Episode 128 | Unbreakable: Finding Hope and Wholeness After Life’s Unexpected Changes

LWH Podcast Recording: What does it mean to be unbreakable when life breaks your heart? When a marriage ends, or you lose both of your parents, when you start over in a new place, and when you experience the unimaginable loss of a child? How do you keep going when the life you knew no longer exists? How do you move from simply surviving to finding your way back to wholeness, purpose, and hope? Today we're talking about what it really means to be unbreakable. Welcome to the Lead with Hope Podcast, where we explore what it means to lead ourselves and others with greater clarity, purpose, resilience, and hope. I'm your host, Dr. Brandi Kelly, and today's conversation is one that will remind you that being resilient doesn't mean life never breaks your heart. It means discovering that even in the places where you've been deeply wounded, There can still be Be a way forward. My guest today is Dana Killian, author of Unbreakable. Dana has walked through extraordinary loss and profound life transitions, including the collapse of a long marriage, the loss of both of her parents, a cross-country reinvention, and the devastating loss of her son. But her story doesn't end with what she lost. Dana has found a way to move from survival to wholeness. And today she helps others discover that same path. Her newest book, Unbreakable, offers insight, resilience, and a compassionate way forward for anyone navigating grief, loss, change, or a life they never expected. Dana, welcome to the Lead With Hope podcast. I am so grateful that you're here today.

Dana: Thank you, Brandy. Happy to be here.

LWH Podcast Recording: Dana, your story includes experiences that could have completely changed the way you saw yourself and your future. And so I'm wondering what mindset shift helped you to move from how am I going to get through this? to what's possible for me now?

Dana: I inadvertently developed a bit of a mantra with the very first trauma. And I found myself lying in bed every night, saying to myself, I will not let him destroy me. I had just learned about my husband's secret life. And I didn't know what I was going to do with that. I didn't know how I was going to get there. But I just repeated that to myself over and over. And it became what I now call a determination, certainly was a mantra for me at the time. And every time something would happen, I would check myself and my behavior against that. Is this response that I'm having something that's moving me forward or something that is keeping me stuck in the pain?

LWH Podcast Recording: That is so powerful. tell us a little bit about what was going on in your life at that time that you developed that mantra.

Dana: So I was married to an alcoholic, a very high-functioning alcoholic. He had a big career, but he had a di a significant drinking problem. And we had been dealing with this for decades. We got to the point where I was done, and it was a you can have me or you can have vodka when he finally went to rehab. And unfortunately, while he was at rehab, I then learned that he also had been leading a secret life. A secret sex life. And so that was just a a devastating new development after all of these years of trying to hope help this man that I adored get sober. And I was absolutely broken by it. the has anything in my life been real, in our life together been real? And I spent a year of my life after that kind of curled up in a ball emotionally. And that was when that mantra came to be as I was sorting through not only what was real about my marriage, but what did I want to do now? And what was my own identity as I came out of that? Because it should have been, I felt it should have been clear. Head for the door immediately. And and it didn't work that way for me. So That's where that mantra came in. It just it just kicked off a process for me of trying to sort through identity more than anything else as I sorted through the

LWH Podcast Recording: Yeah.

Dana: action steps that needed to happen.

LWH Podcast Recording: And it's a powerful mindset shift. It's it's about reframing, as you eloquently said, your identity, reframing what your future could look like, finding that meaning in the midst of of this loss

Dana: I I think that's the name and then a myth of the

LWH Podcast Recording: and this major life transition. So you talk about you know that that mantra, but I'm sure it was much bigger than that. How did you reconnect with that sense of meaning and purpose in your life?

Dana: It took time. It took a lot of time. you know, so much had to be worked through. not only the history of our marriage, but who is this man? What have I not seen? What have I chosen to put in the background, perhaps, why am I still here? Versus running for the door. And all of that had to be dealt with. And I think a big, big part of all that for me was trying to understand why he had done what he had done. That did not make sense to me. Yet he was not in a pos a place emotionally where he could honestly answer those questions in a way that would make it clear to me in any way that I could wrap my head around it. And eventually over time, I realized that was a story I had to put together myself. I did something that I now call, I created the story of why. I took his background, what I knew to be true of his childhood history, what I knew to be true of how he defined himself and his own identity. And then I filled in the gaps. And it was really, really an important thing for me to do from an identity standpoint, because it was part of my I guess what I would call closure today. I didn't see it perhaps that way then, but certainly what I would call closure now. We expect the other the person that hurt us to give us closure, to explain their behavior, and nothing that they say is ever the full story because they're still broken. So going through that process myself, realizing that I needed those answers, that became an immensely transformative aspect for me and for my own healing.

LWH Podcast Recording: Mental health matters. And I believe supporting the whole person is at the heart of leading well. That's why my work through Spar Cope EDU includes speaking, professional development, leadership coaching, and therapy. Because sometimes you need a keynote that shifts your perspective. Sometimes you need coaching to help you move forward. Sometimes your team needs professional development to grow together. And sometimes you need a safe space to slow down, process what you're carrying, and work through what's happening beneath the surface. It's all connected. Our mindset affects our leadership. Our habits affect our well-being. Our experiences shape our perspective. And our mental health impacts how we show up at work, at home, and in our relationships. As a therapist, a coach, a speaker, I have the opportunity to support people at different points in that journey. Therapy is also more accessible now than ever. With virtual options making it easier to get support from wherever you are. So if you've been thinking, maybe it's time for me to talk to someone, I want you to know that reaching out for support is not a sign of weakness. It's an investment in yourself and your well-being. I'm going to drop my therapy link in the show notes. Reach out and let's see if working together may be a good fit. Whether you're looking for personal support, leadership coaching, professional development, or a speaker for your organization, my goal is the same, to help you find clarity, build resilience, and lead with hope. Because when we take care of the person behind the leader, everyone benefits. Mental health matters and you don't have to navigate it alone. And now you you've got a book, and your book is titled Unbreakable. But being unbreakable does not necessarily mean that we're never gonna hurt or grieve or even fall apart. You know, you talked about kind

Dana: Yeah.

LWH Podcast Recording: of for that year being in a ball, you know, kind of just protective mode, taking care of you. But now, as you're on the other side of that. What does unbreakable mean to you now?

Dana: Right we need to use I got to the point in my own healing where I realized I knew what to do, that I had inadvertently developed a process through what became a series of traumas. And so I'm at a point where I consider myself, call myself unbreakable, very clearly use that term, bec not because nothing will ever hurt me again, but because I know that whatever does. It will not leave me curled up in a ball on the floor thinking I will be broken and unhappy forever. I have a process. I didn't have that process when I found out about my husband's former husband's secret life. So the unbreakable part for me is I know what to do. And and there there are lots of parts to this. It it is not simply a decision, but but a great part of that. big gr driving force of that does start with that determination and then we start filling in the pieces and we pick up processes that help us get there.

LWH Podcast Recording: it starts with a decision. You have to make that decision to move towards healing or find a habit that helps you to move forward. So thinking about habits,

Dana: Thank you.

LWH Podcast Recording: what is a habit that you could give to the listeners if they're in a mode where life is just uncertain right now? They feel a little bit broken. What is a habit that they can start implementing in their life today?

Dana: Well I need to back up just a little bit on that question because

LWH Podcast Recording: Okay.

Dana: part of where that comes from for me is the realization that so many of us have something difficult that happens to us and we think we're healed. Because we feel some relief. When in fact we are still living with anger and resentment that perhaps comes back into our language about whoever it is that hurt us. And it was really important for me to break that down. And that's part of what that unbreakable thing did for me. The steps along the way of making sure that I did not live with. the residual that carried forward into a place where I felt I could no longer love or I would give up or just shut off part of my heart. So to answer your question in kind of a roundabout way, the a lot of this is our mindset and our determination not to stay broken. But then we have to understand what broken is. And I firmly, firmly believe that if we are still angry and resentful and talking about our ex or whoever it is that hurt us ten years later, we're still broken. Perhaps we function and we're not crying every day, but if that anger and resentment is there, we still have work to do. First, we have to recognize that holding onto that anger and that resentment is a choice we make. So going into the what I call the story of why is a really important step where I was letting go of the expectation that I had that he should be able to tell me why. I created that own that that story of why for me. And everybody can do this too. This idea that we have that, well, you know, the universe just delivered something. I don't believe we have to live like that. We still need answers, even if God did it. Come up with your own story. It simply has to be believable to you that in a way that you can release the anger, the resentment, the harboring of these difficult emotions. You're not going to heal. If you have not let go of some of that, if you can't put it in a place where you are not sitting with the you know cold wet diaper of pain.

LWH Podcast Recording: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. that makes me think of the fact that, we need to forgive. Forgiveness is a huge step forward in this process. And sometimes we think by not forgiving, we're hurting that other person. But in reality, we're only hurting ourselves. It's a choice. We can let go of that bitterness and that anger and that resentment. And we can only do that by forgiving them. And sometimes it requires us to

Dana: Do that by looking at them.

LWH Podcast Recording: forgive ourselves a little bit too.

Dana: I always struggled with the idea, and it it's very common in therapy that you must forgive them. But for me, too often that is simply a label, or I'm throwing something at it that I don't really feel. And that's where this story of why came in for me. I had to do that work first. And once I did that work and could release the pain by completing the story. It became forgiveness. it's not to me it's not just a label and I really want to be clear about that because we

LWH Podcast Recording: Yeah. Right.

Dana: rarely talk about forgiveness, I think, in the complex terms it needs.

LWH Podcast Recording: Absolutely, yes. you can say you forgive, but until

Dana: And you forget.

LWH Podcast Recording: that is really something you truly grab hold of and embody and live out, it is just a label. So that's a that's an important distinction that you make there, Dana.

Dana: There.

LWH Podcast Recording: now while we're talking about this, we're specifically talking

Dana: Thank

LWH Podcast Recording: about your husband, but

Dana: Like she a lot of big loss of your marriage.

LWH Podcast Recording: You've had a lot of big changes, the loss of your marriage, the loss of both of your parents, a huge move, the loss of your son. Those things all can really snowball. And maybe you've healed from

Dana: Oops.

LWH Podcast Recording: one of them, but how do you keep healing

Dana: Okay.

LWH Podcast Recording: when life feels like it just keeps throwing the punches?

Dana: Yeah. Yeah, I as you indicated, I've had this series of traumas that that ran through an eight-year period. It started with the discovery of my former husband's secret life, and most recently it was the death of my oldest son from fentanyl. And it was after my son died that I could really look back on. each of these traumas and how each of these traumas taught me something. And the trauma, whatever I was learning or taking on, or doing, it was instinctual. I didn't really know it at the time that it would add up into something important, but it did. Each trauma, each learning led to something else that made the next trauma easier to put into its perspective. And they all relate. It it is all this process of moving to unbreakable that started with that determination, that moved into some small actions, that eventually became creating the story of why, that became learning to talk about what happened. Many of us, when we have pain, that is horrible pain, death of a child, we struggle to talk about it. And I had a little technique that I write about and talk about, which is to create three stories. A one-liner, a short story, and a novel length version. So if someone says, you know, do you have children? I can say yes, I have one child who is an engineer, and I have another child my older son died from fentanyl. That is the one-liner. The novel, I don't have to say anything more to the person in front of me. And we get tied up in knots about reintroducing the pain if we have to speak about it. Yet if we don't talk about it, we don't release it, we don't heal either. So the novel length version is the story that I would give my therapist or really close associates about all the things that led up to and how I was affected. And then that That short story version is for those people that maybe need a little more information about what was going on with my son or our family life and what might have led to some of the some of the things. So that too is another another step in the process. Because talking about Difficult things is really painful for a lot of us because we feel like we're just going to open more wounds and we don't want to do that. So I had those stories together, and I advise anybody else to think about kind of having at the ready versions

LWH Podcast Recording: Yeah. Yeah.

Dana: of those stories, and you get to decide who to who to deliver them to. And it also gives you the sense of control, which is hugely important when we've experienced trauma.

LWH Podcast Recording: we verbally process these losses and these traumas to make sense of them. And I often encourage when I'm counseling people going through loss or working towards that healing that we're talking about, I encourage them to journal because

Dana: Yeah.

LWH Podcast Recording: there's a step. In this progression where maybe you're not ready to say it out loud, but you can write it down and you can start drafting that that version of that story or those stories that you talk about, Dana. So if if somebody's listening today and maybe they're thinking,

Dana: Yeah, feature and

LWH Podcast Recording: It's so hard, I can't talk about it yet. Start with journaling, start with writing,

Dana: Absolutely.

LWH Podcast Recording: and then know that you're going to in time. talk about it as you progress along this healing journey. And Dana, I'm so sorry to hear of your loss. I've never lost a child, but I've had a lot of loss in my life. And it's so important to connect with people that understand what loss feels like.

Dana: Yeah. It's a it's an immediate connection. I mean any parent can put themselves in that situation even if we haven't experienced it directly and we sure don't want to. But it there is a there is an innate sense of the pain. And when you are able to speak with somebody who has also experienced loss in in that vein or something close, you have an immediate connection and immediate understanding. And I'm so glad that you brought up the idea of journaling. And I I I'm somebody who was terrified of the idea. And I fought against that for the longest time. But it turned out to be such an important process for me, one I like words, I'm a writer. But

LWH Podcast Recording: Mm-hmm.

Dana: the idea where I can say things on those pages that I would never say out loud. And if they

LWH Podcast Recording: Mm-hmm.

Dana: are too vulnerable, I can rip that out and throw it in the shredder.

LWH Podcast Recording: Mm-hmm.

Dana: It

LWH Podcast Recording: Yes.

Dana: and to see the progression of my thoughts or to see the progression of an idea that just kept coming back and back and back, it hits you in a different way when it's on a page than it does trying to go through your mind on what a therapy session was four weeks ago. So yeah, journaling is an amazing tool just to

LWH Podcast Recording: It is.

Dana: get it out of your heart.

LWH Podcast Recording: It it really is. And you know, your book, Unbreakable, when when this podcast episode goes live, it's probably gonna be November. The book though is going to be available on September 10th, which is what in two days when we're recording this? Yeah.

Dana: Correct. Correct.

LWH Podcast Recording: So that's exciting. And can you tell the listeners maybe just a quick summary of what they're gonna get if they pick up Unbreakable and where they can get it?

Dana: So, what I did with this book is I used the series of traumas that I had. I start the segments with this is what happened to me, this is what I learned from it, and this is what you can take away and do. And so it is a process of holding your hand through a traumatic event in the way that a big sister would. That's the subtitle, A Big Sister's Guide to Trauma. Therapy is amazing, everybody should do it. But I think of this book as either a lead up to therapy if you're not yet ready to get in the chair, or a companion to the experience of being in therapy. Therapy can feel a little disjointed and distant. Here you've got somebody who is just gonna cheer you on with tough love along the way. And you can find the book or all of my books at danakillion.com or any place that you would like to buy your books. It's available in print, ebook and audio.

LWH Podcast Recording: Dana, you have a powerful story knowing people who have navigated adversity and trauma and loss, that gives me hope. But I always like to ask my guests at the end of each show, what is giving you hope in the world right now?

Dana: That has been easy though. I think it I am increasingly hopeful that we have the ability to talk about things and to acknowledge that every single one of us will or may or has already gone through something really difficult. It is the strength that we have by not hiding in the shadows, by using our voices, by finding the people who can give some guidance. or just shared their vulnerability with us, any place that we can get to, where people are willing to talk, to share, to compare notes, to help each other out is a wonderful, encouraging place for all of us to live in.

LWH Podcast Recording: I completely agree with you. And Dana, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for sharing your story and also the hope that you found along the way. I'm grateful for you and for the reminder that even after

Dana: picture.

LWH Podcast Recording: profound loss and unexpected change,

Dana: It's okay.

LWH Podcast Recording: wholeness is still possible.

Dana: Thank you so much, Brandy. I appreciate it.

LWH Closing: That's a wrap for today's episode of Lead with Hope. ⁓ Remember, ⁓ the world needs your leadership and change starts with you. ⁓ Fuel your life with HOPE, embrace your purpose, and shine your light for others. ⁓ If this episode inspired you, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment to give us a five-star rating and share it. ⁓ Every review helps spread HOPE ⁓ and empowers more leaders to rise. ⁓ Thanks for listening ⁓ and until next time, ⁓ keep leading with HOPE. ⁓