I used to think that the power of each full moon was all about the sign in which it occurred. And while that is mostly true, I was ignoring all the other factors involved. That’s okay, as I wasn’t ready to learn about that sort of complexity at that point, and needed to simplify things to learn to recognize power when I felt it. But as my relationship with the Moon cycle has matured, so has my understanding of the different energies entwined in the cosmic dance.
For example, this Full Moon is certainly brimming with wriggling, flowing Piscean energy, but its hard to ignore the influence of all the retrograde planets (including Mercury which will have just started its backspin the day before). This reframes that sensitive “Wild Child” energy with a whiff of reflective nostalgia and introspection. Uranus will be sextile this moon as well, foreshadowing awakenings and stirrings deep within (and maybe even a little destructive energy as well).
Obviously all the planets and signs bear their influence on any given moment, but there is one heavenly body whose powerful influence on each Full Moon I ignored for way too long: the illuminating rays of the Sun itself. How often I have failed to consider the very power that lends its light to our closest celestial ally each cycle, bringing the Moon into the fullness of its radiance, just as its warmth orchestrates the seasons here on the Earth. The Sun-Moon axis is the very essence of what a Full Moon represents, the balancing point between two opposites on the Zodiacal wheel. It seems so obvious, but often goes without regard. We can’t look at the energy of a Full Moon without considering the influence of the Sun, which this month is radiating the virtues of the sign of Virgo – grounded, practical, and selfless.
The Moon Cycle Magic of Synchronicity
For the last few weeks, I’ve had some weird synchronicities around the concept of the Inner Child…to the point where I just can’t help but say, “Aw crap, I guess this is a thing the universe is wanting to me to look into deeper.” First, it came up in a book I’ve been working through (“The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron” highly reccomend!). Then I noticed that videos about CBT techniques concerning the Inner Child started popping up in my youtube feed. Now, you could chalk that up to the Almighty Algorithm gods, but I have been reading a paper copy of the book (which only mentions the Inner Child briefly) and I haven’t done any internet searches for it or let it influence my browsing history…I least I don’t think I did. But the third instance of synchronicity certainly wasn’t an algorithm thing…in fact, it hit much more personally and directly. My counselor brought it up in a session. Ugh.
So now, I was realizing that yes…this is a thing I should probably look into, even though the term “Inner Child” has always made me want to roll my eyes and cringe. As a grunge-loving child of the 90’s, I always looked with deep cynicism at anything too much resembling psychobabble, and my evangelical upbringing didn’t help much with that either. But as the Jungian fascinations of my 30’s have opened my eyes to the healing that such “psychobabble” often precipitates, I’m starting to come back to these concepts with an open mind and open ears. While talking through the Inner Child stuff with my counselor, she recommended a book to me, warning “Now you can’t just intellectualize this stuff, you need to work through the exercises and let it touch you on a emotional level.”
When I got home and looked up the book on Amazon, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the cover looked familiar. Too familiar. Like…”I think I own this book already” familiar.
So I’m looking through my bookshelves without success and remember that at one point, someone did give me the book. My former housemate had given it to me, to give to my then-fiancé, who was going through addiction recovery treatments. She thought it would help him deal with his complex childhood traumas. I then remembered giving the book to him, and him giving me that “You know I’m not going to read this self-help bullshit” glare. I was searching my bookshelves and memory banks to remember what happened to the book next and came up with nothing. Now that we are married, his books are all mixed in with my books and I would’ve remembered shelving it, wouldn’t I? But I don’t remember seeing it at all since the day he threw it in the trunk of a car he sold long ago, never to give another thought to it.
So I gave up the search and added the book to my wishlist. Maybe I would get around to reading it after I got through the other 20 books I’ve been slowing working through. (The To-Be-Read pile is an unrelenting, ever-growing beast, isn’t it?). I didn’t mention the book to anyone. No one, not even my husband.
Imagine my surprise to come home from work a couple days later and find THE BOOK sitting on top of my bookshelf, waiting to be shelved. It was stacked on top of an Alcoholics Anonymous book and a DVD copy of the movie Prometheus that I didn’t know we owned.
“Um…honey…where did this book come from?” I asked, freaked out a bit.
“I was going through some boxes of tools in the garage and found some books. Figured you would want to put them away yourself….according to whatever mysterious method it is that you organize your bookshelves…”
“This Homecoming book that Lyn gave you…did you ever read this?” He gave me that “You know better” look again.
I explained to him the strange circumstances around the title, and how frequently the Inner Child stuff kept coming up for me. He shared how that concept comes up a lot in his recovery groups and agreed that maybe we both oughta start working through that book as well.
After all, we both had pretty fucked up stuff happen to us in childhood. And now we both seem to be in a healthy place to work through some of that abuse and trauma head on…with the help of our therapists, counselors, and maybe a little guidance from ancestors and spirit allies as well. What better time than now? While we’ve both worked on some of this stuff before, it seems different this time. More focused. More grounded. Like we are ready. Like the universe is on our side. Like we can finally get past some of this shit for good.
Wake up, Mama Bear
I’m not going to try to go into all that inner child work entails. I’m not qualified to do that and there is already a metric ass-load of resources out there to get you started on your own journey if you are feeling called to go down that path (the most important resource being a mental health professional that can speak to your situation directly). What I can explore with you here is the aspect of working with the Inner Child that has helped me the most and how it relates to the energies being illuminated by this month’s full moon, and the tarot card I pulled for this part of the lunar cycle, the Queen of Pentacles.
When the wounded Inner Child starts to cause problems in an adult’s life (often in times of crisis or major life transitions), the knee jerk reaction is to try to heal, fix, or protect the inner child. That happens on an unconscious level through our instinctual coping devices, manipulation tactics, and trying to work out the anger/insecurity/injustice we felt as children on the situations we face in the present. And that just doesn’t work. It may have helped us survive as children, but as adults, these triggered reactions aren’t appropriate or helpful for the situation at hand. My husband has started asking himself…Am I really this angry at the person in front of me right now or are these feelings coming from anger I couldn’t express as a child in a dangerous situation? As for me, all too often, I let my boundaries get trampled by people because I’m afraid of experiencing the sort of rejection I felt as a kid who could never be good enough for my perfectionist parents. My desperate attempts at people-pleasing at all costs are my attempt to protect my wounded inner child. My husband’s anger issues are his attempt to protect his inner child.
But you can’t protect, heal or love the You of the past, can you? I think this is where we spiritual types get hung up. We talk a lot about “healing the inner child”, and sometimes I think we don’t know what we are talking about. I see people talk about Inner Child work as basically just letting your inner playfulness out to run the show for a while. Watching cartoons and eating SpaghettiOs and making blanket forts and that sort of thing. Now, there’s nothing wrong with those activities…shit, I highly recommend doing them for the sake of reawakening some joy in your life. But when you are dealing with childhood development needs that weren’t met, or trauma that caused you to build some serious walls and booby traps in your unconscious mind, I don’t think watching Scooby Doo all day is going to do anything to “heal your inner child.” Wording matters…and “healing the inner child” probably isn’t the right wording for this problem anyway. Its the same issue we get with ancestor work sometimes (although that’s a blog post for another day)…. we can’t change things that happened in the past. We can’t heal the child that was. We can only deal with things in the present moment, with the resources that we’ve been given. Someone with real childhood trauma can get completely lost in trying to “fix” their inner child. What I’m finally beginning to learn is that my wounded child inside is a reality that I will live with forever….her wounds are my wounds. Her unmet needs of the past are my present day triggers. And she isn’t going to go away. No amount of spiritualizing or intellectualizing will get her and her triggers to go away completely. Letting her have her way every once in a while may help me get in touch with her, but its not going to make my life any healthier.
But that doesn’t mean we are without hope. There’s more to it then that. That’s where the Queen of Pentacles shows up.
In the Wildwood tarot deck, the Queen of Stones is represented by a standing mother bear, protecting her cubs with her fierce power. When this card came up for me, I struggled to connect it to the Full Moon in Pisces. And then I remember what my inner child work has been teaching me.
In this present day, I can embody that Mama Bear energy. Therapists call it “reparenting” yourself. Providing yourself with the needs that were not met for you when you were a child. Identifying the places in your life that wounded child triggers are coming up and creating some space between the present moment and the trauma of the past.
Sometimes it means telling your inner child “No! This is not the right way to react to this situation,” with loving guidance and discipline. Sometimes it means standing up and protecting yourself from things that you’ve allowed for too long because you’ve fallen into a cycle of rehashing the same childhood traumas again and again. This usually happens because we have believed the lies we learned about ourself from a narcissistic parent or abuser. But reparenting yourself in the present means letting your inner Mama Bear awaken to protect you from making that mistake again.
Mama Bear is kind, nurturing, grounded, practical and not to be messed with! This just so happens to be the Queen of Pentacles in a nutshell as well.
To me, this a great representation of the dance between the energies at play in this Pisces Full Moon. We have the moon, splashing playfully through the waters of Pisces….fully immersed in the emotional world. “I want this! I need this!” she may scream in a tantrum. She thinks what she wants is the toy her brother is playing with, but what she probably needs is a snack and a nap, and some good healthy boundaries. This is the light of the Sun in Virgo. The light of the mother’s face smiling down on her child in full compassion, wisdom and the radical unconditional love of a mother. So many of us didn’t get the necessities from our parents that we needed to develop in a healthy way… the security, the love, acceptance, wisdom, stability from our parents. We can’t go back and change that. But we can provide that for ourselves in the present. It requires a mindful self-awareness of our emotions that can only come from hard work and practice….meditation, therapy, and a routine grounded in self-care. Not the bubble baths and shopping therapy brand of self-care that influencers loved to market on instagram. I’m talking about self-care that looks like setting (and keeping) your doctors’ appointments. Not letting your laundry pile up. Choosing the healthy foods your body needs and hydrating adequately. Having the uncomfortable conversation with your boss that will defend your healthy boundaries between your work life and home. Leaving the unhealthy relationship that you’ve stayed in because deep inside you don’t believe you deserve something better.
Mama Bear reaches down and nuzzles her bear cubs to say without words, “You deserve love. You deserve health. You deserve to be heard and to feel safe. You deserve your place in the world.”
You don’t have to be a mother or a parent to understand this powerful love. It is within all of us as the Mother archetype; even masculine presenting people experience this within their Anima. Our first identification with it is not as the parent, but as the child who needs their mother…from there we know exactly what the child (or in this case, this inner child) needs. Due to medical problems, I will never be able to have children of my own and honestly, I’ve never felt a motherly instinct towards a baby or child in my life. But even I can understand that Mother’s love when I think about myself as a child and wish that I could protect her from the abuse and trauma she experienced. I’m guessing that you have that ability within you as well.
Lets reawaken our inner Mama Bear this Full Moon. Unleash her fury on the problems you’ve unconsciously created for yourself. Let her show you the boundaries you’ve been ignoring….literally imagine the way a mother grizzly bear acts when humans get too close to her cubs!
Embodying this loving parent archetype for ourselves doesn’t mean ignoring your inner child’s wants and needs so you can focus solely on serious grown-up stuff….quite the opposite! Think of how attentive a mother is to their baby’s needs. We can’t go back and change the past to heal our inner child, but we can learn from what their behavior is telling us about our present selves. This is where we need to be emotionally connected to our inner child: Pay attention to your triggers. Use the retrograde planetary energy to help you look back and remember where your deepest wounds originated. Find a safe time and space to experience those memories while being fully emotionally present (depending on how deep the trauma goes, you may need a therapist or counselor to help facilitate this). Use mindfulness meditations to help you separate the emotions that come up from the experiences you are living in the present moment. This is the hard work. This is the deep work. Write a letter to your inner child and let them know that Mama Bear knows exactly what they went through. Because that’s the key to all of this, no one else knows what you’ve been through better than you. No one is better equipped to help you heal in the here and now.
Above all things: Know Thyself.
Mugwort & Meade 