What are these residual emotions!?

What are we being called back to for healing?

Can we feel what is asking to be felt, so that we can move forward with confidence?

These are a lot of the questions to ponder this New Moon. Cancer, the first of the water signs, the crab that wears its home on its back, and the protector of family. Cancer, who rules the IC and 4th house in the astrology chart — the root system of family lineage and connection to home. Cancer, that represents your mother, your grandmother, your great grandmother, and so on. Cancer, the sign that represents your early childhood upbringing and home life. All these themes are coming to the surface this New Moon, not to be meditated on for the future, but to revisit the past.

Normally, a New Moon is a time to set intentions for a new beginning — especially in the fertile and conception ruled sign of Cancer. However, this New Moon is conjunct Mercury retrograde in Cancer — which is a time where we spend reflecting on the past. In the emotional sign of Cancer, we are sort of being blocked from thinking logically about the past, and more so being immersed into the feeling of the past.

Whatever has been emotionally bypassed from childhood, will likely be brought up to the surface — asking to be felt. In order to move past an impactful event (whether good or bad), it needs to be felt. This does not mean you necessarily need to act on your emotions, actually, it is best not to at this time. Sometimes, the act of just allowing yourself to be in your body and feel an emotion, is all the body is asking for you to do. Otherwise, emotions get trapped and stored and replayed over and over again — there must be a release.

Since 2026 started, I have been pulling card after card that represents us as humanity and individually being in a sort of liminal space. Individually, it is as if we are between identities; and collectively, it is as if we are unsure of where we are moving next whilst simultaneously moving forward regardless. 2025 was the year of endings, while 2026 is the year of beginnings. However, we cannot seem to let go of the past. We as society are holding on to something so sacred, so comfortable, and so secure — that we are unable to come up with creative solutions on how to adapt to the completely new timeline we have entered.

We long for the days of no internet, of kids riding bikes on the street and knocking on their friends doors to hang out. Of being fully present with your surroundings without feeling the need to capture it on a camera phone or video the process. Where people just did their hobbies rather than capitalize on them. However, we deep down know that this is over and there is no going back. Time never moves backwards, it only moves forward — and how can we move forward when the past keeps us in the nest?

There is a heavy amount of grief that as a society we have not yet processed. The world asks us to forget and move forward, gaslighting us into acting as if nothing has changed (when everything has). We knew what was coming, we were programmed and desensitized to this current reality through TV shows, movies, and books for decades. Now that we are here, in that future — we accept it, but do not know how to adjust to it.

Cancer (or the 4th house) is the part of our chart we look to for where we need to create and nurture emotional security and comfort. It is the part of our chart that reminds us of home and what our relationship to home looks like. When we all feel disconnected from our home on a macro scale of Earth and in our own countries and communities — it creates a gaping hole that should be filled with security, but it is now filled with rot. This feeling is ever more present, if you never had a good sense of security in early childhood. We want to cling to our traditions and creature comforts, but they are fading away by each coming day.

This New Moon is asking how to create your home within. How can you create your own emotional safe zone, while everything else around you is changing. How does one recreate their sense of identity to home, when they feel exiled from it? Well, if you think about immigrants or how our ancestors had to deal with relocation, they likely formed new traditions and ways of relating to each other. When you think about North America, and the pioneering immigrants that came here, they started forming their own culture. Think about the wild west, speakeasys, or holidays like Thanksgiving. These likely got created, after those people had to first let go and fully process that they were here to stay and had to let go of some of their attachments to their old culture to merge with the other cultures that came at the same time.

I wonder if that is what this New Moon is getting us to process and realize. That in order to become creative and create the society, its structure, and the culture and traditions that bring people together — that we have to let go of what we are clinging onto. And with that? Comes so much grief, fear, and confusion.

So this New Moon? Allow yourself to just feel. Let what you miss come to the surface, allow yourself to cry, and provide for yourself the secure container to hold the tears. And then, release them into the water streams (or down the drain). You don’t need to know where you are going next. We don’t need to know what direction the world is moving towards yet. What we do need, is a collective grief clearing, so that this next chapter can have space for us to open ourselves to something new. If you have ever grieved something, did you naturally lose interest in your creativity during that process? Probably. But then in the period of time that followed, did you get a surge of new life and creativity? Hopefully likely. The new identity is coming, but first you need to fully grieve and let go of the old one to make space for who you are becoming.

Tarot Card

The Five of Cups

How incredibly fitting this card is to have been pulled for this New Moon. It completely symbolizes exactly the words I wrote above. Where the person in the image is focussed on the spilt cups (what went wrong, what they are forced to empty out, and old emotions), they are ignoring the 2 full cups behind them. If they just turn around towards their next chapter, they will see that there is new life and potential waiting for them to move towards. In this image, they aren’t turning around yet, and that is okay. They need and want to see and understand what cups they are leaving behind — let yourself just be there today. So that tomorrow, and the days ahead. We can turn around and leave those spilt cups and move towards the full ones that are waiting for us.

Notice how in this image, the spilled cups are towards the river—and she herself, is faced towards those cups and that river. I believe this river is there to help her release what emotions are being grieved and to release them into the river stream. This is why above, I suggested taking your emotions to the water to be released.

Thanks for reading!!

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