In recent years, the HCI and CSCW communities have begun to examine the role technology plays in personal, rather than professional settings. Part of this work has begun to address a specific class of life events that are unpredictable, uncontrollable, and destabilizing - what we refer to as life disruptions. While each disruption is unique, we find that patterns of social and technical reconfigurations occur in a variety of different contexts. Drawing on three case studies of severe life disruptions - intimate partner violence, homelessness, and death - we remark on the ways that life disruptions prompt a journey towards a "new normal." We enumerate the common lessons learned among our case studies and seek to inform future technology research and design work which may involve life disruptions.