Mercury Leaves Retrograde Today, But Here's Why You Could Still Feel The Effects

Today is a long-awaited day.

For three weeks, we've been white-knuckling our way through communication disasters, delays, miscommunications, putting out fires while trying to maintain some semblance of sanity.

Sound familiar? Mercury's been in retrograde, and this one was a really nasty one for a lot of people. You might even be feeling like three weeks ago was a lifetime away because of all the changes this one probably brought to your life.

The good news is today, Mercury goes direct. The retrograde is officially over.

Unfortunately, we aren't completely out of the woods just yet, because the two weeks before and after a planet goes retro, it enters what astrologer's call a "shadow period."

While a shadow period isn't the full-scale assault on your best-laid plans that the retrograde is, it does prevent us from being able to move forward with total ease.

A shadow period is a little like a planetary buffering period. It's a time when we may have to just sit and process everything before we rush back to our normal speed.

It's also a good time to sit back and really go over the events of the past three weeks, which may have been so chaotic, we didn't even have time to adjust to it all.

As much as we might want to just forget about everything that's happened, we can utilize Mercury's shadow period to really think about what went wrong during the retrograde, how it could've gone better and how to prepare ourselves against it happening again.

You may have argued with someone or made a rash decision. You may have been dumped by your SO or had a miscommunication with an employer.

Now is the time to go over what you should have said and what you shouldn't have. Be sure to spend the shadow period going over what changes or amends you'd like to make, choose your words and actions carefully, but don't necessarily do anything just yet.

Think of it as a kind of physical therapy.

You've been through the crash, suffered your injuries and lived through it. Now is the time to process what you learned and to dress your wounds.

Strengthen your spiritual muscles slowly and persistently, and in two weeks time, you'll be back in action.