Mercury Retrograde & Shadow Work: What This Cycle Is Asking You to Heal
Mercury Retrograde, Shadow Work, and the Healing Themes Returning From Summer 2025
In last week’s blog post, I explored the beginning of this Mercury Retrograde cycle — a cycle that is closely connected to the previous Mercury Retrograde from earlier this year.
Mercury Retrograde periods often bring back unfinished themes, emotional patterns, or soul lessons. This cycle is no exception.
There is a signature theme resurfacing for you — something you’re being invited to continue healing, unwinding, and breaking free from.
Reflecting on the Last Mercury Retrograde (July 17 – August 10)
To understand the deeper purpose of this current Mercury Retrograde, pause, reflect, and look back four months to July and August:
What themes or challenges were present for you then?
Which relationships or transitions catalyzed soul-level growth?
What patterns felt like they were asking to be healed or released?
These earlier moments laid the groundwork for the deeper healing that is now emerging (and, likely, happening) for you.
What This Mercury Retrograde (November 9 – November 29) Is Reopening
This current Mercury Retrograde cycle is not random. It’s a continuation of the story.
Retrogrades are cosmic invitations to:
Pause
Slow down
Reflect
Integrate
This cycle is opening a new chapter in your healing — one that requires a bit more stillness, spaciousness, and presence.
How are the themes you’re experiencing now connected to what unfolded for you in July and August?
Mercury Enters Scorpio: A Call Toward Shadow Work
As Mercury moves into Scorpio on November 18, you may feel a natural desire to:
Withdraw
Be quieter
Spend more time in solitude
Do deeper emotional or somatic processing
The astrological sign of Scorpio values deep, psychological transformation. The planet Mercury rules communication, the mind, and thought. A planet going retrograde often indicates a period of reflection, reviewing, reworking, and re-assessing. When we pair all of these together (i.e. Mercury retrograde in Scorpio), they create powerful conditions for shadow work, subconscious and psychological transformation, and emotional integration.
What Is Shadow Work? A Jungian Explanation
The concept of the shadow originates from Carl Jung. In Jungian psychology, the shadow represents the unconscious aspects of your personality — the parts of you that are unacknowledged, repressed, or hidden from conscious awareness.
Shadow work is the process of bringing these unconscious aspects into the light of conscious awareness so they can be processed and worked with, instead of repressed and suppressed.
These shadow aspects may include:
Suppressed emotions (anger, grief, jealousy, fear)
Parts of your personality you learned were “too much” or “not enough”
Childhood coping strategies that once protected you
Deep needs you learned to minimize
Gifts and sensitivities you learned to hide
What I call “womb wounds” — inherited emotional imprints from your mother’s nervous system or pregnancy environment
Shadow work can help you access your inner gold: your gifts, intuition, power, and authentic expression.
Why the Next 13 Months Are So Significant
The next 13 months create a rare astrological window for deep healing and accelerated growth. We are clearing old patterns at a root level so that, by 2027, a new beginning becomes available for those who have done this inner work.
A Blessing for This Cycle
May this Mercury Retrograde offer you courage, clarity, and liberation as you meet the layers within you that are ready to be transformed.
With care,
Heather
P.S. — If you are seeking a space to do some transformational shadow work of your own, this is my jam and genius.
👉 For therapy in Connecticut or New York, schedule a consultation here.
👉 For private coaching worldwide, book a coaching consultation here.
P.P.S. — My oracle deck Your True Nature Oracle is 20% off for the holiday season! It's an incredible gift for yourself or anyone you love. Use code YTN20 at checkout. Offer expires on 12/24/25 at 11:59pm EST.
