Full Moon in Cancer: Soul Nourishment
Each month, the Full Moon illuminates our skies. If you dwell in an urban area flooded with light, the visual power of this period is far more subdued, no matter how radiant the Moon appears. In my first year in Sedona, a dark sky city to this day, both the darkness of the New Moon and the incandescence of the Full Moon presented shocking contrasts that had not been as apparent in my previous life as an urban dweller. At the New Moon, it was so dark it was so dark that you could not clearly see more than fifteen feet save for the luminosity of the stars above in contrast, during the full Moon, the landscape looked like the old Western films I had grown up with, and you could see for miles.
Full Moons illuminate.
Annually, the first Full Moon of the year is always in Cancer, serving as a reminder that soul nourishment is the seed of any New Year’s resolution, goal, or intention.
The sign Cancer is ruled by the Moon, whose role in our charts and our lives is far too underestimated. Way back when I was a baby astrologer, I was willing to play the skeptic's game of “Guess my sign.” I would inevitably be wrong and then find out later that I had correctly named their Moon versus their Sun sign. The Moon in our charts is, in essence, where we live. It rules our embodiment, the past, our needs, what nourishes us, how we bond with/emotionally attach to others, and our unconscious habitual self. In other words, it is who we are when we don’t think about it. Astrologically, this light of the night sky holds the key to our felt sense of the environment and safety we move through each day throughout our lives.
We live in a very externally oriented world. Our culture equates value with achievement and accomplishment in the outer world, often leaving the inner world of our psyche languishing on the vine. We are bombarded with images of wealth, youth, power, and fame as the measures of success. Nothing is innately wrong with any of these, but all too often, we have internalized these images and shame ourselves because we feel we are somehow not living up to one or more of these, and our resolutions/intentions for the New Year become a reflection of this. We choose them in order to fix what we perceive as a problem out there, not recognizing that the true root of any of these lies in the concept that somehow we are not enough. As Carl Jung said, “Shame is a soul eating emotion.”
The truth about who we are comes from a source within us: call it the soul, the psyche, or anything else. Our psyche is always speaking to us. Unfortunately, all too often, mesmerized by the siren song of the temporal outer world, we have forgotten how to listen. Or even worse, we have become attuned to the self critical voice that says we better get with the program and the deeper urgings of our soul become drowned out.
There is a subtle complexity to this; a fish can’t see the water it is swimming in. We become accustomed to the background noise. I remember, in my 20s, moving into a new apartment in Chicago. As we moved in, I and my roommate realized it was a mere half a block from the El (elevated train) which meant it was noisy. Within a couple of weeks, we have tuned this out completely. We don’t come out of the womb with negative self-talk, it is learned behavior. Young children are full of joy because they haven’t yet assimilated the belief that they aren’t good enough simply by being.
I promise you the key to all of your New Year’s resolutions/intentions/goals lies within. It is not about developing disciplines, etc, though they can be helpful support in the process. A seed doesn’t need to be given marching orders it needs to be watered and fed so it can develop strong roots. It needs to be nurtured. This is about being vs doing. And the best way to do that begins with extending kindness toward yourself and practicing self-compassion. Which is an inner-world journey.
Studies have shown that people who cultivate self-compassion are more resilient, are more likely to feel authentic and connected in their relationships with others, and show more grit in going after goals. In other words, they are more likely to thrive.
When we consciously work to shift our relationship with ourselves, everything around us in the outer world opens as well. Through this, we tap deep into our roots and fertilize what we need to help us stretch out into the world, just like a tree whose branches reach into the sky, we are more able to step into the spaces we feel we are meant to inhabit.
Dr. Kristen Neff’s life’s work is in the field of self-compassion and her website is a profound resource: https://self-compassion.org
So, on Monday, January 13, under the light of this first Full Moon of 2025, resolve to practice kindness toward yourself throughout this year. Give yourself room to breathe. Be gentle with your beautiful, glorious, ever-evolving self.
