Have you ever had a season when life seemed determined to knock you off your feet?
Perhaps you lost someone you loved. Maybe before you had time to catch your breath, another challenge arrived. Then another.
You told yourself to be strong. You kept showing up. You kept moving forward.
Yet, beneath the surface, you felt shaken.
I know that feeling well.
In my chapter, Life in the Rock Tumbler of Compounded Grief: Finding My Footing with Faith, featured in the soon-to-be-released The Wellness Universe Guide to Complete Self-Care: 25 Tools to Navigate Loss, Grief, and Transition, I share one of the most difficult seasons of my life. Within seven and a half months, I lost my best friend, my brother-in-law, and my beloved dog. Each loss brought its own heartbreak. Together, they created what I came to call a grief trifecta.
My heart barely had time to process one goodbye before another arrived. Some days, it felt as though life had placed me inside a giant rock tumbler and pressed start.
Do you remember those old rock tumblers? My brother had one when we were children. Rough stones were placed inside along with grit and water, and for days, the machine rattled away in our laundry room. Eventually, those ordinary stones emerged smooth and polished, transformed by a process that seemed endless to my younger self.
Back then, I thought the process seemed endless.
Years later, I discovered grief can feel much the same.
It tumbles you.
It wears away your certainty.
It shakes the assumptions you didn’t even realize you were carrying.
And it leaves you searching for solid ground.
As I wrote this chapter, I realized that God had been preparing me for this lesson long before my season of compounded grief began.
The preparation arrived in an unexpected form: the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Like many Californians, I had experienced small earthquakes throughout my life. They were unsettling, but manageable. Then came the quake that changed everything.
One moment, my 11-month-old son, Max, and our dog, Rocky, were watching a squirrel through the sliding glass door. The next, glass was shattering, the earth was moving beneath us, and I was desperately trying to protect my child while wondering if our house would remain standing.
What followed were hours of uncertainty as I waited to learn whether my parents had survived their drive across the Bay Area during one of California’s most devastating earthquakes.
Years later, I would recognize the deeper lesson hidden inside that experience.
An earthquake shakes the ground beneath your feet.
Grief shakes the ground beneath your soul.
The difference is that earthquakes last minutes.
Grief can last much longer.
One of the most painful losses I share in this chapter is the death of my best friend. We had known each other since kindergarten.
We grew up together, raised families, celebrated milestones, and shared decades of memories. She knew versions of me that almost no one else knew. Her loss wasn’t just about losing a friend. It was losing a shared history and a future I assumed we would experience together.
She died from pancreatic cancer.
I survived it.
That reality introduced another layer to my grief: survivor’s guilt.
Questions surfaced that had no easy answers.
Why her?
Why not me?
How do you move forward when someone you love deeply no longer gets the opportunity?
Then came the sudden loss of my brother-in-law.
Shortly afterward, the loss of Spike, our beloved rescue dog, who had faithfully walked beside us through countless seasons of life.
Many people underestimate the grief that accompanies the loss of a beloved pet. Yet those who have loved an animal deeply understand. They are woven into our routines, our homes, and our hearts. Their absence leaves a space that cannot simply be filled.
Through all of these losses, I discovered something surprising.
Faith did not remove my grief, provide all the answers, or erase the pain. What it did provide was a place to stand when everything felt unsteady, a place to breathe when sorrow threatened to overwhelm me, and the reassurance that I was not walking through the darkness alone.
Although faith had always been part of my life, the turning point came when I stopped asking God to remove the tumbling and began trusting Him to steady my footing within it. Rather than pleading for the pain to disappear, I learned to lean more fully into His presence, believing He was beside me through every difficult moment.
I found my footing again through quiet conversations with God, through journaling the thoughts I could barely speak aloud, and through angel cards that often seemed to arrive with exactly the encouragement my heart needed. Prayer, tears, reflection, and countless reminders of God’s love became anchors that helped me navigate the uncertainty.
The losses remained, and so did the grief. But alongside them, something else began to grow: a deeper trust in God’s presence and guidance. I came to believe that even when life felt uncertain and the ground beneath me seemed to shift, I would be supported, strengthened, and led forward one step at a time.
That faith became the solid ground beneath my feet until I was able to stand on my own again.
The chapter is not simply a story about loss. It is a story about finding your footing when life feels uncertain. It is about discovering that grief and gratitude can coexist. It is about learning that even when your world has been shaken, there is still sacred ground beneath your feet.
If you have ever experienced multiple losses, navigated unwanted change, struggled with survivor’s guilt, mourned a beloved pet, or wondered how to keep moving forward when life feels overwhelming, I believe you will find pieces of yourself within these pages.
Most of all, I hope you will find hope.
Because while I would never have chosen this season of grief, I emerged from it with a deeper faith and trust, greater compassion, and a profound appreciation for the precious gift of life.
The tumbling did not last forever.
And if you are in your own season of tumbling right now, I want you to know something:
You are not alone.
There is solid ground beneath you, even if you cannot feel it yet.
Connect with Janette on The Wellness Universe and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
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In a world often shadowed by uncertainty and challenges, Janette Stuart emerges as a radiant beacon of hope and joy. As the Emissary of Joy at Angel Angles, a best-selling author, angelic practitioner, and a triumphant survivor of pancreatic cancer, her journey epitomizes resilience, faith, and the transformative power of positivity. Through her remarkable experiences and unwavering spirit, Janette has touched countless lives, illuminating pathways to inner peace and healing. She shares profound insights on navigating adversity, embracing joy, and discovering deeper meaning in life’s trials. Joy and gentleness are her superpowers.
