#104 - When the Unexpected Arrives - Rising with Grace Through Life’s Storms

“The unexpected will arrive, sister—but it doesn’t have to break you. It can build you.”

In this deeply personal and raw conversation, I open up about something every single one of us has experienced—or will: the arrival of the unexpected. Whether it's a sudden loss, a devastating diagnosis, a dream deferred, or even something as frustrating as a surprise tax bill, life has a way of knocking us off balance. But here's the truth—I believe with every fiber of my being that we get to choose what it means AND we ge to choose what we do next.

If you're walking through pain right now, or still healing from a storm that hit you out of nowhere, this episode is for you. I share pieces of my own story—my miscarriage, financial setbacks, the loss of my parents, betrayal, and more—to show you that rising is possible. Together, we talk about sacred curiosity, how to stop fighting reality, how to reclaim your power, and why sitting in the suck is sometimes the most healing thing we can do.

This isn’t just an episode—it’s a lifeline. A call to reconnect with your body, ground yourself in what’s still true, and take small but powerful steps toward healing. I’m here with you, sister. Always.

xoxo - Christine 🥰

⏱️ Episode Timeline Highlights:

[2:18] – Big podcast updates: a revamp is coming and I’m inviting you to be a guest
[4:36] – Two ways you can help grow our Girl Out of Order community
[7:03] – Shifting into today’s soul-stirring topic: when the unexpected arrives
[9:42] – Personal story: the miscarriage that shattered my illusion of certainty
[13:47] – Why we struggle so deeply with the unexpected—and how to shift the meaning
[17:39] – Rising from betrayal, loss, grief and choosing transformation over victimhood
[20:48] – What still remains after loss? Reclaiming power through radical acceptance
[24:21] – 3 powerful practices for when life crashes in: feel, reconnect, get curious
[27:25] – Grounding questions to help you take one courageous step forward

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Transcript

Christine Gale (00:01.37)
Hey there, sister. Welcome back to the Girl Out of Order podcast. I am so thankful for you, my dear listener. And I just wanna let you know that you are the reason I show up. I've had so many moments of self-doubt and I guess I'm gonna call it weariness.

in the last six months just wondering if anything I'm doing here makes a difference. And if that sounds just kind of bleh, it's because it is exactly that. Bleh is a human emotion when you're building something, when you're showing up and sharing and being real and raw and honest, but you're not sitting across the table from another human being where you can

gauge their reaction, where you can see their face, where you can touch their hands, where you can hug and embrace. And I just want to tell you how much I appreciate hearing from each and every one of you. Whether you leave a comment where you listen to this podcast or you show up in the Facebook community or you send me a text or you send me an email, I just want you to know that every single bit of feedback, every

Hey, by the way, this meant a lot to me moment keeps me going and touches my heart so deeply. And I'm also really excited because I am going to be doing, I'm not going to be, I am doing a bit of a revamp and a refresh of the Girl Out of Order podcast. I was inspired by my friend and TLC sister, Jeanette, who...

or maybe some different reasons has decided to expand her podcast to doing more interviews. And she said, I'm just really bored of talking to myself. And I can't say I'm bored of talking to myself. But that sounded weird. I'm not talking to myself. I'm talking to you. I'm talking to you, sister. I may not know who is listening, but just trust me that when I'm talking, I am picturing you. I am feeling you.

Christine Gale (02:18.962)
I am inspired by you. So I'm not so much bored of that as I am just starting to understand the depth and breadth of the stories of the women that are surrounding my very life now. And this is coming out of Own It and talking to so many incredible women who are like, I'll be on your podcast.

And I would love to be on your podcast and I'm getting brave and I'm asking and I'm inviting and I'm opening my eyes to even more perspectives because at the end of the day, the third pillar of Girl Out of Order is building bridges among all women. So I wanna bring on more women's voices. And so here's the thing. If you think you have something that

could really benefit the Girl Out of Order community. If you are like, that's it, raise my hand. I am a Girl Out of Order. I know that my story could touch so many. I am inviting you to email me at Christine at girloutoforder.com and say, I would love to be considered to be a guest on the podcast because here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna send you a form.

and you're gonna fill it out and you're gonna tell me all of the reasons why you should be considered to be a guest on this podcast. So I'm hoping that my inbox will be overflowing with incredible stories from incredible women around our incredible world. So if that's you, hit me up in my email and I will send you a Google form to fill out and let's just make sure that our topics

are in sync. I'm so excited. my gosh, even just saying it out loud gets me giddy. So the last little bit I have before we dive into today's topic is I am just asking you for a favor. Two actually. The first favor is would you please do me the favor if this podcast has served you in any way, shape or form, I am asking for you to do a rate or review

Christine Gale (04:36.0)
or share this podcast wherever you listen. And if you can hear my dogs barking, that's just the nature of podcasting. I'm not gonna yell at them. So welcome to the podcast, my dogs. But I would be so honored if you would go ahead and do a written review on Spotify or Apple or BuzzFeed or wherever you listen to this podcast so we can help grow our audience, so we can reach more women. And so we can finally, not finally, I don't know why I said finally.

We can just expand. We can expand. We can bring more and more women into our beautiful community. So that's the first favor. The second favor I have is we are growing our Girl Out of Order Facebook community. And I would love it if you would invite five friends to join our community. There hasn't been a lot of consistent activity in the community yet, and I'm owning that. It's been a wild journey.

But I have a vision as we revamp and refresh the Girl Out of Order podcast of growing this community. And there's going to be so many different facets to it. And I want to grow it as big as we can and get as many women into this community and then start showing up. Because it just takes one spark. It just takes one spark. And then we have a fire of connection and courage and inspiration. And so you

my sister can be that spark. Okay. So for today's episode, switching gears, the topic that I want to talk to you about today is so near and dear to my heart and it's really just shown itself to me in the last few weeks and I thought, you know, when God, the universe circumstances speak to me,

I listen. I am an intuitive podcaster. I would give anything to be that podcaster who forecasts out six months in advance, here's our podcast plan. And I'm sure there will be a little bit more of that when we have interviews that are coming. But for right now, I really just listen to my spirit. I listen to the women around me. And the topic I wanna talk to you about today, I believe is so poignant.

Christine Gale (07:03.798)
It is so timely. And it's when the unexpected arrives. And I went back and forth on what the topic, or not the topic, the title should be. When the unexpected strikes, when news shakes you. And I just thought, those feel misleading. And what do I mean by that?

When the unexpected arrives is so much less daunting and negative for lack of a better word than when the unexpected strikes or when the terrible thing happens. Because let's be honest, a lot of times the unexpected can feel really heavy and really terrible. And what is also true, I have found in my journey,

that the unexpected often arrives and then we give it meaning.

Christine Gale (08:09.614)
because sometimes we don't see the wave coming and then it crashes. The diagnosis, the job loss, the betrayal, the silenced.

from a best friend that you thought would never not be there. Maybe it's a goodbye.

Suddenly, the ground you thought was solid starts to crack and shift underneath your feet and you're thinking, what the hell do I do now? Well, here's the beautiful news.

unexpected, fill in the blank, will arrive, but it doesn't have to strike. It doesn't have to break. It doesn't have to destroy. It doesn't have to ruin. You get to decide what to do with it when it arrives.

I know what this feels like. I have lived so many moments in my life when the unexpected has arrived. I just lived it last week on a smaller scale. I thought we would be getting a tax refund and then said, guess what? We get to pay thousands of dollars that we had allocated for other things really soon. And I was not gracious in my response. I was angry and I...

Christine Gale (09:42.668)
was bitter and accusatory and frustrated. And I stopped myself because it just was one more thing in a long line of the unexpected that I had been thinking about recently.

Somebody that I follow, somebody that I admire, somebody that has mentored me recently suffered a second miscarriage right after the first one, after a healthy baby. And even though it didn't happen to me and even though she's not in my inner circle, I care for her deeply and I can resonate with that feeling of such shock.

And bewildered vent. And you're thinking, but wait a minute. I already made a baby. I already grew human. This isn't supposed to happen to me. I had all these plans, these thoughts, these dreams, these traditions, all these things that I was so excited about. then in a moment.

Go on.

that happened to me with our fourth pregnancy. We got pregnant the first month and if you knew our story, even though yes, we have four beautiful children, but we struggled so hard to have those first three children. So when we got pregnant the first month with baby number four, I thought, this is crazy. Everybody kept saying, yeah, your body does figure it out. My body had figured it out. And I never even for a second considered that I would ever

Christine Gale (11:27.286)
lose a child. And I had low progesterone, so I had three healthy ultrasounds in the first eight weeks of my pregnancy. And I'll never forget my OBGYN who became a very close friend of mine throughout all my babies. I guess that was quite a bit of business for her. I'm just kidding. We really became quite close, kindred spirits. But she says to me as she gave me my progesterone pill, she says,

You had a third ultrasound with a third heartbeat. You can stop worrying now.

So imagine my utter shock and devastation when the bleeding started a few weeks later and I stared at the ultrasound screen with no heartbeat and the uterus that was open and a baby that was already on its way out. It was shocking. It was unexpected. And yes.

It felt devastating. The grief was profound. And as I think about this friend who's now lost two in a row, it changes you as a person. When the unexpected arrives, it's absolutely going to change you in some way because it becomes part of the tapestry of your life. Grief, loss, fear, reordering.

of all the things or as we like to say from the friends episode pivot when you've got a pivot when you go through a global pandemic when you're like me and you have three different children who want to hurt themselves at one point when you're diagnosed with malignant melanoma like I was and you stop and you think, my gosh, could this be it? And you never look at a spot on your skin the same and you do have choices with what you do.

Christine Gale (13:32.664)
with the unexpected.

Christine Gale (13:39.618)
What died when my baby died was a dream.

Christine Gale (13:47.512)
There's such an illusion of certainty in this life. The belief that we should be safe, that we should be loved, we should be successful, we should be healthy, this baby should live, this job should be there for me, I should get the raise. And like Tony Robbins says, we should all over ourselves, there's all these shoulds, but the reality is...

Life does come for all of us at some point in some way that we never expected.

So this episode is for you, sister. If you're staring down a storm that you never asked for.

and you're not quite sure how to find your way up.

I promise you, you have everything you need within you right now to not only weather the storm, but to milk from the storm the lessons of life that will change you for the better as crazy as it sounds. Please do not think I am being cavalier. I am a woman who has walked.

Christine Gale (15:02.242)
many roads of tragedy and pain and loss and grief and fear and anxiety and devastation. And I am a phoenix who has risen from the ashes time and time again. And I know you will too.

You don't get to choose the unexpected, the layoff, the betrayal, the giant tax bill you didn't see coming. My husband lost his job out of nowhere. In the same year I lost my dad, I was held in contempt before the court. My nanny had quit. My mom was moving in with us. Like it had been one of those years where I just didn't think I could take one more thing and then I-

husband who had the stable job and all the benefits lost his job and we had to decide what we're going to focus on in that moment. And here's what I want to share with you. If you're facing the unexpected, stay in the present moment more than you live in the fear of the future.

Christine Gale (16:15.592)
I understand intimately what it's like to face the unexpected, from everywhere from a tax bill you didn't expect to the loss of a child to betrayal in my marriage to the death of both of my parents out of nowhere for my mom and after an agonizing illness with my dad.

when the unexpected happens.

We still get to choose.

We still get to choose. We still get to ask better questions. We still get to feel the pain and the grief that is congruent for the experience and the moment we're in and move through it to ask questions that are going to empower you and help you rise from the ashes time and time again, even when you feel so damn weary.

I can speak to this because I've lived it. I have had so many people ask me, how did you stay in a marriage with adultery? How did you ever forgive him? How did you ever trust again? How did you ever rise from the ashes?

Christine Gale (17:39.734)
And the one thing that I can tell you, my dear listener, that has fueled my rising is this dichotomy, this tension of living in the both and, feeling the pain that makes sense and is justified, but not staying in that place of pain, but choosing.

to make meaning out of it, choosing to find ways to allow that pain and loss to lift me up, to create in me resilience, to give me a purpose. because there it is. There is a purpose in all of our pain, even when we can't see it. I recently had a friend whose husband

did not qualify for a heart transplant. And we knew he was very sick, but we didn't expect him to just die, but he did.

And when she sent that message in our group, I felt so sucker punched. My chest hurt for her. The longing I am sure she had for her husband. The shock of his sudden absence.

Reef will have to have its way in her and it will take time.

Christine Gale (19:14.422)
and it won't be a straight line. And I'm already seeing beauty coming from these ashes. Because we just started a new year in our mastermind and there's another lady in our group who also lost her husband and was sharing about it. And I thought, my God, look at the beautiful connective tissue I'm already seeing forming in our group for women that have had similar experiences.

Some that are further along. Another woman in our group who recently lost her father and understands grief so spiritually and beautifully.

So my dear friend who just lost her husband will get to the point where she, because I know her and I know the work that she's done and I know that the development that she's had will begin to ask not why did this happen, but who will I become now that this has happened?

Christine Gale (20:19.448)
Tony Robbins once said that some of the greatest pain will ever, I think it was Tony Robbins, forgive me if I'm misquoting, but some of the greatest pain we'll ever experience is when we argue with reality. When we just wrestle with reality and we wish it to be different and we rage against the loss, the pain, the betrayal, the lies. That's when the greatest pain happens.

Christine Gale (20:48.642)
We get to reclaim the moment. We get to ask what's still here now that that person, that job, that money, that trust is gone. What is still here? In all the devastation, sister, in all the chaos, what still remains? Your breath, your spirit, your essence, your choices, your

Dignity.

Christine Gale (21:22.454)
When we fight what is, we amplify the pain. But when we accept what is, we actually access power and transformation. I never said you have to like it. That would be rude and just frankly stupid. All right? That would be stupid. You don't have to like it. I reject any personal development that's just like...

Just change in the moment and find all the meaning. Life is happening for you. Yes, Tony Robbins, life is happening for us. And it's congruent to be in pain. You don't have to like it, but you don't have to hate it either. You get to choose to meet your pain, your loss, your disappointment, the unexpected with sacred openness. What do I mean by that?

Get curious. Ask questions.

From the rubble you will rise sister. Your unexpected isn't an ending, it's a beginning as cheesy as that might sound. You can't fix it necessarily, but you can get curious about it.

Christine Gale (22:44.204)
You can ask, what God?

What do you want from me in this moment? Who can I become because of this moment?

I've slept by the bedside of a child in so much pain that I had to hold her hand to make sure she was there with us in the morning. And it isn't always easy to ask what the purpose is in this pain, but it is incredibly powerful when you start asking, what can I bring forth in my life, in my spirit, in my health?

in my wisdom, in my mission, because I suffered, because I slept next to my mom while she died in my arms. What can I become? Who can I touch? How can I change this world for the better?

I've wept, I've panicked, I've railed against God, I've screamed in anguish, and I've moved through so many unexpected circumstances by asking better questions. I get to reclaim my power and rewrite the story. It's not the end. You get to choose what things mean as crazy as that may sound. Don't turn this off.

Christine Gale (24:21.058)
Because if you haven't tried the things I'm going to suggest, I'd ask you, what have got to lose?

So just a few quick things and I'll wrap up today. When the unexpected arrives, create a space for you to feel it all. Don't rush through it.

Find a physical location where you can go and just feel. Let the tears come. Sit quietly. Like my future son-in-law said to me the other day, you know what, mom, we're really struggling, both of us, but we've decided to sit together in the suck. Yeah, that's a really good thing to do because self-love says, you know what, the things I'm feeling are freaking valid and I am safe to feel them all. They will not kill me.

but if I don't feel them, they will change me in ways I will not want.

And then I love this one, reconnect with your body. The book, The Body Keeps the Score is about trauma and how we store it in our body. And if we do not stay present in our body and work through our trauma, our unexpected, our disappointments, our grief, whether you've lost a child, a job, a marriage, a trust, you have a diagnosis, reconnect with your body. Hold her, touch her.

Christine Gale (25:50.874)
Move her, honor her, feed her, nourish her. Like my friend Tamerly says, get your nature dose on y'all. Go outside, connect your body to the earth, to the trees, to the sun. It might seem silly. I used to think it was foo-foo and dismiss it, but I can tell you, Vienna shadow of a doubt, when you reconnect with your body, you take the power of trauma and you take it back.

You take it back because you let your breath catch up with your heart that is beating inside your beautiful body and fueling you to navigate the unexpected.

And then how about asking some grounding questions? Just let me give you a couple here. When the chaos is swirling about you, when you're facing the unexpected, ask yourself this, what is still true about who I am, even though this happened or is happening? What do I need? Not what should I do?

And then what small action can I honor, can I do today? To honor my wellbeing. What small action can I take? What text can I send? What call can I make? What dinner can I have with a friend? What Bible verse do I need to read? What journaling do I need to do? Just what do I need to honor my self-worth, my self-love?

Christine Gale (27:25.88)
Sisters, the unexpected, unexpected, excuse me, it's gonna come. Life is coming for all of us and storms are gonna happen and things are gonna throw you off track. I love the visual, the metaphor of the spinning top that is our life and circumstances come by and they go flick in the top.

goes like this, right? If you're looking at me on YouTube, it goes topsy turvy. And sometimes we don't know what to do. In that moment, yes, you do. Because I just gave you a bunch of tips.

Start by telling yourself, I can't rush this.

but I can navigate this with strength and courage and groundedness and wisdom and maybe a sprinkling of help.

Life is gonna happen. Circumstances are going to come. And the unexpected will arrive. And your best self will show up for it all. I love you. I believe in you. Keep being a girl out of order no matter what circumstances arrive. The more girl out of order you are, frankly, in my opinion, the better you're gonna navigate these circumstances and the

Christine Gale (28:55.512)
faster and more powerfully, you're gonna rise and you're gonna take with you when you rise all of that wisdom and experience so that you cannot hold on to it, but you can set it free to bless, to reach and to serve others. We're in this together. I love you forever. Bye.