Your essential purpose in life is to nurture and care for whatever or whoever you believe needs it. At first, this is yourself! And the degree to which you received this support in childhood greatly determines how well you go about giving it to yourself or others as you grow older.

Esoterically, it is written that all souls are first born onto planet Earth in the Sign of the Crab, simply because they know intuitively that the Cancerian will is the one most likely to find a way of being looked after in their new home. Cancer has been called the "Lighthouse of Welcome", which is something that the individual Cancerian would do well to become. For when you seek to protect rather than just seek protection, your essential qualities of neediness, sympathy and emotional receptivity then become a recognition of where nourishment and care are needed, along with the motivation and method required to give and sustain them, rather than an aching dependency in itself.

What were clinging claws that can clam up in the face of emotional intrusion then becomes a pair of open arms that holds firmly and cradles gently. The acute awareness that you have of another's feelings, which can be misused to emotionally blackmail them, becomes a ray of healing. And that vulnerable sidestepping becomes the sensitive approach that cares for more than just family - but all human beings. Cancer's motto could be 'Who cares is cared for'.