Two years ago, Madonna Bagder endured the worst Christmas ever when her three young daughters and parents died in her Connecticut home's fire.
In the aftermath, a despondent Badger repeatedly threatened to kill herself, barely coping in a haze of grief and despair. But she eventually found love again.
The 49-year-old ad-agency owner is engaged to be married.
"It's never going to be easy. The pain is just so huge that sometimes it feels like a prison cell," she writes in a moving first-person essay in Vogue.
"But trying really hard to not feel sorry for myself makes me feel good. Basically, I go to wherever the light is, because anything else is darkness."
Supporting her in this daily struggle is fiancée Bill Duke, a longtime friend and real-estate broker who was by her side the day her world burned away.
They plan to spend Christmas volunteering to help children.
Last year, Madonna Badger spent her first holiday season after the fire in Thailand, volunteering at an orphanage for girls at the invitation of a friend.
She brought the children toys that belonged to her kids.
"Thirty or so of them came and stood in front of me and prayed for me in Thai. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them we were all crying," she said.
"When I looked into the girls' faces, I saw my children."
"It broke me open in a way I still can't fully explain. If these little girls were living with joy and happiness, I realized, how could I possibly feel sorry for myself?"
Today, Badger has returned to her agency in New York and attempts to live each day to the fullest, both for herself and the memory of her family.
"What better way to honor their lives than to not give up?" she writes. "I chose this life. I wanted to have these babies, and I wanted to have this company."
"I wanted my girls - and my [mother and father] - to look at me and see a strong, smart businesswoman with a heart full of love for them."
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