My mailbox, well and truly scrod

So, my issues with Thunderbird Mozilla mail are well, scrod. I've had to start a completely new profile from scratch today, after I started one yesterday in an attempt to clear up the issues I was having. After I went through all my mail and only selected things of utmost importance, it not only didn't get better, it got worse *weep*. I was able to pull client informatoin from my old mailbox into a Word document ... but the rest? Gone ... all my mail ... all my saved mail ... all my addresses from my address book. So, if you want me to have your email address, you might want to drop me a line sometime in the near future...

I figure this the PTB's way of telling me to stop being such a packrat and stop storing stuff and hanging onto mail like they were real letters stuffed in a shoebox, or something.