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I write regularly at jessicashepherd.substack.com — soft, human words on healing, astrology & intuition:
Blog
Sagittarius Full Moon: New GPS
Did you ever read the children's book The Phantom Tollbooth? It’s a story about the importance of being willing to engage our life journey, and to learn from it. It begins with a young man named Milo, who is bored.He receives a package one day, with a map, and note that reads, “For Milo, who has plenty of time.” The package instructs him to have a destination in mind, but he disregards that, and as he plays in his room a whole world opens up and he’s taken to his first stop, called...
Taurus New Moon: A Feminine Approach
If you naturally use stress and resistance to leverage movement in your life, you may be disappointed right now. With five planets retrograde, including our action hero Mars, there is nothing to push against you. It can be harder to get things done. Wait for it. I wanted to write this piece and with retrograde Mercury in the sign of “the silent one” and I had to wait for it. Just as Taurus wears a situation or person down through perseverance, I made like Sitting Bull, which fits the current...
9 Things To Do While Venus Is In Taurus
The sensual, physical world is your oyster while Venus transits the sign of Taurus (3/30-4/23 in 2018). Taurus is Venus' home sign, which confers dignity upon all Venusian activities (art, pleasure, creativity, beauty, abundance, sensuality) undertaken during this time. Naturally, there are some sweet overlaps between Taurus and Venus --most of which revolve around relaxing, enjoying being in a physical body and appreciating this abundant, beautiful planet we call home. To...
Scorpio Full Moon: The Guts of Love
A few of my friends are in newly committed relationships. After the heady high of romance, things can get rocky. From listening to their stories, I’m reminded of the challenges a relationship faces during that precarious and magnificent time when two people decide to merge hearts & lives. John and I very quickly decided we couldn’t live without each other; time was made irrelevant by the fact that we had found our other half. There is no more glorious feeling than finally finding the one...
Mars Retrograde, and Pre-Retrograde Peep Show
When a planet stations, i.e. is about to change direction, it gets very strong. A stationary planet can show us our weak areas or blind spots related to that planet -- areas that we could stand to work on during retrograde. Right now, you're getting a sneak preview: How are you relating to Mars in your life? I’ve been coming face to face with how other people’s energy effects me. Last night, while attending a class on using feminine energy to heal, we did an exercise where we were instructed...
Aries New Moon: Waking Up
There’s a gif circulating on social media of an exhausted, sweaty rhino running on a treadmill while looking at a picture of a unicorn. Under it, the caption read, “In what way are you trying to be who you are not and will never be?” It reminded me of, well, me. Picture it: me, in front of a camera, all eyeliner, big hair and purple shimmery shirt, doing a test recording for MTV. I have no idea what I said. I babbled something about love and astrology. Underneath, I was terrified: I had...
Libra Full Moon Lunar Eclipse: Fierce Medicine
Several times over the past few weeks, friends and clients, while talking about their experiences with both making judgments on others, or being unfairly judged, have asked me a leading question, “I bet you have been judged a lot, being in the public eye?” Before my first book was published, I had a channeled reading with one of my teachers who said: Expectations come with this new book and role. Many new people will love and elevate you, and there will be people whom you will disappoint. He...
Chiron in Pisces: All the Suffering of the World
There are two choices to life's pain and suffering: open to it or shut down. The healthy choice seems to be the obvious one. Bring it closer. But how do you hold it all when the pain of the world is just too much? Pisces rules the principle of connection, of unity, oneness. We are all connected in ways that we often don't realize, and while some of us are more empathic than others, like a ripple traveling a lake all the suffering of the world will eventually reach the edges of our...
Pisces New Moon Solar Eclipse: More Love
There are moments of awakening, and they often happen in a form you do not expect or even want, but there they are, irrefutable in their magnitude. When Magnus, beloved pup of my heart, stopped eating, became depressed and lethargic last weekend, all of my nurturing attention was mobilized in only the way seeing one you love suffer, can. From Saturday on, every day following took on that hazy, otherworldly quality of being out of time. I started going into those dark places that we go to. You...
Thoughts on Pluto in Capricorn and Power
Empowered is a word that gets used a lot. I know I use it to describe when I feel like I am strong, in self-respect and self-honoring, and can take on the world. I know when I’m not in my power. When I feel disempowered there’s always a component of helplessness, the feeling that I cannot control, or escape what is happening -for what is power if not feeling “in command”? I am sure all of us are familiar with disempowerment, by degree; the banks own everything we have, we are the...
