Using Astrology to Heal Your Inner Child and Step Into Your Higher Self
- Shanae Smith
- Mar 30, 2022
- 14 min read
Updated: Mar 5
Growing Into Your Personality
Do you ever feel like there’s a disconnect between who you are on the outside and how you feel deep within? Or maybe you’ve struggled to reconcile the person you’ve become with the emotions and experiences you carry from childhood. We all grow and change, but how does that process work with your astrology chart? What parts of your personality evolve, and what stays constant?
Understanding the layers of your astrological chart—your Rising Sign, Moon Sign, and Sun Sign—can illuminate how these aspects of yourself intertwine, revealing both challenges and opportunities for growth.
But this isn’t just a guide for personal reflection. If you’re a parent, exploring these placements can help you better understand your child’s unique emotional needs, communication style, and approach to the world. By learning how these astrological elements interact, you can strengthen your connection with your child while fostering their growth in a way that honors their individuality.
By exploring these astrological elements, you’ll uncover not only how you show up in the world but why you react the way you do. This isn’t just about self-awareness—it’s about creating harmony between your inner and outer selves, so you can live authentically, feel seen, and reclaim the confidence to be exactly who you are.
By reading Using Astrology to Heal Your Inner Child and Step Into Your Higher Self, you’ll:
Discover the unique roles of your Rising, Moon, Mercury, and Sun Signs so you can uncover the deeper layers of your emotional and personal identity.
Learn to Heal Your Inner Child so you can release emotional blocks, build self-compassion, and create a sense of safety and wholeness within yourself.
Gain Tools for Self-Compassion so you can break free from self-criticism and cultivate a nurturing relationship with yourself
Navigate Life with Confidence so you can face life’s uncertainties with clarity and trust in your unique path."*
Deepen your understanding of yourself and others, so you can connect more meaningfully with your children or loved ones, and foster deeper bonds built on empathy and authenticity..
Your Rising Sign: The Personality Outfit - How You Present to the World
From the moment we’re born, the Rising Sign – also known as the Ascendant – sets the stage. It’s the point where Heaven meets Earth, and it governs our first impressions, the energy we project, and the expectations placed upon us.
As children, we naturally show up in the world through the lens of our Rising Sign.
For example:
Aries Rising kids typically independent, confident, and energetic.
Capricorn Rising kids are expected to be responsible, often out of necessity.
Scorpio Rising kids may instinctively guard their privacy.
These traits aren’t random – they’re deeply rooted in the reward systems we experience. Early in life, we learn which behaviors are reinforced and which are discouraged, shaping how we navigate the world.
The Rising Sign plays a huge role in how we interact with others—it’s an important, real, and valid part of us, but it’s not the whole story. While your Rising Sign shapes how others perceive you and your initial approach to the world, your Moon Sign takes us deeper into the hidden realm of your emotional needs, instincts, and the inner child who craves nurturing.
The Moon Sign: The Inner Child's Voice
As children, our Moon Sign takes the wheel. The Moon governs our emotions, instincts, and subconscious reactions. It’s raw, reactive, and deeply tied to our relationships with caregivers and authority figures.
For example, toddlers don’t process the world through logic. They experience life through a series of emotional highs and lows – crying when something feels “unfair” or laughing uncontrollably at a silly face. These instinctual emotions shape our early experiences.
The Moon is unpredictable, waxing and waning like the literal moon. It’s not always rational, but it leaves a lasting imprint on our relationships and how we approach emotional safety.
If the Moon Sign is the voice of your emotions, Mercury is the translator, shaping how those emotions are processed, understood, and expressed in your thoughts and words as you navigate life.
Mercury's Role: The Teenage Translator
As we grow, Mercury steps into the spotlight. Mercury represents communication, intellect, and learning, and it becomes central to how we process and express ourselves during adolescence.
This is also the stage where society tells us it's t ime to start to suppress raw emotions. We’re told to "be logical" and “use our heads,” sidelining the Moon’s emotional instincts in favor of Mercury’s intellect.
But here’s the thing: Mercury and the Moon aren’t adversaries – they’re different facets of your outward expression. While Mercury takes over during adolescence, the Moon still waits in the wings, showing up only in trusted relationships or safe spaces.
While Mercury governs the bridge between thoughts and communication, your Sun Sign represents your core essence—the light of individuality that shines when you step into your full authenticity.
The Sun Sign: Growing Into Your Core Self
Finally, adulthood brings us into alignment with our Sun Sign – the trunk of the personality tree. The Sun represents who you are at your core, beyond first impressions and instinctual reactions. It’s the part of you that doesn’t bend to societal expectations or play roles for others.
This process isn’t always easy. We’ve all heard the phrase “playing a character,” and astrology confirms that when your Rising, Moon, and Sun aren’t aligned, it can feel exhausting. The key is recognizing the interplay between these parts of yourself and making space for all of them.
What to Do to Heal Your Inner Child to Flourish in Adulthood
Healing the inner child is an essential part of personal growth, and astrology offers profound insights into how to approach it. Traditional methods for healing provide proven techniques, but they resonate differently depending on your Sun Sign, Moon Sign, and its element. Whether your Moon is in a fiery, earthy, airy, or watery sign, each has its own emotional language and approach to healing.
As adults, our Sun Sign often reflects the type of energy we now bring to those healing practices, and even Mars can help us understand how we take action, so it may help to consider those energies as well. In this section, we’ll explore key methods for inner child healing, pairing them with insights for each Moon element and practical tips to align your inner child and adult self.
1. Reparenting Yourself - All Element Moons
Traditional Method: Reparenting is a crucial method that almost everyone can benefit from. Reparenting involves giving yourself the love, safety, and validation you may have lacked as a child. This could include creating routines, speaking to yourself kindly, or celebrating small victories.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius): Thrive when they actively celebrate their wins. Reparenting for Fire Moons might involve bold affirmations and exciting rituals to honor their accomplishments.
Earth Moons (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn): Need stability and grounding. Creating predictable routines or actionable goals can provide a sense of safety, and a process to follow that allows them to celebrate wins.
Air Moons (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius): Value intellectual stimulation and communication. Reparenting could involve writing affirmations or discussing emotions with trusted people.
Water Moons (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces): Heal through emotional validation. Allow yourself to feel deeply and create comforting rituals to nurture your inner world.
Actionable Steps:
Identify one thing your inner child needed most (e.g., encouragement, safety, or emotional support).
Journal prompt: “What did I need to hear as a child that I can say to myself now?”
Practice: Create a weekly ritual that feels nurturing, like a celebratory dinner for accomplishments or journaling in a cozy, safe space.
2. Journaling and Reflective Practices - Especially Air and Water Moons
Traditional Method: Writing can help uncover hidden feelings, memories, and unmet needs. It’s a powerful tool for processing emotions and creating clarity.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: try bold, passionate writing styles—expressing desires, anger, or dreams.
Earth Moons: Prefer reflective journaling that provides a sense of emotional security, stability, and grounding. Instead of focusing on future-oriented or performance-based practices, these individuals may resonate with revisiting comforting memories, or writing letters to the inner child that validate their feelings and offer reassurance
Air Moons: try free-flowing, exploratory writing and might enjoy storytelling or philosophical musings.
Water Moons: try emotional depth—journaling about feelings, memories, and intuitive insights resonates deeply.
Actionable Steps:
Journal prompt: “What is one thing I always wanted to say but couldn’t as a child?”
Practice: Try daily free writing for 5–10 minutes about a childhood memory, focusing on how it felt.
Extra: Use a special journaling notebook you would have loved as a child to make the practice feel special.
3. Visualization and Meditation - Especially Water and Earth Moons
Traditional Method: Guided imagery helps connect with the inner child on an emotional level by creating a safe mental space.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: Try energizing visualizations—imagine bold adventures or exciting scenarios where they feel powerful.
Earth Moons: Try from grounding imagery, such as envisioning themselves in nature or a stable home environment.
Air Moons: Try toward imaginative, expansive visualizations, like flying or exploring limitless possibilities.
Water Moons: Try emotionally comforting scenes, such as being embraced or resting near water.
Actionable Steps:
Practice: Create a guided visualization where you meet your inner child in a safe place. Ask them what they need and offer reassurance.
Journal Prompt: “What did my inner child ask for in my visualization, and how can I honor that in my life now?”
4. Play and Creativity - Especially Fire and Air Moons
Traditional Method: Reconnecting with play and creativity brings back the joy and freedom of childhood.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: try active, energetic play—dancing, sports, or bold artistic expressions.
Earth Moons: try structured creativity like crafting, cooking, or gardening.
Air Moons: try imaginative activities like writing, brainstorming, or experimenting with new ideas.
Water Moons: try emotionally expressive art forms like painting, music, or writing.
Actionable Steps:
Practice: Dedicate one day a week to a playful activity you enjoyed as a child, like finger-painting or building with blocks.
Journal Prompt: “What did I love doing as a child, and how can I bring that back into my life?”
5. Affirmations and Positive Self-Talk - Especially Air and Water Moons
Traditional Method: Affirmations are a way to rewrite negative or limiting beliefs developed in childhood. They help shift your mindset by replacing criticism with encouragement and self-compassion.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: Respond to bold, empowering affirmations like, “I am strong, capable, and unstoppable.” They benefit from affirmations that inspire action and confidence.
Earth Moons: Prefer affirmations tied to stability and security, like, “I am safe, supported, and enough just as I am.”
Air Moons: Thrive on affirmations that stimulate the mind and align with their love of possibility, like, “I am free to explore, learn, and grow.”
Water Moons: Need emotionally nurturing affirmations such as, “I am worthy of love, and my feelings matter.”
Actionable Steps:
Create 2–3 affirmations tailored to your Moon Sign’s element.
Reflect on how your Chiron placement—the wounded healer in astrology—may influence the negative beliefs or fears you’re trying to rewrite. Chiron can reveal the emotional wounds you carry and how affirmations can help you reframe those experiences.
Practice: Say them aloud in front of a mirror or write them daily in a journal.
Journal Prompt: “What beliefs about myself do I want to let go of, and what would I replace them with?”
6. Setting Boundaries - Especially Water and Air Moons
Traditional Method: Healthy boundaries help protect your emotional energy and create a sense of safety. For inner child healing, setting boundaries allows you to reestablish a sense of security and ensure that your adult self is prioritizing the needs of your inner child over external pressures.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: Tend to set bold, dramatic boundaries when they feel overwhelmed but may need reminders to enforce them consistently.
Earth Moons: Value practical and steady boundaries. They may struggle with saying no if it disrupts responsibilities but benefit from prioritizing self-care.
Air Moons: Often focus on intellectual boundaries, like limiting overstimulating conversations or ideas, but may need help with emotional boundaries.
Water Moons: Can struggle with emotional enmeshment and need clear strategies to protect their emotional space without guilt.
Actionable Steps:
Practice: Identify one specific area where your boundaries feel weak. Write a simple script or statement you can use to assert your needs. For example, “I need time for myself in the evenings and won’t be available for calls after 8 PM.”
Journal Prompt: What’s one situation where I feel my boundaries are being ignored or stretched too thin? How does this impact my inner child’s sense of safety or self-worth? What mindset or actions can I take to rebuild trust with myself and protect my energy moving forward?
7. Reconnecting with Nature - Especially Earth Moons
Traditional Method: Spending time outdoors can ground and soothe your inner child, reconnecting you with a sense of wonder and simplicity.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: Feel energized by dynamic natural settings like hiking, climbing, or campfires.
Earth Moons: Find comfort in steady, tactile experiences like gardening, walking barefoot in the grass, or collecting natural items like rocks or leaves.
Air Moons: Enjoy open, breezy spaces like hilltops, wide fields, or stargazing under a clear sky.
Water Moons: Feel at peace near water—whether it’s a beach, river, or even a long soak in the bath.
Actionable Steps:
Practice: Plan one outdoor activity aligned with your Moon Sign’s element.
Journal Prompt: “What memories do I associate with being outside as a child, and how can I recreate that feeling now?”
8. Acknowledging and Processing Emotions - All Element Moons
Traditional Method: Allowing yourself to feel and process emotions is a crucial step in healing. This method involves naming your emotions, sitting with them, and finding healthy ways to release them.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: Tend to release emotions through action—exercise, movement, or physical catharsis (e.g., screaming into a pillow).
Earth Moons: Process emotions best when they have time to reflect and ground themselves, such as through quiet solitude or creative outlets like crafting.
Air Moons: Benefit from talking through their emotions or writing them down to gain clarity and distance.
Water Moons: Need a safe emotional container to feel deeply and process without judgment, like journaling, crying, or meditating.
Actionable Steps:
Practice: Identify one emotion you’ve been avoiding. Name it, sit with it, and explore how it feels in your body.
Journal Prompt: “What emotions did I suppress as a child, and how can I release them safely now?”
9. Self-Compassion Practices - Especially Earth and Water Moons
Traditional Method: Self-compassion replaces self-criticism with kindness. It involves acknowledging your struggles without judgment and treating yourself as you would a friend.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: Benefit from passionate, encouraging self-talk that cheers them on.
Earth Moons: Need to replace self-criticism with gentle, practical reassurance, like celebrating small achievements.
Air Moons: May respond to reframing their thoughts or creating affirmations that feel intellectually satisfying.
Water Moons: Heal through nurturing, soothing practices, like emotional journaling or repeating kind mantras.
Actionable Steps:
Practice: When self-criticism arises, pause and reframe it with a compassionate statement. This takes practice and time to catch!
Journal Prompt: “What is one critical or negative belief I learned about myself growing up? How has it affected my choices or self-worth? What would I say to my younger self now to challenge that belief?"
10. Therapy or External Support - All Element Moons
Traditional Method: Sometimes, inner child healing requires guidance from an experienced professional. Therapy or external support provides a safe, non-judgmental space to explore deeper wounds, uncover patterns, and develop healthier coping mechanisms.
Astrological Insights:
Fire Moons: May need an active, empowering approach, like somatic therapy or action-based techniques, to process and release emotions effectively.
Earth Moons: Might prefer structured, goal-oriented therapeutic approaches, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) or methods with tangible results (ie somatic therapy, journaling with a purpose like tracking emotions, and bullet journaling to see progress, art or creative therapies etc)
Air Moons : May thrive in therapy that focuses on intellectual exploration, reframing thoughts, or analyzing patterns. A therapist who encourages dialogue and brainstorming might resonate.
Water Moons: Often need external validation or a safe emotional container to process deep-seated feelings. Therapy can help them feel supported in ways they may not have experienced before.
Actionable Steps:
Identify the type of support that feels most aligned with your needs (e.g., talk therapy, trauma-focused therapy, or even community support groups).
Reflect on your emotional patterns:
“What recurring emotions or struggles do I notice, and how could professional support help me navigate these more effectively?”
Practice: Research local therapists, online options, or even astrologers specializing in emotional healing.
Journal Prompt:“If I were to seek help for my inner child, what qualities would I want in the person supporting me? What emotional needs would I hope to address through this process?”
Why Your Whole Chart Matters - Where to Look if Your Moon Sign Doesn’t Resonate
If the insights connected to your Moon Sign don’t seem to align with your emotional experiences or inner child needs, don’t worry—there are many other areas in your chart that influence your emotional landscape and healing journey. Here’s where to look next:
Chiron (Sign and House):
Chiron, the “wounded healer,” represents your core emotional wounds and the unique path to healing them.
The sign and house placement of Chiron may reveal specific themes or areas of life where healing is most needed.
The Moon’s House Placement:
While the Moon’s sign shows how you process emotions, the house it occupies shows where these emotional needs are most likely to manifest.
For example, a Moon in the 7th house may place emotional focus on relationships, while the 6th house could emphasize emotional fulfillment through routines or service to others.
Aspects to the Moon:
Planets that form aspects to your Moon can color or even dominate its influence.
A square from Mars might make emotional expression feel charged or conflict-driven.
A trine from Venus could bring ease and harmony to emotional interactions.
Other Planets with Emotional Themes:
Mars: Reflects how you handle anger, assert yourself, and protect your boundaries.
Venus: Indicates what brings you comfort, joy, and emotional harmony.
Mercury: Shows how you think, process, and communicate about your emotions.
The Sun: Highlights what makes you feel validated and recognized as an individual.
Stelliums or Elemental Dominance:
If you have a stellium (three or more planets in one sign or house) or a dominant element (e.g., Fire, Earth, Air, or Water), this could significantly influence your emotional style and needs, sometimes overshadowing your Moon Sign.
A Water stellium might make you more emotionally sensitive, even if your Moon is in a more detached Air sign.
The North and South Nodes:
The Nodes provide insights into your soul’s journey and where you’re meant to grow emotionally. The South Node can reflect past emotional patterns, while the North Node indicates the emotional growth path ahead.
Your astrology chart isn’t about “hacks” to change how you show up – it’s about understanding how you already work and learning to align with it. You can’t "trump" the universal energy you embody, but you can learn to navigate it with confidence.
By diving into your Rising Sign, Moon Sign, Mercury Sign, and Sun Sign, you uncover the roadmap to navigating your unique challenges and opportunities with clarity and confidence.
This work is an act of self-love and self-acceptance. It invites you to embrace every layer of who you are—from the way the world sees you to the emotions that drive you and the essence that makes you, you.
Every piece of your chart holds wisdom, not to change who you are, but to help you step into the fullest, most aligned version of yourself. The more you connect with these truths, the more empowered you become to meet life with authenticity and grace.
Ready to Align With Your True Self?
Healing your inner child is a journey of self-acceptance—and astrology can help you understand the deeper patterns shaping your growth. Your chart reveals both the wounds you carry and the strengths that help you step into your highest potential.
New to astrology? My Natal Chart Tour gives you a beginner-friendly breakdown of your chart so you can start exploring the influences that shaped you—and the ones guiding you forward.
Ready to align your healing journey with astrology’s cycles? My 5-Day Mini Course: Setting Aligned Goals That Work for You teaches you how to work with your chart’s themes to create real, lasting transformation.
Looking for deeper insight? A one-on-one astrology consultation can help you identify the placements in your chart connected to inner child healing—and guide you toward self-trust, growth, and alignment.
Your past may have shaped you, but it doesn’t define you. You have the power to step into your highest self.
Key Takeaways:
The Rising, Moon, Mercury, and Sun Signs each play a unique role in shaping your persona, emotions, and self-expression.
Your Moon Sign holds the key to healing your inner child, revealing the emotional needs that shaped you.
Astrology offers personalized guidance for self-compassion, boundary-setting, and emotional alignment.
Practical tools like journaling, affirmations, and connecting with nature can support inner child healing, tailored to your Moon’s element.
By understanding your astrological chart, you can navigate life with greater confidence, authenticity, and emotional resilience.
I am not a licensed therapist, counselor, or medical professional. The insights and suggestions shared in this post are based on astrology and personal reflection techniques and are not a substitute for professional mental health or medical advice. If you’re experiencing significant emotional challenges or trauma, I encourage you to seek support from a licensed professional who can provide specialized guidance.
Comments