How to Navigate Loss and Fear and Emerge Resilient

“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” ~Lao Tzu

Sailing on a beautiful day in calm seas can feel like a spiritual experience and can convince your senses that life should always be like this.

My family life was smooth sailing for many years. My husband and I were committed to our family and our responsibilities of building and running our businesses, leaving little time for anything else. Gradually, the weather changed, and we found ourselves in the uncharted, turbulent waters of divorce.

I was unprepared for the toll it would take. My anxiety caused me to lose weight, and when I felt hypo-glycemic, it was my body’s reminder to nourish myself. I was scared about what life would look like for my three daughters and me and wanted the best for my husband, even though we decided we could not remain together.

Living separately, we grew to learn how to do things we depended on each other for, such as financial management, cooking, DIY home repairs, etc. We lost some friends, and some family estrangements developed—a ripple effect we didn’t see coming.

When you lose friends and family members due to divorce or estrangement, it can make you question your worth and stirs up self-doubt.

Years pass, and life goes on.

Eventually, we both remarried, and a few years later, my new husband, Bill, was told he had throat cancer. His treatments whittled down his hard-earned military physique to a shadow of his former self.

During this time, as his caregiver, I was also preparing to take a board exam to practice my profession, and I worked as a science teacher in an alternative school to help make ends meet. The days were incredibly long and hard for both of us.

Within that year, my father was diagnosed with cancer, which further destroyed our family. His treatments were equally brutal to his body. Eventually, Bill lost his valiant battle with cancer, and my father lost his battle in the following seven months, resulting in two funerals in a year.

Physically, I was exhausted and gained an unhealthy amount of weight. Whenever I ate, I had gut pain, so I lost the pleasure of eating. Headaches were frequent, and due to a loss of sleep, my energy was so depleted that doing everyday tasks was a burden, never mind having to relocate and downsize yet again.

I had little support, and this was when I felt genuinely broken.

In my “brokenness,” I remembered a conversation with a pastor friend who reminded me that life has its seasons: the spring of childhood, the summer of youth, the autumn of adulthood, and the winter of death. So many aspects of life can be viewed that way. With that, I discovered truth in his words and oddly felt an inner peace.

I grew to understand the phrase “if you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up” because I hit those rocks hard. I desperately needed to regain my physical, mental, and emotional health, which had been tested repeatedly for years, for myself and my family.

My sympathetic fight-or-flight nervous system switch never shut off. I realized I had to change that before relinquishing control of my health and well-being, which I have always valued but took for granted.

Here is what I discovered in my losses and fears, along with some pearls for living with resilience.

1. Submit to the process.

Feel the depth of your feelings by allowing them to flow through you.

When you are in a liminal place, at the threshold of change, it is only natural to have many strong feelings and feelings that you may resist—grief over the loss of a loved one or a relationship, fear of the future ahead, anger that you are in this position, frustration with your own body, or denial of the new reality.

Feel your feelings and journal to process them or communicate with someone you trust. This is how you start to heal. Far better than suffering silently is being honest with yourself about your feelings tied to the complexities of your process.

Minimizing yourself or numbing your feelings invalidates the depth and breadth of your experience.

If possible, consider reframing a sad or difficult experience to put a positive spin on it.

I may be divorced, but my daughters are the best part of my life. I would not have them if it weren’t for my previous marriage. Also, downsizing into a smaller home improved my financial situation. I rejected it initially, but it made my responsibilities and financial commitments more manageable in the long run.

Suffering any kind of loss or hardship is never easy and can feel crushing. Meet yourself where you are, go with the flow of your emotions with self-compassion and nonjudgment, and, if possible, open your mind to reframing a negative into a positive result.

2. Don’t ruminate while looking in the rearview mirror.

This is so tempting.

It is so easy to slip into the default pattern of looking at the past when we want our personal losses, challenges, and difficulties to make sense.

Exercise radical acceptance if you need to accept your life as it is, even if it causes you pain.

When I learned of radical acceptance, it felt unnatural, something I might have to convince myself to do. But I realized that to be at peace, I could not control everything in my life. Seasons.

Also, bringing gratitude into your daily life is a valuable, underutilized tool that brings what is good into focus. When we target several reasons for gratitude as a daily habit, we shapeshift our mindset to support our well-being.

Amassing what has happened to you in the past and bringing it into focus today creates an unnecessary, overwhelming burden. The past cannot be changed, and the future cannot be predicted, but we can choose to accept what is right now.

This will lessen your suffering and the tendency to look back in the mirror.

3. Connect with your physical, mental, and emotional needs.

Prolonged stress affects our hormones, cardiovascular system, gut health, musculoskeletal system, immune health, and every other function and body system with far-reaching, long-term effects.

There is no reason to neglect or minimize your needs; this is a time to amp up your efforts to honor your needs. Listening to your body’s messages strongly improves your ability to handle and recover from stress.

When stuck in the stress cycle, mindful self-care practices are even more important to prevent unhealthy habits from forming. Eating nutrient-dense meals, walking in nature, practicing consistent sleep hygiene practices, or spending time with friends or family members who love and support you are effective self-care practices to reduce stress and manage anxiety.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you cannot experience all the potential that your life has to offer if you do not first meet your basic physiological needs. As you meet those needs, you can move through your experience in life more fully, owning and attracting love to you, developing deep connections, and increasing your confidence, self-esteem, and full potential despite setbacks in life.

It is easy to become more reflexive than in control, an oversight that is not uncommon for highly stressed individuals.

When I reprioritized myself with self-care practices, my health and well-being improved, as evidenced by my improved blood labs, weight loss, ease of digestion, and increased energy levels. I had a renewed sense of purpose in my work; later in my life, love found me.

When you connect with your physical, mental, and emotional needs, you can also better honor them in others.

4. Chart a course that meets your life’s needs at the time.

Decide what needs to be done to meet important needs. By successfully tending to some of the smaller needs, you can more easily prepare for larger target goals. With that, you develop an adaptable and increasingly more positive mindset.

Consider small gains as you progress forward.

As part of my healing and stress management, I knew I could do what I had to do by taking small, manageable, and incremental steps. It was too difficult for me to envision a big-picture view of a whole and healed life following so much loss for a time, but eventually, that changed.

A day at a time, a week at a time, and a month at a time are now years later.

Remaining open-minded and building your optimism naturally builds and reinforces your resilience muscle.

So celebrate the small gains in your life. They naturally lead to more small successes, which builds confidence in planning for larger ones.

5. Life happens, and when it does, develop a surfing mindset, even if you fear the wind or the waves.

When the winds of change occur, a sailor must adjust the sail to tack and harness the wind to his advantage. The wind and the waves do not remain the same even on one given day. Sailors hone their skills to have the wind and the waves support their intended direction.

Life never remains the same. Things constantly change. When they do, step back, breathe, and ask yourself what the next best step is in caring for yourself in the moment and in moving forward.

Through resilience, you can more easily heal and accept life’s dynamic nature by learning and growing from overcoming challenges and setbacks, and, in the face of uncertainty, you can live more fully with confidence and joy in the present and in the mystery of the future.

Resilience is a quality that is not earned by having an easy life; rather, it is a testimony to coming through hardship and challenging experiences and feeling whole despite them.