Resilience Is Built, Not Found—What Do You Anchor To When The World Crumbles with Shaina Hargens

The ground can give way without warning. When Shaina Hargens’ first child, Lee, was stillborn, the loss was a one-in-a-million event that shattered assumptions and rewired daily life. From that grief came a quiet question that shaped everything: what actually held me up? Together we explore how her answer became a practical, grace-filled approach to resilience that women can use in real time.

Shaina walks us through the anchors that kept her afloat—beliefs, community, reflection, and small, repeatable actions—then shows how she rebuilt her routine after her rainbow daughter arrived. We get tactical about energy management, including how syncing work with the menstrual cycle can reduce burnout and increase momentum. No hustle sermons here; just simple systems like alternating “in the business” and “on the business” weeks, clear pockets of recovery, and the courage to say no when your body says pause.

We dig into the Resilience Map, a choose-the-next-step framework for messy days when anxiety blurs everything. Whether it’s a three-item grounding exercise, a hard phone call, or a bath that unclenches your jaw, the map trades overwhelm for clarity. We also talk about honoring safety while moving through limiting beliefs, widening your circle when you’re ready, and letting faith reshape the story you tell yourself.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re holding it together on the outside while unraveling inside, this conversation offers language, tools, and permission. Build anchors before the storm. Rebuild them after. Sync your calendar to your real energy. And when the day feels impossible, choose the next right thing. If this resonates, tap follow, share with a friend who needs steady ground, and leave a review so more people can find their map.

Connect with Shaina:

Website: www.ShainaHargens.com

Instagram: @shainahargens

Facebook: @shaina.hargens 

TikTok: @shainahargens

YouTube: @isoprosperity

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Shayna’s Story Of Loss
• 2:00 One-In-A-Million Grief And Survival
• 4:20 Resilience Is Built, Not Found
• 7:40 Rebuilding With Tools And Anchors
• 10:30 Burnout, Reflection, And The Tool Belt
• 12:40 Syncing Work With The Menstrual Cycle
• 16:20 Energy Management And Boundaries
• 18:30 Anchoring Amidst: Presence Over Hustle
• 22:00 The Resilience Map And Next Right Step
• 25:00 Limiting Beliefs, Safety, And Opening Up
• 28:20 Coaching, Faith, And A New Journal
• 31:00 Daily Reflection And Final Takeaways

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome back to the Against All Odds, the Less than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte, where we will hear stories of incredible people thriving against all odds. And my hope is that we can all see how life is always happening for us, even when we are the less than 1% chance.

SPEAKER_02: 0:20

Hey, hey, welcome back to Against All Odds, the Less than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte. I am so excited for another amazing conversation that's going to take place. And I'm going to just quickly introduce you to Shayna. I just got a little bit of a glimpse into everything, and I'm so, so excited for you guys to listen to her story. So Shayna Hargins is a motivational coach, speaker, and writer who believes resilience is built, not found, out of her own season of searching and missed the devastating one in a million loss of her first child to the birth of her rainbow baby. She set out to rediscover her anchors, not only for herself, but to share with others. Because we never know when the storm may hit. Her mission is to guide women back to their God-given identity, helping them to anchor and miss fortified, confident, and gracefully resilient through gentle rhythms of planning, reflection, and connection. So I am so excited to hear all about this. Shayna, welcome to Against All Odds. Thank you so much for having me, Maria. I am so excited to talk to you. So give me just an idea: what is your Against All Odds story and how has it brought you to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00: 1:41

It's a story of loss and survival. Like both pieces. So in your intro, you mentioned my first child. His name was Lee, and he was full-term stillborn. It was devastating. Yeah. And it was a one in a million. The condition that led to his loss was just that. It was a one in a million. And then going into a rainbow pregnancy, it was a 18% chance that it could happen again. So it magnified everything. Absolutely. And it it came what leads to this conversation is answering the question, how did I survive? Like what happened, what what was already in place that allowed me to be here? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:44

Yeah, that's usually kind of when we're in that in those moments of like unimaginable pain. And it has to come back to that reflection point of okay, wait, why how? And when when we allow ourselves to calm a little bit from that, I think that's when we can actually decipher what brought us to where we are and what we actually were able to feel in our hearts that was the right way to go.

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

Yeah, there's a lot of disassociation in all of that. And so the next piece to that is reconnection, like not only to yourself, but those around you, what you believe in, and just really, yeah, finding rediscovering all of that for yourself.

SPEAKER_02: 3:39

Yeah, absolutely. And so in the introduction, I mentioned that you've said that resilience is built, not found. Can you take us back to the season that shaped that belief and how obviously your own loss and revival journey led you to rediscover your anchors?

SPEAKER_00: 3:57

Yeah. So it came to that question of like, how did I survive? So a lot of times, and I know I'm sure you've heard this throughout your interviews, we get that question of or the comment that says, You're so strong. Right? Yeah. And yes, we are, we all are, even when we don't want to be. Yeah. Right. And so then it's like, okay, what are those anchors? What are those pillars that held me up and walked me through all of that? And it was a lot of rediscovery. After my son was born, 16 months later, my rainbow daughter was born. Oh, wow. And yes. And the year of firsts after she was born was survival. It was getting through those, it was feeling through those. And it's like when she turned a year old, it was like, oh, I could breathe again. Right. Then I set out to answer that question. Like all of this stuff has hit me. All those ups and downs, ins and outs, joy and sorrow, right? What was it? Like where did that resilience come from? Right? Because it didn't come from journaling initially, right? And like after the event, not to minimize my son, but just like in a conversation, right? So like after the event, then yes, you're journaling, you're reconnecting, you're just re-finding those things for yourself. But you have when it comes to building your resilience, that's something that is built along the way. It is built in the journaling, it's built in the conversations and the connections that you have, it's built in what you believe and so on. And yet we have to rediscover it. Yeah. And it's not necessarily something you buy off the shelf. Yeah, absolutely not. No. But in all this rediscovery, it in pieces it was, in small pieces. So it was a workshop that I had attended, and one page of that whole workbook was like a piece of gold, right? Yeah. And then another, and then oh, this journal page or this thing I had taught previously in my coaching business, right? I'm like, oh yeah, that's a piece, right? Yeah. And I discovered those anchors for myself so that I can give them away. So I can have conversations like this.

SPEAKER_02: 6:46

Yeah, it's like having this for so many years, continuously having things to put in your tool belt. And when you least expected that you needed it, it was again taking that one foot in front of the other and saying, Oh, well, wait, this could help and let me use this. And oh wait, this could help and let me use this. And so little by little, kind of understanding that along your journey of life, you've been able to build this tool belt for yourself. And then I would imagine that during the process, you also added more things to your tool belt because I feel like we're always in different parts of our journey, and what can work maybe at one point of our lives may not necessarily work, but we can tweak that or we can evolve from those other things that helped before.

SPEAKER_00: 7:52

Yeah. When we because we can pick up and go again, yeah. And sometimes we don't pick up all the right things, all right? But we have the tool belt on us, right? Yeah, we can always reach in for more. And I got to a point in my kind of revival where I was like, okay, something's not working, like something's still missing. And it, I really felt it in kind of like a burnout cycle, yeah, of like, what is wrong with me? Or what does this look like now, or why does this not feel the same, or what have you. And so I looked back at my old tool belt and I was like, because it's still mine, right? Yeah, even though I may not be the same person wearing it, right? And it actually, there's things in that, like you just said, you can tweak, you can reimagine or reenvision for what you're doing now. One of those things was my calendar, and I hadn't synced my calendar to my cycle, but I didn't know that's what I had been doing before, right? Like my whole self. So I went back and I'm like, okay, that was working. I wonder, right? Like, here's this little aha moment. It was like, I wonder if that is what was helping me sync to my cycle. And so, like, plugging that in really it changed how I actually even work with my cycle, with my business, with my life.

SPEAKER_02: 9:34

That's awesome. And so, can you explain a little bit on how that works? What came out of that of syncing your cycle to your business or what you were doing?

SPEAKER_00: 9:48

Absolutely. So, this is like the you know, one-minute version of what I do in what we call calendar conquering. So, yeah, we lay that all out, we make it all happen. But what it does, so what I had been doing, what I had been advised to do, was to meet with my clients every other week. Okay. And so you'd have a week, you, me, I would have this week of being on my business versus in my business. Right? Okay. And so that's something, I don't know, we hear that, but how do we actually apply that? We do that with systems, we can do that with rhythms. And so this every other week thing worked really well. And between the course of motherhood and riding out that momentum, because I did not for over three years, I did not add new people to my circle. Yeah. And so riding that momentum back to a place where I'm like, oh, I'm bed zero, right? I'm at baseline. So building it back up, I didn't pick up the every other week cycle. It petered out because my client, my clientele had petered out at the time. And so having that burnout cycle moment of like, what's wrong with me? I was like, wait a second, maybe back then I magically or accidentally synced with my cycle. Yeah. And so now putting it in my calendar now is something that I not only teach my clients, but it's something that allows me to know when I'm on versus when I'm off.

unknown: 11:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 11:32

And that's with like your the energy that you're able to, I don't know, give during your cycle. Is that what I'm understanding? Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 11:43

Yep. And so like I absolutely do not schedule a workshop or webinar during like a four or five day period. I'm like, no, I'll probably cry my way through it. No. But to have those pockets of no for those other things, right? That fill us up, yeah, that's where the magic happens. And I love doing that with my clients too.

SPEAKER_02: 12:08

I love that. And you hear about that kind of like with workouts and stuff. Like, these are the days that you should probably work on like lifting heavy or doing more cardio, or because at least in the aspect of what of my side of TikTok or Instagram or whatever, that's what they're talking about. Because I'm at that age at least that like things just don't always function the same. What worked for me 10 years ago does not work for me now. So it's understandable, I guess, if and we don't really think about it, if we're doing that with like workouts or how we move our body, then why not with other things in our life? Right. So many women feel like they're holding it all together on the outside, which I could totally attest to, but unraveling on the inside. What do you what does it really mean to anchor and mist? And how can women begin to reconnect with who they are, even in the middle of like life storms?

SPEAKER_00: 13:20

It means that we can do the next right thing. We can do whatever it is we want to do as long as we want to do it. Yeah. Right. So to anchor amidst is to really uh take a moment to breathe and be where you're at. It's to anchor in some of those things that I mentioned into your beliefs, into your connections, into your gratitude, into your story that says, huh, I can do more of that kind of stuff. Right? And then more, and then more, and then more, but at a pace that feels like momentum and not like something that's dragging you down, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 14:12

Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I feel like so many times it just feels so overwhelming. And then when we think about it, is like, okay, well, if I do one thing at a time, and then from there build a routine or build on those steps to where I really truly want to be and where wanna go. That's what's gotten me through a lot of chaotic moments. When my my oldest daughter, when she was growing up, she was diagnosed with a mental health disorder. And as a single mom of three kids, I was going absolutely crazy trying to learn how to parent because there's no manual, right? There is no manual on the best the way to parent them, how to deal with all these situations. So I say that to because there was no way that I had a manual on how to parent her because I was learning as I went, right? And so it felt so overwhelming to deal with life. Mornings were really, really hard. So it was like the start of our day was always so chaotic that I had to learn to step back and become very present. I start that's where I started to meditate. I started to do my gratitude early in the morning. I would wake up earlier than I would normally wake up. I was working from home for for the most part throughout that time period, and I had an online business, and so I didn't have I didn't have to wake up at four o'clock in the morning to give myself that oxygen mask first and take care of myself first. But when I started to do that, that I started to find that oh I can wake up and make sure that I am in a place where I need to be and I'm calm and I'm it very present, and then I could go in there and wake her up, and it doesn't have to come from an anxious place, it comes from a place of really just knowing that I'm at peace and I'm ready for the day, and anything that comes my way is going to be easier because I'm in a better place, and so the change that happened, I was like, oh my gosh, this is a totally different child. But I then realized that it was me, it was my energy, the energy that I was putting out, she was picking up. So when I was anxious of oh my gosh, I don't even know what today brings, and would wake her up with that energy, it was case, yeah, versus love and warmth and openness, yes. And so when I would come in with those kind of like calm and loving energy, she would totally respond differently. And I was like, Oh, okay. And then I started to like add little things, like you said, different little things that I would add to this routine. It was okay, so I'm gonna try to wake her up 15 minutes before she would wake up, she would have to wake up, right? So if she had to wake up, as an example, at like seven, then I would wake her up at 6:45 and give her a choice if she wanted to wake up now or in 15 minutes, and it was a form of giving her control without getting out of the routine that we needed to keep, right? Right, so she felt in control. Hey baby, do you want to wake up now or do you want me to give you 15 more minutes? And she would obviously always say 15 more minutes, and so I was like, Okay, I'll be right back. And then when I would come in, it would be totally like okay, I'm ready to get up now, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a totally different child. I am not even dealing with the same child right now, and so yes, it's learning those things and learning that we have to reconnect with ourselves and be present in our own body and in our own energy, so that when we go in there, totally different, totally different outcome. But I love that so you talk about graceful resilience, that strength looks different than it feels. What practices or rhythms do you teach to help women rebuild resilience gently rather than hustle their way through it? Because that's always like more chaotic.

SPEAKER_00: 19:18

Right. Really, the simple short answer is I have a map for that. I know, right? So having a map, having something diagrammed out for yourself to answer that question, right? Something you did with your daughter of like, okay, how do I correct myself so that the way I walk into her room is different, right? And so you backed yourself out of that equation far enough to see what that solution was, right? And so to walk through that map says, okay, I'm heading. Into burnout, or I'm heading into this particular season, or I'm just living life and the world around me is a joke. Yes. I said it nicely in the title of my journal, crumbling. But really, there's so so many different levels of resilience that we just get to build every single day. Or we can also choose not to, which is not the direction we want to go, right? For mental health, for the people around us, for just our day-to-day, like how we start our days. And so having a map tells us, hey, when I get to point A, point B, right, this formula, what is my next right step? What is that thing that shifts into a positive interaction, into a good day, into more momentum to get the thing done, to get to that vision that God's placed on my heart? Yeah. Right. So having a map, I have a map called the Resilience Map. And it literally is just that next right step so that when you're feeling that, oh, what is going on with me today? We can just go to this map. And we can say, How about let's try this? Whether it's everything from a bubble bath to calling your neighbor back about the issue with your dog, like all the things in between, because it's all needed and it's all beautiful and it's all restful.

SPEAKER_02: 21:40

Yeah. And it's like uh, oh, what is it? The diagrams that tells you if this, this, or this. Yeah. That's what like I'm picturing in my mind is like those, like, if this, then these are the options. And if this, these are the options.

SPEAKER_00: 21:59

Oh, now I'm over here, like, I need to add that to my map. Because all right, you got me on a mission.

SPEAKER_02: 22:06

I got that that's what I pictured in my brain as you were saying that. I'm like, oh, this is like one of those tree things that you like have to like, if this, then this.

SPEAKER_00: 22:19

Yes, we I will add that as an option B to my to my resilience map.

SPEAKER_02: 22:25

I love it so much. So now that you're guiding other women through their own anchoring journeys, what does it look like when women begin, when a woman begins to live anchored? And what is one message you hope that every listener carries with them after today?

SPEAKER_00: 22:45

Yeah. When you start to anchor amidst and really take that moment to invest just in that thought, to anchor amidst, it gives you permission to set that boundary, it gives you permission to make that phone call, right? To take that time out of your day to make that phone call, right? It gives you permission to celebrate, right? To celebrate that story. That's what you do here, right? Absolutely and and yet when we are not anchored in the world we live in, let alone all the things that can happen in our story, like if we are not anchored or anchoring amidst, we gotta have something to hold on to.

SPEAKER_02: 23:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:34

And that peace, like I said, I would say to answer that question is permission.

SPEAKER_02: 23:39

Yeah, yeah. I love that. I feel like it's just that reminder that we all need to, hey, wait, come back to yourself because we are the longest relationship we will ever have, right? Yes. So to come back to ourselves, and I think innately, when we are not in fight or flight, we innately know what we need. Like again, my oldest daughter, she's now 21. She deals with a lot of mental health, and when she calls me, we don't live together anymore, she lives on her own, and so when she calls me and she's anxious and like having coming into a panic attack, the first thing I say to her is okay, take a deep breath. Because the moment that you start getting present, and then the second thing I always tell her is, all right, like tell me about three things that you can see right now, and I ask her to describe them, and I and it just anchors her into the present rather than the chaos that's happening in her surroundings, and so that's what I want to make sure that she focuses on so that she can start like listening to her herself in her body and and knowing innately what she needs. It's like having that map that you talk about internally, like, okay, I know that this is the what I need for right this moment, but it's first getting to me for her, it's first getting her to a place where she can actually think past the anxiety and past the things that are going in her head at the moment, so right, and that's why ultimately the why I wrote my journal is because so many women don't have because we're so isolated in whatever way, right?

SPEAKER_00: 25:35

We don't feel like we can call our mom, right? Some of us can't, and that's hard too. But to not be able to have that person a call, I want this journal to have that prompt that pulls you into that present that says, I can anchor right here where I'm at, not in my old self, not in my future self, but just right here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 26:00

And I say this because I don't think that right now I would, no matter how wonderful of a relationship I have with my mom now, I couldn't call my mom because in that generation, they simply just that's not something that they talked about, that's something that they muscled through, that's something like it was, it isn't. I think that the generation now of adult women, let's say even late 20s to 40s, we don't have a parent that is open enough to understand that because they're just like, you've got this, get over it, I did this way, kind of thing, and it's more of the like muscling through rather than like coming and knowing that there's a better path within ourselves, and so I love that because I've been through therapy, I've done a lot of work on myself. I can give that to my daughter as she's like starting her adulthood and so forth, and I say that more because she's 21 in chronological years, but in mental and emotional, she's still like she's 18. She is now coming into like, oh well, everything that you were telling me did help and did work. Let me call you. And I've had many forever with them to just feel like that they can come to me, but because that was the one thing that I wanted to be like, all right, this is my my check list of like how I want to be a good parent. I want them to be able to talk to me. So now I've worked on that for their entire life, but we don't all have that. That's something that innately I want her to understand that she could have in herself, and I'm I'm just the guiding light now. So I love that you have a journal that does that for us that don't have necessarily that guiding light.

SPEAKER_00: 28:17

Yep, every day.

SPEAKER_02: 28:19

I love it, I love that so much. So, what limiting beliefs or roadblocks did you have to overcome in order to get to where you are today?

unknown: 28:29

Gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 28:30

Initially, I'm like every single one of them. All the things, right? But to something I mentioned earlier was I paused opening my group, opening like my circle for over three years. Yeah. I couldn't let someone new into my story.

unknown: 28:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:52

Because if they didn't know my son, they didn't know me.

unknown: 28:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:58

And that was a huge at the time, it didn't feel like a limiting belief. It felt like safety. Yeah. And that's perfectly okay. And then when it felt like I was ready, it actually all just like at the end of a Tetris game, like all of them fall into place just perfectly, right? Like visual, right? And like putting this journal into motion and having conversations with people like yourself, like we didn't know each other two weeks ago, right? And it to me that was a that's a huge step, even just in the last couple of months. But it's because of honestly, I have to give credit to God. Three months ago, I had a totally different journal title picked out. Yeah. I was packed up to go on a like a home away from home trip with my husband and my daughter, and I just mentally walking through, like, what's next? What's next? If I'm gonna get this journal published, what's next? And it's like God stopped me. I was driving and he just was like, right? And he said, The journal title you've picked is not going to allow this journal to be as big as it's gonna be. No, and I was like, Okay, God, then you gotta give me a new journal title. Like, I knew that already, but I wasn't praying about it. I'll pray about it now. And it just fell into place, and it made it to where now I can have these conversations and finish my sentences and my thoughts to make it not just about my story, but about every single person's story. Because really, this journal anchoring amidst, I wrote an opening letter and a closing letter, everything else, and I wrote the prompts, but the prompts are yours, they're not mine, right? And to to be able to connect all of those dots and then to have this conversation, that full circle, like to open this as wide as I've opened it just in the last couple of months, just blows my mind. And it was a huge limiting belief that I allowed for a couple of years, over three, probably three and a half, before I actually started even accepting new Facebook friend requests. Yeah. Like it was baby steps, but it was something that had to be done. But I can also, I've had a coach through this as well, and I'm a coach, right? I get to do this too. But along, along all of this, I knew that it was a limiting belief, and I knew where it was serving me and where it wasn't. And as long as I was okay with that, right? Until honestly, a couple months ago, the gates just busted open and it was too late. Like, okay, here we go. It's been fun, but it was big and it's okay.

SPEAKER_02: 32:14

Yeah, and I love that you stated that you have a coach, even if you're a coach, it's like a therapist, they have therapists as well. We all need them. So I love that because I think so many times we're focused on these are the things, and a coach can show you, oh, but wait, what about all of this? On the outside of what you're focused on, and so it that allows you to grow, that allows you to continue to push yourself past those like limiting beliefs and challenge you into, but wait, this isn't necessarily this will help me grow, but if I'm thinking if they're talking from the outside looking in, maybe they're seeing something that I'm not seeing, and so I think that's what you do for women as well, is that you coming from a place where you've been able to challenge yourself past those limiting beliefs because you had your coach also was coaching you through it, it then helps you work so much better with the people that you the women that you're coaching because you're gonna see past their limiting beliefs.

SPEAKER_00: 33:33

Right. And yet still be just like the story I just told you, like still be in some of that safety. Yeah. Because when we do something from solid ground, yeah, we can kick some butt.

SPEAKER_02: 33:47

Yes, absolutely. I absolutely I love that. All right, so what daily habits or rituals would you say have helped you reach the level of success where you're at now?

SPEAKER_00: 34:00

Answering the questions for myself, right? Like the every coach needs a coach thing. If you're not answering your own questions, right? If you're listening something to a podcast to learn and grow, if you're like, oh yeah, they no, what about you?

SPEAKER_02: 34:19

Like, yeah, it's a reflection.

SPEAKER_00: 34:21

Yeah, I think it is just that power of reflection of like answering those questions for myself and then figuring out a way how to give them away.

SPEAKER_02: 34:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 34:34

Yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_02: 34:36

Oh my gosh, this has been awesome. Do you have any other? I will obviously share all of your links and everything, but do you have anything else that you would like to tell our listeners today?

SPEAKER_00: 34:49

Keep going, do the next right thing, whatever that is for you, because you're the one that makes the rules. Yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_02: 35:00

I love it so much. So, Shana, thank you so much for joining us today. I am so excited for everyone to hear this. I think that it's a powerful story and a powerful map to continue to grow and learn how to be present and so forth. So I'm so so excited for everyone to hear this. Thank you for joining me today. Yes. Listeners, thanks so much for listening or watchers, however, you like to see this podcast. I am really, really excited for you to reconnect with Shayna in through her social media or through her groups. I really hope that if you feel called to it, to really connect with her. Her story is powerful, and I know that it will make a huge difference in your life. So, thank you so much for listening today. Peace out, guys. Love your life. Bye.