Find Hope in Tragedy

How to Open Doors After a Loss

You lost your job. Your partner wants to break up. You and your best friend got into a fight and are no longer speaking to each other. When things like this happen—or when many of them happen at once—many people think, “Why me? Why am I being punished?”

It’s easy to give in to despair when bad things happen. As you’re going through rough times, it’s completely understandable that your first instinct is simply to run away and hide until things get better. But often when your life starts falling apart, you are actually getting a wake-up call from the Universe. Something in your life needs to change, and you are being given an opportunity to change it.

It’s okay to mourn the loss of your job or love relationship or friendship. But once the fog clears a bit, think about what you had.

For example, quite often people who lose their jobs never felt quite fulfilled in that job in the first place. I definitely mourned my last “desk” job because it was essential in helping me pay my bills, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that I started feeling healthier once I was laid off. When I worked there, the pressure actually made me physically ill at times. In the months after the layoff, I desperately looked for any job that would help me make ends meet, but doors shut in every direction. It wasn’t until I started examining my life’s passion that doors started to open. It was the Universe’s way of nudging me in a direction that would ultimately benefit me the most.

A friend of mine was devastated when her live-in boyfriend of several years decided to leave her. She found herself in a state of deep depression and longing, obsessing on what “should have been.” She also felt like there was no other person out there for her—and that she would end up alone for the rest of her life. After several months of desperately trying to get him back to no avail, a professional counselor was able to help her take a step back from the situation and examine it with new eyes. She realized that her ex never really understood her or appreciated her. This actually surprised her, because she had always considered him to be extremely romantic. But when she looked at the situation more closely, she realized that even though he was always buying her roses and taking her out to dinner, he was also always trying to change her in some way. This realization helped her to come to the conclusion that she deserved the chance to find someone who would love her for herself, not some unattainable vision. Soon after she made that discovery, another partner entered her life. Someone who adores her for the person she is.

There is a Universal law that states once you clear unnecessary or harmful things from your life, you create room for better things—and that’s when the doors of opportunity start to open. Sometimes we are strong enough to clear those things on our own, but there are also times when we hold so tightly to them the Universe is forced to intervene. In that sense, tragedies in life can also be an opportunity for spiritual growth. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make the traumatic event any less devastating or painful, but hopefully it helps to know that once you are able to look at the situation more closely—or to put it another way, once the sun starts to peek out after the storm, there’s a great chance you’ll discover a rainbow.