Feeling Lost After Loss
Have you ever done everything right and still felt completely lost? Have you ever looked at your life on paper and seen something that should feel good and wonder why it felt so hollow? Or maybe you've been trying to rebuild after a hard season, doing all the things, staying busy, pushing forward, keeping it together, but something inside keeps whispering that you're heading in the wrong direction, that the life you're rebuilding doesn't actually feel like you.
If any of that sounds familiar, today's episode is for you. Because here's what I've learned, both from my own experience walking through the hardest seasons of my life and from walking alongside women who are doing the same work. You can survive a setback and still lose yourself in the aftermath, , and the reason that happens is almost always the same. When life falls apart, most of us stop listening to what actually matters to us and start rebuilding from fear instead. Today, we're going to talk about how to change that.
Welcome and Free Resource
Welcome to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast. I'm your host, Laura Mangum Broome. If you've been knocked down by life--grief, illness, loss, divorce, or unexpected change, you're in the right place.
Here, we turn setbacks into stepping stones because healing, growth, and joy are not out of reach. They're available to you even in this season.
Before we dive in, if you ever find yourself caught in loops of worry, self-doubt, or mental exhaustion after a hard season, I created a free resource called Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day. These are the same strategies I use when life starts to feel overwhelming. You'll find the link in the show notes.
Tree Roots Metaphor
I want to start today with an image I come back to often. Picture a tree after a violent storm, branches scattered across the yard, leaves stripped, the trunk cracked and leaning. From the outside, it looks like a total loss, like the storm won. But underground, something different is happening.
The root system, deep, tangled, and stubborn, is completely intact, not struggling, not dying, intact. The tree isn't finished. It's just waiting for the right conditions to grow again. That image stopped me the first time I really let it sink in because I recognized it.
My Story of Upheaval
I know what it feels like to look like a total loss from the outside, to have people look at your life after the diagnosis, after the loss, after the marriage ended, and see wreckage, and to feel, on most days, like that's exactly what you were.
When I was in the middle of the hardest stretch of my life, navigating breast cancer, losing my teenage son, losing my father, going through a heart transplant, and then an unexpected divorce after twenty-seven years of marriage, all five of those things happened within five years. I didn't just feel like I'd lost pieces of my life.
I felt like I had lost me. Not the grief, not the illness. Those were real, and I could name them. I mean the self part, The part of me that knew who I was, what I wanted, what mattered, and where I was going, that part went quiet. I remember sitting in my house, the stillness after everything, and realizing I didn't know how to answer the simplest questions anymore.
What do I enjoy? What do I want? What gets me out of bed with any sense of purpose? I didn't know. And what I also didn't know at the time was this: I hadn't lost those answers. I had just buried them under years of surviving, under the weight of grief and fear and just getting through. They were still there.
My values were still there. My passions were still there. My sense of what mattered, the things that had always been true about me, even before any of the losses, they were still intact, like those tree roots underground. I just had to clear the debris to find them again. And that's what today's episode is about, because here's what I know now.
When you reconnect with what actually matters to you, when you get honest about your core values and let your buried passions come back to the surface, you stop rebuilding from fear. You start building something that actually fits. Let's talk about how to do that.
Survival Mode Trap
Here's something that doesn't get said enough about major life change. Survival mode is real, and it's necessary right up until it isn't. When your world collapses, when the marriage ends, when the diagnosis comes, when the life you built around someone or something disappears, your nervous system does exactly what it was designed to do. It shifts into protection mode. It narrows your focus.
It says, "Get through this. Just get through this." That response is a gift in a crisis, but here's the problem. Survival mode doesn't have an off switch. It doesn't know when the acute crisis is over. It just keeps running, keeping you small, keeping you reactive, keeping you focused on not losing any more ground.
And in that stretch, something subtle and devastating can happen. You start to mistake coping for living. You stay busy so you don't have to feel. You keep your head down so you don't have to look up and face how much has changed. You rebuild the external pieces, the routines, the responsibilities, the appearance of having it together without ever asking the deeper question: Is what I'm building actually mine?
Core Values Explained
Core values are not aspirational. They're not the things you think you should want or who you think you should be. They're descriptive. They reflect who you already are at your most essential. Things like connection, belonging to something and someone; integrity, doing what you'll say you'll do, being who you say you are; growth, moving forward, learning, becoming more; faith, Leaning into something bigger than yourself. Freedom: the ability to make choices that honor who you are. And service: contributing to something that outlasts you.
When you're living in alignment with your core values, life feels right even when it's hard. Even on the painful days, there's meaning underneath. You feel grounded. You feel like yourself.
But when you're out of alignment, when you're rebuilding a life that doesn't reflect what you actually value, even a good life can feel hollow, like you're checking boxes that don't belong to you.
After a major loss or life change, misalignment often looks like this. You keep saying yes to things that make you feel worse, not better. You numb out—food, screens, relentless busyness without actually resting. You feel like something's missing, but you can't name what it is. You keep waiting to feel ready before you take the next step. You go through all the right motions and feel nothing behind them. That hollow feeling isn't failure. It's not weakness.
That's your values trying to get your attention. Your roots are sending a signal.
Radical Acceptance and Roots
The first step towards your next chapter isn't making a plan. It's stopping long enough, honestly and without judgment, to ask yourself, "What has always mattered to me even before any of this happened?" This is where radical acceptance comes in, the first phase of my iCope2Hope System(TM).
Radical acceptance doesn't mean you're okay with what happened. It doesn't mean the loss wasn't real. It means you're willing to face the truth of where you are and from that honest place, make choices that reflect who you actually are. You can't build a new chapter on someone else's values. You can only build it on your own.
Your values are your roots. The storm didn't take them. It just buried them under the debris. The work is clearing it
Passion Goes Into Hiding
Here's something I want to say because it took me a long time to understand it myself. Passion doesn't disappear when life falls apart. It goes into hiding. When you're in the middle of grief or transition or total reinvention, passion feels like indulgence, Like something you'll get back to someday once everything else is figured out. You put your interest, your dreams, your curiosity in a drawer and tell yourself you'll revisit them when you're not so overwhelmed. But someday has a way of becoming never.
Before we go further, I want to make a distinction that I think is important. Purpose is the why behind your life, the bigger mission, the reason you're here.
Passion is the what, the specific things that make you feel alive, engaged, and like time just disappears. Passion shows up in the conversations that energize you, in the work that doesn't feel like work, in the activities you'd do for free if money didn't matter, in the topics that make you lean forward.
Here's what I found to be true. You don't have to find your passion. You have to remember it. Think back before the setback, before survival mode, before grief rewrote your daily life. What did you love doing? What topics made your eyes light up? What could you talk about for hours without getting tired?
The clues are usually hiding in memories that predate the loss. Maybe it was a hobby you dropped when life got too busy or too heavy. A skill you had that you stopped using. A topic you always meant to learn more about. A type of person you always felt energized and fulfilled by helping. A creative outlet you told yourself was just for fun, as if that wasn't enough of a reason. A dream you held quietly because it felt too big to say out loud.
Here's the trap most women fall into at this point. Fear says, "That was the old you. You're different now. That probably doesn't apply anymore." Wisdom says, "That was a clue. Follow it." The two voices can sound nearly identical. Fear is just quieter and more reasonable sounding. It doesn't announce itself. It slides in, dressed up as practicality.
After a life-changing loss or transition, reconnecting with passion isn't really about excitement. It's about empowerment. Empowered to want things again. Empowered to be interested in something beyond just surviving. Empowered to be a woman with dreams, not despite what she's been through, but because of it. The setback didn't make you less worthy of a full, meaningful life.
If anything, it earned you the right to stop settling for one that doesn't fit. Here's something else worth saying. Passion after a major life change often looks different than it did before. It can be quieter, more intentional, more filtered through what actually matters. That's not a downgrade. That's refinement. You survived years of unimaginable loss, not just to barely exist. You survived to build something, and passion, the real honest this-is-what-lights-me-up kind, is part of the blueprint.
Values as a Compass
Once you've reconnected with what matters most to you and what genuinely lights you up, the next question is, now what? Here's what I don't want you to do.
I don't want you to turn this into a five-year plan. I don't want you to create a vision board, map out every step, and then feel paralyzed when the map doesn't match reality. What I want you to do is simpler and more powerful. Use your values and passions as a compass for every decision, big and small.
Fear will always have an opinion. It'll tell you it's too late, that you're too old, that your timing is wrong, that you don't have enough resources, that nobody will care. Fear is loud, fear is convincing, and fear is remarkably unhelpful. The tricky part is that fear often sounds like wisdom.
It dresses up as practicality. It says things like, "Let's be realistic," and, "You should be grateful for what you have," and, "Who do you think you are?" Your values are quieter. They don't shout. They whisper, "This matters. This aligns. This is right." When you're distracted by survival, you stop hearing the whisper. So the work isn't just excavating your values, it's learning to hear them again over the noise.
Here's how values-led decision-making works in practice. When you're facing a choice, any choice, ask yourself: Does this align with what I value most? Will saying yes to this move me closer to who I want to become or further away? If fear weren't a factor, would this feel right? Am I choosing this because I genuinely want it or because I think I should? Would the woman I'm becoming make this choice? These questions are simple. They're also the difference between a life rebuilt on fear, avoiding pain, staying small, playing it safe, and a life rebuilt on values, moving toward meaning, connection, and real growth.
Values-led living doesn't mean ignoring practical reality. Bills exist. Timelines are real. Not everything is possible right now. It means you don't let practical reality be your only filter. It means it gets a seat at the table alongside logistics.
Here's what this looks like for real women rebuilding real lives. A woman who values freedom starts saying no to obligations that drain her and yes to the business idea she's been putting off for three years.
A woman who values connection stops isolating and starts looking for her people, a support community, a coaching group, a new friendship built around who she's becoming. A woman who values growth signs up for something that scares her a little, not because she's fearless, but because growth matters more than comfort. A woman who values faith leans into that anchor on the days when uncertainty feels unbearable instead of white-knuckling through alone. A woman who values service finds a way to turn her hardest chapters into something that helps other people and discovers that her healing accelerates in the process.
That's not a consolation prize. That's the whole point. Time alone doesn't rebuild identity. You can wait years and still feel just as lost. What changes things is intentional reinvention, asking the right questions, making values-aligned choices, and taking the tiny, consistent steps that move you towards something true.
20 Minute Excavation Exercise
Here's something practical you can do today. You don't need a perfect quiet hour or a special journal. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Grab whatever you have, a notebook, your phone, a piece of paper, and find a space where you won't be interrupted. This exercise is called the Values + Passion Excavation. It's one of the first tools I walk women through inside the iCope2Hope system because it works, and it works fast.
Prompt 1: The before list. Write down five things you genuinely enjoyed, felt energized by, or were naturally good at before your biggest setback. Don't filter, don't judge, don't ask if they're practical. Just list the things that made you feel most like yourself. Maybe it was mentoring someone younger, writing, hosting people in your home, volunteering, leading a team, creating something with your hands, or having deep one-on-one conversations. Whatever comes up, write it down.
Prompt 2: The never negotiate list. Complete this sentence five times. No matter what I've been through, I will never compromise on, (and fill in the blank.) Your answers might include my integrity, my faith, my relationship with my kids, my need for freedom, my commitment to growth, the way I treat people. Let whatever is truest come up. These aren't aspirations, they're revelations.
Prompt 3: The one-word map. Now you have two lists in front of you, the things that lift you up before your setback and the things you'll never compromise on. These are your passions and your values. Look at them together. What words or themes show up in both or feel the most charged, the most true across either list? Circle them, then choose three. Not the most impressive three, the most honest three. For example, you might notice the word connection keeps surfacing, and how you loved mentoring, and how you listed relationships as non-negotiable. Or growth shows up because you loved learning new things, and you refuse to stop moving forward. Or service because everything on both lists points toward helping other people. Write your three words at the top of a fresh page. These are your anchors. These are what your next chapter gets built on.
Prompt 4: The passion thread. You now have three anchor values and a list of things that once made you feel alive. Here's where it gets interesting. Under each anchor word, write one item from your passion list that connects to it, even loosely. You're looking for overlap, Where what you love and what you value most intersect. That intersection is where your most aligned next steps live. For example, if one of your anchors is connection and your passion list includes hosting people in your home, that's a thread. If growth is an anchor and you listed learning new skills, that's a thread. If service is an anchor and you wrote down mentoring, that's a thread. You're not building a plan yet. You're just noticing where the two sides of yourself meet.
And Prompt 5: The first small step. Ask yourself, "What is one small thing I could do in the next twenty-four hours that honors one of my three anchor values?" Not a life overhaul. One small, concrete, doable thing. If your anchor is connection, maybe you reach out to one person you've been meaning to call. If it's growth, maybe you sign up for something you've been putting off or spend twenty minutes on a skill you've been ignoring. If it's service, maybe you offer your time or your story to someone who needs it. Whatever it is, make it specific enough that you can actually do it today. Write it down, then do it. That's the beginning of your next chapter, not a dramatic breakthrough, one honest, intentional step toward who you actually are.
Recap and Next Step
Let's recap what we've covered today. Survival mode is necessary during a crisis, but it can stretch into years and cause you to mistake coping for living.
Core values aren't aspirational; they're descriptive. They reflect who you already are at your most essential, and they don't disappear in a setback. They just get buried. The hollow feeling after a major life change is often values misalignment, your roots are sending a signal that what you're building doesn't reflect who you are.
Passion doesn't disappear when life falls apart. It goes into hiding. You don't have to find it. You have to remember it Reconnecting with passion after loss is an act of empowerment. Empowered to want things again, to dream again, to be a woman with a next chapter. Values-led decision-making means using five simple questions to filter your choices through what actually matters, not just what fear says is safe.
This week, use the 20-minute values plus passion excavation exercise to find your three anchor words and identify one small step you can take in the next 24 hours. If you're in a season right now where you feel lost, where you're doing all the right things and still feel like something's missing, I want you to hear this.
You haven't lost yourself. You've lost a version of a life that no longer fits. And as painful and disorienting as that is, it's also an invitation, one you didn't ask for and didn't want, to build something truer. Your values survived the storm. Your passions are still in that drawer waiting to be opened.
The next version of you, the one who's stronger, clearer, and more intentional than the woman who walked into this, she's not built from scratch. She's built on exactly what's already inside you. You don't have to have it all figured out today. You just have to be willing to take one step in the right direction.
Moving through is the goal, not moving on, through, with your roots intact, with your values leading, with your passions lit back up, even if it's just a little for now. Start there. The rest will follow. You're right where you need to be. Growth happens one step at a time.
Closing and Call to Action
Thank you for listening to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone in your life who's navigating a hard season of change or rebuilding. Leave a review. It helps more women find this community. And connect with me online at iCope2Hope.com. The link is in the show notes. Don't forget to grab your free guide, Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day. The link is in the show notes, along with other free resources.
Until next time, adversity can make you bitter or better. Choose better! You've got this!
