The Curse of "Real Life"

We have all at one point or another had to sacrifice our gaming life for real life. When you're a DM real life can be the cause of a lot of heart ache. I recently lost 2 players that were in my group for over a year. With the group being primarily new people, I have run into a lull.

I have been in the situation a few times and trying to keep the story going is key. I have 3 players and I'm working on filling in the two I lost. but the story must go on. the first game without them was a little slow going, I felt like we were trying to gain momentum, but we couldn't. We figured out a few things as we went, and the session turned out pretty good, but I definitely need a couple more people to add a little more dynamic to the group. Have you ever had this experience? how did you adjust to the loss?

This challenge reaches all gamers at some point, I have been playing WOW (World of Warcraft) for over 15 years, more than a few times I couldn't participate in a scheduled raid due to "Kid aggro" but an important thing for me is finding a group that is family friendly.