Lost beyond Steemit

This tale will serve as my reintroduction to the Steemit space.
It will have no windows and no doors, so it will be up to you to find a way out!
So, as I alluded to this is not my first foray into the Steemit world. In fact I was a pretty active member my first time around. I was one of those people who got the "Steemit bug" early on, and felt the need to check the feeds multiple times throughout the day. Looking for good stories to comment on or community posts to interact with. If I wasn't researching posts on crypto news or commenting on someone else's post then I was deciding what my next post/story would be about.
Alas all good things must come to an end!
Just as I was in the height of my Steemit use an unfortunate incident caused me to lose access to my account. I could see the account (and probably worse I could see the account's balance), but I could no longer log into the account. I could not transfer nor withdraw the account balance. I could no longer communicate to my followers nor could I read/view the content I had been following.
How could this happen you ask? Better yet how could this be avoided? Stay tuned for the next installment of this harrowing tale!