October 22 marked the one year anniversary of a hundred foot oak tree that came crashing through my house, destroying it's structural integrity, collapsing the roof, and bursting multiple pipes which caused widespread water damage and black mold.

As I looked back on what I dubbed at the time as "one of the worst moments of my life", I realized that in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that bad.

There are so many different ways personal trauma could happen from car accidents to floods. Having this happen to me showed me I wasn't prepared as I thought I was to experience a personal trauma. As I celebrate the best worst thing to ever happen to me, I can finally share some of the lessons I picked up along the way.

1. Figure Out What To Grab Before

My first response after making sure everyone was okay was to grab my parent's wedding photos, our two boxes of picture books, our family bible, our strong box with all of our important papers, and the Christmas angel that my grandparents brought with them from Germany.

I used to think about what would I save if there was a fire, but I realize now there are so many more things that could go wrong other than fires.

Lesson Learned: Make a mental list of the things that are your top priority to save just in case.

2. Stuff Is Just Stuff

I am what I like to call an "emotional hoarder". I will save any trinket if it reminds of a special moment in my life. Part of me believes this comes from my mom who said she wished she had saved her concert tees but it definitely comes from the fact I like to be surrounded by good memories.

Of course, I kept some amazing things from my childhood, but did I really need to hold onto my first bra for twelve years? Probably not. My new way of holding on to memories is to take a picture of it or write it down in a journal. If you're having trouble grasping this remember, things are replaceable but people and memories are not.

Lesson Learned: Your possessions should not define you, especially if you end up losing all of them.

3. Don't Think About "What If...?"

I was in the driveway when it happened with my mom. It was a wind storm that caused the tree which we believed to be healthy (that ended up having termites) to crash through the roof.

My brother was in the room next to the initial damage and my dad was in the garage. While neither was hurt, the hardest thing for me to get over was the "what if...?". It could have killed either of them or my dogs had they not been in the places they were at that precise moment. The thing is, they weren't in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Lesson Learned: You can not heal if you constantly think of the worst things that could have happened.

4. You Will Be An Emotional Wreck...

I used to think I was good at handling tough situations, but the tree proved differently. My initial reaction was shock, the "this can't be happening to me" moment. This lasted for about a day until I fell into the "pity party" phase.

I would sit in my car and sob in a grocery store parking lot for 25 minutes on trash bag runs because I didn't want to go home and look at the mess my house (and my life) had become. I realized I was having some issues when I had a panic attack driving to a friend's house on a windy day when I saw the trees start to move. I luckily could identify the problem and talk to someone about it so this wouldn't form a phobia.

Lesson Learned: You don't have to suck it up, let your emotions out. It's completely normal to feel upset or scared.

5. ...But You Will Get Over It

When it happened I thought my life was over and in a way it kind of was. After you let yourself get all of those terrible feelings and emotions out of your system, you are going to feel so much better.

It took me sitting down and realizing "Wait... we're going to get a brand new remodeled house, something our family has wanted to do for years out of this terrible situation," to finally see there are good things to come out of bad events. If you can't find a positive way to spin your situation, at least you have a story to tell at parties for the rest of your life.

Lesson Learned: Try and find the silver lining in every terrible situation you face, there will be one.

6. Sorry, But Bad Things DO Happen To Good People

My family are good people. We try to be good neighbors, we volunteer, and none of us have any felonies under our belts. When this happened, I felt like the whole world was working against me personally.

What did I do to make the universe punish me like this? If I can learn from any natural disaster that's happened even in the past five months, I know that the universe doesn't care if you are a good person or morally bankrupt.

Lesson Learned: Bad things canhappen to anyone.

7. Learn How To Adapt

When it happened, we had nowhere to go. Luckily, we have great insurance which hooked us up with a suite at an extended stay hotel. We have two elderly dogs and we were going from a five bedroom/ three bath house to a two bedroom apartment-like setup.

I was born and raised in a suburban house, I have never lived in anything but loads of space. It was initially shocking to lose privacy, share a bed with my brother, and completely have your schedule changed but I eventually got over it.We ended up getting to live in a rental house after a month in the hotel. After staying in three rooms, even a small house felt like a palace.

Lesson Learned: Be thankful for what you have, there is always someone out there who has it worse.

8. Trauma Has a Weird Way Of Bringing People Together

As easy as it was to completely block out people around me when it happened, it was oddly refreshing to see how the people surrounding me reacted with support. I told my boss I needed time off and instead of questioning it, she told me about how a leaky pipe caused a problem in her house.

I had neighbors come by to check on us when we were packing during the day. My friends were there when the thing I needed the most was just for someone to listen. I would listen to strangers, cashiers, or waiters tell their own personal horror stories when I would tell them what happened and realized trauma and the feelings of doubt and anger are fairly universal.

Lesson Learned: Don't ignore the people around you trying to help, they've probably had something bad happen too.

9. Good Work Takes Time

We automatically went with the remodeling company the insurance company recommended without any thought. When months went by with no work being done, we started noticing little things like charging $500 for a toilet (the average price is around $200) or not filing the proper permits starting to add up.

It felt like we were not only getting scammed out of our money but our time. We decided to dump the company and do our research, meeting with multiple contractors until we found one that understands our needs and goals for our house as a project.

Lesson Learned: While it might take some time, do your research until you find the right choice because good work is better than fast work.

10. Don't Let People Take Advantage Of Your Situation

The shady contractors we originally planned on using had not only done this to us, but to other families in similar situations. The company is designed to be an emergency response contractor, meaning they are supposed to specialize in disasters. When we talked to other people who had similar experiences with them, we realized that they could easily use people's emotions to manipulate them into doing or purchasing things they didn't want.

We were told frequently not to pick certain things because it would lower the resale value or that certain things were out of our price range when we were the ones who were going to pay for and live in the house!

Lesson Learned: There are terrible people who can use your moment of weakness to scam or manipulate you. Don't let these people take advantage of you.

11. This Didn't Just Happen To You

Lesson Learned: Just because it looks like your family has it together, it doesn't mean they do. Listening can be the best gift you can give someone.

12. Set Backs Will Happen

While the year of reconstruction was largely due to the fact we had contractor problems, it was also attributed to the bank holding up the process. In order to get a loan to fix what insurance wouldn't cover (upgrades), the banks wants you to get your house appraised.

The problem is, our house was an absolute wreck, meaning it couldn't be appraised until it was fixed. But we couldn't fix it without the money which we couldn't get without the appraisal....do you see the problem? The problem eventually got fixed after a few conversations explaining to them the predicament but it took a while.

Lesson Learned: Setbacks are going to happen and sometimes for really stupid reasons, they will pass.

13. You Can Grow From This

I can now look at a tree falling through my house as a good thing. I learned how to let go of stuff I didn't need, cherish and value the stuff and space I did have, brought me closer to my friends and family, and taught me how to deal with big problems. It's hard to learn these life lessons if something bad has never happened to you.

Be patient, your wisdom is not going to develop overnight. In the end, use your disaster to make you a better person.

Life Lesson: Your personal catastrophe will eventually give you a unique perspective and appreciation you never had or saw before.

Whatever it is you're going through, I know it's hard. I promise you that you can and will get through this. Just remember, progress doesn't happen overnight. That picture is me, one year later sitting on the thing that I thought had ruined my life. Guess what? It didn't.