How Parents Make Us Happy
The main struggle of the Moon is presented through frailty and tenderness, and very often it will be interpreted as a weakness in its points of anger, fear or resentment. However, it seems impossible to grow out of negative emotions if they aren’t coped with, let out in the open and cleansed so we can truly see the strength we’ve been given by being blessed with our earthly existence and the life we live every day.
Our Family Tree
Our family is best seen through the natal position of the Moon, our fourth house, its ruler, and planets we carry in the sign of Cancer. The sign of Capricorn speaks of its shadows and things that come as consequences of emotional battles left in the darkness of the emotional world of our ancestors. It is no wonder that Saturn is seen as the darkest shadow of the Soul, bringing years of sorrow and sadness by traditional explanations and leaving us broken on our path towards personal happiness. It seems to be our greatest challenge to see ourselves as a part of a much larger whole, a system of Saturn and all those who stood before us, so we can have the energy to succeed in our personal endeavors.
Challenging positions of the Moon will show tasks our Soul is to overcome in this lifetime, to deal with painful issues that have been around in our family tree for generations and summoned us to be resolved. We shouldn’t burden ourselves with too much responsibility though, as we are here only for our fair share of it, and to give back what is needed to bring dignity and love into our system and to those inside it who have never been given the right to take their rightful place in our waters with their “negative” emotions.
Emotions and their Shadows
When something isn’t metabolized well in our emotional world, it turns to its negative and comes our way through circumstances out of our control. This is the importance of stories shared by the Sun and Saturn, where one is aware and ready to use anything in life for pure creation, and the other an outcast, hated for simply being what it is. On the other hand, Saturn is our sense of protection, our connection with God and our inner (and outer) structure that everything resides on. Both entities have their own relationship with the Moon, Saturn standing opposed it through rulership of opposing signs, and the Sun being its support system and connecting our heart chakra with our physical existence and this body.
The way our parents loved each other is seen in the relationship of the Sun and the Moon, and this is typically something we recognize and something we are ready to embrace. When there is a tension between the lights, even problems between them are easier to spot and this gives us a clear sensation of things we need to work on. On the other hand, Saturn in our chart represents all those things that have been left unsaid, emotions that were cast aside, compromise, unclear intentions, and restrictions brought on by their relationship. It will show where we felt pressured or limited in our strivings in life by the system and the family we were born into. Saturn has a way of influencing each of our relationships, just as Moon does, and will be seen more clearly as time goes by. It is no wonder that Saturn itself stands for the highest structure of any relationship – marriage.
Romance
When a new romance starts, people tend to see it as magical and incredibly connecting at first. Still, not every relationship begins in this manner, and most of us will find that signals of possible misunderstandings and separation were seen all along. No matter the force of disappointment we might have felt in close contacts, if we dig deep enough, we will see that each of those negative experiences connects with something we are troubled by in our primal relationships at home. This isn’t easy to see when someone’s parent is gone or idealized, but if you look hard enough, you will see it is there just the same.
There are approaches to psychotherapy that teach us about our patterns and things we learn to accept in our lives through contacts with significant others. One of the views is that recognition of patterns brings us close to our partners and easily pushes us off balance in time. Still, if we rely on faith and belief that we are here because WE CAN fix things that are broken in our family line, we will see that our need to play out patterns and shadows through partners in life can be mended if we heal our relationships with parents and those who stood before them. The main core of the ideal and the truth behind the scene, is that there is no parent without love for their children. Even the most aggressive, oppressing, the stiffest and most distant parents, or those who don’t even know that they have children of their own, have their deep burden to bear and show as much love as they can in ways that come naturally within their own system.
We are Loved
Very often, a girl’s father will see himself as unfit to be her parent, either becoming aggressive to keep her in the system of “protection” as he perceives it, or choosing to distance himself, trying not to hurt her by his incompetence. A boy’s mother will push him too far on his manly journeys, separating him from the feminine model he should nurture within, or hold him too close in an attempt to emotionally protect him from the outer world, as if he didn’t have his own emotional mechanisms to develop. This creates an unnatural relationship of pain, instead of joy. Whatever our personal story, we are sure to recognize issues that hold us back, overprotective or overly distant, pushy, aggressive, or clingy, with parents unable to take more responsibility than they’ve been pushed to take in their lifetime. The important thing here is to see that lack of responsibility one takes for their child is only the image of too much responsibility taken from someone else, from parents, their parents’ parents, etc.
What we can do for ourselves is see the love. See the quality in the toughest of situations with those who created us. Even if they don’t see it themselves. It is our task to clear the path to see ourselves as loved as we truly are, by simply being alive. This may seem impossible in certain situations, but perspectives are many. If we dig through our emotional states, go through the sadness, anger and resentment, allowing ourselves to feel them bit by bit, we will see that behind all that ancestral pain and themes that seem to eat us alive, stand people who never knew any better. They simply had their instincts, initiative, and the life force of love blowing in their sails, giving them the ability to create us. After all, there is no life in its physical manifestation (exaltation of the Moon on the 3rd degree of Taurus) without love.
