Cancer: The Mother, the moon, and the moonchild
A deep contemplation on the fourth zodiac sign in astrology through my perspective
By next week, I will be with my extended family for a cousin’s wedding in my family hometown. Ancestrally, home.
Weddings in India, as we all know, are a ripe opportunity for drama, heightened emotions, and triggers. Many (and many many many) people come under one roof to not just celebrate the bride and groom but participate in the hottest stageshow of “when will you get married”, “you’ve gained weight right?”, “ah, you have worn this before”, and “who is gifting what”.
Don’t get me wrong, weddings are fun and colorful. All my childhood I’ve ached for big family gatherings and weddings. Talk about the perils of being an elder child, I hardly had any weddings to attend in my childhood. Now, it is just back-to-back shennagian.
Receive my blog posts as newsletters in your inbox! Subscribe by pressing the button below 🤍
Anyway, the reason I talk about this in my Cancer blog is because I have been noticing subtle emotions around food & my god's given beautiful, loving, delightful body in the past few weeks leading up to this trip. Even though my average diet consists of mostly home-made, non-junk, healthy foods with occasional indulgences, I have been feeling pangs of guilt and shame with every dessert, every bag of chips, every time I am too tired to workout or go for a walk. I am silently watching myself judge myself. I am watching myself dread landing in the town next week and being greeted by another ‘you’re not enough’ side-eye. I have been a chronic people pleaser and ardently first grand-daughter, nephew, niece of the family and if there’s one thing I have craved is approval and admiration of my favorite people I grew up playing with. With time, distance grew and formality set in over the years. But what never failed to leave over the same years were casual greetings on weight camouflaged as ‘healthy’ and colour camouflaged as ‘tanned’.
It is Cancer Season as I write this. Ofcourse body, food, love and comfort are at the forefront. I have a Mars in Cancer in my natal chart, meaning I am very passionate about all things Cancer in my life. I also have a north node in the Cancerian fourth house. So when I say passionate, think blood boiling, adrenaline rushing, teeth gritting emotionally aggressive passion for all things home.
Cancer is a feminine sign. In astrology, it hosts the 4th house of home and mother. It is the house of comfort and nourishment.
When we think of Cancer, we think of what makes us feel at home, what makes us feel cared for, and what tends to our emotional well-being. If you think of it, all these answers lead to one feeling: the feeling of mother.
It doesn’t matter what’s your relationship with your mother, this is what ‘mother’ feels like. In fact, for those of you who have experienced bitterness with your mother, Cancer season and Cancer archetype in your natal chart can provide an opportunity to mother yourself the right way. It tells you that every child in this world is worthy of unconditional love and nurturing. It tells you that Luna, Moon, Mother is watching you at all times. It reminds you of the feminine energy within you waiting to nurture & nourish & tend to.
A water sign that Cancer is, this is a sign that is emotional poetry wrapped in fierce warriorness.
You have to understand the different facets of mother to understand Cancer. Mother is not just soft, rose and pink. Mother is also sharp, protective and shielding. Think of crab, the symbol of Cancer - hard shell, soft core.
Think about the most prominent Cancer women in your life or even outside in the world. They don’t display the conventional stereotypes of feminine, instead they are bold, confident, and speak their mind in absolute fearlessness. Feminine and mother, both are so much more than soft and nurturing.
A baby has zero survival chances if mothers don’t have the protection instinct activated at birth. It’s her protection mechanism that keeps the mom on her toes watching every move of her baby and coming to guard every time danger loops in. Sometimes, the danger could look like a predator, sometimes it could look like shielding the baby from the edge of the table or adding intuitively another layer of sweater even on a normal day. There’s both beauty and need for this fierceness, in this feminine energy.
In tarot, Chariot card is Cancer.
The chariot represents forward movement with courage and confidence. The role of a fierce mother is to support the child to stand on its two feet. Quite literally, she enables forward movement. On baby’s behalf, it takes courage to stand on its two feet and take one baby step at a time. Where does the courage come from? The confidence that the mother places on her child is directly proportional to the courage a baby can muster to start walking. As I write this, I cannot help but think how interdependence is a natural part of human relationships, one that modern feminism has stolen from us.
If you’re a Cancer reading this, it is important to honour this fierceness and protectiveness but at the same time understand that it’s coming from a deep place of unconditional love and care.
It’s important for Cancers to not get lost in the arrogance and use it as a means to shield themselves from the very love they crave to offer on the altar to their loved ones.
Cancers are caring and when we say caring, caring in the most humbling ways. In fact, cancers may or may not be good at writing poetry like a pisces would or passionately painting a canvas like a Scorpio would - but they are really good at ‘khidmat’. Khidmat, an Urdu word I came across yesterday while watching a Pakistani show where a mother talks to her daughter about the relevance of taking care of her husband’s little needs, not as an act of slavery, but as an act of love.
It’s pretty hard to understand this as a modern society, especially coming from south asian countries where women have indeed been treated like slaves for so long in marriages.
Yet, caring is a love language. We care through words many times, but Cancers also care through acts - cooking a meal, ironing clothes, arranging the desk, stocking pantry, keeping wallet and keys at reach in the house. This is comfort. This is care. This is making living easy. This is what house wives have done for ages, which now stands as unaccounted labor. (thinking about my mother and smiling in gratitude real hard while writing this).
If you are a Cancer woman, know that caring comes naturally to you. This world and especially the modern world, can make you feel bitter about giving and caring through conditioning and false labels of equality of fake feminism, but it is who you are.
As a mars in Cancer, I can say I almost feel deprived when I am not caring and pouring. I have been told all my life that I care too much and give too much, and that is why I suffer in the end. But the truth is, when I strip off the very core of what love is for me, I stand parched and barren. It makes me feel nourished to care. May be sometimes, i overdo it to a point where I need to learn boundaries like every water sign does in this world. But this is who I am. Cancers, this is who you are.
Withholding love and care is a wounded behaviour many many cancers indulge in just like many mothers unconsciously participate in when they are hurt.
The most beautiful thing about astrology is that we are all different and we all have different love languages. Just because the person in front of you loves or cares differently, not in the most Cancer ways, doesn’t mean you need to change yourself. As always, we are learning how to stay authentic in spite of the shoulds.
As a Cancer soul, irrespective of your gender, you are here to heal the feminine - within and without both. You are here to remind people around you what it feels like to give and receive in love. Romantic love, platonic love, motherly love, sisterhood love, love for the universe - you are here to teach the universal language of unconditional love. The bitter truth is that somewhere we all have been wounded as children and have had certain unmet needs from our mothers collectively. These wounds bleed and ripple out in all our connections leaving us even more hurt, wounded, abandoned than before.
The Cancer is here to teach us how to tend to our wounds like a mother would.
The Cancer is here to teach us how to nourish our empty vessels like a mother would.
The Cancer is here to teach us how to receive love the way we were always meant to - deserving and in worthiness.
The Cancer is here to teach us how to love unconditionally, in devotion and to certain extent without expectations - love for the sake of love, not for what it gives in return. Love because there is healing in loving.
The Cancer is here to water our barren hearts, the hearts that no success, no accomplishment, no bag, no amount of vanity would ever be able to fill up.
Cancerian men and women walk out in the world mirroring us what we crave for the most - tender love.
These men and women are reminding us that one day we will get exhausted running and chasing. One day, we will come down to our knees and sob, sob hard and ask, ‘where’s love?’ Many of us already have. Many of us already have been through this initiation. Many of us have already seen that there is no replacement ticket to love. And we are tending to love, first and foremost.
Are you a Cancer? Do you know a Cancer - I would be happy to hear how these words make sense to your story :)
It’s a new era! I have bid goodbye to my old brand name in all ways and my website’s new address is ‘shivanib.co’. Things will be changing slowly… But this month, I am pausing 1:1 one-off sessions. However, you can order your HD + Astrology recordings for Love, Money, Expression, Work, and Health here.
You can also listen to my meditations for free here.
I've also collaborated with Hibiscus Monkey - a bodycare brand I've fallen in love with through my skin healing journey. Click on the banner below to checkout their lovely skincare products for your body🍒
More contemplative zodiac posts like these on Gemini, Taurus, Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Sag, Scorpio, Libra, and Virgo.
Such a beautiful post 🤍