CANCER
The discomfort of your truth
is that it may cause separation. But,
You separate from yourself
in the ways you confuse care with caretaking.
We are all here becoming, sweetheart.
And it’s not your job only to hold us together.
We are meant to learn, unravel, break apart
and remember our interconnection again and again.

0:12  

Hello, Cancer. Welcome to Embodied Astrology. You are tuned in for the horoscopes for Capricorn Season, December 21st, 2021 through January 19th, 2022. My name is Renee. I'm an embodied somatic intuitive and a consulting astrologer. This is an offering to you of my interpretation, my sense of the overarching themes, opportunities and challenges for Cancer Sun, Cancer rising, other ways, other planetary placements you may identify as a Cancerian, in this season ahead. As you listen, please listen through the lens of your own intuition. The language that I have may not always resonate perfectly for you. So notice what you associate with and follow those threads. Make the meaning that is most meaningful for you. Take what works and leave the rest. I always suggest that folks listen to horoscopes for their Sun and rising signs. If you don't know your signs, you can get a free chart at embodiedastrology.com in the horoscopes section, where you can also find written transcripts of these horoscopes if you prefer to read rather than listen.

1:21  

Before I begin, I want to let you know about some class offerings through Embodied Astrology. On December 22nd with me, there will be a two and a half hour solstice Capricorn Season workshop that includes an embodied practice, creative visualization and meditation that is meant to support you, to support all of us as we work with our own charts in relation to the season's upcoming astrology. If you can't make the live event, the recording will be available through January 19th.

1:54  

On January 8th, I am so pleased to welcome Janice Lee for a 2022 opening ceremony. Janice is an author, a teacher, a shamanic healer and a very profound and incredible facilitator of experience. Her workshop, The Dandelions are Prophesizing, consists of meditation, free writing and communal ceremony that really brings us into the depths of the transformative process of letting go. And as I'll be talking about in just a moment, letting go is a really big theme in the season ahead, and certainly in the year ahead. If you'd like more information on either of those workshops or registration, you can find it all at embodiedastrology.com. Please make sure to stick around at the end of this horoscope for some other updates and more information on how to connect with me and the Embodied Astrology community over Capricorn Season and beyond.

2:56  

Alright, Cancer. So as we enter into this new season, we cross the threshold of the solstice. And this is of particular importance for you as a sign that is also marked by the beginning of a solstice. Two solstices at opposite times of year that are important pivotal markers in the Earth's journey around the Sun. And as you know, the solstice is a time of year where we get the most intensity of light and dark, where we feel the polarity existent on this Earth that is set up in our kind of primary, fundamental understanding of what it is to be alive on Earth, which is that there are polarities. There is life and there is death. There is an inhale, there's an exhale. There's daytime, there's nighttime. And in the space of polarity and opposition, we can easily get caught. And I think there are many spiritual paths, including the study of astrology, that really try to unpack the suffering that emerges from the misidentification with binary thinking, with the thinking that day and night are somehow separate and not part of the same continuous whole, that life and death are somehow separate, that like and dislike, that you and me are different. One thing leads to the next. The ways that we polarize each other and where we find opposition inevitably becomes a mirror, becomes a point of growth, becomes a place for pushback and information and development of who we feel ourselves to be and how we feel ourselves in continuity.

4:56  

Capricorn is your opposite sign, and as we enter into the season, the feeling of opposition, particularly in the realms of relationship, I think become profoundly palpable for you. And not in a new way, you have been very aware of the polarizing potentials of relationship for quite some time now, you've really been trying to figure it out, what is the space between you and the other. Whoever the other happens to be, whether you feel yourself othering them or whether you feel yourself coming into unification, whether you feel yourself being othered, separated from, or whether you feel yourself being embraced. As we move into Capricorn Season, it feels like something lands for you about the process that you have been in, I would say for the last year and a half, that I think has been an unconscious process that has been pushing you to, I want to say, follow your intuition in a new way. Listen to yourself in a new way, conceive of possibility in a new way.

6:16  

And to some extent, I think that over the last year and a half, you've had to separate yourself from emotion in some new ways. As a Cancer identified person, you know, the emotional landscape and the technology of emotion is very much like, this is your tool, right? This is the technology of water. Water and emotion moves down and in. Right, it brings us into the puddle. It's like, this is where we dissolve. You and I are not separate, we affect each other. That's part of your wisdom. It's also part of your pain, right? Like, where do you end and where does another person begin? What are these things people talk about called boundaries? And it feels like over the last year and a half, there's been a kind of untethering yourself in certain ways from emotion, particularly the qualities of emotion that get you bonded with other people unconsciously, where there is co-identification, codependency. And on your end, this feels like a merging. This feels like you don't know who you are, you have to be who you think they want you to be or take on their feelings for them or something like this. And you've been in some kind of process. Some of you have been engaged in therapy, some of you have been reading books, some of you have just been listening to yourself, listening to some friends. I don't know what it is for you. But you, I think you've had assistance from some dimension, that it has been helping you to recognize where you lose yourself, where you come undone and how to claim yourself in a new way.

8:14  

As we move into Capricorn Season, you are getting tested. You've got your exams. How did you do in this course that you have been in? You're getting tested, you have relational tests that are confronting you. And these tests are intense. Others are providing reflection and mirror for you. They are asking you to observe your own process. They're asking you to have a lot of integrity with the learning that you have involved yourself in that you have been involved in for a long time now surrounding relationship and how you show up for it and what it is that you want and need. They're asking you to not turn away from the lessons. Even as the lessons are intense, even as you feel yourself backsliding, which you will in moments, even as you feel yourself confronted and affected and agitated and terrified. You know, I don't know what exactly your situation is. But there is something that is like, coming to a head, some kind of confrontation that needs to be had.

9:46  

So I really want to invite you to stay in yourself. And that's much, much easier said than done. How do we stay in ourselves as sensitive people within dynamics with others who provoke us, who cause our hearts to break, right? Who we want to coddle and comfort. And when we've made mistakes, you know, how do we stay in ourselves and feel the profundity of our failures in relationships? Not come out of ourselves, oh my God, I'm so sorry, what did I do? Not that apology is not what's needed. Sometimes it definitely is. But what I'm asking for, what I'm inviting you to feel is the difference in the resonance of truth that happens in your communication when you are really centered in your own being and in your own body, as opposed to when you're not. I know I've spoken about this for several months now in different ways. And forgive me if I'm being redundant at this point. But these lessons that we learn in our lives take time, right, that's part of what it is to be an Earthling. Like we have to deal with time and how long these processes take. On a somatic level, on a body centered level, the contrast of feeling is in your nervous system. It's the difference between feeling regulated and dysregulated. It's the difference in feeling between the capacity to love yourself, in the sense that you are a human being deserving of love, you are a soft body, a tender heart, you can love yourself, and you can be in conflict. And in the conflict, you can also love another in their soft body and their tender heart, even if they're really pissing you off, even if they are dysregulated. Even if they are aggressive, insulting, violent in some way. When you allow yourself to become polarized by the other, polarity increases. So if you're being confronted by a person who is shouting at you, and you shout back, or you close your body in rigidity and hatred, they are going to shout louder. You are both locked in the dynamic. If you leave that confrontation and allow yourself to spin into the vortex of blame and shame and anger, and what the fuck that fucker, da da da, this kind of thing, you're stuck in it. And so there has to be the capacity right now to let it go, to not take it personally.

13:14  

And that does not mean you get to let yourself off the hook of accountability when accountability is what's needed. And in accountability, we have to be able to love ourselves, right? We have to be able to forgive ourselves. And we also have to be able to not take it personally. You know, all the time we're stepping on each other's toes, we're hurting each other's feelings, we're crashing into each other's existences. All the time we are ignorant as to the impact that we have. And especially for those of us that might be identified in some ways that Cancer can easily identify, oh, I'm a caretaker, oh, I'm sensitive, oh, I'm taking care of people. I'm holding space for them. That identification process, that space that we can get in is also a blindness, right? It keeps us from seeing where our care may not be asked for or wanted. We might be giving something that is actually gross to someone else, like, not what's being asked for. We might be lying to ourselves. Right? You've learned by this point in your life that there are times when your full intention is care and actually what you were doing was just satisfying your own ego. And that's not a place where you need to hate yourself but it is a place where you can know, notice and remember, what was the somatic quality of that care? Were you frantic? Were you outside of yourself? Were you picking up on all the little details of somebody else and feeling resentful inside and trying to figure out and trying to manage and da da da da?

15:09  

I've been seeing a lot of posts on social media recently of people kind of breaking down the difference between niceness and kindness. And really making the distinction that kindness is not always nice. And that sometimes the kindest thing is to say the thing that is hard to hear. That's the feeling that I have for you right now is that you want to look at the ways that you create situations that harm you, first and foremost, and then maybe other people, when you come out of yourself, when you don't pay attention to what it is that you want and need, when you're so focused on the other person, when you're so focused on, you know, any element of the other: wanting them, not wanting them, thinking you need to take care of them, whatever. It's like, when you come out of yourself, you're not conscious of what it is that you are creating. And I think that for the last decade, for the last 13 years or so, this is what just keeps getting shown to you over and over and over again is like, you have to land in yourself, you have to be in yourself, you have to know what your boundaries are, you have to know what your asks are, what is your yes, what is your no. And then you have to be willing to be honest about it. And then you have to be willing to engage in some kind of process around it. And that includes being honest in the ways that you listen to others.

16:43  

Now I have some Cancer placements in my chart and, you know, I'm like, damn it, like this is really, it's really hard, right? It's sticky, because in the ways — and forgive me if you don't resonate with this, I'm speaking from my own experience and the ways that I identify my own Cancer tendencies, my Cancerian tendencies. It's a longing. It's a longing to care for others, to hold them, to include them. It's a sensitivity to the ways that disruption happens, right? Disintegration, severance, exclusion. It's like, oh, baby, like, how can I make you feel better? Right, and then in that, there is ego. In that, in this want, you know, in this wanting to hold, in this wanting to make space, there is also ego, there is an expectation that somebody is going to receive it, that they'll soften, right? That they'll give you some kind of emotional response, that then they'll do what you want them to, that then we can be nice. Something needs to happen in your life right now that is around conversation. And, and, and accountability. You know, be like — you are trying to move into some unknown spaces right now in your life that are requiring you to take risks. And that is really what I think Capricorn season is about for you is doing what is uncomfortable and what is unknown. Taking risks, to speak how you actually feel, to stay centered in yourself while you feel the intensity of habit that pulls you into co-identification, that pulls you into caretaking roles. Making choices for yourself that might result in separation. There is that risk. Is this resonating for you?

18:51  

So the first 10 days of Capricorn Season, the last 10 days of the year, this — everything I've been talking about feels really thick. It feels like hard conversations, it feels like confrontation, it feels like relationships are, you know, it's like there's power in them. You want to transform them. The work of doing it is both rewarding and gruesome. You are feeling the ways that you are transforming, you are feeling your own power, you are feeling your own desire, you are feeling — you know, it's like you're in that and then you're also getting big doses of provocation, you're getting plenty of opportunities to fragment and backslide into these old ways of being. And so it very much may feel like two steps forward, one step back or even one step forward, two steps back. That is okay.

19:51  

Over the next year as we move into 2022, you will learn and learn again that when you are transparent and when you make space for the transparency of others, when you create conditions where honesty can happen, that profound growth and learning will occur. If you are in any kind of position of leadership — and we all lead in some way, shape or form, so think about where you get to be a leader. In some way, shape or form, literally, it could be walking down the street and like, taking the initiative to say hello. But wherever you have any capacity for leadership, when you come into those spaces with emotional vulnerability that does not center yourself but that does care for yourself, where you are not — it's like you're working to really be aware of your own feelings and take absolute responsibility for them. But also, you're really working to kind of hold a field around you where others can have their own feelings and where they can take responsibility for them. Right, everybody needs to take responsibility for their own emotional landscape. If you happen to have young children, this is the place of leadership, right, where you are — this is part of what you are teaching them. That even in your role as a nurturer or as a caretaker, where you are actually needing to take some responsibility for their feelings and help them, you know, feel better, you're also — you are wanting to teach them how to regulate themselves. How do you teach others to regulate themselves? You regulate yourself. And part of your own self-regulation is noticing when you disappear, when you put up your shell, when you pull out your claws, big crab claws, get cranky, crabby, you know, when you make those harsh boundaries that are like, actually, that's not a healthy boundary, that's not a clear boundary. That's a reactive boundary. You are looking for the utmost integrity in your emotional body. This is not easy, this is a real challenge, you are being asked to mature and really uplevel your emotional awareness and capacity. You are being asked to be a Buddha, right, to sit in the center of the storm, to sit in the fire. And to open your heart to all of the heartbreak inside and around you. And to not take it personally. To allow the feelings that are there to be there, but not to react in a way that is polarizing, right, in a way that others, yourself or an other.

22:54  

The first two weeks of January, lots of opportunities for you to be working in the emotional landscape. Especially around this workshop that I mentioned, Janice's workshop on January 8th. There is some kind of like, I don't know what it's gonna be for you. But it is definitely a feeling of, you are done with a particular relationship pattern. So come to that workshop and practice letting go. You want to really let it go, this way of being. And it could be a way of being that is being mirrored to you by another person in your life, right. But what is being mirrored to you is how you get pulled into the dynamic. How when you get pulled into that dynamic, you leave yourself. We can't take responsibility for that other person. And whatever it is that's going on for them, whatever is causing them to behave in a way that is fragmented, that is not your — that is not the place where you are responsible for them. What you're responsible for is regulating yourself, holding your own space, and to the best of your ability, making conscious choices from that place. Because this other person might just need to be heard. They might just need to actually feel that you are listening to them. And when you get defensive or shut down, or when you jump out of yourself and try and take care of them, they're not feeling heard. They might not need your care. They might just need you to hear it. Whatever it is. Who knows what they might need, they might not need anything that you can provide. They might not, you know, what they need might fully be about themselves. In which case, you know, how do you make a graceful exit? But it is about shifting from a reactive space into a proactive space, into a space of response-ability.

24:54  

You think that you're getting there the first two weeks of January. You think that you're getting there. It feels like you become less emotional, you become a lot more analytic, like you're seeing the patterns in things. You are getting somewhere, but don't be entirely certain of where you're getting, because it's going to take you a little longer than you think. Give yourself all of February for whatever this resolution process is about, all the way into March. There's something that is coming up into your face, into your space. It is another person or it is very much the ways that you approach relationships and that you work in the space of other that really needs your attention. And everything I'm trying to say is, there is no such thing as a very cut and clear other. And we are not each other. Right, it's a total paradox. It's a complete head scratcher. You can't take responsibility for other people. Their feelings are not yours to process. And in holding space for them to be different than you and giving them back to themselves, you recognize that you are part of the same thing, right? That the argument that you get in when you react to them or when you try and take care of them in the ways that bring you out of yourself, it perpetuates the conflict, it perpetuates the feeling of separation. I don't know if this is making sense, I feel like it is very, like, very much in the realms of non-dualist kind of esoteric thought. But it is also — it feels very practical in my body as it's coming through.

26:53  

There is a Full Moon in your sign on January 17th. This is a Full Moon that highlights every single thing I've just been talking about. It is a Full Moon that really pushes you to the edge of whatever the situation is. And then you have a breakthrough. Then you have a fucking breakthrough. And in the days that follow the Full Moon, a very significant and palpable shift in your energy, I think is coming. I think you're going to feel that. And what it feels like to me is that you are more capable of moving forwards with the — the sticking points of what this situation has been. It feels like the breakthrough that you have is the breakthrough of the duality, it is the breakthrough of the thing that you haven't been willing to see. It is the breakthrough of the place where you've been functioning on autopilot and automatic and allowing your unconscious or where your unconscious is kind of pushing you forward. And then something becomes conscious and it's like you recognize like, oh, this is how I stay in myself or oh, this is my part in this or oh, I don't need to take you on like that, and like, you know, and then you have a different kind of energy for working with the discomfort, and I don't think it's gonna feel as uncomfortable anymore moving forward. It's not that you're totally done with the discomfort. But you are really done with the ways that it controls you and that it like, keeps you in this stuck space where you lose yourself.

28:40  

Okay, I hope that any or all of that is helpful and interesting to you. Again, take what works, leave the rest. Associate with your own themes, make the meaning that is meaningful for you. If this is helpful and you want more astrology from me, check out your 2022 Year Ahead Report. That's an hour and a half long reading special for your sign where I give a similar type of reading for the whole year. The opportunities, the challenges, the main themes, embodied support for working through them. You can pre-order the readings now, they'll be available by January 10th. If you want support throughout this month and through the upcoming months, through embodiment and through deeper learning, I have several levels of membership available. You can sign up to become a subscriber to my monthly workshops, that's once a month, two and a half hour space holding that I do, offering embodiment, creative visualization, different kinds of practices and tips and suggestions for reading transits, reading the current astrology in relationship to your own chart. Another level of membership that is access to a community forum space in the virtual realms where you can connect with other astro enthusiasts and learners for support in learning and growing and cultivating our awareness of astrology, as well as the synthesis between astrology and other healing and creative modalities. This is my passion, the synthesis of somatics and astrology. There are so many people in this community that are working in the bridges between astrology and all kinds of things. So if that sounds like a fun space to play, you can check that out as well. If you want to learn more about astrology through the embodied lens, I have a multi-part class series called Your Chart is a Body. This is an introduction to embodied chart reading, where you work through the main components of an astrological chart: signs, planets, aspects and houses, through the body, through experiential somatic practice. All of that and more is available on my website embodiedastrology.com. If you enjoy this work and it brings benefit to you, please do consider supporting it. The number one way to do that is by sharing it with your friends and networks, leaving affirmative reviews on your favorite listening platforms, and your financial donations continue to sustain the production of this work. You can make a one time or recurring monthly donation by following the link in the show notes. Cancer, I'm wishing you all the best. Much love. Bye for now.