Why let go of yesterday?
Because yesterday
has already let go of you.
Steve MaraboliÂ

The Full Moon on January 13, 2025 at 24 Cancer
stirs deep and uncomfortable feelings that evoke memories of past needs, bonds and patterns related to family and safety, parents and home. Healing is available if we divest ourself of something that holds us in the past and has no promise of enlivening our future.
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We are invited to parent ourselves, to embody both the archetypal Mother (Cancer) and Father (Capricorn) as we engage feelings that emerge. We can be soft, allowing and nurturing (Cancer)Â while also not losing sight of our goals and the structure (Capricorn). Keeping the long-range plan and current commitments in mind, will help give the context and incentive to recognize what we must detach from and leave behind.
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Mars conjunct Cancer Moon and oppose the Sun
Chiron square the Full Moon
Pluto conjunct Sun and Oppose the Moon/Mars conjunction
Cradle Configuration (holds and helps resolve the oppositions named above)
Neptune/North Node trine Moon/Mars and sextile the Sun
Uranus sextile Moon/Mars and trine the Sun
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Full Moons are the peak moment of each lunar cycle when something in our life reaches a culmination point. The days leading up to the Full Moon bring increased momentum, activity and mounting pressure. At the Full Moon, emotions and tides run high. Something comes to a head, experienced as a crisis or breakthrough, and a desired resolution can be achieved. During the two weeks following the Full Moon, we are completing a month's journey and distilling the wisdom of the recent lunar cycle, so we are ready for the invitation that is presented with the next New Moon.
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The houses where 24 Cancer and Capricorn reside in our natal chart provides us an indication of the area of life where we need to engage feelings associated with something in our past so that we can release attachment to a feeling, belief or position that is holding us back.Â

I realize there’s something
incredibly honest about trees
in winter, how they’re experts
at letting things go.
Jeffrey McDaniel
Swimming in Feeling
This is a highly emotional Full Moon; The Moon in Cancer is accompanied by four other planets (Neptune, Saturn, Venus and Mars) in water signs. We can easily find ourselves swimming in feeling. There may be intense feelings around loss or safety, around family or issues related to home. A strong Piscean energy will continue into the coming months which will assist us in closing out a chapter in our lives that is coming to a close. We have an opportunity to slow ourselves down to recognize what has ended or is coming to an end and do the personal work so that we can effectively release and let it go. We need to clear out the old so that there is space to welcome the opportunities that will dawn later this year.
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An Emotional Stew
Mars Retrograde Conjunct the Full Moon
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Mars Retrograde (Dec 6 – Feb 24, 2025) is in Cancer until April 18. Sensitivities and feelings are amplified, giving us the cues about what we are to clear. Family dynamics are emphasized. People from our past may show up in our life to awaken feelings that have been dormant, giving us the opportunity to connect with what we have not fully released.Â
We may want to just move forward and get on with it, but while Mars is Retrograde, we are needing to sit with what we are feeling. Like Mars, we might prefer to just take charge and take swift action, but instead feel frustrated as we find ourselves hanging out with some form of grief, discomfort and insecurity. Our impulse is to protect, but it would be a missed opportunity if we used this impulse to protect ourselves from the vulnerability and discomfort we are feeling. Instead we are to create a protected space where the feelings have permission to be aired and we can hear the messages they have for us.Â
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With Mars in Cancer, we want to protect and defend what and who we love. Practicing mindfulness will help us avert a tendency to react aggressively to a perceived threat. We are to exercise patience, slow down and disengage from a power struggle with something or someone that upsets us. It is much easier to project our feelings outward rather than sit with the discomfort of facing them. It is an optimal time to take a break in order to give ourselves the quiet time be with the troublesome feelings that circumstances are stirring. By trusting our feelings and hearing the messages they have for us, we can transform the feelings and divest ourselves from something that weighs us down.
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Feeling Old Wounds
Chiron square Full Moon
During the course of the day, leading up to the Full Moon, a woundedness may surface that has us feel bruised and vulnerable. As the Moon separates from its square to Chiron and moves closer to Mars, we look to protect ourselves. Mars inflames the woundedness and the need to retreat.
Cancer is associated the constellation of The Crab. The Crab has a hard outer shell that protects a soft, mushy inside. When the Crab feels threatened, it closes itself up inside its shell, successfully shielding itself from the threat. Taking our cue from the Crab, we can remove ourselves from the outer threat, but in the retreat we are left with facing the intensity of the feelings that the threat produced. The key is to not reinforce and hold the wounded feelings like a badge of honor, but to allow them to move through us like a wave. And when the wave has run its course, there can be release that allows us to let go and move on. Â
Transformation in the Way we Take Care of Business
Pluto conjunct the Sun and oppose Mars and the Moon
There are plans and tasks we are motivated, even driven, to tend to in the world (Sun conjunct Pluto). The challenge becomes how to do this without minimizing our sidelining what we are feeling. There is a transformative opportunity if we can be with - rather than act out from - some strong feeling. We can discover a new way to handle discomfort or approach a situation. When strong feelings surface, it is best to curb an impulse to take rash or aggressive action and instead take a step back to ponder what triggered the intensity. Intense and disturbing feelings will culminate in a crisis or breakthrough around January 15 or 16th (Mars oppose the Sun). We are to pay attention to what is illuminated about our feeling nature at this time and look at how we can use the remaining weeks of the Mars Retrograde to practice embodying new understandings.

Some of us think holding on
makes us strong,
but sometimes
it is letting go.
Herman Hesse
Cradle Configuration
Lunar Nodes shift to Pisces/Virgo
Neptune trine Moon and Mars and sextile the Sun
Uranus sextile the Moon, Mars conjunction and trine the Sun
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The Cradle Configuration appears when three sextiles and two trines form a cradle, a container that holds and provides gifts that can resolve the tension of an opposition. The opposition of this cradle is the Full Moon, or specifically the Sun/Pluto conjunction that opposes the Moon/Mars conjunction. Â
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The presence of the Cradle supports the resolution of emotional discomfort while also tending to our commitments to long term goals. It provides us the means to fulfill the potential of the Full Moon invitation to release attachment and feel freed from a worn-out pattern, possession, person, behavior or way of approaching life.
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The following planets and astrological dynamics of the cradle support us in being with our feelings, releasing attachments, and being ready to receive something new:
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Neptune. At the tale end of its journey in Pisces (which began in 2011), we can see how far we have journeyed in our relationship to the spiritual (Neptune conjunct the North Node). We have have a broader understanding of soul's journey, a deeper trust in our intuition, and our trust in the guidance we receive. We can also look how the last 14 years has brought a more expansive understanding of the divine and its role in our life.
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Neptune trine Mars and the Moon softens the edges around powerful feelings. We are more likely to welcome our sensitivity and feeling nature. Feeling attuned to the larger contexts and wholes in which our life operates, we bring a spiritual perspective to the issues of a day which help us to feel less triggered by their inherent drama. We bring increased compassion and intuitive understanding around past motivations and actions.Â
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The North Node is in the final weeks of its 18-month journey in Aries. Since 2023, we have released tendencies to overly compromise ourself in order to secure outside validation or approval. We have been resolving issues of victim-consciousness and patterns where we give our power away. The opinions of others do not hold as much weight. Taking leadership of our life, we feel greater confidence to stand up for ourselves and what we believe in and desire. The trust in our intuition and the messages the come from our feelings has been strengthened (North Node conjunct Neptune). The wave of feeling that swells is swelling within us has the potential to soften and open our hearts. We have only to welcome the full spectrum of feelings that evoke the beauty and the tragedy that is our life (North Node and Neptune trine Mars and the Moon).
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Uranus sextile the Moon and Mars, trine the Sun. Uranus, as the Awakener, disrupts habitual and automatic behaviors so we feel rejuvenated and more alive. With Uranus in a harmonious relationship with the Full Moon, we are more inclined to strike out and do things differently. We are open to new ways of using available resources. Aware of our own cautiousness (Moon and Mars in Cancer), we intuitively also recognize get that this is not the time to hold back and so are willing to set aside tentativeness to approach something differently. As we open to new ways, new ways open to us!

Personal Reflection of the Full Moon Invitation
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This past week, I found myself opening a large storage container that houses photos, letters and memorabilia from my childhood and early adult life. It has been a decade since I last lifted the lid, looked through its contents and ruffled through old memories. Then, like this week, it was with the purpose of releasing what is no longer worth keeping and carrying with me.
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And so, for hours and hours, I found myself looking at one image after another. Memories and feelings flooded my awareness. I encountered old versions of myself, each distinct from the other. There were photos of people I have not thought of in years and seeing their faces suddenly filled me with the joy, longing, sadness or whatever feeling surfaced as I remembered what we once shared. There were decades of family photos and in a short period of time I witnessed and reflected on how family members grew and changed over the years and the many ways we had spent time together. Feelings surfaced I didn't know I still carried in relation to a given circumstance or person.  I even contemplated how we used to do things that we don't do today. For instance, I read through letters and cards =and marveled at how we would sit down to write and mail long letters to each other because a 25 cents a minute phone call was prohibitive.
I would like to think I was not just regurgitating old experiences, but that there were new awarenesses, connections and understandings that resulted. My intention in going through all the memorabilia was to to let go of as much as possible. This intention permeated and colored my experience as I held each image, item or paper of my past.
Deciding to let go of and toss old memorabilia was not easy. I wish I could report that it were. I could feel myself holding onto the past, holding onto memories, holding on to a younger version of myself. While I thought perhaps I should let go of more than I did, I let my feelings and intuition guide me as to what I was ready to release. I finally let go of the book my mom kept of my school years that housed report cards, awards, and special facts about that year in my life. I let go of lots of photos and stories and essays I had written.
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In the end, I would like to have let go of more than I did. Why is it so hard to let go? What I have kept is better organized and takes us much less space. So, in some ways the project was a success. But I can’t help but wonder what mementos of my past that are still in my possession are just an emotional attachment to something that does not support my life moving forward.
We are each to make decisions based on our intuitive sense of what is still meaningful to us and what is an outgrown emotional attachment that needs to be retired. We are in the process of letting go of the past so we can be fully present to the new life that is coming toward us. For some of us, we have the luxury of choosing what to keep and what to toss. For others, whether through natural disaster or circumstance that force a relinquishing of resources, possessions, people or work, we are to make room for the feelings that help us to process, let go and arrive at a new place within ourselves.
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