When the Universe Decides You Need a Shake-Up

Despite my best efforts to live stress-free and avoid toxicity at all costs, the Universe has decided this simply

will.

not.

do.

Apparently, life’s been a bit too calm lately, and I’ve been served what us Tarot readers call a Tower moment, complete with lightning bolt and the sensation of being in freefall towards the rubble covered ground.

I don’t normally worry too much when I pull a Tower card. It usually brings the Death card out with it, which I also don’t fear. Recently, it’s been accompanied by the Wheel of Fortune, and I feel reassured that once the Tower moment has been and gone, like every other time I’ve experienced a descent into chaos and the dark night of the Soul, I will come out the other side in a better place.

Trouble is, even if this moment is the start of something good coming into my life, I’m really not enjoying this shake-up.

It’s anxiety-inducing, stressful, and honestly? I’m angry. I’m scared. I’m sad.
But above all else, I’m exhausted.

Every tarot reading lately? Death card. Tower card. Wheel of Fortune. Over and over.

I’m not really in the mood for this change, even though between you and me, I think I’m overdue a kick in the pants.

I’ve been saying I want change for ages, but never really doing anything about it.

Life has been comfy and I’ve become complacent about things I have no right to be complacent about.

Like my health, for example.

I’ve been bombarded by a slew of horrific symptoms - the customary hot flushes, insomnia, mood swings etc. But also some really unexpected ones like cold flashes, phantom insects crawling on my skin, and memory loss so bad I thought I had dementia.

Terrifying.

Now where was I? Oh yes, the forgetfulness… 😜

After struggling for ages, I finally sought help.

Back in October when I finally realised that I wasn’t going round the bend, I was actually in perimenopause, I decided to save up and pay to see a private specialist to get some support and advice. (My local doctor and hospital were totally useless.)

Everything went well and by the end of the appointment I was crying with relief. I felt seen, heard and understood. The nurse gave me practical solutions and reassured me I could feel good and get rid of the brain fog.

All I needed before I got my prescription was a quick health check.

And that’s when it all went tits up.

It was dangerously high. I was apparently in a hypertensive crisis.

It was so bad that she wouldn’t let me wait to see my local doctor. Even worse, no treatment for menopause until she gets confirmation that my blood pressure is under control. I was gutted.

Off I went to the nearest emergency room for immediate treatment.

After 8 hours of waiting in the ER, an injection into each bum cheek that stung like a bitch for ages, and a load of meds, my blood pressure came down just enough for them to wash their hands of me and hope my GP could take over fixing it.

I had to see my doctor who arranged for a blood test before he went on holiday, leaving the practice nurse to break the news to me a few days later that not only was my blood pressure stupidly high, but I also have Type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol.

I was shocked. I cried as hard as my daughter did the day she lost her Minnie Mouse doll. (She was in the Post Office window for a whole weekend and we had to visit her every day until Monday morning when we could rescue her.)

I felt fear, overwhelm, and a sinking feeling in my gut that things were serious.

‘Tranquila’, the nurse said. ‘With a new diet, an exercise plan and some meds, you’ll be good as new in 4 months!’

I didn’t believe her.

To add insult to injury, investigations into some other problems I was having with my rebellious 54 year old uterus revealed that I have ‘ugly cells’ down there.

I felt like I’d been hit by a monster truck. I was terrified I’d end up depressed. Again.

Depression is common in people diagnosed with diabetes.

It’s not just about being told you can’t binge chocolate digestives ever again, either.

When I visited support groups online they put the fear of god into me with talk of foot amputation, risk of going blind, kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes if you so much as sniff a bit of sugar.

I’m not kidding, I felt like my life was over. Can you imagine life without Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream?

I’ve spent the last 8 months working hard on changing my diet, which I’d considered pretty good up to now. (Boy, how wrong I was!)

Walking is part of my daily routine. My 14 year old dogs ramble alongside me and it feels more like a pleasure when I thought exercise would feel like a chore.

I’ve shed 56 pounds in weight so far, which is amazing.

The side effects are: -

Nightly heartburn - gone.

Chronic back pain - gone.

Being unable to breathe when walking more than 10 steps - gone.

Snoring like a foghorn - gone. (My husband is eternally grateful for that one.)

Wearing clothes designed to cover up my body, rather than cos I like them - gone!

I do feel better. But the health system has been slow about treating the biopsied “ugly cells” in my uterus, which adds another layer of anxiety I can’t quite shake.

We got notice from our landlady that we need to leave our home of 10 years.

We weren’t too worried at first, we’d been thinking of moving anyway.
But then we started looking.

The housing crisis in Spain is real!

Rents have more than tripled.

The competition for every house is fierce.

Many of the houses we see advertised have someone reserve it before we even view them.

Trouble is, we’re not your average family…

We’re trying desperately to move out, but we aren’t your ordinary family looking for a simple apartment. I wish we were.

I have 5 kids living at home with me, aged between 15 and 33. All are neurodivergent, some need more support than others. None are in a rush to leave home. Splitting the family would cause them serious issues.

We also have:-

🐴 2 ponies,

🦆 4 ducks,

🐶 3 elderly dogs

🐱 and to complicate matters even further, we’ve become accidental custodians of a colony of 24 feral cats that rely on us for everything. I can’t leave them behind to starve.

It doesn’t leave us with many options.

Finding a place to accommodate us all is like discovering hens teeth.

My kids and I, being neurodivergent, are all self employed. Self employment in Spain is very expensive (Tax 21%, VAT 21%, Social Security payments are around 300 euros a month regardless of your income) so we only just make enough money to pay rent and bills between us. We can’t make savings, there just isn’t the spare cash.

Self employment also rules us out of renting most properties.

Landlords don’t like it. They prefer a nice, regular pay check. It’s fair enough, we’d like that, too, but none of us, apart from my husband, are very employable.

Plus they want us to earn 3 times the rental price of the house we want. To rent a place that would fit us all in would cost at least 1600 euros a month (sounds cheap if you’re from the US or UK), requiring us to earn 4800 euros a month NET.

Sounds easy if you say it quick!

The best option would be to buy a new place but that comes with it’s own set of obstacles.

This is on top of his self employment. He’s currently working an average of 77 hours a week to try to get us out of this mess.

I barely see him and we have absolutely zero work/life balance right now, which is tough on both of us.

Even after all this, we aren’t eligible to apply for a mortgage til the end of June 2025. We don’t have much of a deposit either, so we’re all doubling our work load to raise funds.

He had narcissistic personality disorder and he abused me in every way you can imagine throughout my childhood for sport.

So my first emotion? Relief.

But even in death, he’s found ways to fuck up people’s lives.

His “golden child” daughters, my half-sisters, are also wreaking havoc, withholding information, excluding people from his funeral, even stealing money.

I haven’t had contact with either of them for a few years, not since they pulled some unspeakably cruel stunts on my brother - who became the designated ‘black sheep’ of the family after I left home. IYKYK.

But then about four years ago, my stepfather seemed to have some sort of regression back to his old ways. He began a campaign of abuse against her my younger brother and his 3 year old son, (both of whom were living with them) before leaving my mother and buggering off back to the UK.

He did it as a ‘joke’ in the hopes that she would see just how much she needed him (and his money) and would beg him to return.

The joke was on him, cos she realised just how miserable she’d been for the last 40 years and had no intention of asking him to come back.

I’ll talk about it more in coming posts cos I’m in danger of this turning into a novel at this point.

Anyway, my mother is trying to deal with the aftermath.

I’m trying to help her, but my sisters are being obstructive and outright spiteful, excluding people that they judge ‘didn’t love him enough’ from his funeral, and gleefully refusing to send my Mum his death certificate so she can deal with her house and any insurance policies.

He’d apparently called my Mom to tell her he needed to cut this daughter out of their will because she’d stolen all his money. He wanted to come out to Spain to change the will but in the week after he found out, he died of a stroke, so he didn’t manage to get it done.

Then said sister, who didn’t know we knew about what she’d done, had the cheek to ask my mother for the money to pay the funeral home cos she didn’t have enough.

Unbelievable.

My heart is breaking for the people suffering genocide right now in Myanmar, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan, China and the Central African Republic. The war in Ukraine continues.

People are dying because two fucking billionaires decided to cut USAID to the poorest people on the planet, whilst they enjoy tax breaks and play with rockets and golf clubs.

Losing their jobs, their rights, their security, their lifesaving food stamps and medical assistance.

Trans people are the enemy apparently. And when they aren’t causing the world to end, then its Black people, brown people, the Venezuelans, women who have the fucking nerve to challenge these idiots in charge, and of course the terrorist organisation known as Antifa - whoever the fuck they are supposed to be…..

People are being assaulted and disappeared by ICE. I don’t even know where to start with what happened to over a thousand people incarcerated in ‘Aligator Alcatraz’. I mean WTAF? They just disappeared. Where to?

There are some other things going on that I won’t go into this post, but I’ll probably share more in the coming weeks, when I’m not about to explode with grief, frustration and RAGE!

Everywhere I look it feels like shit is getting out of control.

You wouldn’t believe it but since I started writing this post yesterday, our car refused to start - new starter motor required,

and then I got the message that my favourite Uncle is seriously ill. (Update: He has since passed away and I’m so sad.)

I don’t know how much more I can take.

There’s more, so much more.

Before this chaos, I started a new therapy business.

I’m an ecotherapist, energy healer and Gaian Witch with a special interest in mental health and wellness, and I was creating a virtual retreat for people struggling with depression.

As you’ve probably gathered, I’m a neurodivergent abuse survivor and I’ve been stalked by the ‘black dog’ since I was a child.

I’ve got certifications up the wazoo and I want to help other people to ‘ditch the black dog’ by sharing what I’ve learned.

I want to create the kind of space I needed during the worst depression I ever had in my life. They were dark times and I desperately wanted to be unalive.

So I was in the middle of building something a bit different - a safe, supportive space where healing goes beyond taking meds and getting an hour of therapy a week. (If you’re lucky!)

And then I woke up one night feeling some serious imposter syndrome and thinking:

“What if I’ve forgotten what depression feels like? How can I talk about this when I haven’t had an episode for almost ten years?”

Be careful what you put out into the Universe…

All this chaos being thrown at me feels like it was sent to test me, an opportunity to prove to myself that my methods work when it comes to keeping the black dog at bay.

But does it have to feel so extreme?

I may well have had the fleeting thought that the Universe sent me this shit-show just to remind me what depression feels like…but that doesn’t mean I believe it’s true.

What I do believe is this:

This too shall pass.

I’ve been through hard times before.
I’ve hit rock bottom before.

HARD.

And every time, I’ve picked myself back up, dusted myself down and rebuilt my life.

After a trip to what has felt like the fires of hell in the past, I’ve managed to start new businesses, meet my Soulmate, and moved to Spain in search of a better life.

Rock bottom, awful as it is, can be a strangely solid place to start again, on your own terms, in your own way. Even though it might feel painful at the time, you can find yourself free to take advantage of new opportunities, if you’re open to them.

I refuse to be beaten down by it all.

Over the last decade, I’ve built an amazing toolkit to help me keep the Black Dog of Depression at bay, and believe me, I’m making good use of it right now!

And if sharing how I’m coping with this mess - this chaos, grief, trauma, and pain, helps even one person find a way to cope with their own shit show and climb out of depression, then it’s worth me writing it down on digital paper.

So, if you’re neck deep in your own Tower moment…I see you.
It’s horrible.
It’s unfair.

Most of all, it’s so damn exhausting.

These tower moments are often where the magick begins!

We find that we can be rid of things that cause us pain and stress, but we never quite got around to fixing until we were forced.

And that can leave space for new opportunities.

So keep the faith that this too shall pass and look forward to what you can create from the rubble.

With love and magick always,

Maria xx