Frida Kahlo, Cancer. Photo-illustration: by Prieti Kinha; Photos of Getty
On Tuesday morning, the sun enters a caring, introspective Cancer. In the coming month, your attention may shift from the world around you to the one inside. If you have neglected your inner life, you have neglected your need for security or friendship or healing in favor of constant communication, this is the time to fix things. If you’ve felt far away from your loved ones, Cancer season offers a chance to find your way back to each other. Then, on Wednesday night, the love planet Venus enters carefree Gemini, preventing things from becoming too sentimental, and encourages you to see beauty even in relationships and experiences that are not necessarily deep. You will not take yourself so seriously that you forget how to laugh, how to flirt, how to just enjoy the company of people around you.
While caring for other people makes your life richer, it can also be stressful. The more you invest, the more vulnerable you are to being hurt. The more you value and value a relationship, the more you have to lose. When you feel particularly pessimistic, you worry that love is not worth the risk, that it can only end in pain. This week, your job is to be brave enough to continue caring for others. Because right now love will not make you weak or exhausted, on the contrary: strong and fearless and ready to fight, because you know what you are fighting for.
Sometimes it surprises you (even though you know you shouldn’t) when others are as firm in their beliefs as you are in yours, when they prove to be equal in determination. Your first instinct in these situations may be to prepare for conflict. What other result can there be when two stubborn people collide in the head? But especially this week, competition is not your only option. If you are open to it, you may find something better instead: a friend who is willing and able to stand by you, to fight as hard for you as you do for yourself.
No matter how charming, funny or liked you are (like Gemini, there are probably many), there are still moments when you feel invisible. You know that people enjoy your company, they even admire you, but you are afraid that they just don’t pay enough attention to see you. This week it would be easy to react by becoming stronger, impossible to ignore. But see what happens if you give others the benefit of doubt. You may be surprised at how insightful they really are and how much they value you – not just the mask you wear in public, but the real you – after all.
Lately, you have been unaware of how many things in this life are completely out of your control. You cannot force those in power to develop a conscience that they do not have. You can’t even convince certain people close to you to act the way you want. The sun rises and sets, the seasons change, and people act on their own chaotic, individual impulses: you can’t control any of this. Even so: you are far from powerless. Every day there are situations – no matter how small – in which your care and attention matter, and this week your task is to find them.
It is difficult to live in a ruthless society and not be cruel in response, to deal with greedy, carefree people without being changed for the worse. Violence creates more violence; people who take advantage of this truth rely on everyone else, including you, to forget that there are other ways. So this week is up to you to remember. The world seems to be changing for the worse every day, but that doesn’t mean it should. Protect everything that is good, brave and good in you and you will be rewarded for it.
When you ask too much of others – for care, effort or attention that they are unable to give – you are inevitably disappointed. And after too many experiences like this, you may begin to believe that you will never be satisfied, that there is no one to truly appear for you, or that you are uniquely cursed in love. But this is far from the truth. What’s more, it stops you from appreciating the sweet but imperfect ways in which people in your life show that they care. This week, try to accept the gifts they offer. You may find that all of these different forms of attachment are ultimately what you need.
These days you thought how if our reality was just a little different – sweeter, fairer, less insecure – you could live another, fuller life. You dream of the fuller ways you could use your creative talents if you didn’t have to work so hard just to pay the bills; imagine how much more energy you would have to take care of your community if you weren’t so exhausted at the end of each day. But this week, don’t imagine for a moment that your potential will be wasted. You are already doing so much in this imperfect world of ours.
Sometimes it seems like the people in your life, even the ones who love you the most, can’t … handle all of you, complicated me. They are constantly trying to deceive you, to label you, to understand you once and for all, and they become frustrated, even upset, when they find they can’t. You wonder if it would just be easier to be the person others have decided you are, to stop changing so much, to give up the messy, more intricate sides of yourself. But it is not your job to pretend to be small for the comfort of others. Your job is just to live life to the fullest.
This is frustrating, fostering the suspicion that others are underestimating you, knowing that you are capable of bigger, more wonderful things than anyone else thinks. You wonder what your life would be like if the people around you had more faith in you, what would have been different if you had received the support you needed. No matter how confident you are, the feeling of being invisible and unappreciated gives its own. This week you have the chance to start building again. Don’t wait for someone else’s approval. You are capable of more than you can even imagine.
It is tempting for you to wait for the ideal conditions before taking action, or to feel confident that a relationship is worthwhile before diving. In a sense, it makes sense. Why should you take less than you deserve? But the truth is that change rarely comes at the “right time” and there are no perfect people. Consider this knowledge a gift, not a disappointment. You do not have to wait for the optimal moment, which may never happen. You can act at this time. You can create the world, the relationships, the conditions you need at any time.
When faced with a confusing relationship or a difficult decision, you tend to think about it lately. This can be strangely satisfying. This gives your brain work and all the mental effort confirms that you are making good progress. This week, however, do your best to resist the urge to turn the same dilemma over and over in your mind, to obsess and theorize without a break. Right now, the answers you’re looking for are more likely to come when you loosen your grip and stop trying so hard. Give yourself a moment to just be.
You wondered if you were really strong enough to last the next few days. Not that you are particularly weak or have a deficiency in any other way. It’s just that the future is so terribly uncertain and you’re afraid you won’t be ready for any change in the horizon. You worry that you will not have time to develop the inner strength you need to go through this. But power is not something new that you have to generate from nothing: you have had it all along; what you need to do is remember how brave you can be. You have proven it before and you will do it again.
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