Meeting my immature Inner Child in her tantrums

When was the last time your inner child had a proper tantrum? And why?

Cancer energies are among others about the Inner Mother and Inner Child archetypes within us all: the one who nurtures and the one who is in need of nurturing. During this Cancer season, I've come into contact with some immature parts of my inner child. I've gained understanding about my conflicting attitudes towards responsibility.

On the one hand, I've often been treated as “the responsible one”. As the big sister, that's the role I was raised into. I embraced it, to a point, but then tantrums would take over - and remnants of these tantrums have carried over into adult life. I connected the dots more clearly now: my tantrums have been about my Inner Child hurting from the subjective experiences of having too much responsibility being shoved over too early. Especially with all the Leo energy I have in my chart - Leo is our inner, creative child wanting to shine - that part of me didn't want to grow up and be the adult. One reason that I left my job for solo entrepreneurship 1.5 years ago was that I was exhausted of feeling like 27 people needed something from me in every single moment and I just wanted to shove away the responsibility - this was my subjective feeling, which didn't represent reality, but I felt a lack of oxygen regardless. The experience built up not only because of professional reasons but also personal ones, and led me to cut out everything I could to be able to relish in no messages, no calls, no emails coming my way, no-one needing anything from me.

The rest, peace and quiet was very much needed, and correlated well with the progressed lunar phase I was living in. Progressed lunar cycles are an astrological timing technique which expand the 29.5-ish-day lunar cycle into cycles of 29+ years in our lives. These progressed cycles go through the same phases as the regular lunar cycle does: from a new moon phase of planting new seeds, through waxing phases to the peak of a full moon and then waning back again. Each person goes through these phases at unique times in their lives, depending on the relationship of the Sun and Moon at the time of their birth. In recent years, I was at the very last, balsamic phase of this close-to-30-year cycle - a phase which was specifically about low energy, withdrawing, reflection, rest, retreat, and so on. Understanding this has been a lifesaver, to ease my internal blaming about not being more productive.

I still find remnants of this part of me that fears responsibility for the sake of spreading myself too thin. I do console my inner child and acknowledge that she was in some ways forced by circumstances to grow up too soon. However, I acknowledge that it's time to step into adulthood now that I'm wanting to pick up steam again in regards to creating things in the world. Creation requires for both feminine and masculine energies to be present: needing both intuitive flow and inspiration as well as a container for that which is being birthed - having freedom to explore as well as taking responsibility for building a structure to bring the creation to life.

So, with more creative juices flowing again, I'm needing to learn to resolve my inner conflict between shirking away from vs. craving big opportunities - aka big responsibilities.

How could life send me new opportunities if part of me is internally sticking my head in the sand in order to try to avoid overburdening myself?

The vision is taking shape but the actual productivity is still low, feeling like energy and time are slipping through my fingers without much anything being created. I've needed to realize that my human capacity is still lacking - my body can't yet sustainably, without stressing, hold the frequencies needed to be able to do the work I want at the scale I envision.

I'm excited about learning to step more into responsible parenting roles for my inner child: the nurturing Inner Mother (Cancer) and supportive and disciplining Inner Father (Capricorn). In previous phases of life, neither of these energies were in balance within me. Meditation, movement, sound - anything with a focus on the lower chakras - are proving awesome tools in this process. I'm learning to grow my inner nurturing and my inner discipline at the same time: having more empathy towards myself yet also encouraging myself to persist; breaking giant goals down into small achievable steps and celebrating taking them. Seeing it all build up with time.

Are your Inner Mother and Inner Father in balance to support you creating what you want to see in this world? Or are there parts of your Inner Child that are still shunning responsibility and wanting for someone else to take over?

Get in touch at saila@purposeworks.fi if you'd like to chat about balancing these energies within you, or learning more about how they show up for you astrologically.