get ready colleen say hi to everyone

Colleen Harrison: hello everyone and thank you so much for having me today it's so wonderful to get to chat with you

Melanie Branch: finally yeah okay so I'm ready I'm excited for this I have questions that I ask every single person so we'll just get those ones out of the way and then we can go get this train off the tracks.

First and foremost what sparked your entrepreneurial journey what was that point in time where you were like fuck this I gotta do my own thing oh man

Colleen Harrison: it was a kind of a tornado that started in like nobody wanting to employ me for anything you know like I was a restaurant career person but that was I have no surprise there.

None that one I mean I think honestly I think the restaurant industry is kept alive by people who don't know they're neurodivergent and don't know how to you know take care of themselves appropriately and so alcohol like alcohol was keeping me through that career I had to numb all of my sensitivity and whatever like everyday.

It was really bad are you

Melanie Branch: talking about my story or are you talking about your story I'm confused I mean I think

Colleen Harrison: it's a common one the neurodivergent community I do you know and so kind of like the year before COVID really I'd attempted to get out of the restaurant industry a couple of times and those like I got fired for wait for it being too detail oriented.

And I wouldn't find out I was on the autism spectrum for three more years

Melanie Branch: wow

Colleen Harrison: and so that just wasn't working out and then special interests like I took to I'd always loved astrology but then When I discovered the birth chart and how you know when you first read your birth chart you're like oh wow there's really something to this you know it's like it's you on paper in the stars and you're it just I felt like I was home.

And so I got kind of addicted and it helped me change my life it helps me give up alcohol for the most part it helped me just start to feel like I was here you know like all the self like assurance and validation that I'd always been seeking externally like I could do for myself finally so yeah and then it was like I sort of for years really struggled to get it off the ground.

I was also in the throes of like a major depression and identity crisis and whatever and COVID hit and it was like well there's no restaurant industry anyway so let's just keep rolling yeah it felt like a like a vision quest that might not make a lot of sense for a long time and then thankfully finally.

Really it was learning what neurodiversity is and you know I'd known about my ADHD for a long time but never taken it seriously and Then discovering Oh probably autism too and realizing that's what I was really using astrology for was to manage all that stuff and then it clicked like all of a sudden I was like Oh I can make this business work.

I know how to help people I know who I'm helping finally you know

Melanie Branch: yeah oh God so Christina and I were actually talking about this she's my business partner and the head of everything over at the neuro spicy Academy and you know she's woo adjacent I am very woo and we were talking about like how does what we know about ourself affect how we show up and how alienated we feel affect what we end up pouring all of our time and energy into.

And that real pipeline of okay ADHD take a pill go be normal and then you you're like wait a minute wait wait wait wait wait so hold on so when you take the pill that makes me able to do the executive function things I still have all these other things going wrong over here so I feel like I'm missing out on something and the analogy That makes the most sense for me is it's like you have a stick shift and everybody else has an automatic and nobody is willing to take a look in your car and see that your hardware doesn't look the way everybody else's hardware does but from the outside they're just like no no no it's easy just drop it and drive and we hit the gas pedal and we go and you're like but I'm telling you there's another pedal down here that you guys aren't talking about.

And then there's this thing over here I don't think it's like no no no it's just the same just figure it out just and I'm like but I don't think you understand it's not the same yeah that's the best

Colleen Harrison: analogy I've ever heard and the 12th house of hidden blind spots potential mental illness you know mental stuff.

It happens to be affiliated with heavy machinery i e cars so there you

Melanie Branch: go did you know my son Intorus is in my 12th house and I know that that's a big major thing and it has a lot to do with my relationship with my dad oh yeah or how how that actually manifested and and how I can understand it better.

Yeah yeah yep

Colleen Harrison: yeah I'm telling you well you know the birth chart it has all the answers you want to know what's going on in you and it's follow the path in your birth chart

Melanie Branch: absolutely your actual updates on TikTok are ones that I send to my business partner and life partner now I guess Christina.

I'm like get ready! Get ready! This is what's happening! She explains it better than I ever could so when it comes to running your business as an astrologer and a neurodivergent entrepreneur trying to find that balance between creative flow and energy and then strategic flow and energy and perhaps the more boring things because we know an ADHD nervous system is an interest based nervous system.

So if we're interested it's going to go great if it's boring I don't want to do it so how do you really walk that line how do you find that balance yeah interestingly

Colleen Harrison: YouTube has helped me with that tremendously because YouTube's the thing that I like was the most afraid of really putting my face on camera right?

Because I'm also hitting I'm like I'm 37 so I'm approaching my 40s I have all these wrinkles I never had before and I'm like Oh great you know and every camera every New phone they come out with you can see more of the wrinkles it's a lot but it's like the YouTube stuff was the stuff I didn't want to do for so long.

Those daily updates that I love now that my clients like make me swear I'll never get rid of I put that off for a long time I paid a really expensive business coach I never should have she promised to you know give me solutions that would help me to continue to avoid the thing I just knew I needed to do you know but as soon as I just bit the bullet and started doing it and realized I was helping people it.

It was a wonderful sort of symbiotic process of saying Okay I don't love this aspect of it but I can learn to love it it's also in my chart that I should love it so I had to kind of develop a love for it and then but you know it requires a shitload of energy a shitload of courage and so What I started doing and found really works I actually got from a Huberman lab podcast episode about habits.

And so it's about like implementing 1 or 2 habits that work and giving yourself time to adjust to those giving yourself time to read your own energy and what you need to produce that right and then once I get comfortable I get used to something then I layer on another and so that's been my process so far.

And then of course there's balancing YouTube and content creation and clients right cause that's really where I'm making my money now I think eventually YouTube will start being more financially lucrative but not yet so I'm really dependent on those clients coming in the door so you know it's about you know I think I got it from you actually systems over you know structured routine and habits.

Like it has to be a system there has to be wiggle room for your energy to fluctuate and thankfully I can track my energy fluctuating with the moon and what I do for a living so yeah it's pretty sweet it's it's a good system so far and yeah don't plan on quitting anytime soon I can't because nobody wants to pay me for anything else you know.

Melanie Branch: So when we when I realized that I needed to go into mindset coaching right I had been working on my mindset since about 2018 because I had this moment where I went you know I was in a very busy restaurant I will never name the name of it publicly but a lot of people know what it is I was in a very busy restaurant.

I worked there for five and a half years before I quit and went full time with my business and it was in 2018 that I was like I'm just going to start replacing my anxious thoughts with grateful ones and just see what works out like I knew I had ADHD I didn't know I was autistic and I I was still of the mindset that with ADHD you know you either take a pill or you know you self medicate with caffeine.

But like you I was drinking all the time having like I literally the amount of Wake up at 6am get the kids to school go to the gym I was getting my degree I was working in the evenings like all like I had to I can't even go to Walmart and Target in the same day now and I'm just like I don't know how I used to do that right so there was a lot of that coping and I just said okay well this is all just anxiety so if I had to stop being a bitch it was all overstimulation is what the fuck it was I was in a loud restaurant with go go go go go they would sit you Four tables at a time.

There was no there was no flow to it this restaurant is known for just putting asses in chairs right and getting people to order off a very large menu right well people

Colleen Harrison: treating you however the hell they want however they feel they want I think that's a dirty business we're talking that I think will come to the fore in the next.

Couple of decades about how the restaurant industry is really so much grosser socially and Yeah creates behavior in us that is so not okay but anyway we

Melanie Branch: won't go enough on that tangent it it it really breeds an environment of coping not thriving yeah you know suck it up deal with it go drink go smoke your cigarettes whatever it is that sort of thing.

And so once 2020 hit and my mom passed away from her 18 month battle with stage four and neck cancer and I was on Tik Tok so I was like yeah videos about ADHD honey what do you think this says and then I started treating my ADHD with accommodations and lifestyle support and then all the videos are about autism babe.

What do you think this means are all your videos on Tik Tok about autism my husband's like no and I was like what is it and so I really just started like diving in and I was like okay so mindset work is one piece of the puzzle I got to regulate my nervous system I have to fix my environment I have to accommodate my my my real struggles with executive function.

And I don't know about you but out of the eight key executive functions working memory is the one that I struggle with the most and I forget what I'm saying mid sentence all the time cause it's like I'm trying to balance and like wrangle all of these great ideas and thoughts that I'm having and one sentence leads to another thought but that's not part of the same one.

And it's like I'm trying to hold on to all of them so I personally use notebooks to write all of my stuff down I take notes every time I'm talking to somebody I have notes from the last and I was interviewing because sometimes people will just say words and I'm like Oh I like that word I wouldn't have even thought to use that one.

So I write it down so when it comes to so I would imagine you know working with a one on one client and like reading their chart and remembering all the things and being able to keep up with the brain that's going so fast how do you do it

Colleen Harrison: well so one thing I learned in my autism assessment was I actually have an incredible memory which I'm so thankful for after the decade of alcohol abuse.

Yeah right left out there yes seriously and so that tends to be okay for me so I have my Venus and Taurus in my seventh house directly opposing quite a lineup in my Scorpio first house so working one on one with people has always been a strength of mine and so when I have a person's chart in front of me and when we're in thankfully like the Zoom thing is wonderful for me because I'm not picking up on all the physical.

Energy that I normally would be I can just focus on you and what you're saying and you know and what's in your chart and what seems to need to come out of your chart for you so working with clients is great I can relate with what you're saying more so in the YouTube experience it's like I kind of put a lot of faith in whatever higher powers out there that like my nervous system is so activated because I'm so it's so much pressure right that what I'm about to say like needs to A inspire people needs to relate with a huge audience of people it's a lot of like sort of channeling and trusting that what's coming out of my mouth is what people need to hear.

Yeah got this from somebody named Victor Otto I don't know you're woo so openly he's a pretty woo dude He's a cancer like me Victor Otto yeah oh DDO him and his wife have a podcast They're both very woo but they're they're very well meaning and they're both in recovery They they met in a actually from their heroin addictions way back when but I found him very early on in my journey and He I think he's a cancer like me he said you know when he's producing content sometimes he'll produce something that he's like I don't know but his rule of thumb is if it's sincere.

He posts it and I just love that because if it's coming from your heart if it's sincere you can trust that somebody out there needs to hear it like somebody's in a dark corner thinking they're alone and if they hear that you've been through it too if I get one person I've done my work for the day you know cause I just you know you've been in that place of darkness feeling so alone.

Only to learn like oh it's neurodivergence and there's so many of us out there with it you know who were born to parents with alcohol problems and trauma who probably are super neurospicy too and will go to the grave not knowing it you know but I'm content or determined rather to you know change that generational trauma you know All of that.

So

Melanie Branch: you know my let me try and get this true and correct I am 37 as well and this year especially this past maybe 12 months I have come to understandings about how traumatic my childhood or I don't even want to say how traumatic my childhood was but how many traumatic events I've occurred that I did not know were traumatic at the time and the thing that made the most sense to me and that resonates everybody when I tell them is that the the reason that we don't want to compare our traumas with anybody else is because trauma is not the severity of the event or situation that makes it like how traumatized you were or how much it affected you.

Trauma and how deeply it has affected you It is by how alone you felt when it happened wow so you know if you felt super alone when you were 12 and your grandma died and nobody told you what the fuck was going on and you went all the way up To you know Tampa for the funeral but nobody told you that you needed a black dress for the funeral.

They just assumed you were gonna fucking know and then you have to go to the mall with your pissed off parents and your sad sister because HA! And you're just like whoa wait a minute for one person that wouldn't have been a super traumatic thing but because you felt alone in it it was a life marker.

Yep wow

Colleen Harrison: wow so I have to say that's like the most One of the most important functions of working with clients I find now is like I get people who feel a pull to work with me and then I'm like Okay so you got Saturn and Moon in a tough aspect here you know how was mom and dad you know how was growing?

Oh no it was great they gave me everything everything was good but I'm so unhappy and I'm like Okay well we're going to dig in a little bit more here and then it's like They wind up just regurgitating things that they thought were normal but didn't feel right and I'm like you need to stop and honor that.

That wasn't normal you have a right to acknowledge you have trauma just like everybody else you know just because it looked good on paper doesn't mean it was okay

Melanie Branch: yeah yeah we all know that look too when you're telling somebody like I said I have been married to my husband for 17 years and just when you think that you guys have told every story that's ever happened to you ever growing up before you ever met each other.

I'll tell them a story about my childhood and that you know that look on their face where they're like What the fuck where you can see the whites of their eyes on the tops and the bottoms of their irises and you're like Ah so that wasn't Evan everybody didn't do that that was just a oh okay great good to know.

I'll keep that one in my back pocket from now on and make sure not to bring it up around you know people I don't know at a party so

Colleen Harrison: But I hope it's the opposite like I hope that these younger generations like get to experience the opposite us all coming to the fore with like this shit happened to me and I don't think it's okay.

Did that happen to you you know like we got to start talking about this of We're All Ever Gonna Be Okay the biggest threat to society per my favorite psychologist you know he's long gone his name's Donald Winnicott I think the the holistic psychologist does a good job of you know reiterating a lot of his work.

But the secret biggest threat to society is shitty parenting you know is unhealed trauma from childhood it's like if we could all acknowledge our pain we'd be a much happier world

Melanie Branch: well and the good news is moving forward as millennials who pretty I think it's just a millennial and I know it has a lot to do with our Scorpio Pluto but millennials are really pretty much the ones that are like it stops with me.

However it has to stop with me whether it's how I raise my kids or the fact that I just won't have any more kids from this fucking lineage and it just won't be able to perpetuate anymore like it really stops with me it's so refreshing when I see my cause I have four generations in my home my husband is a Gen X.

I am a millennial our oldest is the youngest of Gen Z and our youngest is the oldest of Gen Alpha wow so we have so many different perspectives in the home and these kids they're different fucking kids man like they Nothing affects them the way it used to affect us everything kind of rolls off their back and they're really open about everything.

Like they they don't care like I remember as a millennial it was all what's your sexuality are you bi are you this are you that they just get to work with us they say what do you want to be called what do you want us to refer to you as and who do you like oh you like people cool great excellent.

Like

Colleen Harrison: no problem be who you are great you know it's acceptance I just like I I get comments sometimes you know what it's like being on social media everybody's got an opinion about everything and like it's yeah i I just I'm dealing with one right now that I'm not sure how to respond to or if it even warrants a response.

Just just saying oh it's so doom and gloom out there you can't change them like this person sounds like the 88 year old in my building who you know it's like ah fuck the stupid people sorry I probably shouldn't say that word but why not okay fair I wasn't sure about house rules but I should've anyway.

So I think what I love about the younger generations and where they deserve so much credit is like you know climate crisis perfect example that's something they have to face it's a reality for them that it isn't for us the older we get we can't just say ah it's their effort I'm just gonna hate it and walk around with that you know hate.

for it it's like no it has to be acceptance it's it's a reality that needs to be acknowledged you know it's I don't know it's I don't think they get enough credit for their level of acceptance and all the maturity that comes with that

Melanie Branch: yeah absolutely so let me ask you this we're going to get real personal here.

Here we go open book here I realized that alcohol was no longer serving me in November of last year so I'm pretty recent to the no alcohol journey very much one of my propellants to acceptance was I woke up one morning and I was hungover and I just went I really like early mornings as an entrepreneur especially like if I have like a something creative a project that I'm working on.

I like those early morning hours five to 8am to just knock shit out on my computer when the world is really quiet and I don't like losing any length of time to feeling like shit yeah I had this you know kind of come to Jesus moment but you know what I mean it wasn't like a real come to Jesus.

It's not my thing where I just said this is not serving me anymore and the further I continue cause I got big fucking dreams TED talks and shit like that there are going to be people that come out of the woodwork that go Oh I have these videos of her being wasted and blacked out and all this stuff.

And I wanted to be able to say yep that girl did exist she doesn't exist anymore yeah yeah and to also see it from the perspective of I have ADHD and autism and I'm a very sensitive human being and I have been taken advantage of my entire life and I have simply been trying to live in a world that is too loud too too noisy too bright too smelly like just an overwhelming world for my sensory needs and my nervous system.

So like of course I had to drink and smoke cigarettes

Colleen Harrison: right right it started for me because I couldn't sleep i I was an insomniac from as early as six years old I think I remember one night NSYNC had come out and I couldn't get the song Bye Bye Bye out of my head all night long it was just Bye Bye Bye playing over and over and I was like what the f Like it felt like I was possessed.

Yeah and I think well just to go real open book here my mom got addicted to heroin when I was before I even hit double digits and you know poor woman it turns out also autistic and you know sexually abused as a child alcoholic parents and a poor woman never had a chance and you know her and my dad got married and pregnant for the wrong reasons.

And you know I was a I think an attempt to save something that wasn't working and rather than love and cherish me I was a threat immediately out of the womb and I think You know I I think my brain was just trying to keep me safe and keep me whatever like I just I I became her parent pretty immediately in our dynamic and it was so much pressure.

It was so much pressure then she was gone and I was my brother's mother and I was like doing all the laundry and taking care of the household at 11 years old and it never I never knew that that wasn't normal that that was going to take a toll especially not sleeping I never knew that I needed we went to therapy.

That was the only thing anybody knew was like get them both in therapy me and my brother mom addicted to heroin like way before it was as big as it is now and then you know we grew up in very affluent suburban towns we went to great schools and dad remarried pretty twice over he's had two since.

And it was all about just keeping the appearance eh and the ship moving forward there was no time to think no time to wonder if my dramatics were anything but me trying to be annoying huh my sensitivity was anything but a bother to everybody else and you know whatever so it was a lot of self hatred for me.

It was a lot of the only way I could sleep and then you know the restaurant industry was the only place I could function in the adult world and get paid the chaos felt normal yeah like an office setting was disastrous for me a few times over before I found the restaurant industry and then you know I have Pluto Saturn the Moon and the South Node in my first house.

So I attract a lot of people who you know I have to be an uncomfortable mirror for them and that was the restaurant industry to a T for me lots of very challenging tables all at once and then I'd get out and it was just like you know I was normally dating co workers unhealthy restaurant romances and dramatic.

Ask me where I met my husband I knew I didn't even have to ask obviously you guys met in the registrar industry obviously what yeah yeah yeah so you know so alcohol was keeping the ship going like I would I stayed in therapy the whole time and they would say you know oh you know we just need to address your drinking.

You just need to give up drinking and I was like I promise you the alcohol is not the problem the alcohol is how I'm managing the problem I promise you that I said that to therapists over and over and over again and it never stopped them from putting me on pills for sleep that could have killed me with how much they knew I was drinking.

But you know it was also the culture in my family it was the culture with all of my friends there was no way unless I wanted Social exile completely and that's what wound up happening but you know what I wouldn't do it all over again it was totally worth it it was totally worth it yeah I got myself back

Melanie Branch: you know when it comes to those assholes at your tables that want to run the show here's why I remember this.

This happened probably once every two three weeks right you know there's a if you've never worked in a restaurant before if you've never been a server before and you've never had a four to eight table section and a slow afternoon where yeah where everybody gets fucking or like worked a Sunday morning brunch where everybody's exhausted because they worked all day Saturday and then they partied all night Saturday night and the cooks are hungover and the the fucking everybody in there is hungover and you're wondering why your waffle's taking 22 minutes bitch?

And Slow down! You want to piss me off yourself or do you want to calm down I used to I remember what would piss me off the most as a as a Taurus sun Aquarius moon Taurus rising I'm all fixed trust me I understand the process I've perfected the process I'm really good at what the fuck I do and I wouldn't be here if I wasn't.

Just give me a minute just just let's just trust that there is a system in place here so every time somebody would try and like run you ragged or you know try and spit something out before you were about to say it and that sort of thing because we all have guests like that I would always get them to a point where they'd be like Oh well I had this too.

And I would like pull it out from behind me and say I know it's almost like there's a system to it huh it's almost like or my favorite thing to say to people was oh it's almost like I've done this before it's almost like I know how to do my job right especially because the restaurant I worked at is known for its extensive menu.

And you know you had to know yeah you had to know every ingredient in these dishes so that if somebody was gonna you know order one thing you go okay well you're a 90 year old grandma do you like spice because this meal is spicy right we had to like what was called tour guiding so like people pretty much knew their head from their ass at this restaurant.

Right but didn't say it didn't stop anybody from sitting down at your table and acting like you didn't know anything right or like

Colleen Harrison: you'd get the whole table's order and everything would be great and then the mom at the table would go to each kid and ask them if they really wanted that if they they wanted to change their mind.

And you'd be like lady I gotta go like they they're adults they can make decisions

Melanie Branch: yeah absolutely I used to just to fuck with people I could tell instantly as an energy healer and an energy reader and a psychic intuitive I just didn't know I was all those things at the time I could instantly tell who was the boss of the table and I can tell people's relationship dynamics.

I can tell people like I can look at someone's picture and tell you all this information about them to like a scary degree and I thought that was something everybody could do so I would intentionally ignore the person that wanted to run the show and I would talk to them last sometimes

Colleen Harrison: it was all you could do to get away from the table.

I sometimes I have not great luck with therapists I had one recently that I really liked she moved on and I'm taking a break cause like I often find you know people who get into that profession in this day and age were pretty book smart and able to and probably not ADHD and able to you know get the degree and then nobody.

Nobody questions if they're actually able to counsel and do the job right and I'll sit there thinking like wow A this person has nothing to offer me they have no idea what to say to me right now about the vulnerable thing I presented to them b I probably got more psychology training from my restaurant career than they did in any of their you know fancy degree work.

Melanie Branch: Yeah absolutely it's so true I'm a real proponent of somatic therapy for neurodivergent people because it really is physical based move it through you know don't store the emotions that sort of thing which none of them are really

Colleen Harrison: trained on or even consider to incorporate

Melanie Branch: and the frustrating part about the DSM and traditional psychotherapy is that it's all based on how closely you can behave like a cis het white dude.

Colleen Harrison: Right right right

Melanie Branch: so you know my goal is to be the best me possible right and it's unfortunate that I can manipulate a scenario because I'm ADHD and I have had to and and and autistic and I have had to be malleable and and a chameleon my entire life to exist and to you know survive right

Colleen Harrison: right.

Well going back to the somatic thing I gotta say apart from astrology the thing that I got into super hard at the same time that helped tremendously was yoga getting into my body sweating out so many toxins you know developing a relationship with my body in a way that I never had and then meditation and breath work too.

I'm big proponents of all three

Melanie Branch: I am a big proponent of rebounding if at multiple points in the day you can catch me standing outside on my mini trampoline I got a mini trampoline because of you! I'm like calm it I did! I am not even usually jumping so much as I am just standing there and it's like the ultimate stim of like you know your kids in the grocery store when they're like rocking around you're like I'm just trying to buy the food!

Stop moving! It is the best way to just you know get the wiggles out and I'll go out there listen I blend the best of both worlds I keep my headphones on I'm scrolling TikTok I'm answering I do I use Marco Polo with all my clients so I'm listening to their Marco Polos and I'm answering them back right?

And I'll even alternate between standing in the grass and then going and getting on my trampoline so I can really like ground and be outside and whatnot so I do strongly recommend moving meditation for a lot of my neurodivergent friends you know going for a W A L K I can't say the actual word because you know who's here.

But like dancing or getting out in your neighborhood and moving around you know yoga stretching if yoga is scary for you be careful if you're hypermobile I am now coming to the realization as an Ehlers Danlos person that you can have hypermobility and not be super flexible because hypermobility is your joint and the certain there's certain kinds of tissue that it's it affects.

Right and that means that your muscles have to be really really tight to hold everything in place so like I've never been able to do a split but my fingers aren't supposed to bend as far back as they do right like what are we talking about here so and they've also even done research to figure out why we have those T Rex arms.

And that's because it holds your shoulders in place so that they don't fall out of the socket because you're just standing there with your arms down and gravity's doing its work so like there's a a a method to the madness why we do all the things we do as neurodivergent people and that's really why I like the term neurospicy because it's it describes all of those comorbidities in a sense of like we're having a good time too.

Right

Colleen Harrison: I mean and literally like I don't know it's funny in hindsight 'cause all my life I wa I was a like let your freak flag fly kind of person and I never understood the small talk thing I never understood why people weren't themselves I got myself in so many awful situations got manipulated so many times 'cause I didn't realize the other person wasn't being genuine back.

Like I don't I'm missing cognitive empathy I've had that's I've been muscling that my whole life and astrology helps me fill in that gap in real time but like it's it's such an experience and then all the comorbidities and stuff and the way our healthcare system is in the United States right now and like there being no research on women whatsoever you know for most of the stuff.

Melanie Branch: Mm mm no and you know what I will never understand and this may make me a shitty person but I don't fucking care I don't care about your ADHD or your autistic kid I want research on grown ups I want people to be doing research on the kids absolutely but that's not helping me I am a neurodivergent grown up.

And here's the thing guys it's pretty genetic is what all the signs are pointing to so if you're studying if I think my kid has a neurodivergence then I can point the finger back at myself and pretty much 99% Assume that I have it too right

Colleen Harrison: right well and look at like we're at a a clear turning point in our economic system and our workforce and whatever.

Why not help all these people like why not help us get back to work why not help us be able to produce and provide like knowledge is power why hold it back from us and I you know I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but I wonder how much That's fine you're welcome here I wonder how much of it is the alcohol industry.

Right cause you know we do have data pointing to alcohol abuse producing It's

Melanie Branch: a poison right right I mean there the the one thing that It always stands out really really starkly in my mind is when Jim Carrey was getting all that makeup done to be the Grinch he they brought in like a a green beret or like a CIA guy something like that to help him with tort like how to get through torture techniques.

And so I was like Oh it's literally smoking cigarettes okay restaurant industry right smoking cigarettes it's like hitting yourself so that you can focus in on like one area of your body instead of all the other it's literally stimming being physical that sort of thing it's literally everything that an ADHD person does.

Yeah yep right right and so we would we could withstand torture because everyday life if you're not living it the way that you want to be living is torture can you imagine if we had to walk into an office and be like the receptionist every single day and talk to a bunch of people that just didn't and pick up on all that energy and like read their energy and know what's can you no I would not be thriving.

Well

Colleen Harrison: speaking of you know the military and whatnot a lot of Mars in the military right mars is the god of war I have Mars as my ascendant ruler conjunct my son it was unpacking that planet and understanding that I had more energy that needed to go somewhere constructive than most people right I use my mini trampoline less in everyday life than I thought and more in moments of crisis.

I've had a few Really tough blows in the last couple months since I got it and that's when I get on it and I'm able to just take all of the anger like the well of rage and bounce it out I put on a song you know that fits the emotions and I bounce it out and I you know I just wonder how many people are in the military because they like me have an afflicted Mars that you know It's a well of rage a well of energy that needs to go somewhere okay?

Like if I don't go into the military who knows how that'll come out right

Melanie Branch: yeah yeah absolutely I don't know what my husband's Mars is in he's in the Navy oh really my Mars is in Capricorn yeah my husband's a Gemini sun he's a Virgo moon and he's a Leo rising and when I tell you my my Venus is in Gemini I love Geminis.

I don't ever understand why anybody hates a Gemini I'm like Gemini's crazy it's the most fun thing you'll ever have in your whole life it's a good time can you

Colleen Harrison: stop oh yeah time out you're a Venus and Gemini yeah so every man that has ever hit on me in my entire life Venus and Gemini some of my best friends Venus and Gemini.

You people love me I don't know I don't know what it is my Mercury and my Gemini every

Melanie Branch: man that I dated was a Gemini really there you go there we go and I can I can just sniff it out I'm just like you are a good time aren't you and they're unpredictable so like you're not you're signing up for some stuff keeping you on your toes.

Yes keeping you on your toes for real but I mean they're gonna have a good time yeah

Colleen Harrison: well think about Mercury mercury's job is to be able to go up to the heavens and then go down to hell and translate all along the way right mercury loves to go hang out at the biker bar and then go to church on Sunday and tell everybody the stories right?

That's Mercury yes and Mercury in Gemini is carefree mercury in Virgo very different story because it's Earth there are physical consequences to Mercury's

Melanie Branch: Yeah absolutely god it's so interesting I could just talk about astrology all day long my youngest son my 13 year old is an Aries sun and a Taurus moon and he has a lot of other Taurus placements and I tell you he and I can just vibe we just exist together like over this past weekend my husband and the kids were supposed to go out of town and do this little family thing I was working so I couldn't go but at the very last minute my 13 year old was like I really I've had a long week I really just want to not I was he was doing this play thing and this whole thing and they were supposed to leave Friday night and he was just like I my psychic senses were going off and I was like do you want to stay home?

Cause it was kind of like my mother saying oh I can just get a couple days by myself! Like yeah I do I just want to say I don't want to go and I was like that's cool you can say and hang out with me cause we're both in our headphones we're both staring at our phones we're both going to be like do you want the pizza now?

Or do you want it later like we can just coexist in the environment and like not require anything from each other and one of my biggest neuro spicy things is being perceived all the time right so it's not like I want my kids and my husband to leave specifically it's that I just want a couple of hours a day where nobody else is around and I can do whatever the fuck I want.

Like you know echolalia and all that kind of shit you know just not have anybody else around and feel any sort of responsibility for what they're perceiving so really getting that figured out with people and getting your work done at the same time is one of those things that's hard to balance too.

Of like I have dreams about having my own apartment yeah

Colleen Harrison: i I mean it's been me and my dog for the last two and a half years and you know my living environment is a has always been a touchy subject I've been in a lot of really gnarly ones this has been the most healing time of my life and you know I often.

wonder or like panic that maybe one of my neighbors waiting for the elevator right outside my front door can hear me saying the ridiculous shit that I Say all day long to my dog but like whatever I just laugh and I'm like you know Hopefully that encourages whoever can hear me to be more of their own ridiculous authentic selves.

It's yeah we need alone time Yeah we're Conditioned in this day and age to be go go go and like external validation all the time Even if I am alone I gotta show people on Instagram that I'm enjoying it right like give me a break But I used to be like that when I was drinking It was a show all the freakin time meanwhile it was so lonely and dark on the inside.

But I seemed like a socialite and a party girl

Melanie Branch: yeah well that's one of the roles that we have to play when we when people see that that high energy that one good that two good days every couple weeks where you're just go go go get everything done you're sparkling you're amazing you're fantastic you're wonderful.

We want that every day too! I listen it's fantastic it's great when Melanie is like that but that's not possible every day

Colleen Harrison: right or yeah right it's

Melanie Branch: It's not

Colleen Harrison: possible every day i I the the depth that I fell like I couldn't get out of bed for nearly a year and it was horrifying I was like am I ever gonna be okay?

Cause it was such a stark contrast to who and how I'd always been and it you know I That's partly how I knew it was astrology for me because it was the only thing that got me out of bed before my dog and then you know the combination of you know my dog astrology and then learning to love myself through astrology that that brought me back to life.

And now you know service service is such a huge part peace I save all my good comments I read them when I'm low you know I have clients that like really are genuinely so appreciative and it's it that truly has brought me back to life in a way I could have never imagined and suddenly now I don't want to go back to my old mojo.

I'm I'm perfectly content you know like I don't feel that erratic joy anymore those high highs that I used to feel and I'm I'm okay with that I'm like Oh wow a really great thing just happened and I feel pretty neutral and it's great you know because the lows aren't nearly as low as they used to be

Melanie Branch: either.

Yeah I saw somebody make a tiktok about like six things that happened after they got their autism diagnosis and one of them was they're now cool with being alone and enjoy their alone time without that FOMO that society puts on us it's like no you have to go do things you have to be with people you have to do this.

You have to schedule this you have to go out you have to do all that it's like no I can stand around my house with my headphones on with a flamingo leg eating nuts in my kitchen and talking to my fucking dog and have a great Saturday

Colleen Harrison: well and there's nowhere I'm I think I'm the best company you know and I don't mean that arrogantly.

I'm not the best company for you but I'm the best company for me and there's literally no more freeing feeling I wish everybody felt that way and that is my dream for the world is that someday everybody feel that way you know

Melanie Branch: we gotta waste those that's a perfect way to end this listen I could really talk to you forever and I am gonna ask you when we're done when we can talk again so don't worry.

So what I'm going to have you do now to get this train back on the tracks ugh it's like I'm it's like I'm used to working with a DH years is I'm gonna have you plug your spot tell everybody how they can follow you how they can find you and how they can work with you and then we're gonna do a super fun lightning round of a DHD like questions.

Colleen Harrison: Perfect well my name is Colleen I am a neurodivergent astrologer and I'm also a neurodivergent astrologer on Instagram on Tick Tock Tick Tock it's neurodivergent astrologer somebody had claimed the a on Tick Tock for some reason on YouTube also a neurodivergent astrologer and then my website is a neurodivergent astrologer dot com.

I have a bunch of different options for personal readings I love love love to work with clients one on one you know whether you are neuro spicy or not but I imagine most of your audience is but I love helping people understand their birth chart better understand themselves.

So yeah whether current transits or you know down and dirty just into you and then we can get to the transits and what's going on now later you know today being pretty exciting you and I are filming this actually while the moon is on Aries sorry while the moon is on Chiron in Aries the wounded healer.

Aries being my sixth house of health and wellness so isn't it funny where we're filming this we're teaching via Chiron about like our own health and wellness strategies and Jupiter's transitioning into Taurus which should be pretty exciting for particularly you both of us actually for the next year ahead so.

Melanie Branch: Yeah and Taurus and Scorpio placements look look out!

Colleen Harrison: The whole fixed cross I mean with Pluto going back and forth between Capricorn and Aquarius until November of 2024 it's a great time to do a consultation with a you know your friendly astrologer of choice so hit me up absolutely

Melanie Branch: okay everybody give her a follow.

I'm so excited to find out your answers to the lightning round first and foremost don't overthink these it's okay just you know stream of consciousness what's your favorite social media

Colleen Harrison: platform ooh I mean Instagram I hate it but I've loved it for so long so well no YouTube youTube yeah YouTube.

Melanie Branch: That's a first for YouTube all right write it down oh fuck it's just me okay number two what's the most recent rabbit hole that you have gone down oh Lord

Colleen Harrison: Oh that's a hard question it's probably my dog's health i the veterinary industry needs to find Jesus like yeah my brain goes they could do better.

God so

Melanie Branch: yeah so my dog's health also if if your dogs have worms you need to go ahead and take care of the worms in yourself too just so that everybody knows just so everybody knows like I could talk about parasites all day long anyways neither here nor there but I hope your dog feels better oh thank

Colleen Harrison: you.

She's actually in a pretty good spot right now but it's just one of those things her stomach can't decide if it's healthy or not and no vet wants to help me figure that out either so

Melanie Branch: I'll send you some information on this dog food that I got for mine and my dogs are now they've agreed with me and we've made a deal that they're going to live forever with me.

So I'll send you that information that's energetic ties you know anyways okay what is your favorite emotional support show so like the show that you put on when you can't take on any new relationships oh God

Colleen Harrison: so I've been off cable for years I am on YouTube all the time it would be Schoolie and Van Life YouTube videos because that's my dream.

Melanie Branch: You might know my friend she has a Schoolie that she just got done and she's driving all around with her kids I'll send you her information too fourth question two parter have you consumed any water today and do you want to share your water cup with the class

Colleen Harrison: I've been drinking it this whole time.

Share my water cup with the class

Melanie Branch: yeah like your emotional support cup oh

Colleen Harrison: I I'm such a weirdo venus and Taurus I recycle they're all you know peanut butter jars that have gone through the dishwasher that are now you know recycle reuse people save the planet

Melanie Branch: it makes me think that you have I have moon water in that.

This is recycled somebody left this at the soccer field when I was coaching my kids soccer a couple years ago so I bought some stickers on Amazon and put the stickers on it so nobody would know all of

Colleen Harrison: my favorite sunglasses are sunglasses that people left in restaurants I worked at

Melanie Branch: yeah! No nobody found any sunglasses in your booth.

That's weird okay last question what is your current dopamine snack and or meal

Colleen Harrison: oh okay also very Venus and Taurus it's dried dates and walnuts

Melanie Branch: oh so you might be part fairy you eat like a fairy I've been told

Colleen Harrison: I eat like a rabbit yeah yeah I'm also like on a wicked smoked salmon kick for some reason.

I know

Melanie Branch: talk about worms it's okay we'll talk about worms later on another show okay bye bye bye bye bye it's okay it's okay so I'm so happy to have had you on the show and I will invite you back on the show anytime don't you worry and I love you all equally and for different reasons and we'll talk very soon.

Okay

Colleen Harrison: bye thank you so much for having me.