When Your Life Falls Apart…and You Build Again

*** Written 18th Feb 2016

A few years after my life began to fall apart, I came across a quote about how sometimes the walls we build around ourselves need to be torn down so we can reach what’s waiting on the other side.

At the time, it made me think about just how much had changed.

Years earlier, someone incredibly special to me, a little boy (aged 4) I thought of as my godson was swept away in floodwaters and passed away.

It was sudden. Devastating. Impossible to make sense of.

That loss changed everything.

There are moments in life that divide time into before and after. You don’t recognise them as they’re happening, but eventually you realise that you never quite returned to the person you were before.

His death was one of those moments for me.

When Everything Starts to Move

Over the years that followed, it felt as though almost every part of my life was pulled apart and rearranged.

I changed jobs. My soul sister moved overseas. I went through a divorce and lost not only a relationship, but a family and a version of the future I thought I knew.

I came home to an empty house and had to begin again.

I sold houses, moved homes and changed jobs again. I bought a car, bought a block of land, built a house and moved into it. I sold more things, changed direction and tried to work out what, or where, home was supposed to be.

I lost a fur baby.

I parted ways with people I once thought would always be in my life, and I formed friendships I couldn’t yet imagine living without.

I travelled.

I stayed still.

Somewhere among all those endings, I found the love of my life. I became part of a new family and stepped into the beautiful, complicated privilege of being a stepmum.

So much happened that it can feel strange to see it written down.

At the time, though, it didn’t feel like transformation.

It felt like breaking.

The Wall I Thought I Was Destroying

I used to think of my life as a wall.

Every relationship, home, friendship, job and plan was another brick holding it together. When those pieces began disappearing, it felt as though I were dismantling the life I had worked so hard to build.

Brick by brick, everything familiar seemed to be coming down.

What I couldn’t see at the time was that each opening was also allowing me to move through to the other side.

Not because the painful things were meant to happen.

Not because losing someone you love is secretly a gift.

And not because everything happens for a reason.

Some things are simply heartbreaking. If I could change them, I would.

But I can also recognise that surviving those years taught me things. I learned, grew, experienced and loved through circumstances I never would have chosen.

The loss wasn’t the lesson.

Learning how to keep living was.

Grief Doesn’t Follow a Straight Line

For a long time, I thought healing would mean becoming who I had been before.

I imagined there would be a point when I was no longer hurt, angry, frightened or guarded. One magical day, I would wake up completely healed and everything would make sense.

That day never arrived.

Instead, healing happened quietly.

It happened when I laughed without feeling guilty.

When I walked into an empty house and realised I was capable of filling it with a new life.

When I trusted someone with another small piece of myself.

When I recognised that being happy now didn’t erase what had happened then.

Grief doesn’t disappear because life becomes good again. Love doesn’t end because someone is no longer here. And finding joy after loss doesn’t mean the loss mattered any less.

It simply means our hearts are capable of holding more than one truth at a time.

What Breaking Taught Me

I’m not saying I regret everything that followed. I don’t.

I’m also not saying I’m no longer broken.

But I am getting there.

Those years taught me to take the log out of my own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else’s. They taught me to look for the good in people instead of always searching for the catch.

They softened some parts of me and strengthened others.

I learned that people can disappoint you without being entirely bad. Relationships can end without being meaningless. A life can look nothing like the one you planned and still become something beautiful.

I’m still learning to trust.

Sometimes I’m not sure I ever fully will. But perhaps trust isn’t something we suddenly recover. Perhaps it returns gradually—in small decisions, safe moments and the people who continue to show us that they’re staying.

Life Can Be Good Again

When I look back now, I don’t see a perfectly constructed story where every tragedy led neatly to something wonderful.

I see a woman trying to survive.

I see someone grieving, rebuilding, loving, leaving, beginning and occasionally having no idea what she was doing.

I see a life that fell apart in places, and another life slowly emerging through the gaps.

I will always carry the little boy we lost with me. His life and his absence are part of my story, but neither belongs to me alone. Some pieces will always remain private, held quietly by the people who loved him.

What I can share is this:

Your life can change in ways you never wanted or imagined, and somehow, you can keep going.

You can be heartbroken and hopeful.

You can miss what was and still love what is.

You can carry grief while making space for joy.

For now, I’ll drive with the windows down, let my hair blow in the wind, turn up the music and sing as loudly as I can, with my best friend by my side.

So much has changed.

I have changed.

And while it hasn’t always been easy, life is good.