The Adapted Life, Finding Next
I’m Julie Hasselberger. For 26 years, I was the full-time caregiver for my beloved son Daniel, whose life was marked by profound disability and extraordinary beauty. This podcast began as a way to support other parents navigating the complex, often isolating world of special needs caregiving. But life changed — heartbreakingly and irrevocably — when my son passed away.
Now, The Adapted Life, Finding Next is a space for truth-telling, tenderness, and transformation. It’s about what comes after the role that once defined you is gone. It’s about grief, relational trauma, resilience, and the raw, ongoing search for next — for purpose, healing, and connection.
If you’re facing a season of reckoning, rebuilding, or rediscovery, I invite you to walk with me. You are not alone. This is the adapted life… and together, we’ll find what comes next.
The Adapted Life, Finding Next
Even Though I Grieve ...
Even though I Grieve
Even though I grieve
I can smile at your photo
Even though I cry
I can feel grateful
Even though I am broken
I can limp along today
Even though I miss you
I can create new memories now
Even though you were always here
I know that you are gone
Even though my house is quiet
I can still feel, and hear you
Even though I grieve you son
My love spans all time and space.
I will always be your Mom.
You will always be my Daniel.
Even though I grieve and hurt
I am healed by memories of you.
Dear listeners and friends,
This is the idea behind this episode .... I AM 213 DAYS INTO THIS GRIEF....
So, I say to myself, each day. “Wake up. Breathe. Be grateful. Check in with yourself. What should I do next?” Here I am. Back in the comfort of my own words and hoping that somehow, I can find others who are learning to live with loss, and grief. Are you there? How can I help? How can we help each other? And I stop, make myself a coffee from my Nespresso machine, take the dog out, and hug my husband. Then I wonder if I am having attention deficit because I forgot what I originally intended to do before I started making my coffee. Ever have that happen to you?
OK. Keep going Julie. BREATHE!! Grief is like a getting a new skin. A transformation into a new human being whose heart has been broken beyond repair. The pain just becomes part of everything. By osmosis grief enters every cell of your physical human existence and forms a new person. It is this new you, that supports how you cope. It is the new way you interpret the world. It is you transformed in how you exist in relationships.
As I have taken minute by minute, stepping along with this new " me " in my life after Daniel, figuring out what to do now has been really hard. I feel like a tree with no trunk and just a lot of branches floating in the wind. Nothing is grounded. Nothing is landing.
But here I am, and this is now episode 30 of a podcast project that I had hoped would help people who are caregivers, that has turned into "People who are caregivers whose person died".
Please let me know if there is anything I say that connects with you, or make suggestions to help me. I am so grateful to be here now. And I hope you are too!!!
Much Love,
Julie A. Hasselberger
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