Emotional Healing After Trauma: How to Reinvent Yourself When Life Breaks Your Heart

It's you walking into work to find out that you no longer have a job.

Or maybe it's the breakup that you never saw coming.

You never thought that you would be someone getting a divorce.

It's when life takes a sudden left turn and everything you know changes.

Everything about who you are, what you ever hoped or dreamed of, is gone.

Today, my friend, that's what we're talking about.

Is when life breaks your heart.

And when that happens, how do you begin to recover?

How do you begin to move forward?

And how do you begin to reinvent who you are, to find a new version of you, this person who can keep going in spite of it all?

Today, my friend, we're going to be talking about all of that and more, all inside of today's 376th episode of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Hey, I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and you are listening to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

For myself, that moment was back in 2003.

I was just at the start of my junior year of high school, turned 17 years old, and life was going good.

It was perfect for a teenager.

In my junior year of high school, things were going great.

Awesome goopa friends.

Had my dream truck that I had gotten when I turned that sweet 16.

Life was going amazing.

And here it was just an ordinary Friday.

Well, although it was kind of special because we were getting ready to do one of my favorite weekend trips.

We were lucky enough to have one of those boats, the kind with a cabin that you can sleep in.

And we were going to be taking it up to St.

Augustine, Florida for the weekend.

Now, that trip means that Friday evening, my mom gets off of work, my stepdad's off work, we meet at the marina, we board our boat, and we head up the intercoastal waterway, headed north from our home here in Daytona Beach, Florida, up to St.

Augustine, Florida.

A beautiful ride up the Intercoastal Waterway.

Like I said, one of my favorite trips.

And the reason is because the marina that we would stay at, it was the St.

Augustine Municipal Marina, located right at the base of the infamous St.

Augustine Bridge of Lions, the iconic bridge in this oldest city in the country.

Every time that we ever would go there, it was something special for me.

And so this was one of those awesome weekends, an amazing time.

And then everything changed because one of those moments happened.

As I said, maybe for you it was a phone call, a text message, a moment in time when everything stopped.

For me, I was down in the cabin of the boat.

I was flipping through a dirt bike magazine when my mom came down and sat down across from me on the little dinette.

And she told me the news.

Because what I didn't know is that my mom had been holding on to something.

She had got a really big phone call just a few hours before.

She was on her way to meet me and my stepdad at the marina when she got a call from the doctor who let her know that the results came in from the MRI.

And, well, unfortunately, the results of the MRI, as the doctor would explain, were worse than he could have ever imagined.

And so as I sat there in our boat, in this dream scenario, this place that I dreamed of going, I loved being there, and yet everything turned upside down.

As my mom told me the news, that I had a brain tumor.

Now, we would find out that it was luckily non-cancerous, but it was bad.

They compared the tumor to the size of a plum, positioned right in the center of my head.

And literally, due to its position, they said that I had at most six months to live if this tumor was not removed.

Now, at that moment in time, my memory goes into little snapshots.

And I can remember getting out of the boat.

How I got out so quickly, I don't know.

Because the next memory I have is me just running down the dock as fast as I could, all the way down the dock to the top of the marina, climbing the stairs, going all the way up until I was at the top of the marina.

And there I stood with my arms on the metal railing, looking out over this picturesque scene of a marina full of sailboats and powerboats, the sun setting in the distance.

And there I stood in disbelief that I had a brain tumor.

No, I didn't even know what was to come.

And if you know my story, you know that October 28th of that same year, October 28th, 2003, is when I would go into surgery to have that brain tumor removed.

And everything was supposed to have gone great.

And instead, well, I came out to be left completely blind.

I didn't know that at the time.

All I did know, though, is that I had a brain tumor, and that was scary enough.

Now, I share that because we have all had these moments.

As a matter of fact, in life, we don't just have one of them.

Many times, unfortunately, we have many of these life-shattering moments, or like I like to think of them, these moments when the world stopped spinning.

And yes, the situation, the circumstances for each of us, they're all different.

But the impact is all the same.

Matter of fact, the whole inspiration for today's episode, for today's topic, it came from a woman who I introduced to you just a few episodes ago.

Her name was Wendy.

And if you heard Wendy's story, you heard that this moment, it happened on the side of a mountain, doing what she loved, riding her bike, cycling, flying down the mountain, down the road, going faster and faster until all of a sudden the moment happened.

And she crashed hard.

So hard, in fact, that she would have to be airlifted off the side of the mountain.

And there she is.

In one second, she's doing what she loves.

And then the next second, she's shattered, she's broken, fighting for her life.

Now, at this moment, I want to pause and I want to stop talking about me, and I want to stop talking about Wendy, and I want to start talking about you.

Because today's episode is about you.

And I can guarantee that as I'm talking, there's probably one particular thing that has happened in your life that comes to your mind immediately.

And before we continue, before you continue listening to today's episode, I hope that you think of what that moment is.

And I hope that you put it at the front of your mind.

Now, I know it's not always easy to think about these hard times, but sometimes I feel like it's necessary in order for us to be able to move forward, for us to be able to really harness the lessons that life was meant to teach us.

And right now, for today's topic, I want you to think about whatever that moment was, that moment when your world stopped spinning.

Whether we're talking about me being diagnosed with a brain tumor, whether we're talking about Wendy crashing on our bicycle, the emotions we all feel, they're all the same.

Because no matter how different any of us may be, we're all still the same.

We're all just people trying to make it in life.

So when these instances occur, we all feel scared.

We're worried, we're anxious, we're fearful, we're upset, we're angry.

We don't understand why.

Why me?

Why this?

Why now?

None of it makes any sense.

What's powerful about Wendy was that her story, I believe, though, it has the power to help us all with our own situation, with our own life-shattering moment.

Because here's the thing that I want you to remember is that whenever life knocks you down, whether in the past or in the future, there's one thing that nobody ever tells you.

And that is that you, my friend, you have a choice when life happens.

And yes, I understand that at times like this, it may feel like you don't have a choice, but you do.

You may not be able to choose what happens in this life.

I certainly did not get to choose whether or not I had a brain tumor.

But you know what I did get to choose was how I reacted to it.

I didn't get to choose to become blind, but I did get to choose how I would react to it, what I would do with it.

Now, that doesn't mean that I have never been upset.

My goodness gracious, no.

To this day, I will tell you that becoming blind has been the worst thing that I could ever imagine, because everything was taken from me.

And yet, where I stand today, being able to have the benefit of traveling down the roadways, I can look back and be grateful that God chose me to be the one to go through it.

Because I've learned so much.

And I hope and I pray that because of what I've gone through, I get to make an impact on others' lives, maybe on your life today.

And just the same with Wendy is that in the days and weeks following her accident, she could have given up.

Nobody would have blamed her if she had thrown in the towel on life, because things were unfair, things were unraveling around her, and nobody would have judged her if she hadn't been strong.

And yet she was, because Wendy chose to do something with it, to pursue her dreams, to pursue her life in spite of it all.

If you heard her story, you would know that Wendy, she chose to fight.

She committed herself to healing, to fighting back and to regaining control of her life.

Now, when we're talking about fighting, fighting back, here's the thing that's really powerful that I want you to remember.

Sometimes fighting, it doesn't look like you holding on tighter, but instead it looks like you letting go.

I want to repeat that because I want you to really hear me clearly.

That sometimes when we're talking about fighting, when we're talking about pursuing, when we're talking about regaining control, we oftentimes think that we have to hold on tight, that we have to fight with all our might.

But sometimes the way we do that is by letting go.

That, my friend, is where grace comes into the picture.

To have grace, to have this idea that it's okay.

Because sometimes the strongest thing we can do is to just let go.

Because if we never have the courage or the strength to let go, then oftentimes we'll never get to understand what lies on the other side.

Because if we keep holding on to what was, then we never open our heart and our mind to get to see what tomorrow holds.

And just like Wendy, she finally realized that she had to surrender.

She had to let go.

She had to trust the process of life.

She finally would let go of holding on so tightly to what was so that she could embark on something new.

That is easier said than done.

Trust me when I tell you that I've gone through it in my own life.

Holding on to the life that I had, a life of sight, a life of riding dirt bikes and driving, a life of seeing the blue sky, a life of seeing the faces of my family.

And for so very long, I held on to that life.

And all I wanted was to be able to see again.

I wanted my life back until one day, and it was many, many years down the line, better part of about 10 years later, was I able to come to a point myself when I was ready to let go?

I was ready to finally let go of that life of sight in pursuit of learning to see life in a new way.

And I have to wonder for you, maybe is that what you needed to hear?

Because where in your life do you maybe need to stop fighting so hard?

Where in your life do you maybe need to just let go?

Nobody ever said that life was gonna be easy.

No, definitely not.

But in the same regard, I think sometimes we make it worse on ourselves by trying to hold on to things that were meant to be let go.

We're meant to keep moving forward.

If we look at our lives like a book, if we constantly keep writing on the same page, then it all becomes cluttered.

If we keep writing on the same line, then it all gets mixed up.

Nothing makes any sense.

Sometimes we just simply need to be able to turn the page.

And we have a fresh new page to begin writing.

That's just like your life.

Sometimes you just need to simply come to a point where you can finally let go and turn the page.

Now, another powerful lesson that I learned from Wendy in listening to her story and to think about my story, and to think about anybody else's stories, yours included, is that so many times we keep thinking that we have to get back to where we were.

What do I have to do to get my life back?

We just want our life back.

But the fact is true, just kind of like I said earlier, that was then.

This is now.

We are not the same person that we were back then.

We've grown, we've had stuff happen.

We are different people, constantly evolving, growing, becoming bigger and better versions of ourselves.

And that is where this idea of reinvention comes into play.

And when we think about reinvention, it's not returning to the person we were.

It's instead about becoming who you were always meant to be.

For Lindy, she had to finally let go of what she thought her life was supposed to look like.

She had to be willing to embrace something new, something different.

And if you think about it, that's the real challenge of it all.

Because when life doesn't match our plans, it's easy to stay stuck grieving, wondering what could have been.

So instead, what I like to do is I like to think on the positive is what if, just what if what lies ahead is better than what we're leaving behind?

What I mean is, what if the very thing that we're mourning, that we're so upset about, the thing that we want to get back to, the life that we want back, what if it wasn't meant to stay?

We aren't meant to stay in the same chapter year after year.

No, if we think of our lives as a book, once again, a book is comprised of chapters, of pages.

And if we don't ever turn the page, if we don't ever start a new chapter, the story never progresses.

And so when you think of it from this positive, that just what if the future that you've been resisting is actually the future that you've been dreaming of?

And now I get it.

Change is scary.

But you know what's even scarier than change is staying stuck in a life that no longer fits you.

And that is where sometimes the bravest action any of us can take is releasing our grip on the past, to stop holding on to what was, and to instead begin embracing and get excited about what is to be.

To wrap up today's episode, what I want you to remember is this your pain does not define you, but your response does.

I spoke about it earlier that we can't always decide what happens in this life, but we can always decide how we respond to it.

That's what I'm talking about.

I also want you to realize that you don't always have to have all the answers.

All you have to do is take the first step.

You don't have to have the courage and the bravery to figure it all out, to know exactly where you're going.

No, you just have to have the courage to take the first step.

Because once you take that first step, then the second step, the third step, they keep getting a little bit easier as you go along.

But you have to be willing to at least take that first step.

And when we speak about reinvention, I want you to remember this isn't about losing who you were.

No, it's about you becoming who you were always meant to be.

So if there is one thing that you can let go of today, one fear, one regret, one big moment in your life that you've been holding on to so tightly.

And the fact is true is that you really need to just let it go, releasing you of that burden, tying you down, letting it loose, giving you an opportunity to finally get to discover what else is awaiting for you on the other side.

And with that, my friend, I wrap up today's episode.

Remember, I have new episodes that come out every single Tuesday and Thursday morning.

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So, my friend, that is it for today.

Get out there, enjoy this day, and hey, more than anything else, figure out what it is that you need to let go of and just let it go.