What events have radically altered your life?

Many people go through life-changing events and come out with vastly different outlooks on life. Has this happened to you?

I’m talking about life’s huge events.

For me, those events were
Getting sober (the whole world was glad for that one),
Coming out of the closet (since I was married with children at the time, this one rocked the world of many people),
The birth of my children (who isn’t altered by this?),
Being an exchange student in Japan (I had my eyes opened in a way that I couldn’t possibly have imagined and is still difficult to describe), and
Being diagnosed bipolar (I hate mental illness, and I fight to stay “normal” every way I can, but this disease has robbed me of family, home, friends, lovers, jobs, and so much more).