Full Moon in Cancer

Today on January 6, 2023 at 3:08pm pst is a Full Moon in watery Cancer.

The sign of Cancer is mostly known by armchair/pop-astrologers as the sign of the mother. This is by no means incorrect (it is in fact the sign of the mother, it is ruled by the Moon - quite a feminine “planet” - and it governs the part of a chart that is associated with home).
There is, however, much more to this sign than just nurturing, soft, mommy mommy mommy energy. It is the sign, ultimately, of self-deliverance.

For people who have strong Cancer in their Birth Charts, the desire to take care of others is quite strong, even if it is to the detriment of the person offering the care. The nature of Cancer is to incubate new energy until it is ready to enter the material world. The clearest example of this is obviously the example of the main care-taker in the house who nurtures the energy of the child until the child is ready to take on the job of living on their own and hopefully nurturing themself.
Very often, the care-taker tries to anticipate what the other person needs well before they need it so that there isn’t ever a chance the person receiving the care will go without. For many people with strong Cancer, this is a fear response — the thinking being that if they don’t readily supply what the other may need, they will be abandoned. (I’ve written a lot about Cancer and fear in other blog posts, so check out the archive.)
That fear is so strong that it often leads to self-abandonment, which means the nurturer never turns that energy inward to continue birthing themselves. Yes, we are literally born once through the mother, but then we are continually reborn as we create ourselves and our lives, our bodies becoming the incubator that the womb once was.
If we are not able to do this for ourselves — if we are not able to nurture the new energy within — we get stuck in behavioral patterns that block us from being able to evolve.
This is why astrologers Stella Starsky and Quinn Cox (and my mom — the best cancer) say that the journey of Cancer is the journey from expectant accommodation to self-deliverance.

What cannot be left out of the equation when thinking about this Full Moon is the dynamic between Cancer (which rules the home) and its opposite, Capricorn (which rules vocation).
A Full Moon in Cancer brings up the balance between home-life and work-life so that we can recalibrate if need be.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about what each can draw from the other — meaning, how can the energy you bring to work benefit from the energy you bring into your home, and vice-versa.
My observation is that we often think of “success” as related only to work, and since we all want to be reasonably or very successful, we approach our work with tenacity and zeal. But what about success at home? How much do you think about that? What does that mean to you? I’m not implying that your home life needs to reach any concrete quarterly goals (although a Capricorn heavy household might really benefit from that!), but rather a type of success based on how loving the home is, how joyful the home is, how safe the home feels for everyone involved.
The character associated with Capricorn is often the mountain goat with all its fervor to reach the top. In reality, Capricorn is actually a sea-goat — the torso and front legs of a mountain goat with the tail of fish — suggesting that when trying to reach great heights, we must tap into the inspiration and support from the emotions and deep waters of the self.

Nurture yourself. Nurture your ideas and your dreams. Make your home life the real barometer of success.