Starting Over After a Catastrophic Loss

Recovering your life

“I have lived in the shadow of loss,” says Christina Rasmussen, “the kind of loss that can paralyze you forever. I have grieved like a professional mourner – in every waking moment, draining every ounce of my life force. I died, without leaving my body. But I came back, and now it’s your turn. I have learned to remember my past – without living in it. I am strong, electric, and alive, because I chose to dance, to laugh, to love and to live again.” After I experienced a devastating loss in my life, I decided to turn my life around. Through many tissue boxes and uneaten casseroles, I began living amazing second firsts. There are 12 truths that I hold close to my heart, that are just the beginning footsteps in starting over in your new life. The road to recovery may not seem easy at first, but the truth is: it’s all on you…and YOU can do it!

Recovering your life

Truth 1. Your brain holds the key to your happiness. “The secret I want to share with you is that your brain is so adaptive and so powerful that your own thoughts during a painful period can lead you to experience a remarkable, bright future,” writes Rasmussen, who is the author of Second Firsts. “Even though you are confused and scared, there is a way out of this temporary cloud and onto a powerful bridge. You can help build this bridge to the future, and it can take you wherever you want to go. But you must say new words, have new thoughts, make new friends and add new experiences if you want to discover your new identity. Staying in the past and just going over the events of your loss will not help you rebuild your new life and discover your new identity. You can build new brain maps by thinking differently and experiencing a new life. This won’t be easy but it will be worth it.”

Recovering your life

Truth 3: Loss can serve as a launch pad. Grief walked into your heart and created room for your soul to grow. In that space your soul has been, and is being, strengthened. I believe in the strength of your spirit. And I believe that loss can be a launchpad into a new dimension of living, loving, and thriving. If you’ve experienced a tragedy, your soul has traveled far, far away and into worlds that cannot be touched in any other way, by any other emotion. Grief opens your heart so you can undergo transformation. But it is up to you to take this expansion and spread it everywhere in your life. You must understand that while grief has opened up your heart, your brain will be telling you to hide and play it safe.

Recovering your life

Truth 4: Grieving is a natural part of evolution. “It is human to survive by adapting and evolving,” writes Rasmussen. She’s the founder of Second Firsts, an organization to help people create a pathway back to life after loss, Christina spends her time speaking, coaching, and helping thousands of people rebuild, reclaim, and relaunch their lives using the most powerful tool for personal reinvention: the human mind. “Grieving is a natural part of how we evolve as individuals to respond to the challenges we face,” she says. “It’s amazing, the way we can be catapulted toward life even in the midst of loss. You see, loss creates an unbelievable amount of space for life to enter in. What you feel as emptiness is life’s new home, and what you feel as loneliness is the urge to hold life’s hand again.

Recovering your life

Truth 7: When we exit a chapter we don’t automatically enter a new one. You may think and truly believe that, after being pushed out of your old life, where you’ve ended up today is your new life. Unfortunately, if you’re like most people, this isn’t true. When we go through a divorce or a loss and we exit one life, we don’t automatically enter our new chapter. We go to a place between two lives. We go to wait for time to heal us. Time does not heal all wounds. Action does. Many people remain in the Waiting Room waiting for a better day to come to reenter life. Even though it’s obvious that they can’t go back and pick up from where they were, they don’t really say good-bye and close the door behind them. Thus, they remain chained to the past.

Recovering your life

Truth 8: You must plug in to a second chapter as soon as you exit the first one. I know it may be hard to believe right now, but grief can open the door to an amazing new life. You can start over again, no matter how devastating an experience you’ve gone through. Even when we try to plug in to life with just a few small steps, we can easily become frustrated and angry about this unwanted transition from old life to new. When life is overtaken by grief, everything we do feels harder, slower, and more painful than normal. The brain is telling us to be afraid. It says, “What if I get hurt again?”The heart isn’t ready to love again, or to let go of the pain of the loss. It says, “I don’t want to love anyone else.”Grief says, “The situation is hopeless.” But the situation isn’t hopeless. It’s just hard. Even if it seems daunting right now, spending 5 percent of your day experiencing life in ways that are compelling to you is the minimal amount of time you should consider spending. Connecting with life again is a priority in order to counterbalance the negative reactions you have to your loss with joy and other positive emotions.

Recovering your life

Truth 9: Mr. Right now vs Mr. Right. There is one more thing you need to know. The right person for you right now is someone who may like you more than you like him or her. This individual really has to think the world of you, because every time he or she looks at you, it is like holding a mirror up for you to gaze into. What your date sees, you see. It’s important at the beginning of your journey back to life that you build your confidence by getting your feet wet, not by trying to find a partner for the rest of your life. Yes, you read that right. The purpose of dating after a divorce, death, or breakup is not to find someone to fall in love with immediately. The purpose is to feel loved, liked, and simply adored. You are rebuilding your identity and reconnecting with your interests and desires.

Recovering your life

Truth 10: Change your thoughts change your life. You have the power to change your life in a spectacular way simply by changing your thought patterns… The best way to control your thoughts is to control your words. Words create a pattern of belief within the brain that each of us goes over, again and again, every single day. For instance, how often do you use words such as angry, overwhelmed, sad, unlucky, or failure to describe yourself? And when you do, how does it make you feel? Grief creates habits and beliefs in our minds that don’t serve us. Grief’s habits are egocentric and aimed at continuing the behavior we use to alleviate the pain of our loss. Pain often leads us to develop unhealthy attachments to things like food, alcohol, or watching TV. These quick fixes numb the mind and distract us, but they don’t lead to authentic happiness and success in life.

Recovering your life

Truth 11: Its all on you! The truth about starting over is that it doesn’t just happen on its own. Your next chapter in life, your second firsts, won’t just show up at your door with a big smile. The truth is: It’s all on you. Happiness lives inside of us. It is not dictated by circumstances. I want you to hold this truth in your heart: when it’s your time to go, you won’t wish you had spent more time grieving; you’ll wish you had spent more time living. The further away we move from being the person we were when a loss occurred, the less pain we experience. This type of shift of identity can only happen when the brain is experiencing new habits and routines.