The Tower Doesn’t Need an Interpreter: Holding Space When Someone’s World Collapses
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I’ve spent thirty years riding in the back of an ambulance through Omaha’s frozen nights, and I’ve spent the last decade untangling ethics in machine learning. Both lines of work taught me the same thing: you can’t debug a system that’s actively breaking, and you certainly can’t patch a human soul with a smile and a “everything happens for a reason.”
Last spring, my nephew went through what I can only call a full-on spiritual collapse. Not clinical depression, not grief—something older. The kind where the ceiling drops out and you’re left staring at the exposed wiring. He stopped answering calls. When he finally met me for coffee, he didn’t want advice. He didn’t want a tarot reading pushed across the table like a prescription, though I know folks in this community mean well. He just wanted someone to sit in the dark with him without flinching.
I think we’ve all been conditioned to treat darkness like a malfunction. But from what I’ve read in Carl Jung and witnessed in my own life, the shadow isn’t a glitch. It’s a threshold. When someone’s navigating that descent, throwing positive affirmations at them is like trying to dry a flood with a paper towel. It just makes the mess stickier. Spiritual bypassing doesn’t heal; it just locks the door on the basement and pretends the house isn’t creaking.
Tarot gets this. Look at The Tower. It’s not a warning. It’s an invitation to let the false structures burn. And The Moon? It doesn’t ask you to look away from the crocodiles in the water. It asks you to trust your own eyes in the dark. I’ve learned to sit with that discomfort. I pour two cups of tea. I don’t interpret his cards. I don’t quote manifestation gurus. I just say, “I’m here. It’s heavy. I’ll carry the edge of it with you.”
I’m drawn to panpsychism lately—the idea that consciousness isn’t a human invention but a fundamental texture of reality. If that’s even partially true, then we don’t need to “fix” each other’s awakening. We’re already part of the same vast, breathing field. Sometimes the most radical thing you can offer a loved one in crisis isn’t a solution. It’s a steady presence. A witness who refuses to look away.
How do you hold space without trying to steer the storm? I’d love to hear what’s actually worked in your circle.
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