A Nuclear Family Revolution

We got got, folx. In a world where the nuclear family has kept many would-be revolutionaries at home, making snack plates and mowing lawns instead of picketing and involving themselves in local politics, what can be done? When work, body and house care and the routines that run the engine of your life keep you busy and distracted, is it hopeless?  Should we consign ourselves to watching the world burn knowing at least we’ll have folded sheets?

Let me clarify my own base of operations in this world, as I find it’s easier to understand where someone is going if you know where they’re coming from. I present myself to you as an elder millennial, raised on the promise of success if I was just a good girl. I worked hard in school, climbed hierarchical ladders through nonprofits and settled down with an excellent man to make an incredible kid.

And I did all that knowing I was carrying out someone else’s design, but also personally invested in these activities. I genuinely wanted to help people and be a career success. I genuinely wanted to be seen, fully and authentically by another person and to build lives of meaning together. I genuinely wanted to use my own mistakes and painful trials to be the best mother I could. To break the cycles of harm and inherited darkness that so many children have been forced to walk through.

And it has only been in the last five or so years that I’ve realized how domesticity and being drawn into the trap of creating isolated family units hampers radical action. I can hardly risk standing in the front lines to protest ICE when my son relies on me for his basic needs. At points I was so dispirited by my situation that I consigned myself to making no difference in the world at all. Allowing myself to succumb to a cosmic victimhood from which there was no immediate escape.

Luckily, in that same span of time I’ve also become an astrologer. And in my years of studying charts and planetary potentials I have come to see my own contribution to society as decidedly more complex than traditional revolutionary actions. I was born with an Aries North Node in my 7^th house – my soul came here to forge a path of absolute authenticity within the confines of a committed relationship. To be truly myself even while prioritizing my connection to another. It is from this place that I write what follows.

The Scope of the Problem

The enormity of what lies before us – genocide and ethnic cleansing, rampant violence against women and children, eroding human rights, the prison-industrial complex as Slavery 2.0 and the Earth crumbling beneath our feet – is both real and intentionally overwhelming. You are meant to feel helpless and hopeless, because that combination is ripe for exploitation.

In fact, there are a million things you can do, today, for free, that will change the tide of what’s happening around the globe. What I’m about to suggest isn’t the end-all, be-all of potential actions one could take. There are much smarter, better-informed people with lists like that. But I am a mother, a Cancer sun, and a radical anarchist, and I am deeply invested in you feeling empowered, because I know in my marrow that as we stoke the fires that have dimmed in our bellies, our collective light will show the way forward.

You Are the Foundation

Even while we walk through the fiery end of Aries season, I would be remiss to exclude self-care from the conversation. And yes, as you’ve seen all over social media and in every other advice column, it’s a big deal. Listening for and tending to the needs of your body, mind, heart and soul is the foundation of everything else you will set out to accomplish. Want to help others by running a successful business? Harder if you’re sick all the time. Want to radicalize your neighborhood? A stressed-out revolutionary is usually less convincing.

We could write whole articles on the topic of taking care of yourself, but since this is about being radical within your family, I will leave it at this: Self-care will include the house Cancer rules in your chart, as well as the placement of your moon in your chart. Bonus points if you balance out the energy of your 12^th and 6^th houses, which are about mental and physical health, respectively.

How to Be a Family Radical

Ok, now that you’re healed up, well-rested and convinced of your own worth, let’s discuss the meat of this article: how to seed radical anarchism into your home.

First, find your IC/MC line – the cusps that define your 4^th and 10^th houses. Those energies, whichever signs rule those houses in your natal chart – will give you insight into your own style for balancing your inner foundations and outer expressions. Balance is key to any practice, because your unique blend along this polarity will be the fuel for your anarchist fire. Below is a quick summary of the six potentials:

Aries/Libra – You are balancing an expression of will with a desire to remain in connection. Allow yourself to embody your own desires and impulses when in connection with others, and conversely, allow trusted others to influence your strategy.

Taurus/Scorpio – You are balancing the need for rest, physical well-being and staying true to your values with the need to root out the darkness hidden beneath the surface to achieve emotional well-being. Balancing intense truths with steady action is key.

Gemini/Sagittarius – Curiosity, communication and cognitive flexibility must be balanced with turning information into action, living your truth and forging your own path. Knowledge becomes wisdom in the body, which in turn fuels your next research rabbit hole.

Cancer/Capricorn – Nurturing, inward reflection and lineage work must balance with the desire for mastery, leaving your mark and creating systems that last. Allowing yourself to feel without analysis will fuel your climb to the top of whichever mountain is yours.

Leo/Aquarius – Courageous personal expression balances with innovative community service. What must you bravely express to feel alive, and what unique vision of collective power will you experiment with?

Virgo/Pisces – Practical routines and adaptable processes must balance with free flowing and intuitive being. While Virgo’s service ethic imbues it with powers of planning and implementation, Pisces soul sight shows it that everything is happening in divine orchestration already, when you zoom out.

Got it? Good. Because balancing your inner foundations (4^th house, family) with your lasting imprint on the outer world (10^th house, public work) will keep you fresh and available to try new things. Being radical – getting to the root of existing systems and ideas – takes energy. But, as you watch it change your world, I find it also gives back a great deal of energy.

Roles (i.e. Spouse v Spouse)

One of the most persnickety thickets of patriarchy lives within the roles we define at home. This is especially true for heterosexual couples, where often these roles come prepackaged in cellophane. Roles can include Provider and Caregiver, Homemaker and Financier, The One Who Makes Time for Inner Growth and The One Who Does Not. Whatever your defined roles are in the home, ask yourself some questions:

1. What has my experience of this role been? Is it fulfilling? Compulsory? Deadening? Exciting?

2. Does my partner know my experience? Does sharing my experience of this role feel connective, like we’re learning more about each other, or does it feel frightening or antagonizing?

3. Do I know my partners’ experience of their roles? Do they define their roles the way I would? When we compare notes, would we be on the same page, or offering wildly different perspectives on how things run here?

4. Are there areas of life, roles and sets of duties that go untouched? Things I wish someone was in charge of, but no one has the time or energy?

5. Do I engage with the roles I play at home consciously, or are they more like grooves worn in a dirt road – a path of going through the motions?

Patriarchy is winning the day when we assume roles we never asked for, and when we carry them out without discussion or inquiry. We cannot choose all our roles in a family, often. Particularly if there are dependents involved that require certain things from us. But we can engage with them consciously, we can discuss them with our partner, we can pull out the individual responsibilities and reassign them, redefine them, revise them.

Living with resentment or carrying the weight of roles that should be shared (particularly as it relates to invisible labor and emotional labor) will keep your anarchist fire dim. There is nothing anti-revolutionary about having a warm, loving home life. In a world where gendered roles are designed to keep us at odds within our marriage and the unpaid labor of raising children is meant to keep us yelling at our kids, having a safe, compassionate space for your family is absolutely radical.

Parent v Child

Rampant violence against children is not new. Our preference for intellectual superiority and the isolating push for individuality above collective makes children seem both stupid and burdensome. It was only in the 1980s that the medical community realized that babies can feel pain – prior to that they didn’t even bother to anesthetize them before performing surgery. Our ability to devalue and debase children has a long, storied history.

And beyond that, the fact that late-stage capitalism keeps us all tired, overburdened and lacking the basic necessities of survival ensures that coming home to someone who needs yet more from you seems outrageous. Particularly when those needs are primarily emotional and connection-based, in a society that dismisses feelings and mocks vulnerable intimacy.

All of this rolled together creates a cocktail for epic battles at home between exasperated parents and hurting kids. If you feel disconnected from your kids, some questions to explore:

1. When was the last time I truly listened to my kid(s)? Do I feel I genuinely understand their daily, lived experience? When I listen, do I leave open the possibility that I will be changed by what I hear?

2. How do I relate to being a parent? Does it feel like a divine assignment or a cosmic joke? Do I carry shame, fear or anxiety related to this role? Where do those feelings come from in me? Does it feel like karma, my own childhood, or societal norms?

3. What are my largest visions, my hopes and dreams for my relationship with my kids? Do I live into that vision? Is it clear to me what steps someone would take to live into that vision? If not, can I tease out the values and priorities of someone who lives that way?

4. What do my children most need from me? Do I take time to honor those needs in whatever ways are available to me? Does honoring their needs create intense emotional resistance in me?

5. If intense emotions arise with regards to parenting, do I have a friend, therapist, or wisdom figure I can talk to about them? Do I give myself space to witness and compassionately embrace my own fears and flaws?

The Big Picture

In essence, being a radical within the confines of a nuclear family comes down to:

1. Dropping any performance of roles or expectations. Engaging consciously with your own actions and responsibilities is key to living authentically and creating the possibility for a radical revision of the usual family contract.

2. Loving yourself enough to witness your shortcomings, needs and desires. Ideally, having trusted loved ones and community members you can share them with keeps shame from festering in the darkness.

3. Being vulnerable and authentic in your closest relationships – those with your spouse, your parents, your best friends. The fabric of the universe is love. When we relate nakedly to one another, we are trusting and expanding that love, and that is the revolution.

4. Questioning any knee-jerk hierarchical responses at home AND in the world. Naming the power dynamics at play with your boss, your spouse, your children. Turning them over and analyzing them against your own inner knowing. You may have more experience than your children, more literal knowledge, but translating that into wisdom is about recognizing the divinity in everyone. We do not have the right to speak down to anyone, nor do they have the right to speak down to us. Holy relationships based on notions of equity and belonging are key.

So in summary, no, you do not need to leave your family and forego the comforts of domesticity to change the world. Every word spoken to yourself and another, every examination of power, scripted roles and assumed superiority changes the game. In fact, if we are to change the world, we need to start where we are. And where we are includes a lot of mothers and fathers, children and caregivers who can change everything about their daily lives simply by living them more authentically and lovingly.