Tenderest Parts: Welcome Cancer Season

Cancer season. Acknowledge that you do, in fact, have feelings. Feel them (because thinking them doesn’t count). Tuck down comfy-cozy in your shell and sense into what nourishes you, what makes you feel secure, well and whole. Notice the sensations in your body. Nurture the tenderest parts of you and others. Protect what’s in process. Gestate the thing - you know the one. Let your soft underbelly show with the trustworthy ones in your life. Empty out. Ebb and flow.

Cancer is represented by the crab who lives at the edge of the waters, a vulnerable, soft-bodied creature with no internal skeleton, powerfully attuned to protection and comfort, contained inside a hard shell, armored up, and never moving in a straight line, but cautiously zig-zagging, spiraling in towards the center only to spiral back out again.

You have the sign of Cancer somewhere in your astrological birth chart. The archetype of Cancer is a part of you.

You are the tender and the tough. The exile and the protector. You can ebb and flow between feeling-states, timelines and memories. You can honor your darkest depths and find your way back again to the safety of your shoreline. You can carry with you all the hurts, and also a balm to heal each one. You can be home to yourself.

At the start of this Cancer season, consider:

What am I shielding myself from/guarding against?

What defenses do I use again and again?

How do I know I am safe to come out of my shell?

What might it be like to let my rigidity recede and my softness surface?

What is one message my young, tender self needs from me right now?