Finding hope on the front of a greeting card

By Daryn Kagan EBS Contributor

A greeting card saved my life. It was the best $3.97 I ever spent. I found it while numbly passing through a local dime store. “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.” Western writer Louis L’Amour gets the credit for that one.

I bought it for the first half; I didn’t believe the second. Not that day, the day my everything finished. I was sure of it.

After 12 years as a CNN news anchor, the network informed me they wouldn’t be renewing my contract. I never asked why. Part of me figured, “What was the point?” The other part of me was shattered from ending a romantic relationship the week before with someone I loved very much.

No job. No husband. No kids. The end of everything I had worked and hoped for.

This was supposed to be my beginning?

It’s possible I bought that card just to prove it wrong. It sat on my desk at home, getting tattered, spilled on, piled on. Abused, but steadfastly there. The promise I so desperately wanted to be true.

Even if I didn’t believe it.

Darn, if that card didn’t turn out to be right in ways I could’ve never dreamed. Not overnight by any means. But losing my job brought the opportunity to reinvent my career, and losing love made way for the family bigger than I’d dreamed of.

Because our space here is limited, I will fast forward to tell you I started my own company which spreads uplifting and positive news and content. This column is part of that effort.

And I met a single dad who was raising his young daughter alone after his first wife passed away. We got married and I adopted her, which turned into my sidedoor into motherhood.

The year before I met them, I signed up to be a Big Sister in the Big Brother Big Sister program. Now that “little girl” also lives with us full time.

You want to talk beginnings? How about going from single and never married to married with two kids?

About seven years ago, as all of this was beginning, I received the opportunity to start writing this column. It’s evolved into a place where I share big challenges-sometimes mine, sometimes yours. I’m no longer amazed by how much we have in common. Maybe the details are different, but I’m guessing you have also lost someone or something you loved very much. You’ve probably also found incredible gifts in circumstances you would’ve never picked for yourself. Or maybe you’re still at that “everything is finished” place. Either is fine.

This is a “come as you are” party.

I hope you’re up for a good cry. Some laughs. Life stuff. That’s what we’ll do here in this space-share the ups, the downs. Oh, and my dog. I like to write about my dog. A lot.
Got dog? Got obstacles?

Big Sky, it’s possible this is the beginning of something great.

Daryn Kagan was a featured speaker at TEDxBigSky 2018. She is author of “Hope Possible: A Network News Anchor’s Thoughts on Losing her Job, Finding Love, a New Career, and my Dog, Always my Dog,” and the founder of darynkagan.com, a resource for uplifting and positive news.