Flourishing After Adversity

Rebuilding After a Storm: Reconnect with Your Core Values and Passions Host Laura Mangum Broome explains how, after major setbacks, people can keep functioning yet feel hollow because they rebuild from fear and stay stuck in survival mode, mistaking coping for living. Using the metaphor of a storm-damaged tree with intact roots, she shares her own five-year stretch of breast cancer, losing her tee...

Flourishing After Adversity: The 3 Conditions for Post-Traumatic Growth Laura Mangum Broome introduces the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and explains that the difference between growing through grief and staying stuck is a learnable framework, not willpower, strength, or faith. Sharing her experience of five major losses in five years—including losing her son, surviving bilateral breast canc...

The Outcome Guardrail Map: Break Fear of the Unknown and Take the Next 200 Feet Laura Mangum Broome introduces the Flourishing After Adversity podcast episode on decision paralysis caused by fear of the unknown, explaining it as a neurological survival response when the brain cannot predict.  Drawing from her experiences with cancer, the loss of her son and father, a heart transplant, and an unexp...

The 6 Stages of Grief: Name What You’re Feeling and Move Through It Laura Mangum Broome explains how naming grief can reduce shame and help people move through loss, drawing from her experience of losing her son just before a scheduled double mastectomy while facing cancer. She clarifies that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are not linear o...

The Power of “Yet”: Shifting from Fixed to Growth Mindset After Adversity Host Laura Mangum Broome explains how adding one word—“yet”—can shift limiting beliefs from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, drawing on Carol Dweck’s research in Mindset. She shares how being repeatedly placed in jobs without training forced her into trial-and-error learning and later revealed she’d been using a growth m...

Necessary Endings: Use a Hardship Autopsy to Move Forward Laura Mangum Broome explains that after surviving hardship, people can stay stuck by carrying forward people, habits, environments, or patterns that no longer fit, calling these “necessary endings.” She introduces a “hardship autopsy” as a practical, non-blaming tool to gain clarity and move forward intentionally by journaling through three...

Toxic Positivity vs. Post-Traumatic Growth: Are You Healing or Performing? Host Laura Mangum Broome opens with a wound metaphor to explain how forced optimism can cover unresolved pain, then introduces the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and a free resource, “Reframe the Spiral.” She describes how common phrases like “stay positive” can pressure people to bypass grief, leading to anxiety, numb...

From Victim to Victor: Reclaiming Agency After Adversity Host Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and shares a free guide, “Reframe the Spiral,” for coping with negative thoughts after setbacks. She explains that a victim mindset is a human coping response to pain but that staying there keeps focus on what was done to you and drains agency, while a vic...

Choose Hope Before You Feel It: Taking Action After Adversity Host Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and offers a free guide, “Reframe the Spiral,” for managing negative thought loops after setbacks. Using a gardener watering bare soil as a metaphor, she explains that waiting to feel hopeful often keeps people stuck because action typically precedes...

Fear vs. Anxiety: How to Tell the Difference and Take the Next Right Step Host Laura Mangum Broome explains that fear and anxiety are different experiences requiring different strategies, using her own experiences with bilateral breast cancer, chemotherapy-related congestive heart failure, and waiting for a heart transplant to illustrate both. Fear is a response to a real, present threat and is sp...

Reinventing Yourself After Adversity: Three Steps to Your Next Chapter Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and offers a free guide, “Reframe the Spiral,” for coping with negative thought loops after setbacks. Using Olympic champion Scott Hamilton as an example of reinvention after identity shifts and major health battles, she highlights how he turned a...

Tiny Experiments: Turning Disruptions Into Forward Motion Laura Mangum Broome hosts the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and explains how unexpected disruptions can become opportunities to move forward faithfully and intentionally. She shares a recent plumbing crisis caused by tree roots that required jackhammering her bedroom closet floor, forcing her to empty and reorganize her room, reschedu...

Tiny Experiments: One Brave Step Without the Perfect Plan Host Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to Flourishing After Adversity and encourages those facing grief, illness, loss, heartbreak, or unexpected change to keep moving forward faithfully and intentionally. She invites listeners to download her free guide, “Reframe the Spiral,” and shares how saying yes to being a podcast guest after pu...

Holding Two Truths: How to Process Mixed Emotions After Adversity Host Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to the Flourishing After Adversity Podcast and shares a free guide, “Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day.” Using her father’s memorial service as an example, she explains that human emotions are often layered—sorrow and joy, dread a...

Stop Letting Other People’s Opinions Decide Your Life Host Laura Mangum Broome discusses how fear of others’ opinions can keep people from pursuing dreams and making aligned decisions, sharing a friend’s example of starting a women’s garment business and bracing for family reactions. She emphasizes that while others may have opinions, they don’t carry the outcomes, and encourages focusing on what...

Decision Triage: How to Stop Overthinking After Unexpected Setbacks Host Laura Mangum Broome discusses how unexpected updates—like a diagnosis, financial setback, or sudden change—can trigger worst-case thinking and decision fatigue by making you mentally carry what might happen, not just what is happening. She shares a recent family medical scare that escalated from a routine appointment to possi...

Overwhelmed? Find Your Next Step Host Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and offers a free guide, “Reframe the Spiral,” for shifting negative thoughts. She explains how overwhelm makes everything feel urgent, fuels racing thoughts and tension, and can cause people to freeze, especially during adversity such as grief, illness, heartbreak, or major chan...

Misogi: Choosing a 50/50 Challenge to Grow After Adversity Host Laura Mangum Broome invites listeners of the Flourishing After Adversity podcast to consider a “misogi,” a deliberately chosen challenge that reveals latent potential, inspired by The Comfort Crisis. She contrasts misogi with adversity and ordinary goals, sharing her own chosen challenge of climbing Enchanted Rock on the third anniver...

3 Questions to Stop Living for Approval and Take Your Next Right Step Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and introduces a free guide, “Reframe the Spiral,” for coping with negative thoughts after setbacks. She discusses how fear of judgment and living for others’ approval can keep people stuck, using a scene from The Notebook to illustrate the struggl...

Throw Off the Comfort Blanket: One Brave Step After Adversity Laura Mangum Broome opens the Flourishing After Adversity podcast by reframing “I’m not ready” as a form of avoidance, explaining that comfort can support recovery but can also numb growth like a “comfort blanket.” She shares climbing Enchanted Rock in Texas on the third anniversary of her heart transplant as a physically and mentally d...

S2:E7 If It's So Bad, Why Do We Stay Miserable in Our Comfort Zone Laura Mangum Broome welcomes listeners to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast and introduces a free guide, “Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day,” available in the show notes. The episode explores why people stay in unhealthy or draining situations, framing it as sel...

S2:E6 Identities Change, Values Stay (How to Stay Grounded Through Life Shifts) In this episode of the Flourishing After Adversity podcast, host Laura Mangum Broome discusses the disorienting feeling of not recognizing yourself during life transitions. Laura offers insight into how identity is linked to the roles we play and provides practical strategies to help regain a sense of self. She introdu...

S2:E5 Radical Acceptance: Navigating Chaos with Practical Steps In this episode of the Flourishing After Adversity podcast, host Laura Mangum Broome addresses the chaos that often follows life’s challenging seasons, such as loss, uncertainty, and emotional turmoil. She introduces radical acceptance as a key resilience skill, explaining that it involves acknowledging reality without approving it. U...

Overcoming the 'Why Bother' Loop: Practical Steps to Move Forward In this episode of the Flourishing After Adversity podcast, host Laura Mangum Broome addresses the mental barriers that prevent people from taking necessary steps toward change. She explains how the thought 'It won't work anyway' is often a self-protection mechanism rooted in past pains and disappointments. ...

Finding Strength and Gratitude in Adversity In this episode of the Flourishing After Adversity podcast, host Laura Mangum Broome shares her personal journey through the challenges of bilateral breast cancer and congestive heart failure. She discusses how these experiences led her to unexpected insights and a greater sense of resilience.  Laura offers practical steps to control what you can, focus...