Whether it’s science or magic, if it’s of fun benefit, enjoy!” ~ ed

~

Author’s note: I am a Cancer sun and Cancer rising sign. I am a student of life. I feel and discover through tools like astrology to learn more about myself and in relation to others. Astrology is a language of connection and patterns. Though a non-formal student of astrology, I believe this wisdom exists within us already and goes back deep into the lineage of our ancestors. It is a sacred wisdom accessible to all who wish to grow, evolve, heal, and assist this planet in the healing it needs. I share with you what I feel and what I have chosen to guide myself deeper into. May you read with the remembrance of a truth you already know, and may these words and others always be a reminder to access your inner Truth and wisdom within. 

~

There is this pervasive notion in our world that to feel is to be weak.

That those of a more sensitive nature are the weak ones and most perceptible to wounding, pain, and hardship.

This may be true. But also, we are learning now that there is potent medicine found in the wounding process if we so choose to seek it within. Maybe not at first. Maybe, at first, or for a long while, our self-identity gets so deeply entrenched in this wounding, it feels like an unyielding truth. That the stories told to us by other wounded figures are, in fact, true.

“I am the abandoned one.”

“I am the abused one.”

“I am the unloved one.”

“I am the unwanted one.”

And more insidiously so, that “I am deserving of this pain.”

These are the stories of the wounded. They become the narrative through which we live. This underlying sense of “wrongness” and frailty in who and what we are as sensitive, feeling creatures.

Some of us still have access to feeling. Some of us have chosen to access feeling again, even when it terrifies the daylights out of us.

Feeling was second nature to us as children. As adults though, we struggle to simply feel our feelings, rather than to intellectualize and think our way through them. This is a survival mechanism. It isn’t wrong, or right. It simply is. Survival. At times when we couldn’t safely feel what we were feeling.

It becomes wired into our nervous system, a sense of fight, flee, or freeze, when an intense, uncomfortable, or unwarranted negative emotion surfaces. We try desperately to get rid of the emotion at hand. Through substance, avoidance, busyness, distraction, relationship, sex, food, what have you.

Feelings are visitors, sometimes unwelcome, but visitors all the same. They come to remind us that we are feeling humans, not just humans doing.

We have the ability to feel and that is such a gift, even if most of our lives it has felt like a curse.

The rising full moon in the sign of Cancer (its home sign) is landing on our front doorsteps January 10th, coupled with a penumbral lunar eclipse. The skies are telling us, in their ways of symbolism and energetic mirroring, that we are on the precipice of great change—on a collective and individual level.

2020 is not a year made for those lacking in courage. Courage to feel. To be authentic and show up as such. It is the year we will be asked to do the impossible. To trust in the face of uncertainty. To surrender in the face of conflict. Inner and outer.

The moon’s pull on our emotions is amplified with the full moon. Cancer is the Mother Archetype. The Nurturer. The compassionate friend. The home. The family. Who we find comfort and safety in. The safe space to land at the end of a long, trying day. Cancer is the Moon. The feeling, cyclical, emotive moon. She is water. Feminine and fluid. She ebbs as much as she flows. She is neither one nor the other; she is both/and. She is sensitive. Intuitive. Soft. Strong. Sweet. And also, fiercely protective of her loved ones.

Cancer tells us where we need to nourish and nurture the self. Where, in the past wounding, we have been withholding loving care for the self, or protecting against life in the name of love.

To heal, we have to traverse back into the past, to rediscover where love was missing, not to blame and point fingers to parental figures, but merely to repattern this love for ourselves.

We all have wounds in relation to our parents and in particular, the Mother, to the energy of that which has given us life. How we give ourselves life. Not all of us were born to perfect parents, but we were all born to wounded parents. They did their best with what they had, and even then there was a great injustice to this unhealed pain to just keep transferring to the next generation, hoping this time it wouldn’t be ignored.

Children are sensitive. They are empathic to what their elders are saying verbally or nonverbally. They feel where pain is unprocessed. They tune in to what we, as adults, tune out.

We all had this ability. We all still have this ability. And, we all have the ability to reconcile with it, if we so choose.

The moon is moving into Cancer; meanwhile, the sun is holding down the fort in Capricorn, the sign of the Father, the paternal guide holding us accountable to our actions. These two are in direct conversation with each other; they are each other’s counterparts.

Feel. Ground. Feel. Ground. Deeper into presence and stability.

But, with the moon partnering with the eclipse energy, there are no guarantees. Things may crumble just as quickly as they manifest—things without a sturdy foundation, that is—friendships, relationships, habits, careers.

Capricorn is asking us to solidify what we want to be building. And Cancer is asking us to feel and intuit along the way. To sink deeper into the feeling nature we all were born with, to regain trust in this sixth sense, and recreate the safety in parenting, bonding, and attachment maybe we didn’t receive as children.

Re-parenting the self.

Re-parenting the child within who felt judged, shamed, ridiculed, criticized, abandoned, unloved, unworthy, unseen, unheard, forgotten, cast out.

This is the wound—in all of us. These external stories became our internal stories we have kept telling ourselves, to protect us from further pain.

Healing isn’t pretty. Rarely is it even linear nor does it make sense to our conscious mind. Healing exists in the subterranean subconscious realm, in the body, where our whole life experience has been contained and retained.

The body is the way forward now, by going inward. It is the feminine wisdom and essence of life. The masculine mind’s much-needed counterpart. It holds our memories. It holds our fears. Our grief. Our pain. And, our joy.

The sensing body is the gateway back to feeling. This is what the Cancer moon is inviting us to do. To simply be with the feelings as they come. To offer mindfulness rather than distraction and repulsion. Also to offer the great gift of Cancer in its highest, enlightened form:

Compassion.

Compassion for the self undoing trauma. Compassion for the self undoing fables of unworthiness. Compassion for the child who learned that self-punishment was a way to survive. Compassion for all the stories and all the selves that needed it not so long ago.

We all have the capacity to offer it to others. To be a friend and offer understanding. It’s time we do this for ourselves—to befriend the shadowy parts of us that feel all the things we would rather avoid.

The light of this full moon, the eclipse, and the sun are paving the way for radical self-transformation. In how we relate to ourselves, to our wounds, to our sensitivities. If we choose. If we choose to show up. To show up with the panicky voices telling us to run. Show up with the uncertainty of what we might encounter.

Just keep showing up. Keep showing up to the fullness that you are always becoming. Even in the breaking open and breaking down of past identities—they were never big enough to hold you anyway.

You, like the moon, are full, supple, and oh so whole and worthy of your own loving gaze and attention.

May this moon remind us that feeling is a power and a gift. It is a deep, deep privilege to feel in a world that says otherwise. And to know when we need breaks from the processing too—to give ourselves time and space to dive deep into the Cancer waters and when to come up for air.

Feel. Remember these stories are not the full truth of you. Re-parent the child within. Remind them they are safe in your love and care, right now.

Be gentle, and take as much time as you need to transform.

~