Whether astrology is science or magic, we’re open to most things, if they may be of benefit. ~ Ed.

~

The tides move like the ocean, buoyant and fluid,
Choppy and dark some days,
Translucent and clear like
The moon others,
Heart to heart, we are growing,
Shifting, changing, molting, melding,
Softening, toughening,
Shells of a crab, softness of an interior,
Hearts were made to open,
Porous and supple,
Vulnerable and exposed,
Letting all those near the shore
Know it is safe to come home, too.

~

We are all devoted to something, someone, some truth, or some intention that gives us our why.

We all have learned a mix of conditioned, outdated, and new ways of existing in this world.

We have beliefs that serve us and others that cripple and impair us, even if just internally. We all grew up in homes that had their own shifts and shades of love, turmoil, chaos, and heart, whether they were more rooted or untethered.

Many of us as adults are reworking our trauma, pain, and emotional patterns every single day—even if some days, we feel the gripping and pulling back to default and our old ways of knee-jerk, emotional reactions, victim-mentality, and other various shades of self-disempowerment.

There is no recipe for life. No formula for a life well lived. No trajectory of full certainty and protection from pain, hardship, or loss.

Life is a continuous wave of motion, of e-motion, or energy in motion. We’re always moving, and something—some force within and around us—holds the waters within us. It’s an ethereal, unnamable force, and truly indescribable with words—it’s more of a knowing, both subtle and strong, that within us is something miraculous and infinite, something beyond any limitations we imposed upon ourselves or that were imposed upon us.

We all are emotional beings. We were born as emotional beings. I believe that is our first nature.

As babies in the womb, we were sensing every slight shift in our mother’s environment. Outside of the womb, in our early years, before we had a language to speak and think with, we were feeling and sensing our external world. We were then using our internal, emotional worlds to guide us externally. Somewhere down the line, though, we were told that this inner landscape was less important to attend to than the fast-paced world of hyper productivity, forced obligation, and sacrifice of our innermost needs.

It all got flipped upside down and turned inside out. Many who were more sensitive started to compromise their inner sense of safety for a material, transient sense of safety—money, housing, job status, relationships. (And let’s face it: we were all sensitive at some point, before something painful happened, some trauma, showing us that our sensitivity made us vulnerable to pain and loss.) We coped with these unmet, inner needs by turning to addictions or any form of escaping the self—whose needs never felt worthy of being honored.

The energy of our inner landscape and needs is Cancer energy.

Cancer is the crab—with a tough shell exterior and a soft, vulnerable heart. The sensitive, intuitive, feeling being. The nurturer. The kind, warm, loving friend. The heart of gold.

And, when it comes to the shadow side, the crab can be protective, overly shy, and requires five coats of self-insulation to wall themselves up so as to not risk rejection. Cancer energy can be associated with the past, the energy of holding onto things, even if they are making us bleed as we grip them ever so tightly.

Cancer energy is within all of us. Ruled by the moon, Cancer is a reflective energy. It allows us to go inward and see what we’ve been hiding from ourselves—or at the very least, hiding from others. Cancer energy is the mother archetype. She can be the best caretaker in the world, but if she is not caring for herself, for her needs, for her heart and spirit, her well of caring may dry up.

The year 2021 ended with quite a bang, and 2022 is now ushering us into a time of dancing between energies that are even more polarized—and so there is a deeper invitation to find rootedness in the self.

The first full moon of 2022 lands on January 17 at 6:48 EST at 27 degrees of the water sign of Cancer. As it is near the critical degree of the Cancer zodiac, the energy is showing us an ending, a completion of this energy, a deeper letting go, perhaps.

As we come home to the self, to the inner landscape we all harbor, we get to see parts of ourselves that are in need of a little more care, love, and tenderness in the fires of transformation, which many of us are moving through. With all that’s still happening in the global community, how could we not still be in the process of transformation?

It’s not an overnight process, either. It’s a long haul, perhaps a many-year process. But, isn’t that life? Maybe life has turned up the heat on us these past few years, but we are moving through it, even if our emotional processes have felt extra messy lately: less put together, more out there, less perfected. More of our imperfections come through to say, perhaps, “Can you still love me in these spaces too?”

It doesn’t mean we have to like how it looks or feels. We probably won’t. Many of us weren’t taught to see the crumbling, messy, chaotic, imperfect self with kind eyes. But we can learn a new way to relate to ourselves.

Cancer energy invites us all to go back to the basics—to our innermost needs—where we can bring ourselves a little more care, a little more permission to feel however we are feeling, a little more grace when we don’t get it “right.”

We can only do this by coming back home to the self, to our own energy and heart time and time again, no matter how far we drift outwardly. Come back to the heart space. Allow its vulnerability to expand into golden light, warm and soft, radiant and clear. We only were made to believe that exposing our hearts was vulnerable—because we also believed we couldn’t recover from the pain, that our injuries were permanent, that love wasn’t a powerful enough force. The only pain we feel, after all, is when we are believing ourselves to be separate from this love, to be unworthy of basking in this love.

This full moon is opposing the sun in Capricorn, conjunct with Pluto in Capricorn. This energy is significant specifically for the United States as this year we will be beginning our Pluto return. Pluto rules transformative energy, death and rebirth, change and regeneration. This energy will be ripe and potent opposing this full moon, asking us: are we ready to shed another layer of the conditioned self?

Pluto will be moving to the exact point it was at at the time the U.S. was born as a free and sovereign country from Britain many moons ago on July 4, 1776. This same energy will be present this coming year and for the next few. Great change is upon us, whether your roots are in the U.S. or not—because we know how interconnected we are globally, now (hint, hint: pandemic). These energy shifts within the U.S. will absolutely affect the global community. We will remember what sovereignty means to us, individually and collectively. How will we relate to ourselves and each other when sh*t is hitting the fan? And can we bring more acceptance and kindness there?

Venus and Mercury are also at play in this full moon. Venus has been in retrograde in Capricorn for a few weeks now and has been giving us a reflective dose of medicine around love, romance, relationships, our values, our sense of value and worth, and monetary relations. Venus energy asks us to reflect on all of our relationships—with the self and others. And to parts of ourselves—our emotions, traumas, and patterns. Can we revamp the ways in which we relate internally? Because that is what shifts the cosmic energy externally.

Mercury is in retrograde until February 3 in the signs of Aquarius and Capricorn. This energy is also drawing us inward and back to the drawing board of our communication. How are we using our words to bridge kindness or to burn bridges? We can speak up for ourselves and honor our truths, but can we also do so with gentleness and kindness, not out of passivity, but through feeling solid in who and what we stand for—without making the other person wrong, or shaming them?

Now is the time to be extra honest with how we are feeling. To embrace who we are now, even if the form we’ve taken was not one we expected a few months ago. To show up more fully in our wholeness, as we are, without the need to perform who we are. We may have more questions than answers with this full moon in Cancer.

We may be asked to sift through pockets of emotions that are uncomfortable—but this is where honesty with ourselves happens. We have to see it all in order to know what’s been lurking in the shadows of our subconscious. To see ourselves with the eyes of kindness and allowance. To see ourselves in all our glory and blunders. To see ourselves in all our chaos and shades of grey. To see ourselves and know that no matter what beliefs we have about our worth, that maybe, just maybe, these stories aren’t even true. That we are made of love, that the essence and fabric of this universal plane encompasses the energy of love. And that fear is only the perceived absence of love, a perception of lack—and we can always choose differently.

This full moon invites us to come back home.

Back to our felt experience of life, back to our bodies, back to a spiritual sense of belonging—even if that’s still a foreign feeling. Even if our literal homes may not always embody the energy of love and peace. Even if we are still figuring out what home means to us. Because home is always within us. And maybe, just maybe, we can create that sense of home by first feeling at home in ourselves. We can remind others that it is safe to return back to themselves. Maybe this reconnection is how the world will heal—because by reconnecting, we do heal.

Allow this full moon energy to be there, to move, and to usher you into the passing waves of emotion.

Know that it is just energy moving.

Allow yourself to be here more fully—no need to perform for love. No need to earn love. Just be here. Existing with your wide, open heart. Inviting others to open theirs too.

In that opening, and reconnecting back to the heart, we can feel our innate sense of belonging to each other, to ourselves, and to the cosmos of the mother, who is holding us all. Let this home call to you. Speak to you. Love you. Hold you. Nurture you. And let yourself always, always come back to you. Again, and again, and again.