Jana Shelfer wants you to know there is nothing wrong with you. How you are today, how you live and express yourself in the world, is exactly where you’re supposed to be. It has a purpose, and as a certified life coach and public speaker, her job is to help you discover that purpose. She calls it “Living Lucky,” and together with her husband, Jason, she’s taking that message from TedX stages to bookshops to YouTube and beyond. However, the confident, charismatic woman she exudes today was forged in the fires of tragedy, in darkness so profound that it almost swallowed her whole.

What saved her life? Radical gratitude. Here, she tells it in her own words.