Earth Girl, Fire Moon
If I trace natal charts through my ancestral maternal line, an Earth meets Fire sun emphasis shows up each time. It is what I call our family’s “warrior woman” feature, and I am proud to see it in my daughter as she is, undeniably, a force. But like every astrological gift, there is a dark side to this aspect.
Children born with an ancestral drive to fight for survival are often pitted against their own family who, as warriors themselves, are only equipped to meet fire with fire. Born with an innate desire to survive, children in these households learn to battle themselves, as their parents’ inability to recognize their own rage can leave their children expressing these rejected aspects. Parents will then (often inadvertently) punish their children for expressing the fight that they cannot accept in themselves, and the child warrior is left feeling like their feelings are wrong. This can result in the child turning the energy inward, and fighting themselves. Or, the child may learn that they must stand their ground in a battle for acceptance, and so they grow up learning how to fight for the right to be.
But warrior children do not need to learn how to fight from their parents – they already know how. They were born knowing. As a mother of a little warrior, it is my job to teach my daughter how to love and be loved, so she’ll know what is worth fighting for. Rather than fight her outbursts of rage and frustration, it is my job to respond with listening, love and acceptance. As she has grown older, her outbursts have diminished to the point they are a rare occasion. A trail of projects regularly spill out of her room and down the hall as she has learned to transmute her overwhelming feelings into an unstoppable creative drive.
During our first kindergarten parent/teacher meeting, her teacher began in a chiding tone. She disapprovingly told me that my daughter works on her own time, at her own pace, and routinely defies instructions from the teacher. I remember feeling sheepish and sinking down into my chair a bit. But then she also told me that my daughter sits with a little boy at lunch every day – a boy who no one else would play with because he could not speak English and was very shy. She told me that this little boy would not eat lunch unless my daughter was there, and that every day she shares treats from her lunch with him.
I smiled. My warrior girl.
