Rory was her reason for being. Her motivation. The love of her life and center of her being. And in Rory's crisis, instead of guiding her through it, she cut her loose. Of course she lost her way. She lost the thing that had driven her entire adult life.

You seem to want to blame Chris and her decision to be with him, when that was just the end of a long winding road. Her big mistake was turning her back on the best thing that will ever happen to her, her kid, and trying to live her life as if it didn't matter that Rory needed her then more than ever and she abandoned her! It's not surprising that when she didn't have the center of her universe around anymore she began to lose her way, all through S6.

So, yes, Rory's the one that would come out of all of this fine. She had to find out who Rory was, and sink or swim, when Lorelai turned her back on her. She found she had an inner core that is strong, that she can rely on a man she loves, that she doesn't want to be Emily, nor Lorelai, that she's someone entirely unique. Lorelai just kept on making one bad decision after another. Lorelai was always going to have a hard time as Rory grew up and left home, she'd built her ENTIRE WORLD around her. Lorelai just exacerbated it by turning Emily & Richard's betrayal into Rory's, and instead of dealing with empty nest and trying to build a life without Rory for it to revolve around she had to deal with her own guilt over what she did to the best thing that ever happened to her.