Our Act of Extraordinary Faith

Nothing, of course, happens fast enough and we just want to be returned to that uncomplicated life we once had – we want stability restored – but it is not to be. Now we have a new life; unchartered, uncertain, beyond our control, and that we are on some level undertaking alone, even within the company of the ones we love. Our worlds are still raw and new. They hum with suffering, but there is immense power there too.

We are alone but we are also connected in a personhood of suffering. We have reached out to each other, with nothing to offer, but an acceptance of our mutual despair. We must understand that the depths of our anguish signal the heights we can, in time, attain. This is an act of extraordinary faith. It makes demands on the vast reserves of inner-strength that you may not even be aware of. But they are there. 

~Nick Cave, Musician

Raise your hand if you thought you'd be over your heartbreak within, say, three months of D-Day. Five months? Seven? And keep your hand up if the idea of three to five YEARS makes you want to scream and never stop. 

Yeah. That's what I thought.

Nothing, as Nick Cave writes, happens fast enough. And if I had a nickel for every time someone arrives at our club and laments that she just wants "my old life back" or "my old self back", well, I would be typing this from my beach-house on Martha's Vineyard. 
The bad news is that old life and old self are forever altered. There is no "old" left to return to. We have a new life: Unchartered. Uncertain. Raw and new.
And we hate it, don't we? We didn't ask for this. 
Who would? And yet, we can see how suffering can transform. Not always for good, of course. Sometimes the face of pain becomes contorted by hate. But sometimes, if we let it, suffering is like water over rock. Slowly smoothing out the sharp edges. 
"Mercurial," is how my mother used to describe me. Or, when I was really young, "like a tornado." When I was happy, the world knew it. But when I was sad or angry, well, the world knew that too. 
My edges are softer now. My joy feels richer rather than higher. My sadness feels thicker rather than deeper. Suffering and anguish have shaped me into a different me. One that trusts my own strength. One that has found a sisterhood to hold me up when I need it. "We are connected in a personhood of suffering," says Cave. We need to seek that connection. Sadness can isolate us if we don't reach out to others. But when we can share our softness, our "mutual despair", then we're also sharing those reserves of strength we didn't know we had. 
Believing we can heal from this is absolutely "an act of extraordinary faith". Most of never imagined how painful betrayal was. And, when we're face down in the mud of it, we can scarcely imagine emerging from it, not only okay but really okay. Really really okay. 
Here's what few realize about betrayal until they've navigated that grief and suffering. There is immense power in that change. It's there. Not the power to change him, of course. Or the world. But you. And that, I promise, is all the power you need.