Losing everything to a fire became the start of my new life. Discover how reading my own diaries helped me find myself again.

After a fire destroyed my home, I faced the total loss of my possessions. Yet, amidst the wreckage, I recovered hundreds of my old journals. This video covers the experience of reading my own life story as if it were written by a stranger, offering a unique perspective on personal growth and self reflection.

This story is for anyone navigating life after loss or seeking a fresh start. You will see how looking back at your own history can provide clarity when your present feels empty. By engaging with these journals, I moved beyond the trauma of the fire and began a journey of understanding who I truly am.

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She lost almost everything in a house fire. Her condo, her belongings, the life she had quietly been trying to keep together. But 300 handwritten diaries survived the smoke.

Laurie Collister had been journaling since she was 18, not for any particular reason, just to process, to cope, to let things out. She never planned to write a memoir. She never planned for any of this. But reading through those volumes, one each night, she began to see her own life the way a novelist sees a character, with curiosity, with a little cringe, and eventually, with something that felt like real compassion.

In this episode of The Life Shift Podcast, Laurie shares how a neighbor's forgotten french fries triggered the strange beginning of her deepest self-discovery, what it took to finally stop measuring herself against a template that was never built for her, and how writing her life story helped her become the main character in it.

**In this episode:**

- How a house fire became an unexpected invitation to know herself
- Reading three hundred diaries and seeing herself as a character
- The "secret contract" revealed by the people she kept meeting
- Loneliness as invisible background noise, and what it felt like when it stopped
- Caregiving, boundaries, and the foundation she keeps returning to
- What it means to stop playing second fiddle in your own life

Find Laurie and her memoir *A Different Kind of Vow* at lauriecollister.com or on Amazon.

🎧 Listen to the full episode: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/s5e262

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