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The Adapted Life, Finding Next

The Adapted Life, Finding Next

Written by: Julie Hasselberger
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About this listen

I’m Julie Hasselberger. For 26 years, I was the full-time caregiver for my beloved son Daniel, whose life was marked by profound disability and extraordinary beauty. This podcast began as a way to support other parents navigating the complex, often isolating world of special needs caregiving. But life changed — heartbreakingly and irrevocably — when my son passed away.


Now, The Adapted Life, Finding Next is a space for truth-telling, tenderness, and transformation. It’s about what comes after the role that once defined you is gone. It’s about grief, relational trauma, resilience, and the raw, ongoing search for next — for purpose, healing, and connection.


If you’re facing a season of reckoning, rebuilding, or rediscovery, I invite you to walk with me. You are not alone. This is the adapted life… and together, we’ll find what comes next.


© 2025 The Adapted Life, Finding Next
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Episodes
  • Coming Home to Present, as a tool
    Nov 10 2025

    Send me a Text Message

    Hello,

    In this episode I speak tenderly about how meditation has transformed my journey with grief and pain. This is my first ever guided meditation, so I am sure it won't be perfect.

    I have layered grief, and deep trauma. It has significantly caused me so much difficulty in finding my way again. This is why I added on "finding next", because this journey is just that, a journey.

    I hope this meditation brings you some calm. I love visualizing the forest full of giant pines that we saw in the San Jacinto mountains in California where my daughter recently got married.

    I'm trying to live each day, with the goal of existing and creating from my heart. It is about all my broken heart can spare. But I am here, dear ones. I am here because I know I am not alone in my pain.

    Maybe we can step side by side and heal trauma together. Maybe even one little moment is enough.

    Please feel free to leave me some feedback, you can find me also on you tube, instagram, Facebook, and here.

    I have been hoping to learn how to be a meditation guide, which is what I am working on now. I thought... why not just try.

    All my love,

    Julie

    Support the show

    https://www.etsy.com/shop/DanielsSpecialArt?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQr7Ot0J0o6_gRnG_fJvzDg

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    13 mins
  • Love in transition, healing from brokenness
    Oct 5 2025

    Send me a Text Message

    The Adapted Life Podcast, by Julie Hasselberger

    Season 4 Episode 35 "Love in transition."

    Adapting in our brokenness.


    Love is not static, it bends, breaks and mends across time. The loss of child shatters a family, but love finds ways to carry them forward. Growth in empathy, and emotional intelligence can reconnect partners even decades later.

    Love is like "Kintsugi" The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, the cracks remain, but they shine.

    Thought provoking questions are shared regarding our experience with adversity, loss, trauma, grief and how love in so many of our relationships is sometimes damaged and rebuilt.

    We lost our beloved Daniel on January 12, 2024. Stay with me as I work through grief and finding purpose. It is early days. And very hard.

    Music licensed by Epidemic sound and Premium Beat


    Support the show

    https://www.etsy.com/shop/DanielsSpecialArt?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQr7Ot0J0o6_gRnG_fJvzDg

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    19 mins
  • The Double Loss
    Oct 2 2025

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    In this episode I want to take a gentle walk through discussing what happens when your caregiving world ends.

    I offer a moment of calm meditation, as well as a journal prompt to think on at the end.

    which is, " What truths have you faced when your role as a caregiver for your loved ended?"

    The double loss refers to the loss of a loved one, coupled with the loss of dedicating your life to creating the world of caregiving. Everything you had been doing ends. It is a very confusing time, and it has left me completely lost and not sure of who I am now.

    Support the show

    https://www.etsy.com/shop/DanielsSpecialArt?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQr7Ot0J0o6_gRnG_fJvzDg

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    28 mins
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