Books That Saved My Life

I have a stack of books on my bedside table that threatens to fall over and trap me. At the top of the pile is First We Make the Beast Beautiful (which is a reference to a line from Kay Redfield Jamison's brilliant An Unquiet Mind, about living with bipolar disorder), which I'm reading to try and understand my daughters' anxiety. I've put it aside, however, because I have Educated by Tara Westover out of my local library, which means I have only three weeks to read it and it's incredible. And I also just picked up Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, which I had on hold and which just came in and which I also have only three weeks to read (and which is about an affair so don't go there until you're ready). My book club is reading the incredible Famous Last Words, which I read a zillion years ago but that I should probably refresh my memory. And I just ordered the always ALWAYS amazing Anne Lamott's new book to keep all the others of hers I have on my shelf company.
But it's no exaggeration to say that reading has changed my life. From the first book about growing up with an alcoholic that I tentatively pulled from the shelf of a bookstore near my office when I was in my mid-20s, to Melody Beattie's Co-Dependent No More, which got me out of a toxic relationship, to Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, which finally FINALLY gave me the blueprint I was searching for to write my own book about healing from betrayal...

So, in that books-can-change-your-life spirit, let me share the rest of my bedside table (and please, share your own in the comments). These aren't necessarily books about healing from betrayal. You can find more of those here. But they are about living life with hope and humor and humility and an open heart:

Each Day a New Beginning: My mother gave me this, which was her own bible in AA recovery. It has become my own. I don't struggle with addiction but the meditations in here work for anyone just trying to get through life.

The Impossible Will Take a Little While by Paul Rogat Loeb: This is a collection of essays about "perseverance and hope in troubled times". It features such writers as Maya Angelou, Marian Wright Edelman, Tony Kushner, Mary Pipher, Alice Walker and the amazing list goes on. Dive in and feel restored.

Leaving My Father's House by Marion Woodman: This revered feminist and Jungian will change how you view your place in this world, both historically and now. I also love the companion book of meditations.

Rising Strong by Brené Brown: Is there another writer who has done more to help me understand boundaries, vulnerability, shame? I think not.

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron: I don't know a single creator who hasn't read this book and been inspired by it. But it's not just for those of us who make a living creating but for anyone. It's a meditation not only on art but on the art of living.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline: I was lucky enough to hear this brilliant Indigenous woman speak recently and I wished I could sit at her feet and soak in her wisdom. She has a way of threading together historic wrongs with hope. She's also an incredible writer and this book is Exhibit A.

Get Out of My Life, but first could you drive me and Cheryl to the mall? by Anthony E. Wolf: I have teenagers. This is the best book out there to keep me sane.

This is just the beginning, kids. More to come...

Wednesday Word Hug

You Are Not A Rehabilitation Centre for a Damaged Man

Women are not rehabilitation centres for damaged men. Dear woman reading this, do not ever expend your emotional/physical/mental energy on redirecting the man from the path he has chosen to walk. He has nothing to lose. You, you will lose everything about yourself. ~ tweeted by @DoreenGLM

It's such a familiar trope. Fairy tales about it, songs about it, movies about it, family lore about it. How the love and loyalty of a good woman saved a not-so-good man. 
And we buy it, don't we? Intoxicated by the potential power we have to see something redeemable in someone behaving irredeemably, we buy it hook, line and sinker. After all, we've been marinating in this for a lifetime. My grandfather, the wealthy playboy tamed by my grandmother. Well, until, drunk one of many many nights, he smacked his head on concrete and died. 
My father, another playboy (in a clear case of 'what you see is what you get', my dad had a boat that he literally named Playboy. It was painted on the stern), tamed by my mother until, well, until he cheated and it turned out he wasn't tamed so much as discreet. 
Women are not rehabilitation centres for damaged men, writes our wise Twitter woman. And yet, that's exactly what we are, isn't it? Far too often.
Why is that? I mean, of course we're socialized to think of ourselves as rescuers, of tamers. But why, after it's abundantly clear that we not only haven't rescued anyone but that we're in danger of going under too...why do we stay? Why do we keep expending our emotional/physical/mental energy on redirecting someone from the path he has chosen to walk? Chosen! Nobody has a gun to his head. 
Why did I stay with a man who chose to cheat on me, repeatedly, over years?
Well, I've written often about just how bloody exhausted I was, how wrung out. How I could barely function, let alone leave with three young children.
But that's not the whole story. It never is.
Part of it was that I believed, somewhere deep inside, that leaving would be a failure. He was sorry. He didn't want to have cheated. He wanted to be a better man. And so, on some level, I felt that I owed him the chance to prove it. That I was the rehabilitation centre for this damaged man. 
My own history, watching my alcoholic mother get sober, primed me for the conviction that I knew damaged people could change.
But what I so often forgot in the story of my childhood was that my begging didn't get my mother sober. Nor did my rage or my being "perfect". She got sober when the cost of staying drunk became more than she was willing to pay. She got sober when she made the choice.
I was not her rehabilitation centre even though I tried hard to be. Even though everyone else wanted me to be.
Women often traffic in hope. 
"Women marry men hoping they'll change," goes the jokey adage. "Men marry women hoping they won't."
Joking aside, I think there's a whole lot of truth in that. 
Especially those of us who think we can heal damaged people.
We can't. It's a lie.
We are not rehabilitation centres for damaged men. Or women. They have nothing to lose.
But us? We have everything to lose, including ourselves.

Where Did Kindness Find You?

In a panic, a few days after D-Day, I reached out to a friend for help indexing the book I was working on and that was due a couple of week's later. I gave her only the sketchiest of details of D-Day and asked if she'd help me. I could barely think, let alone index a 200-page non-fiction book. She stepped up without hesitation.
A few weeks after that, I was at a restaurant meeting a friend for a bite and a drink. I hadn't planned on telling her what I was going through but she kept insisting that something was wrong so I caved. Her eyes filled with tears. And then, with a voice steely with resolve, she told me that, since she worked in the same office as my husband and the OW, she would be my eyes and ears. "I've got your back," she promised.
There were plenty of moments like those. When the people around me stepped up to help me when I needed it most. We sometimes miss them, focussed instead on the wrong done to us, the petty annoyances on top of our pain that make us wonder if the world is conspiring against us.
My eldest, who has an anxiety disorder, attended her orientation a few months ago as a transfer student. New to the school, she was determined to get out and make friends. But despite a big smile and a "hey, I'm S", student after student looked pained and turned away.
She sat down on a bench and fought tears. And then another student, this one part of the school's orientation team, sat down with her and introduced himself. "Why don't you join us?" he said. 
My daughter told me this story last night, two months later. The moment has stayed with her.
And that's what unexpected kindness does. 
I think so often of the secret sister on this site who provided her therapist with a gift card to a running store to be given to a betrayed wife who might benefit from running through her pain. I'm delighted at the upcoming plan of our own huge-hearted LilyLove, to create a support group for betrayed wives in her town, based on the kindness she sees here on this site. 
I smile frequently at the support I see daily on Twitter, where #SickNotWeak followers shore each other up. I make it a habit to "like" the post by the stranger who reminds her followers at the end of each day that it was another 24 hours of sobriety for her. 
Kindness is in the dingy church basement where I work on language skills with newcomers who fled war and oppression and who brought food last week (so much food!) to celebrate the successful surgery of one of our ESL teachers. 
It's there, even in the midst of your darkness.
Look for kindness. Extend kindness. Notice kindness.

I leave you with this excerpt from her poem Kindness by poet Naomi Shihab Nye:

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

...

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

...

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Wednesday Word Hug: Bloom

"If This Isn't Nice...": How to be happy again

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

After months, often years, of longing to feel happy again, we notice that we're laughing a bit more. That our chest doesn't feel quite so tight. That we can go hours, sometimes half a day without remembering the betrayal, without a trigger, without that ache.
What is this? we wonder. How can I possibly be happy right now. My husband cheated on me. In fact, he might still be cheating on me. Where is he right now? I better check his e-mail account. 
And our pulse quickens and our heart pounds and we're right back in that dark storm of fear and anxiety.
Which confirms for us that we'll never feel happy again.
And which is simply not true.
In the wake of betrayal, we speak in absolutes. I will never be happy again. I will always hurt. I will never trust him again. People always let me down. I will never be the same. 
It's important, of course, to parse out the truth in those statements. So let's examine them more closely:
I will never be the same: On its surface, that's true. You never will be the same but who among remains the same person? But I know the fear hidden in that statement: That you're fundamentally changed in ways that you don't want to be. You don't laugh so much. You're anxious a lot. You don't feel as safe in your marriage as you did.
I felt all that. And I was convinced that I was somehow destined to remain this shell of my former self, this damaged person. 
I was wrong.
With time and whole lot of healing, I have changed. My eyes are a bit more open to others' treatment of me. I no longer shake off bad behaviour instead calling people on it. My boundaries are so much more clear and strong than they ever were. 
I treat myself better. I try and catch myself when I shift into martyr mode – when I tell myself that my family would shrivel up and die without me there to cook, to clean, to organize, to comfort. Stoking my resentment is unhealthy for all of us. Far better to teach them to cook, to clean, to organize, to comfort. 
I will always hurt: My dear wounded sisters, this hurts like a sonofabitch. I know that. It hurts in a way that you can't ever imagine it not hurting again. And it will continue to hurt for a while. Months. Maybe a year or two. The dull ache will last even longer.
But...
You will not always hurt. Not if you do the work of healing yourself from not only his infidelity but all that old stuff that the infidelity dredges from the muck of your soul. The critical mother's words. The schoolyard bully's words. The nasty sister's words. The belief, somehow lodged in your psyche that you just don't quite measure up. Pull all that stuff up, along with the bullshit beliefs around why he cheated and spread it out, metaphorically, in front of you. And then examine each belief. Challenge it. Is it true? Probably not. Is it helpful? Doubt it. Keep examining the belief behind that default message that plays in your head ("Elle isn't available right now because she's lazy/ugly/stupid/unlucky/pathetic/whatever"). Challenge it each time. Where's the evidence that this is true? REAL evidence. Not your out-of-whack beliefs. Actual empirical evidence. If change is necessary, then change what you want to change. But notice too all the ways in which you're pretty great. Remind yourself of those qualities often. 
What will happen is that hurt will slowly heal. Whether or not your marriage survives, YOU will. And you will grow stronger because you're nurturing yourself. You will grow healthier because you're treating yourself like you matter. We bloom under a benevolent sun not a storm cloud.
I will never trust him again: H'mmm. Probably not if by trust you mean this absolute conviction that he would never EVER cheat on your. That genie is out of the bottle. We know what he's capable of doing so we can't ever convince ourselves that he's not capable of it. 
Even when HE thinks he's no longer capable of it. He is. 
But we're all capable of it. And those of us who think we're not are kinda lying to ourselves. 
This is where his work comes in. When he can honestly look at the various lines he crossed to cheat and recognize what they look like and what he was telling himself, then he's far less likely to do it again.
I knew my husband was worthy of a second chance the day he told me that, whether I stayed or left, he was focussed on becoming a better man. He did not want to be "that guy" again. Twelve years later, he remembers well the profound disappointment he had in himself. I have no guarantees that he won't cheat again. But neither do any of us, whether our husbands have cheated or not. Husbands are completely trustworthy. Until they're not.
Trusting him again really comes down to trusting yourself to be in your marriage in a way that's rooted in self-respect. 
People always let me down: This was my go-to conviction. I had a long list of people who had let me down. My parents. My grandmother. Friends. Boyfriends. Thing is, once I really pulled this bullshit belief into the light of day, I was faced with a deeper truth. I had let myself down. I had let myself down by staying in friendships that were one-sided. I had let myself down by going back to a boyfriend who was careless with my heart. I had let myself down by not expecting more of myself when I knew what I was capable of. 
The difference is though I can't control  how others treat me, I can absolutely control what I allow. And that's all the difference that matters. 
Once I stopped letting myself down, it mattered far less whether others did. It still stings, of course, when someone I considered a friend does something unkind. But once you value yourself, you're far more likely to tell them how their actions hurt. To expect accountability. To not take responsibility for others' bad behaviour but also to take full responsibility for your own. 
I will never be happy again: I promise you that you will. But it requires, as my beloved Kurt Vonnegut reminds us, to notice those moments. Tiny slivers at first. A smile at your child's antics. A beautiful harvest moon. A moment of grace from a friend. A doctor's appointment that delivers good news. A gorgeous pair of shoes, or just the right shade of lipstick. A mighty tree in the woods that has withstood a century or more of Mother Nature's blows. Pay attention, my secret sisters. Pay attention. Happiness returns to those who create a home for it. "And if that isn't nice..."

Here's the difference between acceptance and tolerance

So you've decided to stay. At least for now.
Not much has changed. Maybe he doesn't believe in therapy, at least not for him. Maybe he's grumbling about violation of his privacy when you ask to see his text messages. Maybe things seem a bit better. He's home on time. He doesn't go out with his friends. He's drinking less.
And so you tell yourself that this is good. You're willing to let him stay. At least as long as he's not seeing her anymore.
Your kids don't know. Your co-workers know something was up but they've moved on to other gossip.
And you feel proud of yourself for accepting this new reality.
But have you? Really?
Or are you simply tolerating it?
What's the difference? you ask
Your heart knows the difference.
Accepting feels light, like a weight has lifted. Accepting might still hold sadness and grief. But it has let go of anger, it has let go of revenge fantasies. It has released you from blame. Acceptance knows that this is on him, not you. That it was his choice to cheat and nothing you might have done or not done isn't to blame for his decision.
Acceptance is rooted in self-love, in self-care, in self-respect.
Tolerating? Well, tolerating feels like a clenched fist and gritted teeth. It feels like resignation. And fear.
Tolerating is about counting the weeks, the days, the seconds. 
Tolerating is low-level despair.
Tolerating is the where we experience the plain of lethal flatness. Exhaustion. Numbness.
Tolerating can have its role. It can keep us from fleeing when we're not entirely sure we want to flee. It can keep us upright and functional when we're suddenly single parents, especially when that's something we never wanted to be.
It can be a step.
But it's not a way to live.
And it can keep us dangerously in place when we should be fleeing. 
Fleeing words like land like gut punches. About your looks, your age, your intelligence, your family, your parenting. Fleeing fists and feet. Fleeing control – emotional, financial, physical. 
Tolerating any of that is the opposite of self-love. It's tacit agreement that you don't deserve more.
And that is an absolute lie.
You deserve love. 
You deserve kindness.
You deserve respect.
And especially after betrayal, when you haven't kicked his cheating ass out, you deserve deep deep gratitude and support. 
We know it doesn't always play out that way, at least at first. 
Sometimes there's a period where he hasn't yet figured out just how idiotic he's being, when he's deep in the fog of his delusional choice and he's convinced he can somehow emerge perhaps not a hero but at least not a villain, when he thinks he can push this away and simply insert himself back into his marriage with barely a ripple...well, that's a period of time when we might just be gritting our teeth and clenching our fists and...tolerating his lunacy.
But for only a very short period. Like days or weeks, not months and certainly not years.
Because if he comes to believe that you will tolerate any level of betrayal or abuse or lack of respect or kindness or love, then he hasn't fully accepted the cost of his affair.
Let him know. 

(If you are in an abusive relationship – any kind of abuse, whether emotional, verbal, physical, financial – please reach out for help. There are people out there who understand your situation and can guide you through: The National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233.)