How to Start Over After Losing Everything (One Day at a Time)

In January 2025 my family lost our home in the LA fires. When I say we lost our home, I mean it doesn't exist. We were left with four backpacks.

The morning after, I asked myself one question: what will make today matter?

That's the whole origin story of the app I ended up building, and I'm not gonna drag you through more of it than that. Because if you're reading this, odds are you've got your own version going on right now. A house. A job. A diagnosis. A business that didn't make it. A life you were halfway into building that just stopped.

Starting over gets talked about like it's one big dramatic move. Mostly it's a bunch of regular days, some boring and some brutal, stacked on top of each other. Everything below is a reminder to me first.

It means you rebuild your days before you rebuild your life. The big stuff comes back way slower than anybody wants, so the first thing you actually get back is how you spend one day.

Look at LA. The Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed more than 16,000 homes and other structures, and an Associated Press report this month noted that "very few of those homes have been rebuilt." That's almost two years later. I'm not saying that to be a downer. It's just how long the big stuff takes, and if your days have to wait on it, you could be waiting a long time.

A big loss also takes something people don't talk about much: the shape of your day. When researchers looked at what people lose along with a job, time structure, basically knowing what your day is for, showed one of the largest gaps between employed and unemployed folks (Paul and colleagues, 2023). Any big loss does a version of this. The calendar that used to tell you what Tuesday was for is gone, and nobody hands you a new one.

Because you're trying to carry the whole list at once. Insurance, money, where you'll sleep next month, what to tell the kids, what happens with work. Every unfinished thing keeps tapping you on the shoulder.

There's actually research on that tapping. In a set of studies by Masicampo and Baumeister (2011), unfinished goals kept intruding on people's thoughts, and making a specific plan for the goal quieted those thoughts, even before they'd done any of the work. So it was the plan doing that, not the finishing.

That's kind of a relief when you're starting over, because you won't finish most of the list this week. You can still decide what today is for.

Yes, it's normal to feel that way, and the research says the feeling usually isn't the forecast.

A review by Galatzer-Levy, Huang and Bonanno (2018) pulled together 54 studies (67 separate analyses) of people after potentially traumatic events: natural disasters, bereavement, serious injury and illness, war, and big life events like divorce and unemployment. On average about two-thirds of people (65.7%) followed a resilient path, meaning their functioning stayed relatively stable. About one in five (20.8%) struggled first and recovered over time.

To be clear, resilient here doesn't mean it didn't hurt. It means people kept functioning, more or less, while it hurt. And Bonanno's later work makes a point I like a lot: "the most effective route to resilience requires the flexible use of resources and strategies" (Bonanno, Chen and Galatzer-Levy, 2023). So flexible, not one perfect plan you white-knuckle no matter what.

The same review found about one in ten people (10.6%) stayed stuck in a chronic pattern. If that sounds like you, or you honestly can't tell, talk to a doctor, a therapist or somebody you trust. That's part of starting over too.

You start with today and make the ask small enough to finish by tonight. What today is for changes as you go, so the answer should too.

A few things make an answer work on a hard day:

If it's a job you lost, I wrote a whole guide on getting through the day after a layoff that goes deeper on this.

It means today gets a decision even when the future doesn't have one yet.

People say "one day at a time" like it's a mood. It works better as a specific choice about this day: what, and roughly when. A meta-analysis of 94 tests by Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006) found that deciding when and where you'll act ahead of time had a medium-to-large effect on actually following through (d = .65). The decision is the thing you can control on a day you can't control much else.

And when a day falls apart anyway, and some will, you don't owe anybody a new five-year plan. Tomorrow morning you just ask the question again.

It gives every day a starting line, no matter how much is still up in the air.

The Question is a free iPhone app that asks one question every morning: What will make today matter? You answer in under a minute, before the inbox, the group chat and the insurance company get a vote. Around midday it reminds you what you said. At night it checks in. That's it. No list to manage on the days you barely have the energy to brush your teeth.

Answers from a rebuilding week might sound like this:

If you want somewhere to start, it's free on the App Store for iPhone. If you'd rather start with more on the question itself, this is why I ask what will make today matter every morning.

Longer than you want, and there's no official clock on it. Anybody who gives you a date is guessing.

One thing that does help is a starting line you can see. Researchers Dai, Milkman and Riis (2014) found people are more likely to go after their goals right after "temporal landmarks" like the start of a new week, a new month or a birthday. They called it the fresh start effect. Next Sunday is November 1, the first day of a new month. If you've been waiting for a line to start from, that one's as good as any.

So is tomorrow, honestly. The days you rebuild with are pretty ordinary, and small wins on ordinary days add up to more than they look like while you're in it.

Take care of safety and the basics first: somewhere to sleep, food, and telling the people who need to know. After that, pick one thing for today and let the rest wait for tomorrow's list. You don't have to solve the whole rebuild this week.

Research on disasters, bereavement and job loss finds most people stay fairly steady or recover over time; a 2018 review put the average resilient group at about two-thirds and the recovery group at about one in five. "Normal" may look different than before. If the heaviness hangs on or gets in the way of daily life, talk to a doctor or a mental health professional.

You don't need to know yet. Pick something you can finish today that keeps you moving, and let the bigger picture show up over a bunch of those days. Figuring it out while moving beats figuring it out while waiting.

The Question is a free iPhone app that asks one question every morning: What will make today matter? You answer in under a minute, get a midday reminder of what you said, and check in at night. It doesn't manage your to-do list. It makes sure today gets a decision.