Latest on Substack
I write regularly at jessicashepherd.substack.com — soft, human words on healing, astrology & intuition:
Blog
Pisces Full Moon: Zen Moon
As a writer, I experience periodic blocks. I don’t think creative blocks are exclusive to artists. People experience life blocks all the time, periods in your life where despite your best efforts and intentions (or maybe because of them) the things you try to do just don’t seem to get traction or go anywhere. It’s as if, as I described the downside of a Neptune transit to a client recently: God presses the pause button. Then patiently waits for you to figure out that you can’t repeat the same...
Aquarius Full Moon: The Aquarian Stands Apart
There are only a few people I speak to consistently on a weekly basis: my husband and my therapist. My husband is a Leo, and my therapist is an Aquarian. As I interact with entirely different personalities, I receive very different gifts. Affection, play, fun-loving antics are the Leo’s specialty. An entertainer exemplar, he makes serious business of clowning around, and his generally sunny disposition makes him impossible to be down around. A human being like all of us, he can demonstrate...
Jupiter in Leo: Dare To Shine
Always jump in the puddles! Always skip alongside the flowers. The only fights worth fighting are the pillow and food varieties. -Terri Guillemets Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. -Dr. Seuss Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do. -Jean de la Bruyere What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. -Sigmund...
Capricorn Full Moon: The Shape Of My Heart
Before the Uranus-Pluto square began making matters of life direction (and pretty much everything) tougher to unravel, it was much easier for me to offer Joseph Campbell’s career advice to those clients who were miserable in their professions. “Follow your bliss” I’d say, and point to the major career indicators in the chart: Sun (creative ego), the MidHeaven sign and Tenth House Planets (mission, purpose; what you are here to contribute to the world), Venus (joy). But in recent years it’s...
The Nudge of The Moon
It's Cancer Sun season. The Sun is now ruled by the Moon, so it's a time for quieting down, listening to the Soul. The feminine Moon presides over our heart and soul while the masculine Sun presides over the Ego, the Self, and it’s glorious prizes of achievement and recognition. While both dance across the sky of the cosmos together, how clearly our world favors the Sun over the Moon. We basically ‘go, go, go’ all the time trying to accomplish what? We scrap for replenishing down time,...
Chiron: Pain Without Suffering
Is it possible to experience pain without suffering? As a person who has lived chronic illness for 23 years, and the last 11 of those with chronic pain, yes it is. Case in point: when my Fibromyalgia pain was at its most awful worst, awash with both pleasure and pain chemicals, I fell head over heels in love. Looking back, it seems miraculous because I know now that pain can be the worst form of terrorist who holds your body, soul, life hostage, at gunpoint. Yet it doesn’t have to. Pain –of...
Sagittarius Full Moon: A Life Less Ordinary
“Dwell in possibility.” “Truth is so rare it is delightful to tell it.” - Emily Dickinson Famous Sagittarian (Sun, Mercury, Venus) poet Emily Dickinson may seem an unlikely fit for this adventurous sign. Emily was an ordinary recluse, an eccentric social hermit who wore white clothing and eventually lived her life from one room. You wouldn’t know it from her poetry. Born with the Spirit of the Adventurer, Emily’s inner life was colorful, expansive, rich. She ventured inward, and created her...
Gemini New Moon: Refreshing Power
Every day is a new chance to be healthy. I remember reading this phrase, cut out from a magazine, on a friend’s vision board twenty odd years ago. The “Every day is a new chance to...” felt so enticing to me. What I didn't know even then was that I was about to make a big decision that changed the course of my life - to uproot and move halfway across the country - and that spontaneous decision would happen to spin on the edge of a dime at that same dear friend's urging to claim my happiness,...
Scorpio Full Moon: Vital Bonds
Love always involves a dance between closeness and putting up walls. We love each other, hurt, annoy and frustrate each other. Lately I've been doing the latter, tainting the precious time we have together with emotional jujitsu. I feel irrational when he talks too long and laughs too hard with the wait staff on date night, so I pick a fight goes something like “I’m not enough for you?” though as I am saying this I know I’m being dishonest. Those aren't my true feelings, but an excuse for a...
Taurus New Moon Solar Eclipse: Basic Sanity
During the weeks surrounding Eclipse season, such as the one we are currently in, emotions and energy can be ragged, uneven, which can leave us feeling frazzled, disembodied, ungrounded. There’s dynamism in the air but unsettledness, too -including reactivity and disturbances in our relationships (Libra Lunar Eclipse). As my friend, April, succinctly said in her essay two weeks ago, “This Full Moon Lunar Eclipse comes with a clear message: your relationship style has outlived its usefulness.”...
