What is worth risking everything for?
Tomorrow, June 20 at 4:50 pm EDT/1:50 Pm PDT the Summer Solstice officially arrives. The wheel of the year turns and we collectively enter 2024’s Cancer season. Even though this is a collective experience, the vibrant Cancer Sun is lighting up each of our charts individually as well.
I think of Cancer and Dorothy Gale chanting “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home” again and again rises to mind. If each sign had a mantra, this could easily be considered Cancer’s.
At its core home is a place of belonging. A place of safety. Ideally, a place where we are nourished.
Wherever we have the sign of Cancer placed within our charts we can explore where and how we long for home, for belonging. We can also see where we can become fixed within a certain role or experience because of its familiarity, and its safety even though we have outgrown it.
Within the zodiacal circle of animals, Cancer is represented by a crab. Crabs are very vulnerable creatures. Where we as humans have an interior skeleton, aka our bones are on the inside, crabs have an exoskeleton; their bones are on the outside. Inside they’re all soft. Their exoskeleton protects them helping them be more invulnerable. Crabs have to molt once a year because they have outgrown their shell or they will literally die. In order to do this, they have to leave their shell prior to the new shell being fully formed. And, there is a period of about a week where they are intensely vulnerable while the new shell hardens (a soft-shell crab is a crab in the middle of the molting process).
Metaphorically, this speaks profoundly to the nature of Cancer. There is an experience of intense vulnerability, and exquisite sensitivity, associated with the sign Cancer. It is because of this sense of exposure that where Cancer lies within our chart we will often seek security through the familiar. We will forget to shed our shells staying in a job, a relationship, or even a role we have become comfortable living within long after we have outgrown it. It has become a place that we go to, a place we dwell within that no longer nourishes us.
As David Whyte says “We are here essentially to risk ourselves in the world. We are a form of invitation to others and to otherness, we are meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing, for the right woman or the right man, for a son or a daughter, for the right work or for a gift given against all the odds. And in all this continual risking the most profound courage may be found in the greatest risk and the greatest vulnerability of all, the simple willingness to allow ourselves to be happy along the way.”
Cancer season is an invitation to risk.
For all of its security instincts, Cancer is a cardinal sign. Cardinal signs are about initiation and instigation. They are about beginnings. Solstices and equinoxes mark the ingress into a cardinal sign. They symbolize the entrance across a threshold into a new season of our lives.
Each year Cancer season presents an opportunity to consider what is worth hazarding ourselves for, to acknowledge what space we have outgrown, and to allow ourselves to release the old and emerge into a larger experience of ourselves and life.
Practices for the Solstice:
Journaling prompts:
As the wheel turns and we enter this season ask yourself what “shell” have I outgrown? What risk, even a small one, lies in front of me? What is worth hazarding myself for?
Meditation/visualization:
Begin by stretching your arms and shoulders, and rolling your neck a few times. Shake out any tension in your arms, hands, and legs. Then find a quiet comfortable spot to sit. Close your eyes and begin by just following your breath. You don’t need to deepen it at this point, just witness it as it moves in and out of your body. This more fully brings you into the present moment. Gradually, after you feel your nervous system and mind settling down, allow yourself to deepen your breath. As you deepen your breath imagine your consciousness resting deep within the center of your body coiled as though it is within a shell. You feel safe here, yet also notice how cramped this shell is becoming. You’ve grown. Take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate your growth. Allow yourself to experience gratitude for your growth and for this shell and the shelter it has provided you while you and your experience of life expanded. Then, only after you have fully allowed yourself to dwell in gratitude, imagine the top of the shell opening and you consciously moving up and out of the existing shell. Allow yourself to expand. Notice how vulnerable you feel without it and breathe deeply into both the expansion and the sense of vulnerability. Don’t try to change it, just allow yourself to be with it. Allow yourself to be open to this space and receive it. Feel your heart opening to itself and this space in between “shells” essentially becoming attuned to your newly expanded self. When you are ready, bring your self back to the present moment, and allow yourself to feel your embodiment. The take a deep breath and open your eyes.
