Being flexible is a state of survival.

Mars in Cancer is a shy time. It’s a time of getting to know your fears very, very well but not necessarily having any idea of what it takes to move through the fear itself. Mars in Cancer is about preparation, about protecting yourself with vulnerability, and about feeling some frustration around the perceived inability to move your own walls.

Mars is in Cancer in May, which happens every two years. In a cardinal sign, Mars drives the month of May.

But, then, in late May, the Sun, Mercury, and Venus all move into Gemini. We get a full lunar eclipse in Sagittarius and Jupiter leaves Saturn’s house for its own home placement on the 14th. May pushes us to be super mutable! 

Being flexible is a state of survival. Being flexible is about going the extra distance, of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, and of doing the extra work. Oppression can be thought of as a question of who has to be flexible and who gets to remain condensed. Oppression is experienced as a state of being forced to do the work of flexibility so that empathy can be produced.

Flexibility is about shapeshifting and flexibility is about unreadability. Flexibility is about being able to attach and detach—flexibility is impossible to predict because the nature of flexibility is that it resists description.

Flexibility turns a cry into a joke and a joke into a memoir. Flexibility is about borrowing and about use, never about ownership. In a way, flexibility can operate as a state of freedom but it isn’t true freedom because it has to anticipate another. Flexibility is a state of yearning for freedom.

Mars in Cancer sometimes looks like retreat but it isn’t retreat. Mars in Cancer is about gathering—it’s about deciding that your priorities are different than the options that are presented to seem important for you in a given conflict. When you fight with Mars in Cancer, you’re not fighting with any one person but with all the people Mars in Cancer has gathered.

May is about changing your mind. Often, the act of changing your mind is read from the outside to look cowardly. However, it takes tremendous daring to look outside of yourself and to decide that something you had believed to be real cannot be proved. Doing so means that you lean just a little bit closer to the unknowability of the universe.

Taurus

Don’t be too protective over your ideas. There is no originality—only creativity. Your unique ideas have been thought about by other people before and your genius doesn’t diminish when it is shared. Don’t be worried about other people taking your ideas because no one can take your creativity and your genius away from you.

Your creativity is not about idea making. Idea making is a waste. Your creativity has to do with what you choose to do with the ideas that you have, how you imagine your ideas moving resources and people. In order to move people, you have to share your ideas and, by doing so, you also change them irrevocably.

Gemini

What in the world has made you believe that you are worthy of protection? Is it your age or relationships or class? In May, I want you to reconsider those things not because you are not precious but before the reliance upon certain things over others has made you afraid. You are worthy of protection even without all of those things that you had assumed made you to be precious.

You are worthy of protection even when you don’t know anyone. You are worthy of protection even when you can’t protect yourself. You are worthy of protection even when you can’t buy it. It takes time to understand this because it takes time to process all of the rage that comes with understanding that you are worthy of protection even when you did not have access to it.

Cancer

You don’t have to share all of your political growth with other people all of the time. This is because much of this growth occurs in your actions and not around things that can be announced to the world. There is no higher authority grading you about how much you grow politically.

Accept your mistakes in the past and the future and make space for apologies. You don’t have to fear conflict—you are not here to impress but here to inspire. Let your actions talk for you and spare your words for the moments during which you teach yourself all of the lessons that you need to decide what it is what you want to do over what you want to say.

Leo

Stop trying to protect yourself from other people by trying to seem invincible. No one will walk away when you let go of the secrecy of your fears. The people who you call your friends might change but your friend won’t—instead, your relationships become more true when you allow yourself to be seen by them.

You deserve to be needy, to be clingy, and to be valued when you are needy and clingy. You deserve to be held when you are not feeling your best. You deserve to be helped. You deserve to have strong relationships that you don’t have to wear yourself out performing the work of flexibility for.

Virgo

Rethink protection. It’s not how it was taught to you. Protection, as it was taught to you, is a patronizing thing. Real protection is not about borders and control. Real protection takes leaning into real fears and sacrifice. In some ways, there is no such thing as real protection—only the agreement of it.

Refuse to talk about protecting people without first investigating just what protection assumes itself to be. Do this by asking yourself whether protection is within your means and within your power. If it is not, then you might be defining protection against yourself and denying your own power.

Libra

Stop thinking that you are afraid of work and start distinguishing your ambitions and what you believe to be possible. If there are things that you want but you do not believe them to be possible, adjust what you believe to be reality. Your desires were not given to you so that you could see them fail. Your desires were given to you so that you could watch them change in real time.

Stop shooting yourself in your own foot by lamenting upon things that you don’t know. Have the audacity to try anything at least once. Where you end up will not be where you started.

Scorpio

Don’t try to stay where you are just because you’re uncertain about where it is you could possibly move to without losing something. Movement is essential and so is loss. Let go of what is in your hands and straighten up your shoulders. Don’t try to assert your position in the world at the expense of embracing change.

You are not a static thing but something that is kept alive only through motion. You will not be doing the same work forever and you will not need the same things forever. Understand yourself by understanding your fears around change. Fear feels good when you acknowledge it and then move on.

Sagittarius

If you are afraid of losing something, stop moving away from them. There are moments during which you unintentionally move away from the things that you are most afraid of losing. While this may look like completing your own prophecies, it does not make you any stronger.

Understand that the question of whether or not you lose someone is not up to you. Understand that, despite this being true, that you still grow stronger when you accept that your attachments might grow regardless of whether or not you can control loss or gain. Understand that love, being uncertain, does not make you predictable or poor in courage.

Capricorn

Stop letting other people change you simply because you don’t believe in your own impact. You have the ability to change other people, too, when you ask for space to move. 

If you were taught that certain people will always be unchangeable, leave them alone instead of salivating at the challenge. Your flexibility is an act of love that you can better enjoy elsewhere. People are always changing and willing to change—you change for other people all the time. But you can only commit to changing together when you love each other. Commit to those who want to change with you and not those who you want to improve.

Aquarius

Desire changes you. When you admit what you want, even if it is only to yourself, it changes what you have time for and what you don’t have time for. Why go out of your way to do things that you don’t want to do? How does going out of your way for something that you don’t want do impact how well you are able to believe your own desires?

You’re allowed to change your mind about what it is that you want, of course. Changing your mind makes your patience for things change and you may not be as agreeable as you used to be. This is a good thing. The ability to decide what you want to spend your own time on is precious and worthy of protection.

Pisces

Because you are used to turning fears into admissions of need, May may not be as hard on you as some of your friends. This also means that you might be asked to be present for some of your friends more often than you are able. When in doubt around what you have time for, say yes to the things that move you more often than the ones that do not.

Say the things that you have previously kept secret. You have some wisdom that you have not shared with the rest of us because you have feared that you would be misunderstood. It’s not up to you to decide whether you are heard or not. Let go of control around perception and lean into being yourself.

Aries

Instead of starting new things all the time, trying to prove yourself differently all days of the week, try valuing yourself based on what you have already done. The time that you have already spent towards something is just as valuable as the time that you have yet to spend on something. When you celebrate what’s already been done, it pushes you to dream long term.

Dreaming long term also takes living slowly. You don’t have to only imagine things that you can get done in a day or two. You, too, are allowed to dream of things that take a lifetime to understand.