You are not a machine.
You are more like a garden.
You need different things
on different days.
A little sun today, a little
less water tomorrow.
You have fallow and fruitful seasons.
It's not a design flaw.
It is wiser than perpetual sameness.
What does your garden need today?
Joy Clarkson
The Cancer New Moon on July 5, 2024, at 14 Cancer
invites us to come home to our heart,
letting it guide us to the most loving thing
we give to ourselves to right now.
We are to be gentle with ourselves, listen to and make space for feelings that surface, and what will strengthen, nourish and rejuvenate our loving nature. In this, a new clarity will emerge around what is working and not working around our current goals and commitments.
The New Moon invites receptivity over action. We are to feel into and trust the flow of what is naturally unfolding from within. At the next full Moon, we can initiate changes we wish to make that is informed by the time we spend with ourselves now
Within 24 hours of the New Moon is the optimal time each month to set an intention for what we will initiate and grow in the coming month. The area of life primed for a new beginning is revealed by the nature of the house in our natal charts where 14 degrees of Cancer resides. The house will also cue us as to what area of life we seek to nourish and fill with love.
If you don’t love yourself, nobody will.
Not only that, you won’t be
good at loving anyone else.
Loving starts with the self.
Wayne Dyer
Key Planetary Alignments and What they Inspire
Our Feeling Nature is heightened and is honored over our heroic, rational nature / New Moon Ruler: The Moon in its own Sign
We feel motivation to nourish our heart and the love within us / Mars sextile The New Moon
It is time to put love into action and make it real in our lives. / Saturn trine the New Moon and Venus
We can see our love and the ways we love in a new light. / Mercury in Leo – moving away from opposing Pluto
We are ready to shift limiting patterns so we can open ourselves to a more expansive, satisfying way of loving. / Venus in Cancer square Chiron and Trine Uranus
Cancer is about
Home – both our physical home and the yearning to be at home in our body
Family and those share home with and those we consider family
Feelings and Nurturance
Safety and Security
The New Moon invites us to come home to ourselves and feel what will most support and nourish us moving forward. The Cancer impulse seeks to bond, to establish a deep trust and safety with significant others, and to have a sense of belonging to a person or people.
But rather than giving our attention to finding this nurturance within the relationships that matter, we are to take this time to tend the inner garden and nurture the seeds and growth of our own loving nature. What we are needing for support and how we wish to love may be evolving.
Emerging from the next weeks, we may initiate changes in our relationships so we can experience greater connection and potential for love to bloom. For others of us, changes in relationships may feel like they happened to us. If this is the case, we can look for what is opening within us that wasn't possible before the change.
Two Full Moons in Capricorn bookend the New Moon. The Full Moon two weeks ago and the one in two weeks, compel us to embrace our responsibilities and to dedicate ourselves to the realization of our commitments. Yet, between these Full Moons is the opportunity to listen to our heart so it may guide us in how we are to perceive and follow the directive of the Capricorn Full Moons.
We've got this gift of love,
but love is like a precious plant.
You can't just accept it and leave it
in the cupboard or just think
it's going to get on by itself.
You've got to keep watering it.
You've got to really
look after it and nurture it.
At this point, my contemplation of the New Moon is going to diverge from its usual format – to something more personal, less objective, more revealing, less put together. Yet in my personal contemplation, I hope you see this as an expression of the Cancer New Moon and find something within it for yourself.
Some New Moons are more meaningful for us individually when they are activating one’s Natal chart in a dynamic way. This New Moon is that for me. It conjuncts my Ascendant and opposes my Sun, illuminating a new beginning in how I identify myself - especially related to nurturance - and how my identity informs and shapes the way I relate with others, especially those I call family.
Currently, I am sick with covid. My mind is not functioning optimally and so to fulfill my commitment (Capricorn) to post a Newsletter on the New Moon, I determined I can succeed in this endeavor if I stay connected to my feelings and move with what will best nurture me (Cancer).
Last Friday night, my Father died. I was holding his hand as he passed. 20 minutes later, I realized I was still holding his hand. Still, I stayed holding his hand. To help myself move forward, I said to my brother "I have been so ready for him to go, and now I can't let him go." I then started to cry as I continued to hold onto his hand for several more minutes. I then let go and let him go. And in this letting go, something new opened in my life.
In his final hours, sitting next to his bed, I felt how throughout my whole life – whether I was near or far away from him, whether I wanted to embrace or punch him - my father's presence and influence had always loomed large. In the minutes after he passed, it occurred to me that I could not imagine my lie without him in it.
My brother arrived from California for the last hours of Dad’s life and together we were at his bedside when Dad let go of his last breath. I was grateful to have my brother to share the hours and days that followed – the feelings and memories that emerged as well as the divvying up of tasks that needed to get done.
The silver lining in having covid this week, is that it has allowed time to virtually come to a full stop. Just hours after my brother left town on Tuesday, I became sick and went to bed. Since, I have been cocooning. I am afforded an extended experience of being quiet with myself that marks the completion of almost a decade where I dedicated myself to accompanying, serving and witnessing my parents in the last years of their lives.
It began when I drove across the country and moved into in their house in Washington to care for my Mom until she passed. I then then helped Dad sell their home and assist him in finding and moving to a new home at age 91. Returning to North Carolina, my relationship to Dad and to his care became part of my daily life soon after.
In 2021, I flew with my then 93-year-old Father across the country and moved him into a senior home one mile from my house. In response to circumstances that unfolded, I became dedicated to visiting him daily to ensure he received the care I wanted him to have and for him to daily be with someone who knew and loved him. During this time, I got to know my father in a way I never had. In this stage of life, he was more vulnerable, more appreciative of support, and his heart was wide open. There was a sweetness, a humor and a kindness in this time together evoking softness, forgiveness, healing and love.
Now, both my parents have passed. My experience of family is changing. My experience of home and where I will direct my love is shifting. Part of myself I set aside to care for parents, is resurfacing.
With the New Moon, as I continue to release my Father and how he has been interwoven in my daily life these last years, I open to and am freed up to give and express love in a new way. I have ideas on what this may look like, but the New Moon invitation reminds me that this is unfolding organically. My work is to give space to the feelings and memories that surface, to nurture myself and listen to my heart. The best way to prepare for the future is to take the time now to generously love myself and tend to my inner garden.
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