My 12th house Profection Year... 3 Years Later
Several years ago, I wrote about my experience living through a 12th house profection year. I’m just entering my 4th house year. I have the moon in Aquarius and a Leo ascendant, and I regularly get notes from people with Leo ascendants and Aquarius moons telling me that my 12th house year experiences resonated with them.
Steven Forrest says in The Book of Water, Aquarius moons are regularly told that we don’t do emotions correctly, but we’re here to learn to close our ears to criticism and feel our way anyway. It’s a hard thing to do. When I wrote those essays, I’d been hearing about my defective moon for years. By the time I reached my 12th house year in my 30s, I was darkly glad that I would never have children. All the better for my theoretical children to have another mother better equipped for the job.
During my 12th house year, my opinion of myself changed. I formed a relationship with a man who had the moon in Cancer. He showed me that my style of nurturing was valuable, even though it wasn’t stereotypically “mothering.” I can hold space for people who are feeling strong emotions without getting sucked into them, which makes it possible for people to feel their feelings without thinking they need to take care of me. He spoke with the authority of the moon in a sign it rules, and the experience of being seen and validated by a lunar person was profoundly healing.
It took awhile to integrate “nurturing” into my identity, but I did… and then I forgot about the whole experience. I couldn’t have children, anyway, so why bother thinking about how I could theoretically be a good mother? I tried to be extra nice to the dog, and I moved on.
Then, in my 2nd house year, the impossible happened. I got pregnant. And I stayed pregnant. At 37 weeks, with feet so swollen my toes couldn’t touch the floor when I walked, I became a mother to a spirited baby girl… another Aquarius moon.
We are born with the charts we will carry with us for the rest of our lives, and my daughter is no exception. There are many things I love about her. Her stubborn independence is at the top of the list. Since her very first breath, she has insisted on doing her own thing at her own time, and she has also taught me what being an Aquarius moon looks like on the outside, day in and day out.
In many ways, my daughter has been an “easy baby.” She’s a confident eater. She insisted on feeding herself from the first time she saw a spoon. She has slept through the night since she was 12 weeks old. She is brave, friendly to strangers, and she doesn’t make a fuss.
I know from experience that putting on a brave face isn’t easy, but the ease with which my daughter self-regulates has shown me that Aquarius moons are so frequently misunderstood because our ability to take care of ourselves emotionally is so easy to miss and so easily taken for granted. In situations that would make other kids scream, my daughter makes a soft “ooo” sound. When that doesn’t get the result she’s asking for, she doesn’t protest more loudly. She instinctively keeps calm and carries on.
I think a lot about what I want to teach my daughter about having a healthy moon. My biggest hope is that she will learn that the water bearer’s ability to contain and channel emotion isn’t just a gift that she gives to others. It is a gift she can give to herself. The ability to withstand emotional pressure without cracking means that we don’t need to be afraid of strong emotions. We can trust ourselves to know when it’s time to yell. As I descend to the underworld during my 4th house year, it is something that I am still trying to learn.
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