You know I love a retrograde. Mercury going retrograde in Virgo feels clean, like it's time to FINALLY check some big unfinished housekeeping task off your list. And afterwards, you're going to feel so light. That's what Mercury retrograde is for: clearing YOU out so you're ready to go forward and communicate better with yourself and other people. Pulling the 10 of Swords for this actually made me smile! What better illustration for a thought being thought to death (to borrow a phrase from Lindsay Mack), for finally wrapping up an old hurt, for reaching the endpoint of suffering about something?
So what kind of internal housekeeping do you need to finish in this retrograde? For a lot of us, it's a bunch of golden oldies from Times People Wronged Me. Usually, these things come up when you're ready to clear and release them once and for all. So remember it's good when old memories of pain pops up! When they do, don't just pop them back down like Whack-a-Mole. Feel all the old emotions you're still hanging onto: anger, resentment, hurt, disappointment. Name them, then step back a little from them. Can you see them as something you experienced, not something you ARE? It's so much easier to let go of past hurt when you don't identify with those feelings. When you're able to say, "I felt angry because someone was unkind to me. I wanted kindness and I was disappointed." And then can you let go of it? Breathe in, think "I felt angry." Breathe out, think "I release it."
This is hard work, but any time something surfaces for you, that's because you are strong enough to handle it. Maybe you didn't have the tools at the time it happened, but you sure do now! You've already done the suffering around that issue, and you can be done with it now. 10 is the end of the line, there's no 11 of Swords where you keep on hurting. What are you gonna do with your fresh new clean space?