EMBRACING THE FALL OF THE TOWER

What happens when life feels like it's falling apart, and every step you take seems to lead into deeper chaos? Today on Intimate Tarot, I share my raw, personal journey through the stormy times of my life, symbolized by the Tower card. Often seen as a sign of catastrophe, the Tower’s energy is actually a powerful catalyst for transformation and growth. We explore its profound symbolism and how it helped me navigate the tumultuous period of returning to work after six years as a stay-at-home mom, amidst the chaos of a divorce and personal heartbreak.

Join me as I recount the intense challenges of stepping into a demanding role as an assistant operations manager for a luxury brand in London, and how the mounting pressures at home and work pushed me to the brink. Through honest storytelling, I reveal the emotional and professional struggles that arose, and how the Tower’s fiery energy aided my path toward resilience and eventual healing. Learn how you too can find strength amid chaos and transform life's upheavals into opportunities for growth.

For visual reference I used The Tower card from: LOTR Tarot and Idle Hands Tarot

The app builder mentioned is: Passion.io

Transcript

Alexandra Virginia: 0:01

Welcome to another episode of Intimate Tarot. I'm your host, alexandra, and today we are going to talk about the Tower. The Tower is one of the most feared cards because of its astrological association with Mars, planet of war and destruction. So when this card appears in a reading, it means something catastrophic is about to happen. Right, not entirely. Mars is the planet of fire, of inspired actions, of strength and stamina. This is card 16. It comes after 15, the devil, and before 17, the star. This means that you need that fiery energy to break free from addiction or a moment of dullness to move towards healing and hope. So if you look at Mars as the planet that can push you towards something better and greater, then you will appreciate the tower as a blessing, as a wake-up call. I have in front of me the tower from the Lord of the Rings tarot, which depicts the dark tower of Sauron in Mordor. Even if you're not super familiar with the story, you might know that the One Ring was forged into the flames of Mount Doom in Mordor and only there it could be destroyed. So this card is embedded with life and death, birth and destruction, and that's why it speaks perfectly to my tower in life, which is my job as assistant operations manager for a luxury brand here in London. This is my first office job back in the UK after six years of being a stay-at-home mom in Poland. I will go into details of my Polish life in other episodes, but just for context, you need to understand that I've lived in Kraków for six years and during the entirety of that period, I was either pregnant or breastfeeding, because I had two children, one in 2017 and the other in 2020. So being a mom was my full time job in Poland, so that's why it meant a lot to me, this new opportunity.

Alexandra Virginia: 1:43

It's September when I start, and I love waking up every day, putting on my tight black dress, wearing makeup, taking the train and get to the office and share time with these amazing women on the team. We create a strong bond immediately. I truly feel like I belong there. I am happy every single day. I don't have a problem until February arrives. January was an extremely loaded month for me. I filed divorce papers, so what before was just a talk, now it's in the process of becoming real. The father of my kids flies abroad for a job and he plans to stay abroad for over two months. I'm now, for the first time, alone with the kids in the city where we just moved four months prior, and I'm dealing with a new family dynamic while having a full time job, my side hustle as a tarot reader and a broken heart because I got left by the guy I was dating in December. More on this story in the future episode, the Devil.

Alexandra Virginia: 2:41

So February starts with a heavy heart and a light head, because my mind is somewhere else. I do suffer from maladaptive cognitive behavior, so when life gets too stressful, I just escape to my imaginary world. I'm safe in my head, but because I'm there all the time, I start making mistakes at work and the relationship with my manager starts cracking. I am her assistant, so it's crucial that she and I work side by side in a flow. But I am overwhelmed by my responsibilities at home and I don't have the mental capacity to cope in a healthy way. And it begins this cycle of me being stressed at home, escaping to my happy place in my head, making mistakes on the job, my manager is unhappy with me, I get worried about being fired, so I stress even more and thus escaping my fantasy land even further. I don't know what to do. I start seeing a therapist and I also speak with my GP and he writes me a letter to give to my employer, recommending that I should work from home at least one day a week to ease my anxiety. But I am in fear of presenting this letter to my manager because she has already threatened my future in the company twice at this point and I don't want her to get even more upset with me.

Alexandra Virginia: 3:55

But the situation in the office is becoming heavy. Her and I share the same desk and she makes no effort to hide the disappointment in me and pointing out every single flaw, even personal. Sometimes it feels like a personal attack rather than professional. So I ask HR to have a meeting where HR, me and the manager are all present so I can give my GP letter and ask to work from home on Fridays. I also explain in front of HR in details that I'm going through some family issues and I'm finding hard to cope with responsibilities at the moment. I state very clearly that my problem is not job-related. My problem is with my personal life and I just need a moment to sort myself out before taking even more.

Alexandra Virginia: 4:44

I do only three Fridays from home and every single Thursday I feel bullied for being home the next day. My manager doesn't hide her discontent with me for not being present in the office, despite Fridays being relatively easy compared to the beginning of the week. Also, my job is computer-based. I manage stock on an Excel spreadsheet, so it doesn't really require me to be physically present in the office. But she doesn't like it. Three Fridays later she asks for another meeting with HR to discuss my development. I go to the meeting and say that I don't feel like my situation has been understood, because I am open and honest.

Alexandra Virginia: 5:23

With a letter from the GP saying I am suffering from severe anxiety and my manager has added more responsibilities on my shoulders, it feels to me like she wants me to crack on my shoulders. It feels to me like she wants me to crack. I also say it doesn't help my anxiety to have monthly meetings with HR, as I was still on probation. If somebody has got anxiety, you would want to make them feel safe, not unsafe. Nothing changes. My manager starts to really be rude to me and I cannot handle the situation anymore.

Alexandra Virginia: 5:53

This is now May. My OCD has spiked almost out of control. I experience panic attacks. My colleagues see me crying and they understand I'm not doing well and I appreciate their support. But they cannot do anything to mitigate the relationship with the manager Because even though we are all sharing the same office space, they are on a different line of work. There is nobody that can help my manager and I, not even HR, apparently. At home I'm always angry and on edge and fearful and worried. I feel a mess emotionally, but I am blessed with so much self-awareness that I know when to take a step back before reaching rock bottom. So I take two weeks of sick leave to unplug, recharge and come back stronger, and the two weeks of bed rest actually help. I do feel a little bit better.

Alexandra Virginia: 6:43

On the 31st of May I have a meeting with HR to discuss my return to work and to my surprise, my manager is not there but the CEO is and he fires me on the spot. Now I'm not doing well. Well, at this very point of the story, my therapist tells me that I have symptoms of depression and severe anxiety. So I take the notice gracefully, thinking it was a good choice for both parts. I do not object it. But a week passes and I realize I am now unemployed and not fit to work, because if I was able to work. I would have kept my job right and I am in charge of two kids. You can imagine my mental state. The tiny progresses I made in those two weeks of bed rest are completely gone. I'm spiraling down into the abyss of my sadness. I literally have no idea what to do.

Alexandra Virginia: 7:34

Then one day, while I'm scrolling my Instagram feed, the passionio ads pops up and I saw myself for the 30 days challenge to build and launch my own app. But halfway through it I realized this works very well for people who wants to sell online courses or training programs. So, instead of competing with the entire web, you have all your knowledge and services on your app. If this is something you are interested in, I'll link in the description box the person to tell you so you can check it out. But for me it's not working. There is no product I want to sell. I only have my life experience that I want to share.

Alexandra Virginia: 8:09

And then I think wouldn't it be great to have a podcast where I can share the highs and lows of my life and the lessons that I've learned during this journey, because there is so much that I went through since 2014, when I first left Italy to move to England and then from there to Poland and now I'm back in the UK and in this past decade I literally went through so much from the aftermath of orthorexia, which led me to alcohol and promiscuity. And then I met my husband. I became a mother and it felt great, but I was also isolated in Poland because I didn't speak the language and I fell into maladaptive cognitive behavior. And then divorce happened and I had a spark of joy coming back to the UK because my sister lives here. But then online dating and breakups and now unemployment and escapism again. So there is a lot.

Alexandra Virginia: 9:04

And for the astrologers listening, I have my North Node, moon and Jupiter in Aries in 12 house. So shadow work is my life. I have to go through all this pain to make something useful out of it. I want to live, learn and teach, which is this podcast. I am taking this opportunity to talk about my life because it's therapeutic for me. Every time I talk about an event out loud and I hear myself, I discover a detail I missed before and I look at it differently. But mostly I want to leave you better than I found you, in the sense that I want you to be enriched in some way. So I add spirituality to gossip.

Alexandra Virginia: 9:40

In here we are not just talking about my ex or my life as a single mom. I want to teach you tarot. Tarot is my vocation, is my passion, is my entire persona, is who I am, not just what I do. So I believe the tower arrived for me to shake me and make me realize that I need to focus on my vocation with more intensity and not simply as a side hustle. I have in front of me the tower from the Idol Hands Tarot. In here you see the top disc of a beautifully erected tower hit by a thunder and fall. This image is common in most decks. You see the top of the tower crumbling, not the root. The tower is getting rid of the superficial part of you, the one that doesn't serve you.

Alexandra Virginia: 10:22

My fantastic job in central London wasn't serving me. It gave me money and I was happy there. I loved the team, I was fine, but it was not my calling to work on Excel. I want to be paid to talk about tarot day and night. I have a vocation for the occult and I am completely in love with astrology and cartomancy and crystal healing, and I love to write, to talk, to connect. I'm almost 40 years old and it is time now for me to walk towards my real self and stop compromising and settling down for jobs that are good enough but not the perfect fit and this can be said for a relationship too, or any situation.

Alexandra Virginia: 11:03

When approaching the tower, you need to remember this card comes after the devil, so we are breaking free from a toxic pattern, a sad situation, a bad relationship. The opportunity comes for us from above (the thunder), because we alone were not able to move past the addiction, the obsession. In The Devil we famously see the man and the woman chained, but the chains are loose; they could move, it's just that they lack the motivation. So when you can't help yourself, that's when God intervenes or whatever higher power you believe in. In the card 16, The Tower, the help comes from above, as a wake-up call, a sudden idea, an opportunity, something that forcefully removes you from 15, The Devil, to put you into 17, The Star. So please do not ever see The Tower as a negative card, because The Tower is a blessing. It's the universe helping you when you couldn't help yourself.

Alexandra Virginia: 12:00

When you get The Tower in a reading, ask yourself what toxic pattern am I leaving? Where am I going next? How can I prepare myself for this change? How can I allow this change to have a positive outcome for me? Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope I changed your mind on this card. It's truly one of my favorite and I would love to know what tower moments have you experienced in life. You can message me, comment under this episode or we can keep in touch on social media. All the links to my accounts are in the description box. Subscribe to the podcast and I'll catch you on the next one. Ciao for now.