I had another post planned and scheduled for this New Moon. Then I went back and read some of the older posts on my original blog and got sidetracked. One in particular grabbed me. It was from ten years ago, yet the emotions it brought up as I read it felt as raw today as they had then.
I’d written that post the day before our wedding anniversary and a couple of days before we flew out for a holiday in Bali. Hubby had started long service leave to step back from the nastiness at his workplace, and I was considering resigning from my extremely high-pressure job. A lot of other stuff was going on in the background – it’s fair to say every single part of our lives had imploded. All our structures, the ones we’d taken for granted, were wobbling, and we were both stressed to the max.
Here’s what I wrote then:
It’s our wedding anniversary tomorrow. Twenty-two years ago, on a sunny autumn day in Canberra, we did the “I do” thing. Twenty-seven years ago this month, we started dating.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing- no long-term relationship is. I think sometimes that we’re better together. In any case, it’s our anniversary tomorrow and on Sunday, we fly to Bali for some time away together.
Somehow it seems fitting that there’s a New Moon on our anniversary this year. You see, today hubby effectively finishes his time at the company he first joined straight out of school, 36 years ago. Yep, you heard me right. Thirty-six years. Let’s just say it hasn’t been stress-free getting to this point.
There’s a lot of other stuff going on in the background too – one of which could lead us to sell our house. Although we’ve talked about downsizing over the last 12 months, we haven’t been ready to make the jump. It seems, though, as if the Universe has other plans, and circumstances are bringing this decision closer.
It got me thinking about what I’d need to do to downsize… and that made my head hurt. We have way too much stuff – so much more than we need.
First there are my cookbooks, my reading books, and my travel books. Then there’s the china – so much china…so much of it never used. Some were given to me by my grandmother; the rest were purchased during an eBay whirlwind. They’re perfect for afternoon tea parties with cupcakes and scones that I’ll never have.
While it’s lovely, we don’t need most of this. But my husband says:
‘You never know when you’ll need it’
‘It all has sentimental value.’
The thing is, I don’t need to dust these things to remember the feelings that prompted me to buy them or hold on to them. On the contrary, I never look at them, and hubby doesn’t give them a thought until I suggest de-cluttering.
So, I’ll be gradually letting of much of it- gently and thoughtfully.
My point? Most of us have too much of something. For a rainy day. In case we run out. In case we don’t have enough… or are enough.
Sometimes it’s the very act of holding onto something, gathering up something, or purchasing something that makes us feel safe, secure, and well-fed.
We can also be attached to feelings, to a hair-style, to the past. We can be attached to the way things are, the way things were, or the way that we think they might be. We can be attached to a dream, a hope, or a vision. We can be attached to a lost love, the idea of love, the fantasy of a love. Some of us can even be attached to feeling sad, negative and fearful.
Not everything that we hang onto is, by definition, good. How many people do you know of in unhealthy relationships for whatever reason? How many people do you know who will listen to good advice and then pop their own roadblocks or excuses up? I’ll be the first to put my own hand up for that one – on several different levels.
Letting go of what we are attached to can be scary, as it removes an excuse to move forward. Holding onto that clutter or baggage can weigh you down, physically or symbolically. It’s there in the friend who insists on closure from her ex before saying yes to the guy standing in front of her. It’s there when we hold onto a job long past its use-by date because the current one, for all its faults, makes us feel safe. It’s there when we hold onto a pair of jeans that are two (or is it three?) sizes too small because throwing them out feels almost like abandoning the idea that we’ll ever fit into them again.
At the end of the day, those jeans really are just jeans (no pun or inadvertent advertising intended) and getting rid of them is not an admission of failure. It’s acknowledging that they are taking up valuable room in your wardrobe that can be filled with something fabulous and new when you do drop those two sizes.
It’s the knowing when to let go, when enough is enough, when less is more, that’s the hard bit. Yet, in letting go, there is the peace of just being. At that point, we now know we are enough, we are self-reliant, our satisfaction coming from inside us rather than from the “things” and habits we have gathered around us…and that’s what this Taurus New Moon is all about.
There was a lot I couldn’t say in that post.
I couldn’t say that he was being bullied out of a job because, at 54, he was considered too old and no longer the right fit for the demographic. I couldn’t say the same thing had happened to every man he’d started with — all of a similar age and all on a superannuation plan that had since been scrapped, but which guaranteed a return if they could just make it to 55. I couldn’t tell you he took long service leave at half pay simply to get there. And I definitely couldn’t tell you how furious his employer was that we’d found a loophole.
Nor could I say that the highly stressful job I had was an outsourced role for the same bank that was bullying him. And I couldn’t admit how terrified I was of losing him — physically or mentally — to the pressure they were putting him under.
Those couple of weeks in Bali helped. Especially the comment from a driver who laughed at westerners like us who work themselves into exhaustion to pay for holidays designed to help them recover from work… only to go home and work just as hard to pay for the next escape.
Seven weeks later, we had a week in Mooloolaba between me finishing one job and starting another. The idea that had begun to germinate in Bali started to grow. Was it really so crazy? Could we actually pack up our lives and move to the Sunshine Coast? We’d always said we would… someday. Had someday arrived?
What were we staying in Sydney for? I liked my job. I loved our friends, our family, and our house. But I didn’t like my life. In hindsight, it barely felt like one: three hours a day commuting, writing every night and all weekend, squeezing friends and family into tiny rationed gaps of time, no room for fun, rest, or exercise. I was a heart attack waiting to happen.
What were we doing it for? What if, instead of struggling to pay the mortgage and being permanently exhausted, we stepped off the treadmill and actually lived? Was that even possible?
Yes. But not in Sydney.
Reading that post from ten years ago brought all of it flooding back.
We did sell. We did move. We did make the sea change. Yes, it was a massive financial risk, but in hindsight it wasn’t just the best option — it was the only one. If we’d stayed in Sydney and tried to hang on, we might have lost everything.
It was a leap, but one that now feels inevitable for a plan begun under a Taurus New Moon.
The plan took almost twelve months to come together, but once we committed, we plotted it carefully and stuck to our guns — stubbornly, and despite plenty of opposition and guilt.
It required letting go of so much, both physically and emotionally. Unusually for me, I was the one who struggled most with that part.
The whole experience also taught us the value of having a buffer — a very Taurean concept. We had a Plan B for a rainy day, a Plan C for Plan B, and a Plan D for Plan C. Thank goodness we did, because financially things became very tight for a while, and it was that buffer that carried us through.
The important thing, though, was that going back was never Plan B. Every backup plan we made was about supporting Plan A, not escaping from it the moment things became difficult.
At first, I worried endlessly about money — about going from two corporate salaries to one. I worried there wouldn’t be enough, that we weren’t enough, that we didn’t have enough. In the end, none of that mattered nearly as much as I thought it would.
Ten years later, I can say without hesitation that letting go and making the move was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. He’s healthier than he’s been in decades, and while I’m still stubbornly hanging onto my weight, I’m healthier too — at least on the inside.
Emotionally, we’re both worlds away from where we were back then. I haven’t completely let go of everything that was weighing me down, but I’ve slowed down. I’m more grounded. I appreciate life, nature, and all the things I never had time for when I was busy being busy… and busy drowning.
Anyways, enough about me. Somewhere in your chart is Taurus, and wherever 25° Taurus 58’ falls is where you may need to let go of something weighing you down or holding you back. It’s where you’re asked to recognise what’s enough — or create the buffer you need if it genuinely isn’t. It’s where you can plant seeds for future abundance, and not just financially.
Make a plan. Stick to it. Have a backup — but make sure that backup supports the dream rather than becoming an escape clause for when things get hard.
And remember: Taurus is about the long haul, not quick wins.
Taurus is in my Ascendant at 26 degree