The home sign. Mars retrograde brings the family-of-origin anger to the surface.
Mars Retrograde for Cancer is the surface-level rise of the home-and-family anger you have spent years quietly holding. The trap is the Cancer-specific one: the old wound feels current, and you re-enter a family fight that was already settled, or you act out the old anger on a partner / friend / colleague who is standing in for the original target. The gift is real and hard: ten weeks of learning to feel the anger without misdirecting it. To hold the old wound long enough to see what it is actually asking for — most often a boundary you never set, a conversation you never had, a piece of grief you never let yourself feel.
Re-entering an old family fight because the retrograde made the old wound feel current.
Ten weeks to feel the buried anger about the home — and to learn to hold it without acting it out on people who didn't cause it.
The old anger will feel current. By week ten you will know which parts were current and which parts were old grief asking to be felt and laid down.
For 10 weeks, when family-anger surfaces, write it for one full week before deciding anything. Cancer Mars survives by separating then-anger from now-action.