I’ve never been the type to blame Mercury Retrograde for everything. Spilled coffee? My clumsy hands. Missed text? Probably just bad service. But there was this one retrograde—let’s call it the Great Cosmic Timeout of late 2024—that snuck up, flipped my life upside down, and somehow ended up being the best thing that could have happened.
It started innocently enough. My phone died mid-road trip (classic retro tech glitch). My carefully planned launch-watching weekend got rained out. Emails went unanswered. Plans canceled left and right. I grumbled, of course. “Thanks a lot, Mercury,” I muttered while staring at a blank calendar that used to be packed.
Then, with nothing better to do, I did something I hadn’t done in years: I pulled out my old journals.
You know the ones—dusty boxes under the bed, filled with dramatic twenty-something handwriting, heartbreak scribbles, and dreams I’d forgotten I ever had. I told myself I was just killing time. But page after page, I kept reading.
And laughing. Oh my stars, the laughing.
There I was, convinced that one bad date was the end of romance forever. There I was, crying over a job I now thank the universe I didn’t get. There I was, writing manifestos about becoming an astronaut (still not off the table, okay?). It was like sitting down with a younger, slightly unhinged version of myself who had no idea how strong she’d become.
But then the tone shifted. I found entries from a season I’d buried deep—quiet grief I never fully processed, self-doubt I’d painted over with busy-ness. Things I thought I’d “moved on” from. Reading them didn’t reopen old wounds; it gently cleaned ones I didn’t realize were still tender.
Mercury, that sneaky little trickster, had cleared my schedule on purpose.
No distractions. No new launches to chase. Just me, a cup of tea, and a pile of old words waiting to be witnessed.
I didn’t plan to heal anything. I was just bored. But slowing down—forced by cosmic traffic jam—let me revisit those pages with kinder eyes. I forgave younger me for not having it all figured out. I thanked her for surviving. I closed some loops I didn’t know were still open.
By the time Mercury stationed direct, I felt… lighter. Not because life magically fixed itself, but because I’d accidentally done some long-overdue soul maintenance. The chaos I’d cursed turned out to be a gift in disguise: permission to pause, reflect, and laugh at how far I’d come.
So yeah, I still don’t blame every stubbed toe on retrograde. But that one time? Mercury wasn’t the villain. He was the friend who canceled my plans, hid my charger, and handed me a flashlight to finally look in the corners I’d been avoiding.
Thanks for the timeout, buddy. I needed it more than I knew.