The potent Full Moon Supermoon Wolf Moon in Cancer (12 degrees) at 6:24pm PST on the very first day of 2018 takes us home to ourselves and our loved ones, offering nourishing, cozy, comforting vibes. Cancer knows how to soothe the soul with comfort and care, in whatever forms we find these: through playing games around the fire, warming up with hot chocolate after snowshoeing, taking a long bath with your favourite oils, lingering around the dinner table after a meal with loved ones, retreating into yourself through meditation, reading a book, or journalling, or any number of ways we find self care and nourishment. What a beautiful way to begin 2018.
The Moon opposes the Sun, Venus, Saturn, and Pluto, all in outward focus and career driven Capricorn, reminding us that rest and retreat are necessary in order to most effectively put our energy out into the world. Work-life balance doesn’t imply that our activities at home and with family detract from career, and vice versa, but rather that they feed each other, they require each other, they imply each other. Cancer offers the depth of feeling and psychic grounding that enable us to be effective and goal oriented in our careers, vocations, and the ways in which we contribute to society.
While we are likely to be offered comfort, of course, it's not so simple. Going deeper with Cancer means going deeper into the psyche. Cancer has to do with the ways in which our psychology was shaped in the early years of life, through our relationship with our mother or primary caregiver. It has to do with our attachment patterns, and the emotional responses we learned in childhood that developed into our unconscious patterns of reactivity.
In adulthood, our unconscious tendencies can bring pain if they are no longer adaptive. But it’s important to honour that they offered us emotional security, they are the ways that we adapted to our early environment. It’s much easier to attend to and perhaps change patterns when we see how they were helpful. As we go deep within ourselves, we can gain insight into our patterns and tendencies, and the possibility of transforming unconscious reaction to intentional choice emerges. We can find healing as we learn to respond rather than react, as we bring consciousness to what had been unconscious.
Connecting to a sense of family that offers comfort and security is not always easy. It may take years working through past pains and traumas, of processing and perhaps forgiving. For some, it may mean creating a new family altogether, of finding our wolf pack--those people who we know will be there for us at the best and worst of times.
And certainly finding a sense of family that is inclusive and accepting of all the diverse ways people commune with one another and express themselves and their gender and sexuality requires us to rethink what family means, and what constitutes a family, as we work to overcome the stifling and harmful elements of the concept as we’ve inherited it.
I hope that amid the complexity of feelings that this day offers you nourishment and comfort for your soul. I wish you deep inner renewal and the psychic depths that will launch you to great heights in 2018, the heights of your own choosing as you reach for your goals and aspire toward your purpose. Many blessings for 2018 and onward.