The Soul-Stirring Words That Helped Madonna Badger Through Grief

After her three young daughters and her parents were killed in a house fire at her Connecticut home on Christmas Day 2011, advertising agency owner Madonna Badger was sent from the hospital to a rehabilitation center in Tennessee to begin picking up the pieces of her life. Realizing there was no rehab for grief, Madonna called her best friend, Kate, and asked whether she would come get her. Madonna then moved to Arkansas to stay with Kate.

Madonna says it was at the Psychiatric Research Institute at the University of Arkansas that doctors finally explained her grief in a way that made sense. "It changed everything," she says. "It gave me hope where I had none."

In the video above, Madonna shares that life-changing definition of grief and reveals three things that have helped her cope in the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy.

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