Flourishing After Adversity

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 que...

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, numbness...

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 victor mindset focu...

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 motivation. ...

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 specific; anxiety is a respons...

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 adversity into pu...

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, reschedule appointments, and choose ...

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 publishing her boo...

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 and r...

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 wha...

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 possible procedures a...

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 change. She recommen...

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 anniversary of her hear...

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 struggle of choos...

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...

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 self-protection by the b...

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 introduces three anchors—core...

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. Using her personal expe...

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. 

Laura then offers practical steps to overcome th...