116: Janet Gesme in the hot seat LOSS. FAITH. PURPOSE.

What happens when the thing you’ve built your entire identity around is suddenly taken away?In this powerful episode of Listen Bitch Presents: Tell Me Why You’re Special, Branden sits down with Janet Gesmi, a former professional violist whose career was shattered after a devastating car accident. What followed was a journey through grief, identity loss, faith, healing, marriage, and ultimately discovering a completely new purpose.Janet shares the emotional reality of losing the career she spent years building and the difficult process of separating who she was from what she did. She opens up about a pivotal conversation with her husband that forced her to confront questions of worth, love, purpose, and identity beyond performance.The conversation explores how suffering can become a doorway to transformation, how God often writes unexpected second chapters, and how beauty can emerge from life’s hardest seasons. Janet explains how her path eventually led her into translating life-changing books and bringing powerful messages to English-speaking audiences through language, faith, and storytelling.Branden and Janet discuss grief, spiritual growth, marriage, personal reinvention, purpose after loss, overcoming identity crises, and learning to trust God’s plan when life doesn’t unfold the way we expected.This episode is for anyone navigating a major life transition, career loss, unexpected hardship, grief, reinvention, or a season where God seems to be rewriting the script.Sometimes losing what you thought was your calling is how you discover your true one.⸻Janet Gesme became a translator by accident--or better said, by God' plan. She played viola and cello professionally for 29 before a car accident in 2015 ended her musical career. On that same day, a friend introduced her to a book by Martin Schleske. She ended up translating "The Sound of Life's Unspeakable Beauty" during her long, excruciating recovery. Now, 11 years later, she is playing viola again. Not just any viola, but the opus 304 "Schorschi" viola made by Martin Schleske. She is here today to talk about her translation of Schleske's second book, "Listening Hands: Eavesdropping on the Sound of Life.https://[email protected]/