Embracing our Emotions and Nurturing our Inner Child

Feeling nostalgic and more emotional than usual? It might be because of the New Moon in Cancer on July 14th at 5:44 AM EST. As the sign of cardinal water, Cancer can draw out our deepest emotions, from the tender love we have for our families to the raw wounds of our inner child.

This is a New Moon for being deep in our feelings, reminiscing on old memories, and tending to our inner child. Along with those themes, this New Moon marks a potent moment in time, with the outer planets finally coming into perfect alignment. While the Cancer New Moon initiates a new cycle, there is a grander — or longer-term — cycle occurring as well. Cycles within cycles.

July 2026 is the month astrologers have been waiting for, as it is a grand convergence of powerful planetary energies. Not only is it highly supportive for our individual journeys, but it will surely have a profound effect on the world and collective consciousness. But first, let’s dive into what this New Moon in Cancer means and how it may show up for you.

New Moon in Cancer Overview

The key phrase for Cancer is “I feel.” This simple phrase summarizes the foundation energy of Cancer, which is the feeling state. The Moon, as the ruler of Cancer, is also closely linked to our emotions and nervous system. The Moon in its home sign during this New Moon significantly activates our emotions, which can lead to feeling more sensitive and emotional. It can also heighten our imagination, intuition, dreams, and psychic abilities.

Not only does the Moon in its home sign lend to increased emotions, but this New Moon is also conjunct retrograde Mercury in Cancer. Mercury, as messenger of the gods, can travel between worlds. When retrograde, this symbolizes Mercury traveling to our own underworld, or subconscious, to bring back messages to the land of the living — our everyday consciousness. As such, he is traveling through the underworld of our sensitive, feeling nature and bringing back emotions for us to process.

If you’ve been feeling more emotional than usual, or if your emotions are rising to the surface more, this may be why. The medicine is to let yourself feel these emotions, whatever they may be. Allow yourself to cry, to grieve, to be angry, sad, or confused.

It also points to our deeply loving nature. Cancer is strongly associated with the mother, so we may be feeling more tender and loving towards those we cherish. As with the other emotions, allow yourself to deepen into this love.

With the luminaries and Mercury retrograde in Cancer, we are being drawn inward. This is a time for going within and truly being with yourself — your emotions, body sensations, imaginings, dreams, and inner knowings.

Because of other aspects occurring during this New Moon, which we’ll dive into next, this is a time for being with your inner child. Old memories and wounds may rise, bringing with them a flood of emotions.

This New Moon is asking you to be the loving, safe, and nurturing parent to the little one within you. The emotions and stories that come up likely won’t make sense, and that’s okay; they don’t need to make sense — you just need to feel them.

Reflective Questions: 

• What emotions have been rising to the surface lately, even if I can't fully explain why?

• Which emotions have I been trying to suppress, avoid, or rationalize away?

• What memories, dreams, or seemingly random thoughts have been resurfacing recently? What might they be asking me to acknowledge?

• When I imagine meeting my inner child today, how do they appear? What emotions are they carrying? 

• What intention can I set during this New Moon to deepen my relationship with my emotional world and inner wisdom? 

Chiron and Medusa: The Masks we Wear to Protect our Wounds

During this New Moon, retrograde Pluto in Aquarius at 4 degrees is opposing Jupiter in Leo at 3 degrees. They are both squaring Chiron (0 degrees) and Medusa (2 degrees) in Taurus, forming a T-square with Chiron and Medusa as the focal point.

T-squares generate so much friction that there comes a point where we have to address it to release the tension. Pluto is activating our subconscious and the stories/emotions we have buried there, while Jupiter in Leo is expanding Pluto’s power and pointing to the energies we have stored in our hearts.

With them both square to Chiron and Medusa, they are triggering our deepest core wounds and the masks/shells we have developed to protect ourselves because of them.

We may feel like we are now being stifled behind these masks or that they no longer fit with who we are. The New Moon in Cancer is asking us to go into the emotions, the wounds, and to release/heal them by feeling them. Not thinking, not justifying, not trying to make sense, not doing — just feeling. In doing so, we start to break through the stone encasing we have created around our hearts.

By softening, thawing, and breaking through this stone encasing, we have more access to our tender, loving nature. Love is able to flow more freely through us and out into the world.

Opposing Chiron is the dwarf planet Haumea, which is also being squared by Pluto and Jupiter. Haumea is the Hawaiian goddess of regeneration and rebirth. This symbolizes that through removing masks (old stories, beliefs, wounds) that no longer serve, we regenerate new stories, beliefs, and identities that are more aligned with our true selves and who we are becoming.

Reflective Questions: 

• What protective masks, roles, stories, or identities do I find myself wearing to avoid being hurt?

• How have these masks served and protected me throughout my life?

• In what ways have they begun to limit my growth, authenticity, or capacity to love?

• What part of me feels trapped behind the identity I've created to stay safe?

• I am the author of my life; what stories do I want to write about who I am now? 

Rare Outer Planet Alignment: Initiating us into Higher Levels of Consciousness

If you’ve been following the transits of 2025 and 2026, you’ll know that Pluto in Aquarius, Uranus in Gemini, and Neptune in Aries have been in a minor grand trine for quite some time. In early July, they finally meet up at the exact degree, which is 4° of their respective signs.

Overall, this minor grand trine is pointing to a deep transformation that leads to reclaiming one’s power and sovereignty; dismantling systems that no longer serve our highest path — and the collective’s highest path — forward; and recognizing that we are all connected as one humanity.

We may all look different, walk different lives, and believe in different things, but on a spiritual level, we are one. I believe we are beginning to understand how profoundly connected we are, not only with each other, but with all of life.

This alignment is also initiating us, on a collective scale, to higher levels of consciousness. What was once taboo, “out there,” or “woo-woo” will become much more normalized and talked about. This includes channeling divine beings, galactic communication, telepathy, telekinesis, psychic abilities, nature communication, and an increase of all the clairs (clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, and claircognizance).

These gifts are becoming more online and active within each of us. This is a time for opening up to the “impossible” and giving yourself permission to believe in your innate gifts, no matter how “out there” they may be.

To support this collective awakening, it’s important to prioritize your spiritual practices, such as shadow work, karmic healing, shamanic journeys, deep meditation, and sacred feminine reclamation. What you do for yourself, you do for the whole.

The New Moon in Cancer is the start of a new cycle within a larger cycle that is now coming into its next phase of alignment. This is a potent new beginning that is helping us to clear out old emotional energies that no longer serve, so we have more capacity to receive the gifts and support of this rare and powerful planetary pattern.

Reflective Questions: 

• Where in my life am I being called to reclaim my power, sovereignty, or authentic voice?

• How has my understanding of spirituality, consciousness, or reality evolved recently?

• Which intuitive, psychic, or creative gifts feel like they are awakening within me?

• What fears arise when I think about embracing these gifts? 

• Which spiritual practices help me feel most connected to myself, the Earth, and something greater than myself?

Practice Ideas

For your New Moon practice, I invite you to drop into your body and emotions and fully immerse yourself in them. Whether you’re sitting in a deep meditation or moving your body, allow your consciousness to drop into your feelings. Allow them to rise more to the surface, going deeper and deeper, so they may finally have full expression. Give yourself the space to express them through sound, breath, movement, or imagination.

Perhaps this past week has brought up old childhood memories or this nagging feeling you can’t shake. This is an opportunity to take that old memory or feeling into your practice and follow it to the emotion it’s attached to.

Be gentle with yourself during this process. If your nervous system starts to get overly activated, take a pause. Only go as far and as deep as your body is ready to go.

In addition, you can take your practice one step further by meditating on your inner child. Perhaps you take a visual journey and meet them somewhere that feels safe and comforting. Or, you notice where they are in your body, and you deepen into the feeling of them. In either scenario, you can ask them what they may need from you and if they have anything they need to express through words or emotions.

For more support and a container for this work, you’re invited to join Check-In, our next Alchemical Masterclass on Saturday, July 18th. This online session is an opportunity to pause and truly check in with yourself. Through discussion and somatic practices, you'll be guided in processing what you're currently navigating in life as well as uncovering the clarity and wisdom that's already within you.

This class perfectly matches not only the themes of this New Moon in Cancer, but also the energetics of July as a whole. Come as you are, leave feeling lighter, inspired, and better equipped to show up to and live your life the way you most want to.

With love,

Rhianna Quanstrom
Read my other works here on Substack!