Cancer Sensitivity for the Revolution
Accountability in a Traumatic Culture
You don’t have to venture too far down a google search rabbit hole to find an article that demonizes Cancers for their sensitivity. The FBI lists Cancers as the most incarcerated of the zodiac signs. I know many cancers that feel trivialized and brutalized by the world around them.
In a capitalist-Christian-cis-white-hetero-patriarchal-centric society, we don’t value sensitivity at all. The message to those who are male socialized is that sensitivity is weak; Avoid it or reap the consequences of being disposable. If you are socialized to be a female, your lesson is that sensitivity makes you irrational and incapable; Avoid it or sacrifice what little power we allow. If you break that binary, compound the consequences.
U.S. society demonstrates that to survive, one must be ruthless, desensitized, and adhere to the rules of the colonizer, lest you should earn the exile that you have coming to you. These messages come by way of the exalted, rugged individualist, the glorified cisgender, monogamous family, the exclusion of difference, and the power given to whiteness. Supremacism and accountable collectivism can’t co-exist, and therefore our indoctrination works to eliminate accountability.
I began looking at accountability differently after someone sent me Mia Mingus’s article entitled, Dreaming Accountability. The simplicity of the very first line triggered an immediate shift. “What if accountability wasn’t scary?” It left me vibrating like a cymbal; Humming. Its force knocked the wind out of me. While simple, it was so surreal to my life’s experience with accountability. I had never thought of it without dread before then. I was taught that being accountable invited shame and failure. It triggered fears of being disposable.
As it turns out, those feelings were a part of my familial culture. My family indoctrinated me to believe that my mistakes made us all vulnerable to ridicule and comparison. That indoctrination began long before me. My family fostered us to value the appearance of stability and success over emotional security and honesty. We kept secrets in hopes of ensuring that we were loved and protected.
My family is not an island — we aren’t the only family operating subconsciously by the pull of our collective traumatic experiences. It’s an entire culture in the united states (it upholds supremacy), and it’s very anti-Cancerian. Cancer energy embodies emotional expression and investment in the collective.
What would change if we were to look at the vulnerability that arises during cancer season with the same lens that Mia Mingus examines accountability? What if it (feelings/sensitivity/navigating our traumatic responses) wasn’t scary? What if, despite knowing the odds against us, we battled anyway? What if everything we did was in loyalty to the vulnerable and the collective? What if we could disrobe our trauma with love and lead a revolution of integrity, naked and true?
Cancer season gives us some extra encouragement to feel safety in vulnerability. It is a theatre of loving through the threat of consequence. Cancer season invites us to be sensitive to the intricacies of our feelings, especially those associated with our familial culture. It opens us to access to our emotional selves and the lessons of the crab. This cardinal sign beckons a new season of being. Its energy fuses insight into the missing pieces imposed by our inner traumas.
Cancer and Greek Mythology
One of the Greek myths surrounding the constellation Cancer includes the myth of Hercules’ twelve heroic tasks. Hercules’ story begins with his father Zeus (husband to the goddess Hera and God of Gods). He had been looking down to Earth (as gods are apt to do) when he saw a woman. This woman was Alcmene, the most beautiful woman and wife of Amphitryon.
Amphitryon was off on a mission to avenge the murder of Alcmene’s two brothers. Zeus’s creepy-ass was lurking. Alcmene (Did I mention that she’s his great-granddaughter?) was minding her own business sunbathing, and here comes Captain MeToo Zeus feeling entitled to her body. He shapeshifted into the image of her partner and raped her (by way of deceptive seduction). Hera, his wife, was heartbroken and scorned. Powerless to the damage caused by her husband’s abuse, Hera externalized all of the pain and jealousy and directed it at Hercules. She cursed him (but really, wasn’t it the curse of his father’s abuse?) and under that spell, Hercules killed his wife and children (unhealed generational trauma is dangerous, people!!).
Tortured, Hercules sought redemption for his heinous acts. Hercules went to king Eurysethus seeking a place to make good of his world of hurt. He was unaware of the king’s proximity to Hera. The king and Hera consulted. After much deliberation, he assigned Hercules the penance of performing ten impossible and heroic labors (this turned into twelve after deciding Hercules failed two of them). Hercules set forth. The slaying of the Nemean Lion was the first. The second labor was to defeat the Lenean Hydra, a many-headed, giant serpent.
Hercules was in his element as he knocked the heads off of this beast. But Hera lurked, waiting to interfere with any success that Hercules might achieve. Displeased, Hera released a giant crab to attack Hercules. The crab pinched Hercules’ foot. The half-god, half-human stealthily smashed the crab and went on to defeat Hydra. While Hercules finished the task, Hera went over to the slain crab and placed its remains in the sky to honor the crab for its obedience and sacrifice. Thus, the cancer constellation was born.
Lessons from the Crab
If we affirm that our society treats accountability like it’s the same thing as punishment and exile, how can we flip that narrative internally? How do we navigate our traumas and somehow remain safe while allowing ourselves to be vulnerable? What does the mythology of Cancer teach us?
On the surface, the vulnerability of the crab in the Greek Cancer myth appeared to work against it. It was destroyed for its obedience and thanked with a pedestal. (I know little chaps my ass more than being mistreated and then celebrated for enduring that treatment). However, I like to envision that the crab (a symbol of protection) intervened against the brutal externalizations of the trauma of Hera and Hercules’ family culture. I imagine the crab acting to defend its fellow water dweller from being victimized against the threat of powerful and unaccountable people.
Join me in leaving the shell this cancer season. Alone, we are as vulnerable as the crab in the myth. But if we are driven in purpose and gathered together, there isn’t a mythological beast we cannot slay.
We don’t have to settle for being under the foot of the powerful. We flip the narrative by turning ourselves back on; We lift our curses by speaking truth to the pain of those who witness our making; In showering ourselves with accountability and love. Revolution occurs when we no longer accept that we belong beneath the unrepentant damage of assumed privilege. Let us visualize our better world and move in the realization that the consequences of caving to silence, repression, and desensitization are far worse than the consequences of living in our loud and sensitive truths. Nelson Mandela (a Cancer, by the way) reminds us, “It only seems impossible until it’s done.”
