Didn't See That Coming

Didn't See That Coming Plot Summary

Introduction

The phone call came at 3 AM. Sarah's hands trembled as she fumbled for her cell phone in the darkness. Her husband's company was downsizing, and after twenty years of loyal service, he had been let go without warning. In an instant, their carefully planned future dissolved before her eyes. As the sun rose that morning, Sarah sat at her kitchen table, a cup of cold coffee before her, wondering how they would rebuild from this unexpected turn. We all face moments when life pulls the rug out from under us - when the narrative we've written for ourselves is suddenly erased and we're forced to create a new story. These moments of crisis aren't just challenges; they're unexpected doorways that can lead us to discover strength we never knew we possessed. The journey through grief, loss, and unexpected change is rarely linear, and there's no road map to guide us through the most difficult terrain of our lives. Yet within these broken places, we often find our greatest potential for growth. This book explores how we navigate these painful transitions, rebuild our identities when everything feels lost, and ultimately discover that our capacity for resilience is far greater than we ever imagined. Through stories of courage, vulnerability, and hope, we'll discover that our darkest moments can become the foundation upon which we build more authentic, meaningful lives.

Chapter 1: The Shock of Reality: When Life Pulls the Rug Out

Three days into editing her book on overcoming life's challenges, Rachel's sixteen-year marriage ended. The irony wasn't lost on her - here she was, writing about resilience while experiencing one of life's most profound disruptions. "Everything feels fragile and scrubbed raw," she writes. "Everything feels unreal and uncertain. Everything feels absent of all that matters and simultaneously too big to carry." The foundation of her life, her relationship with her best friend and father of her four children, crumbled between one breath and another. She had begun writing from the perspective of a guide, someone who had already traversed the mountain of grief and could lead others through it. Now she found herself trudging through it alongside her readers, experiencing the dual perspective of being both outside and inside of pain simultaneously. The experience made her question everything - whether she could teach and learn at the same time, whether she should abandon the project altogether, whether she was ready to share something so raw when conventional wisdom suggested she should only share from her scars, never from her wounds. In her confusion and pain, her prayers became simplified to just two words, repeated like a mantra: "Help me." She prayed them unceasingly, always aloud, clinging to a childhood belief that speaking them would ensure they were heard. These two words became her lifeline - the last thing she said before sleep and her first thought upon waking. And somewhere through the darkness, if not an easing of the pain, at least a seed of clarity emerged. She realized that honesty had always been at the core of her work. To remove that truth now would be too great a loss amidst so many others. "So here we are," she writes, "you and I, standing in the midst of pain. Some of us are trying to make sense of the scars of our past. Some of us are holding gaping wounds together with hands that tremble and shake. But we're still here. Together." The shock of reality when life suddenly changes direction can be paralyzing. Yet in these moments of profound disruption, we discover an essential truth: we can endure far more than we believe possible. When the narrative we've carefully constructed is suddenly rewritten without our permission, we find ourselves at a crucial crossroads - a place where we must decide whether to remain defined by what was lost or to begin the difficult work of creating meaning from the broken pieces.

Chapter 2: Navigating Grief Without a Roadmap

When Rachel's brother committed suicide, she was just fourteen years old. Finding him was traumatic enough, but what followed was a series of losses that compounded her grief. Not only had she lost her brother, but in many ways, she lost her parents too. "The day my brother died was the last time either parent made any kind of real attempt at what constituted the nurturing of a child," she writes. While she had always been self-sufficient in her chaotic home, after Ryan's death, she was essentially on her own emotionally. The holidays, once rare bright spots in an otherwise difficult family dynamic, became progressively worse. That first Christmas after Ryan's death, she remembers pretending to be thrilled with a pack of tube socks - one of the few gifts under the tree. But the third Christmas, her seventeenth, was the darkest. Her parents were divorcing, and neither one seemed to care about celebrating the holiday with their remaining children. She and her sister spent Christmas Day huddled in bed watching "A Christmas Story" on repeat - a tradition they maintain twenty years later, a reminder of their resilience in the face of abandonment. Rachel experienced another profound grief when her brother-in-law Michael died unexpectedly. At his funeral, her niece played a video montage of his life set to his favorite songs - baby pictures morphing into photos of him as a husband and father. Watching someone's entire life compressed into minutes was both moving and sobering. Driving away from the funeral, her husband Dave was unusually quiet. Finally, he shared what was on his mind: "I keep thinking that we still have pictures left to take." "What do you mean?" Rachel asked. Dave explained that someday at their own funerals, someone would create similar videos. "I want to live the kind of life that's worthy of the memorial video," he said. "I want to make sure I don't forget that there are people who don't get to take pictures anymore. I better not waste the opportunity." These experiences taught Rachel that grief doesn't follow a predictable path. The popular "stages of grief" - denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance - might be recognizable, but our individual journeys through loss are rarely so linear. For her, suffering took a different route, manifesting as an endless series of unanswerable questions: Who is to blame? What exactly happened? When will this pain stop? Where will I be when this is over? Why did this happen to me? When navigating grief without a roadmap, we often search desperately for answers to these questions, believing they will somehow ease our pain. Yet the truth is that some questions simply have no satisfying answers. The healing journey isn't about finding perfect explanations for our losses, but rather about learning to live meaningful lives despite our unanswered questions. It's about recognizing that while grief may transform us forever, it need not define us eternally.

Chapter 3: The Identity Crisis: Who Am I Now?

After her first book became successful, Rachel experienced an unexpected identity crisis. Suddenly, strangers would approach her in public, often bursting into tears as they shared their deepest traumas. In airports, grocery stores, and even during runs in her neighborhood, people sought her out for advice and connection. "The first time it happened to me at a book signing it was startling," she writes. "When it began happening at airports, several times in every city, it made me nervous." This new level of recognition brought with it profound challenges. The emotional weight of carrying others' pain became overwhelming. She understood why people shared their stories - she had shared her own difficult truths, and they wanted solidarity. But she wasn't prepared for the intensity or frequency of these encounters. The pressure to always be present and receptive to others' needs began to take a toll. She became almost agoraphobic, afraid to leave her house because she never knew when she might be approached or what painful story she might be asked to hold. Home became her only sanctuary, the only place she could be herself - "just Rach" to her friends, "just Mom" to her kids. But even this refuge was breached when her address found its way onto the internet. Packages, letters, and uninvited visitors began arriving. People showed up at her church on Sundays and found her at the gym before sunrise. "I'll be honest," she admits, "it was terrifying for me." The identity crisis intensified as negative attention grew alongside the positive. Blog posts and press articles criticized her as a terrible influence or a bad Christian. "It's a strange phenomenon I've noticed about my work - and frankly, that of other female creators regardless of what they create: When people don't like a book written by a man, they say the book is bad. When they don't like something created by a woman, they say she is bad." It took nearly a year of soul-searching, prayer, and therapy for Rachel to understand that she didn't have to live into who other people wanted or needed her to be. She didn't have to dissolve her boundaries to be present for others at the loss of herself. "Identity is who you are," she explains, "and the most important lesson I want you to take away from this chapter is that you are so much more than the trauma you are living in, whatever that looks like." When life's unexpected turns force us to reimagine ourselves, we often struggle with competing narratives - who we were, who others want us to be, and who we might become. This identity crisis can feel like standing between mirrors, unsure which reflection is truly our own. Yet within this disorienting space lies a profound opportunity: the chance to consciously choose our identity rather than simply inheriting or accepting one. By recognizing that we are more than our circumstances, our traumas, or others' perceptions, we reclaim the power to define ourselves on our own terms.

Chapter 4: Building Courage When You Feel Powerless

Rachel admits to being afraid of a surprising number of things: skiing, snowboarding, water skiing, public restrooms, snakes, Big Foot, aliens, even looking at mirrors in the dark because of a childhood fear of Bloody Mary. But when it comes to big things - moving away from home, starting her own company, writing books when nobody read them, giving birth three times and fighting through years of the adoption process - she seems to have endless courage. This contradiction highlights an important truth about courage: it isn't the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear. As Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear." Having courage means deciding that there is something greater at stake than the way you're feeling or your fear of feeling pain again. Rachel compares this choice to caring for a newborn baby. When she and her husband were adopting twin girls born with addiction, they walked the halls of their house all night with those babies. "Because they were working drugs from their system they wanted to be held constantly and it seemed like the second you got one of them settled the other would wake up screaming," she recalls. It was the most exhausted she had ever been - bone-deep tired that made it seem like she might collapse from lack of sleep. Yet every time those babies cried, just as with her biological children, she got out of bed to care for them. She swaddled and rocked them even when it felt impossible. "I found a way," she writes. "I found something that was greater than my exhaustion and that was my children." This experience taught her something crucial about courage: if you're struggling to find it, it isn't because you aren't brave - it's simply that you haven't identified something as more important than your fear. In difficult seasons, fear looms large because fear is a cousin to grief. It keeps you stuck, trapped in the loop of remembering what happened, who you lost, who betrayed you or who you hurt. It keeps you suspended at the point where your life became unrecognizable. The path to courage begins not with eliminating fear but with finding something worthy of your bravery. Without this motivation, without something that matters more than your comfort, you'll remain exactly where you are. Change is hard, and courage by definition requires working against something that scares you. But with courage, and only with courage, will you discover all that your life can be, even after devastating loss.

Chapter 5: Finding Joy in Dark Places

Long before Rachel ever wrote a book or worked in personal development, she laughed at funerals. Her whole family did. Some of the driest, most hilarious jokes she ever heard were spoken graveside. This might seem inappropriate to some, but as she explains, "Only people who've rarely encountered grief or hardship hold it at a distance." Those who have experienced regular seasons of pain understand there's no way to hide from it or escape it - the only option is to accept it and continue living. At her brother's funeral, she and her sisters cracked jokes about the menu options available to Ryan in heaven, since he basically lived off Taco Bell and Top Ramen. She doesn't remember their jokes being particularly funny, but she remembers laughing so hard they were crying - the first time they'd smiled since his death. When her brother-in-law Michael passed away unexpectedly, Rachel linked arms with her sister Christina as they approached the funeral. Passing the hearse holding his casket, Rachel leaned over and asked, "Do you think we should crack a window so he doesn't get hot?" People around them were horrified, but the sisters "cackled like hyenas." This is gallows humor - grim and ironic humor in desperate or hopeless situations. For Rachel, it has always been "the greatest testament left to those of us in the wake of tragedy. It feels a bit like thumbing my nose at the awful thing that's happening, like, yes, okay, this situation is absolute garbage but damnit, I'm still here!" She compares this choice to joy to the experience of a parent dealing with a toddler who has created utter chaos. Imagine coming around the corner with a carefully prepared snack only to find your child has marked up your couch with permanent marker, cut off chunks of her own hair, and wet her pants - all in the span of three minutes. This scene might represent everything you feel you're failing at as a mother. In that moment, you have a choice: collapse in tears or find the humor in the situation. "You'll laugh because if you don't laugh, you'll cry," Rachel writes. "You'll sob. You'll find it hilarious because you know that what has happened is awful, but you've had just as much awful as you can manage today." This choice to find joy amidst difficulty isn't about denying the reality of your pain - it's about refusing to let that pain have the final word. The beautiful paradox of human experience is that we're capable of holding both joy and sadness simultaneously. Choosing joy in dark times doesn't invalidate our suffering; rather, it ensures that our suffering doesn't define us completely. By finding moments of lightness within our darkness, we reclaim a small but significant measure of control over our emotional landscape and remind ourselves that even in our most broken places, our capacity for happiness remains undiminished.

Chapter 6: Forming New Habits for Resilience

When we go through difficult seasons, we often fall back on negative coping mechanisms - emotional eating, excessive drinking, or other self-destructive behaviors. Most people assume this happens because these activities provide comfort. While that's partially true, there's a deeper scientific reason why we make terrible decisions when under stress and struggle to get back on track. Rachel explains this phenomenon through Paul D. MacLean's Triune Brain theory, which divides the brain into three sections: the reptile brain (controlling fight-or-flight responses), the mammal brain (governing emotions, memories, and habits), and the human brain (responsible for rational thought, language, and reasoning). When life is normal and good, your human brain is in control. You can make good decisions about diet, alcohol intake, and media consumption because nothing is prohibiting that from happening. But in times of stress caused by grief, loss, or trauma, your reptile brain takes over. This "amygdala hijack" drains blood flow away from your frontal lobe down into the brain core and the rest of your body, drastically impairing your decision-making abilities. This explains why someone who has kicked a bad habit for years might immediately reach for it during a crisis - the brain latches onto familiar patterns that alleviate pain, regardless of their long-term consequences. This is why forming positive habits is so crucial before crisis strikes. "I'm not obsessed with great-habit creation because those habits make the good days better," Rachel writes. "I'm obsessed with great-habit creation because they make the bad days bearable." While going through her divorce during a global pandemic, she found strength in habits she had built over years - daily exercise, healthy eating, prayer, and therapy. Eight years earlier, she would have coped with vodka, fries, and "burritos the size of my forearm." Rachel shares how her work in developing good habits has served her during her most difficult times. Her daily movement practice became more intuitive - sometimes just stretching for half an hour or taking a slow walk instead of her usual intense workouts. She continued her therapy sessions virtually, sitting in her car in the driveway to ensure privacy. Her prayer practice simplified to honest conversations with God, her guardian angels, or "honestly, anything that might be out in the ether listening." By establishing these positive routines in easier times, she created anchors that held her steady when everything else was falling apart. "I have changed my anchors, evolved my habits," she explains, "and in so doing I have made the good days great and the bad days bearable instead of self-destructive." The habits we form become the foundation upon which our resilience is built. They are not merely helpful additions to an already stable life, but essential supports that remain when that stability is threatened. By consciously developing positive patterns during calm periods, we create a framework that can sustain us through our darkest moments, allowing us to navigate difficult terrain without losing ourselves completely to destructive behaviors that only compound our suffering.

Chapter 7: Reimagining Your Future with Hope

After his brother-in-law Michael's funeral, Rachel's husband Dave was unusually quiet during the drive home. When they finally parked in front of where they were staying, he shared what had been on his mind: "I can't stop thinking about Michael's video." At the funeral, they had watched a montage of Michael's life - from baby pictures to photos with his wife and children. Dave continued, "Someday at my funeral or your funeral someone is going to make us a video like that, right? And in it they'll choose the best pictures, the ones that represent who we are and the kind of life we lived." His conclusion was profound: "I want to live the kind of life that's worthy of the memorial video. I want to make sure I don't forget that there are people who don't get to take pictures anymore. I better not waste the opportunity." This realization captures the essence of reimagining our future after significant loss - recognizing that while we cannot control what happens to us, we can control how we respond. When Rachel's brother died by suicide, he lost the chance to experience countless beautiful moments. "He lost the moment when his son was born and two daughters after that. He lost the chance to dance with his sisters on their wedding days. He lost seventy-odd years of holidays and birthday parties and Fourth of July barbecues... He lost out on a whole beautiful life that could have been because he made a momentary decision that changed everything." Part of reimagining our future involves making peace with the uncertainty inherent in life. As Rachel explains, we struggle with uncertainty because crisis makes us realize we're not in control - something many of us find deeply uncomfortable. "We don't ever truly know what life is going to look like from one day to the next. Even from one hour to the next. We've never been able to accurately predict the future. I want you to understand that you haven't lost control of life... because you never had control to begin with." Instead of mourning this lack of control, we can embrace the freedom it offers. Rachel encourages readers to be conscious about rebuilding their lives after crisis, seeing it as an opportunity to decide what truly matters. "The gift in this - yes, I said gift - is that you are able to rebuild and in doing so, you get to decide what is a must in your life and what you need to let go of." She suggests practical steps: writing down your vision for the new you, choosing one negative thing to stop immediately, and setting one achievable goal to pursue right away. "I truly believe that we find purpose in creating traction against a goal we are trying to achieve, so long as the goal is something we care about," she writes. The goal doesn't have to be related to what you've lost - it could be learning sign language, paying off student loans, or making the world's best carrot cake. What matters is that it gives you direction and purpose. Life's unexpected turns create the space for us to reimagine who we might become. Though we may not have chosen the circumstances that forced this reimagining, we can choose how we rebuild from the ashes. Each step forward, however small, is a declaration that our story isn't finished - that beyond our pain lies possibility, beyond our grief lies growth, and beyond our loss lies a life still waiting to be fully lived.

Summary

Life's unexpected turns - whether they arrive as a sudden shock or a slow unraveling - invite us to discover depths of resilience we never knew we possessed. Throughout these pages, we've witnessed how even the most devastating circumstances can become catalysts for profound transformation. When Rachel found herself editing a book on resilience while her sixteen-year marriage was ending, when she stood at her brother's funeral as a fourteen-year-old, when strangers' expectations threatened to eclipse her true identity - in each instance, she discovered that healing doesn't mean erasing pain, but rather finding meaning within it. The journey through crisis is rarely linear, and there's no one-size-fits-all approach to rebuilding when everything falls apart. Yet certain truths emerge consistently: that we can hold both joy and sorrow simultaneously, that our habits become our anchors in the storm, that courage isn't the absence of fear but the recognition that something matters more than our fear. Perhaps most importantly, we learn that while we cannot control life's unexpected turns, we can choose how we respond to them. As Dave so wisely reflected after Michael's funeral, we still have pictures left to take - opportunities to live lives worthy of remembrance, not despite our losses but because of what they've taught us about what truly matters. When we reimagine our future with hope, we don't deny the reality of our pain; instead, we refuse to let it have the final word in our story. This is the ultimate act of resilience - not just surviving our darkest moments, but allowing them to illuminate a path forward that we might never have discovered otherwise.

About Author

Loading...

Rachel Hollis

Rachel laid the foundation for her lifestyle brand and media company with the same unfiltered honesty and staunch inclusivity that made her a two-time #1 New York Times bestselling author. Hollis connects with a highly engaged and growing global audience of women who treasure her transparency and optimism. She is one of the most sought-after motivational speakers, plays host to one of today’s top business podcasts and is a proud mama of four who uses her platform to empower and embolden women around the world. Rachel calls Texas home; more specifically the Hill Country just outside of Austin.IG: https://www.instagram.com/msrachelhol...FB: https://www.facebook.com/MsRachelHollis/

Read more

Related Books by Rachel Hollis

Loading...

Girl, Stop Apologizing

Rachel Hollis

A Shame-Free Plan For Embracing and Achieving Your Goals

★★★½☆3.8

Loading...

Girl, Wash Your Face

Rachel Hollis

Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be

★★★½☆3.6