Episode 17: Grief, Recovery, and Starting Over
Release date: 3/30/2026
What survival looks like when life won’t stop changing
Sometimes midlife doesn’t look anything like what we thought it would. In this episode, Gen sits down with Denean for a deeply honest conversation about grief, recovery, rebuilding after loss, and what it means to keep going when life has completely changed shape.
What starts as a tarot reading unfolds into a real conversation about widowhood, addiction recovery, abusive relationships, friendship loss, emotional sobriety, and trying to figure out who you are now. This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like life knocked the wind out of them and still had to keep moving. It’s raw, grounded, funny in the right places, and full of the kind of honesty that makes you feel a little less alone.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How losing a partner reshapes your identity and the people around you
- What recovery really looks like twenty years in — and why the work never fully stops
- The cycle of leaving one painful situation only to recreate it in a different form
- Why grief strips your social circle and what that reveals about who was really there
- Learning to respond instead of react when your nervous system has been on high alert for years
- The slow, unglamorous process of trusting yourself — in love, in work, and in starting over
Available on:
Fate, Forty, and Beyond 