Have you ever had to restart your life after a severe disaster.

I was too young to actively participate in the recovery (I was 11), but we had to recover from a business-inspired murder followed by a government crackdown on everyone involved, even the victims.

Hurricane Katrina.

When I was 24 I had a house fire. I was asleep at the time. My life and that of my roommate were saved by her 6 month old cat waking us up. The now-former roommate still has a faint scar on her face where he clawed her to get her to wake up and then she woke me up. She then became disoriented and I got her, a golden retriever, two cats and 6 kittens out of the house.

I had to live in a hotel for 6 months before I could return home and lost many things to fire, smoke, and water damage. The living in the hotel thing was fun at first but became tedious over time. I was the only guest on Christmas, so the staff let me help decorate the tree in the lobby and I had the hot tub and gym to myself for a few days, so that was cool. Tim, the night manager would call me every morning with my wake-up call. He would say “223, this is your wake-up call,” and I would thank him.

Once my house was finally put back together, I returned to my house and started to try and re-orient myself to the changed (and now somewhat dangerous feeling) place. My first night was good and I woke up to the phone ringing and Tim’s voice saying, “223, this is your wake-up call.” That’s when I knew every thing would be ok.

@Kayak8 Been there too. When my daughters were young teenagers, our house burned and we lost everything. I had to farm them out to friends, and at a time when the four of us really needed each other. It taught us the meaning of “stuff”. It means nothing.

@janedelila Boy you got that right!

I failed out of university and was misdiagnosed with a severe illness while my credit rating was destroyed from non-payment of my student loans… while being disowned and disowning several family members and friends… and finding out that I can’t function without 16 hours of sleep a day while being put on pills with side effects… I haven’t recovered but I changed and adapted to a different way of living.. now I Fluther…