Before and After

A single phone call, a diagnosis, a goodbye you never saw coming. Some moments don’t just hurt, they divide your life into “before” and “after” and quietly change how you see yourself. I’m sitting with those line in the sand turning points and the part we don’t talk about enough. The grief for the person you were and the future you were certain you’d have. 

I share my own identity shifts through motherhood, policing, post-traumatic stress and medical retirement and why “getting back to your old self” can be a promise that keeps you trapped. We dig into what it looks like to stop measuring your healing against a past version of you, especially when trauma recovery, grief or major life transitions change what you can carry, what triggers you and what you value. 

There’s also hope here, but not the forced kind. It’s the grounded kind that says you can take time to be angry, to mourn and to admit you’d undo parts of your story if you could, while still choosing not to let that moment become where your life stops. I talk about the Bibbulmun Track and what can happen when you finally meet the current version of you, the one who has survived everything and is still standing. If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more everyday warriors can feel seen.

Thanks for listening in!

Contact me directly at https://everydaywarriorspodcast.com.au or head to
Instagram  Personal or Podcast
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/trudie.dwyer

Subscribe to Everyday Warrior Moments here

Support the Podcast - Buy me a Coffee

Buy my Book here

Apply to be a guest at everydaywarriorspodcast@gmail.com

Music Credit: Cody Martin - Sunrise (first 26 episodes) then custom made for me.

Disclaimer: The views, opinions, experiences and stories shared by guests on the Everyday Warriors Podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Trudie Marie, or the Everyday Warriors Podcast.

Guests are responsible for the accuracy of the information they choose to share and speak from their own personal experiences and perspectives. While every effort is made to provide a respectful and supportive platform for open conversation, the host accepts no responsibility or liability for the statements, opinions, advice, claims or recollections expressed by guests during a...

Transcript

A Quiet Moment Together

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Everyday Warrior Moments. Thank you, truly, for being here and for choosing to subscribe and support the podcast. It means more than you probably realise and it allows me to keep creating these conversations and this space. This is a quieter moment between our guest episodes, a place to slow things down, to reflect and to take a breath. These episodes are just me, sharing thoughts, lessons, and gentle reminders as I continue to walk in my own journey too. So wherever you are right now, whether you're starting your day, ending it, or somewhere in between, let's take a few minutes together. Welcome to another episode of Everyday Warrior Moments. And I want to thank you for being here, whether it's your first time or you're a regular listener, and for just taking that little bit of time out of your day to spend with me.

The Before And After Line

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Today I want to talk about those moments that really draw a line in the sand. That moment when life becomes before and after. And I think we all have them. Now, sometimes we know they're coming, like becoming a parent or getting married, leaving a career, maybe even moving somewhere new. But sometimes they arrive completely unexpectedly. Things like when you're there's a diagnosis or that sudden phone call, there is a death or an accident, maybe it's a relationship ending, or even losing a job. Something happens, and whether we realize it at the time or not, there is suddenly the person we bef we were before that moment, and then there's the person we are after it. And we can't change that. I've been thinking a lot about these moments lately because I myself have had quite a few of them. I go back to when I certainly became a mother. I was 25, I had just become a mum of my gorgeous daughter, and from that moment, life was not entirely about me anymore. There was a little human who suddenly needed me, and everything I had dreamed of or hoped for was now out the window, and nothing can really prepare you for how completely that changes your identity. There was the trudy before children, and now there's the trudy that's the mother. And I think joining the police force was another one. That uniform not only changed how I saw myself, but it changed how other people saw me. And years later, being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, that changed everything again. Because then there was life before the PTS and everything that came after it. And I think that's probably the line in the sand that's taken me the longest to understand.

Letting Go Of The Old Self

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Because sometimes things just happen that changes us so profoundly that our first instinct is we need to try and get back to the person we were before. Back to normal, back to work, back to how things used to be, and trying to feel like ourselves. And people will even say to us, Oh, don't worry, you'll be back to your old self soon. But what if you're not? And perhaps an even bigger question is, what if you're not supposed to be? I spent a long, long time really trying to be the person before I was diagnosed with PTS. I really wanted the old me back. The person who was capable, strong, and who could keep pushing through. The one who could put the uniform on and just turn up to work and do what needed to be done. And for a long time, I think I measured myself healing against that old version of me. If I couldn't do something she could, I wasn't better. If something triggered me that would not have triggered her, then I still hadn't healed. And eventually I just had to accept that something was really bloody uncomfortable. I wasn't going back to the old version of Trudy. She hadn't seen what I'd seen, and she hadn't felt what I felt. She hadn't lived what I'd lived through. So how could I possibly expect myself to go through something so fundamental that changed me and come out exactly the same? Isn't that the definition of insanity to stay the same and think that things are going to change?

Grieving The Life You Lost

SPEAKER_00 5:03

And I think that this doesn't only apply to trauma. Think about it with grief. How can you lose somebody you love? And then people talk about getting over it. But life is never going to be the same without that person in it. The world is so different now. Or maybe you've received a medical diagnosis and suddenly it's not only your body that's changing, but every plan you had for your future is now going to look different. Maybe it's the end of a divorce or a relationship, and all those dreams and plans you had for your future with that person disappear. It also happens when your children grow up and leave home. I know that I lost a sense of identity when both my children moved out of home. And there are many ways that life can just, you know, be that line in the sand moment for us. And I think what makes these experiences so difficult is that we're not just dealing with the what happened, we're grieving with what once was. We're grieving the person who we were and the future that we thought we were going to have. And I don't think anybody really talks about that part. Sometimes you can so desperately want your old life back, but at the same time know that you're never going to have that life again. And I felt that. I loved being a police officer. And there was a time when that idea of never putting on my blue uniform again was just incredibly difficult to comprehend because that was how my future was planned. I thought I was going to be in that career until the day I retired. So it wasn't just a job that ended, it was an identity and future that ended with it. I had this picture in my head of what life would look like, and that suddenly disappeared. And it wasn't how do I get my old life back? But what do I do with the life I now have to live? And those are two very, very different questions. Because one keeps us looking backwards into the past, and then the other one asks us to stop and turn around and begin to look forward. Now, I'm not suggesting for one second that something devastating happens and we should just immediately start searching for the silver lining because that is just such an unrealistic expectation. Life can be shit, something happens and it hurts, and we need that time to grieve, we need that time to be angry and sit in the unfairness of it all and acknowledge that we actually didn't ask for this. There are things in life that happened that we would absolutely undo if we could. But that's the thing about life. We can't. And I think there's a difference between acknowledging that something changed us and allowing that moment to just become the place where our lives are permanently stopped.

The Bibbulmun Track Turning Point

SPEAKER_00 8:29

And for me, the Bibleman track became a big part of figuring that out. Because when I started that thousand-kilometer hike, I knew I wasn't the person I used to be. And I think somewhere inside the back of my mind, I thought that hopefully I might find that old version of myself out there somewhere in the wilderness. That maybe if I could walk and push through and prove to myself that somehow the old version of Trudy would just reappear. But that's not what happened on the track. I didn't find the old me. I started meeting the current version of me. The version who had lived through all of that and was starting to live her life inside of it. Out there without the uniform, without all the usual roles and distractions, I started seeing those little pieces of myself again. Like the pieces that were me at my core, the curiosity, the turn, the determination, the woman who could actually just sit quietly and start to notice things. And looking at that, when I things started to get hard, I realized that I didn't have to be the woman I was before because I had everything and I had survived everything. And maybe that's what our after can eventually become. We're not a lesser version of ourselves or a damaged version. We're not even necessarily a better version. We're just a different one. A person that is perhaps carrying more experience, a different or new perspective, a little bit of grace and understanding. Maybe we're ready to put in more boundaries or have more compassion for ourselves. I think sometimes we're so busy mourning that person we used to be that we just don't give ourselves an opportunity to meet the person standing in front of the mirror right now.

Questions To Meet Yourself Now

SPEAKER_00 10:51

And that's what I want you to think about today. What is your line in the sand moment? What's that moment in time that created a before and after for you? And there may be more than one. Maybe you don't have one that comes to mind immediately. Or maybe you do have several. But just stop for a minute and think about that moment. See what it took, what you took from it. Because that's where our minds naturally go. I want you to ask yourself, what changed in me because of it? What matters less now? Or what matters more? What will I no longer tolerate? And what have I learned about myself in this? And perhaps an important one is am I still trying to become someone I no longer am? Because that one can be really uncomfortable and really confronting. Because maybe you've been measuring yourself against a version of you that no longer exists. Because let's be real, we are not the same people we were five years ago, ten years ago, or even 20 years ago. I am definitely not the same woman at 50 that I was at 40. I'm not the same woman at 50 that I was at 30, and definitely not at 20. So maybe you've been telling yourself things like I used to be able to handle this, or I used to have more energy, I used to be more confident, and I used to be happier. But comparing two people from two different versions of your life is not a great space to be in. And we have a habit of comparing ourselves to other people around us, but comparing ourselves to versions of ourselves is really weird in some ways. You've probably experienced things that, you know, have made you laugh and love and grow and see the world completely differently. And you're not supposed to be untouched by any of it.

Healing Without Erasing The Past

SPEAKER_00 13:27

So I think that maybe healing isn't about erasing the lines between the before and after. It's about being able to just stand on the other side of it and say, this happened to me, this changed me, and look, I'm still here. I know now I can look back on my medical retirement and understand that policing wasn't the end of my story. It was just the end of a chapter. But at the time I couldn't see that. I was so devastated. And standing right on that line, I couldn't look very far ahead. I didn't know who I was going to become. I didn't know what life would look like. And I didn't even know if I would ever feel okay again. But like I always say, all you can do is take one step at a time forward. Just one foot in front of the other. And funnily enough, that's how I ended up walking the Bibbleman track. That 1,000 kilometers was just walked one step at a time. And maybe that's the reminder I want to leave you with today. Because if you're currently living in one of those after seasons and you don't recognize yourself yet, and you don't have everything figured out, that's okay. You don't need to rush back to where you were. I want you just to stop and give yourself permission to meet yourself here today, right now, as you are. And then I want you to ask yourself, who are you becoming because of everything you've lived through? Not despite it, but because I believe that everything happens for a reason. And I don't necessarily believe that we need to find a reason for every terrible thing that has happened to us. But what I do believe is that we get to decide how we move on from here. Because that before will always be part of our story. That line in the sand will always exist. But there is so much of life available on the other side of it. We just have to take a moment to look forward. And perhaps one day you'll look back too and realize that you were never meant to be the person you were before. And maybe that person has been waiting for you to arrive all along.

One Breath One Step Forward

SPEAKER_00 16:09

So wherever you are today, I want you to take a moment, take a deep breath in and let it go. Come back to yourself, not to the person you used to be or the person you think you should be, just the you right here, right now. And remember that everyday warriors don't give up. They continue to rise. Thank you for being part of the Everyday Warrior community and for supporting the podcast. It really means a lot. If something in this episode stayed with you, I invite you to share it a message, a post, a simple recommendation. It helps more people feel seen and supported. And don't forget the Everyday Warriors podcast is always there for deeper conversations and real stories from around the world. Take care and I'll see you again in the next moment.