Today’s full moon in Cancer offers the opportunity to heal the part of yourself that is looking for love and protection.
The Symbolism of Cancer
Embodying the protective mother archetype, Cancer shelters those things we create — children, art, and any other form of divine expression — so that they may be safely delivered to the world.
Cancer is a sign that knows how to tend to everyone and anyone.
It feeds, nourishes, nurtures, and fosters familial connections to anyone and everyone.
The Shadow Side of Cancer
A full moon in Cancer can show us the parts of ourselves that have been under-nurtured or abandoned.
It can also illuminate how those parts of us show up and the strategies we use to receive care.
To be clear, when I use the word “strategies” I don’t necessarily mean conscious strategies.
In fact, often the strategies were used to elicit care from others are unconscious. They are habitual ways of being and relating that worked for us in the past, when we felt starved of love and affection.
When you were a child, you likely learned that certain behaviors or states of being would elicit attention from your primary caregivers.
Especially if your primary caregivers did not always attune to your emotional needs, you likely learned that there were certain things that you could do that would suddenly cause your primary caregivers to pay attention to you.
That attention is what you called love.
For example, maybe you received attention and care when you got sick or injured. Maybe you received attention when you got in trouble.
The attention may not have been positive, or a good experience, but it was attention nonetheless.
The full moon invites us to look at how we continue to use those strategies today, perhaps in unconscious ways.
An Invitation to Reparent Yourself
The work of this full moon is to reparent those parts of ourselves that were abandoned; the parts that look for love and attention through strategies that don’t truly serve us.
When we learn to give ourselves the nurturing we lacked as children, we no longer seek it from other external sources in maladaptive ways.
How can you give yourself the nurturing and care that you lacked as a child?
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