The Tower Moment: When Everything Crumbles (And Why That's Good)

Welcome to Astronaut Life. My name is Joy D. Let's get into it. Today I just want to rant about tower moments. I've had 6— I've counted them up— 6 Tower moments in my life, and from divorces, breakups, job loss. To me, the Tower moment in the shadow— I mean, it is kind of a shadow card, let's be honest. After it comes the Star. So keep that in mind. Right now we're talking about the Tower, and it's a rock bottom. It's rock bottom. It can manifest in different ways. The way it mainly shows up for me is literally like a bonk on the head, just a bonk on the head from the universe. Um, I've had it happen in meditation several times. Other times I've had— I'll see it. There was a time in my past when I was married to a man who had some issues. He actually was a good guy, he just had a lot of issues, and one of them was anger. And he would hit me. And I'm not saying that for sympathy or whatever, I'm just saying I stayed, and fuck, did I judge myself for that. I knew I shouldn't stay. I knew I shouldn't have done it. I knew I shouldn't even got married to him. But the embarrassment, the shame, the self-loathing was so immense it kept me there. And that Tower moment happened when I watched an episode of Snapped. So I don't— I'm an American, that's on cable TV. And, um, I saw the cycle I was living mirrored in that program. Of course, due to the show's name, the the dude snapped and killed his wife and family, right? I didn't have kids at the time, but it was just me, and I was like, um, I haven't ended up in a hospital yet. I am not dead. If we had a gun, I'm sure I would have been dead by now, but we didn't own a gun, and so I'm here. But it was the wake-up call I needed. It was one of those moments when You, you can't unsee it, you know. The, the glamour we put over things in our lives to digest it, right? We sugarcoat it for ourselves, these lies, so we can stay in there thinking it's safe, but we're miserable. We're miserable. You don't have to be in an abusive relationship to be miserable. Right? Yeah, these moments are real. We're seeing them in our own lives. They're happening to myself right now. I'm going through— I just filed for divorce. As you can see, I have toys around me. I have a 2-year-old daughter, right? I was a stay-at-home mom. It's not like I have a job I can just keep going to, right? I have Astronaut of Life. I've had to totally rework it, and it's been a beautiful, beautiful journey. I'm gonna be all over the place. I'll post in this video my Substack article where it's more, you know, organized, but in this video We enjoy the mess on this channel, in my life. It's messy. I'm gonna jump around. I don't have any makeup on. I'm in my fucking pajamas, right? Like, this is real, dude. Now I don't even know what I was gonna say, but that's okay, right? Um, oh yeah, like right now I'm going through it. Total Tower moment. I had a Christ consciousness, Christ conscious awakening back in April. And that was the biggest probably knock on the head I've ever received from the universe. And I saw things so clearly. Like I said, the glamour was off. I saw I was miserable in my marriage. I was. I was lying to myself about it, just hoping things would get better, when really I was just burnt out from trying. Yeah, you know, for me they do tend to happen a lot around relationships, but I've also had it with jobs. That's what happened, and part of what happened in, uh, Colombia when I used to live in Colombia. If you search my really old videos, I'm still living there in those, but, um I was teaching English as a second language to kids online in China, and then the Chinese government made a law that said no more foreign teachers, only Chinese teachers are allowed to teach children. I lost my job. That job paid for everything for my family at the time, me and that ex-husband. And that's what even brought about Astronaut of Life, right? Was this job loss. I had to— I was like, well, do I want to keep teaching? I've taught in a school, I've taught online. It actually drains me. I'm not energized from that work. Am I good at it? Yeah. I don't really enjoy it. I enjoy the children. But not teaching. So I had to reevaluate. I don't even know if I counted that in my 6 Tower moments, but I'm just saying I've experienced it in multiple facets in life. Sometimes the whole reality crumbles, right? I go from stay-at-home mom to single mom. Now I have to work. I have to start using my voice. Right? It— these moments in life, these Tower moments, these rock bottoms, they're blessings in disguise, you guys. Blessings in disguise. Yeah, they're fucking hard. You gotta deal with all the emotions, the grief, you know, the sadness, the embarrassment, the doubt. Oh, it's so layered, right? So layered. And if you you haven't done inner work, oh shit, it's hard. It's really hard. I've done these moments without doing the inner work back in my past, in my 20s and 30s, and now my 30s or 40s, I've started to do this inner work. And you know what? It's still hard, but you can go about it different, right? I give myself the space. I know my nervous system needs time to adjust to things. You can feel it, right? You feel it. When I let myself adjust and gave myself the space using that feminine energy, right, I was processing, I was doing this inner work, I was grieving. I didn't know if I needed to get a 9 to 5. I didn't know if I was gonna scratch Astronaut of Life or keep it going? I know I'm a single mom now. I want to create this life for myself where I go back to being a nomad but also a mom. Yeah, it's doable. Where there's a will, there's a way, people, right? Taking action's never been hard for me. Actually, not taking action is harder for me. And so I had to relax into that and just be like, I'm just gonna put blinders on for myself. I know things are bad, I'm not in denial, right? I just know I need to create this container for myself to do this. I'm so fucking glad I did, uh, because after like 2 months, the clarity came. It's here. I knew exactly where I wanted to take Astronaut of Life. I had already been writing on Substack. Writing is so huge for me, huge. That's a whole other fucking video. But I was like, wow, I can use my voice in this way, right? You can listen to my podcast with Sarah, The 7th House Podcast, where we talk about our North Nodes in Gemini and 7th house. It's all about using my freaking voice. That's why I'm making this video. I'm not just writing. Both are using my voice, right? But I need to speak it out. And like I said, it's messy. I'm all over the place. I'm in my pajamas on my bed. I don't have a desk, right? I'm using my phone. You can see my kids' toys behind me. I don't have some pretty-ass set, right? We can get in our head and tell ourselves that It needs to look a certain way, right? Well, I'm not gonna make a video unless my makeup's done and my hair is all fucking perfect and I have this big ring light and I have the thousand dollar camera, right? Fuck that shit. I'm on an iPhone 16 Pro and that's a pretty damn good camera. Is it the best? Probably not. Would I love an amazing setup? Yeah. But I don't have it right now, and I don't have any money. I really don't have any money. So it's like, this is what it is. I'm using what I got. I'm not slouching in the dumps with it. When I woke up this morning, I worked on my budget, and I realized just how broke I am. It was like, oh, I was feeling it, man. I was feeling it. I was like, oh shit, today is a Sunday that I'm recording this on, and Saturday, yesterday, my ex has my daughter, so I'm— my weekends are free for myself, right? And I probably worked 10 hours straight writing on subs, writing 2 weeks worth of Substack articles, 6 articles. Redoing the copy on my website, reforming offerings and services, using my voice in that way, right? Using my fire. And today, yeah, I woke up, I was like, oh, the budget's on the to-do list, let's just do it. Oh, I have no money. I'm actually worse than I said. It's actually worse than I thought. Oh man, I spent all this energy yesterday putting this into it, and my Is this the right path, right? Doubt was like trying to creep in a little bit, and I was like, you know what, this, this is perfect. I need to write an article. It's on my list to write an article about Tower moments and my service around it, so I'm just gonna do it. I'm gonna use this fear and doubt and alchemize it into creativity. And put it out there. And you know what? It is fucking lit. I love that fucking article. It took all that energy, all that pain, right? That confusion, that overwhelmed feeling. It really did alchemize it. And now I'm still right in that energy, but now I'm excited. So I was like, let's capture this in a video. Because I have the excitement, I have the want-to, so I'm gonna use it. I'm not gonna sit on my ass and twiddle my thumbs, right? I have a lot of friends who are going through divorces as well or need to make a change in their life. And if you're not used to these types of events, like my life apparently has played out, um, I could totally see how it's, it's hard. I mean, I moved through my first Tower event at 24, 25, so it's pretty young actually. Some people have it even in childhood, right? Um, for me, I was early 20s and you build on it. It's a skill you build on it. But if you're finding yourself— like, I'm 41— if you're middle-aged now and you've— this is your first Tower moment and you're new to doing inner work, oh babe, that's rough. Do you have what it takes? Hell yeah, you do. We all do. You are not the exception. No offense, you're not the exception. You have what it takes. You really do. We all have a flame inside. I know, a big rose, but on my shirt. But we all have a flame inside of us. Now, I've had that flame when I was depressed years ago be so small you could barely— it barely exuded any light in the darkness. Barely even knew if it was— it might have just been smoke Right? We've all seen a fire that's dying. That's what it looked like. And I was like, well, I don't want to die, right? I am gonna get help because it's unbearable in my head. I don't know how I'll pay for a therapist, right? I'm in America, it's not free, but I'll try to make it work. And I did, and it changed my life. Because that was the right action at that time. I'm trying to think if there's anything else I want to say. It's— you do have what it takes, and I know it's scary. Scary doesn't mean bad. You gotta separate those. You don't have to have a plan. You really don't. Your plan could be one step, right? Really, for me, it comes down to how much do you love yourself? Do you love yourself enough to get out of that situation, to let things reorient? And change in your reality, right? Like I said, a lot of mine were around relationships. Do I want to stay in this relationship where I'm either being abused, neglected, or unheard, unseen, right? Taken for granted? Is this how I want to stay and just hope it gets better while I'm secretly miserable and putting a smile on my face and pretending? When my words are harsh and lashing out because of the pain inside, that's— is this a cycle I actually want to keep living in and feeding? No, right? But what am I going to do about it? What am I going to do? I don't have a plan. I don't have a car. I don't have blah blah blah. What about my cat? What about my dog? What about my kid, right? I get it. Nothing about it is easy. I'm sorry. It's not easy, but it's needed. Because you're worth it. And this is not like— I'm, I'm not trying to like be a fucking, uh, hype man here. I'm trying to be real. I want to be real with you, okay? You deserve it. You have the fire and the strength to navigate this. It is okay to not have a plan. It is okay to be fucking messy about it. You don't have to apologize. You truly don't. Maybe there's some, you know, in some areas, yeah, you might need to do that if when you're reflecting and you see that, right? But, um, as far as moving through and alchemizing this phase in life to where you want to go right? I love traveling so much. It is nurturing for my soul to do that. So when I got divorced, I put in my parenting plan space for me to do that, right? There's ways to make it work. Do I have the money to travel right now? No, not yet. That does— I'm planning for future me. I'm laying the groundwork and the scaffolding for where I want to go. I'm telling the universe, hey, I'm making room for this because this is my desire, right? And if that's— if that's still the wrong path, I expect to get bonked again by the universe. But I'm doing that inner work now, listening before I take action, and it's telling me, okay, this is what feels aligned for me in this moment to create that space so I can travel. I don't know where I'm gonna go, but now I'll have the space to have a few months without my daughter, right? I've already lived it when I did my around-the-world trip, my Eat, Pray, Love shadow work trip, and, um, which I'm now in debt from. That's a whole other thing, right? Judge me if you want, I don't fucking care. I did, I did what my soul needed, and I know there's a way out of all this. Now, this is all individualized. We're also going through it collectively. I don't watch the news, and I don't even need to watch the news to know it's a dumpster fire, right? This is a— especially for the United States, it is a Tower moment. But remember what I said in the beginning? After the Tower moments come the Star card. I'm not a tarot person, ironically. I watch it when I feel that the urge to— not the urge, but the nudge, right? But we don't even need to know the freaking definition of the Star card though. I'm sure maybe somebody will put it in the comments for us, wink wink. But I can't wink. But, um, you don't even need to know. It's a fucking star. Stars are happy. Stars are brilliant. They're light. Right, Towers. Tower's destruction. It's falling, it's collapsing. Ah, it's ruined. Then you have a fucking Star. We go from the bottom to the top, right? This is the alchemy. That's the alchemy. Oh my, yeah, yeah. All right, just so you know, I have no idea how long I've been going. I don't think it's been that long. I'm gonna sum this up though. One of my services is using my fire to put, put it under your ass so you can move out of these situations. I'm fucking mastered it. Taking action is secondhand for me. Figuring out logistics, secondhand for me. I'm bragging. Yeah, I am. I'm good at it. I know what I'm doing. I'm navigating it in the moment, right? You're allowed— like I said, you're allowed to be messy with it. And I'm a Virgo, all about fucking perfection. And even I'm saying it needs to— it's gonna be messy. You just have to accept that. There's no clean-cut way to do it, right? I don't know why in our fucking society Every, like, half, half or more marriages into divorce. People are losing jobs, right? It's messy. But yeah, we want to keep, keep up with the Joneses, keep, keep the masks on. But that's another thing pointing collectively, they're starting to come off, off politicians, off the celebrities, and off ourselves, right? It's, it's a global phenomenon. At least in Western culture, it's fucking needed because it's becoming more authentic. We're becoming more authentic. And with all this stuff happening, it's showing the— it's showing the real, what's underneath. We don't really like it, do we? But, uh, it's the truth. The truth isn't always an easy pill to swallow. I'm sure I'll put copy in the bottom of this video that has the links and everything explaining my Tower Moment Guide. But, um, you can book one session where we just talk. It's really just talking. I want to hear your story. I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna take notes, and I'm gonna help you get a few steps. You don't need the whole plan, you just need a few steps to get you— get the ball rolling. If you're like, I don't know if one session will do it, one hour doesn't seem like enough to change my whole life, I get that. You know you better than me, right? I don't even know who you are right now. So I do offer plans where you can do multiple sessions, right? And get a little discount because I know we need that mentorship in a way. I'm not here to be above you, I'm here to be beside you, right? I really don't want to be put on a pedestal right now. I'm literally in the same boat. I just know how to— I know where the oars are and I know how to row because I've done it before. I think that's it. That's it. I'm gonna end this video and go make another one on some other random topic. But thank you for watching. Please like and subscribe. Go check out this offer if, if you know you need it. Take that freaking action step. It's really not that expensive. One, you're helping me, uh, And just know I love you. I have love. This fire is love. That's a whole other video. I'm gonna shut up. I'm gonna end here. Bye.