What is possible for you today?

 ...the trick in life is not to try harder but to resist less.

~From a conversation with Anne Lamott, Washington Post

I am the queen of trying harder. I have a daughter who's the princess. When she was young, I posted a quote on my fridge that read something like: Reasonable people adapt to suit the world. Unreasonable people try to change the world to suit them. Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable people.

It was my way to put a positive spin on my daughter's "spirited" personality. It was my way to put a positive spin on my own personality. Somewhere, perhaps before birth, I became wired to believe that I could make anything happen simply by trying hard enough. That I could change my world through sheer force of will.

It's a tough lesson to unlearn. And living with addicts, both as a child and an adult, didn't do much to change my mind despite overwhelming evidence that I was changing nothing except myself, and not in a good way.

The lesson eventually stuck, however, and I am now convinced that our happiness, or at least our peace of mind, depends on learning the new lesson. Depends on accepting that no matter of trying can change another person uninterested in changing. No matter of trying can unbreak a heart. What's more, I've come to understand that so much of my own healing, my own growth, has come not from trying but from releasing: Expectations. Perfection. My breath.

There's magic in release. Almost instantly, our bodies relax. Our hearts soften. Toward others definitely but also towards ourselves. Which is what prompted me to write this to one of our secret sisters who is working so hard to forgive her husband and herself:

I sometimes think that our valiant attempts to forgive ourselves and him can exhaust us. I have come to believe that rest is at least as important. To give ourselves a chance to just breathe. To take it moment by moment. To stop looking ahead in the hopes that we see a rosier future than our current present. I think aiming for acceptance is wise. "Today, I am fine. Today, I choose to be here." To focus on cherishing and nurturing our best selves but in a gentle way, not a striving one. We are such a culture of strivers. And yet, I think healing from the trauma of betrayal is learning how to just comfort ourselves in healthy ways as our bodies and mind adjust.

The brilliant Kate Bowler puts it this way: Somewhere between "anything is possible" and "nothing is possible" is the question: What is possible for me today?

Putting it that way changes everything, doesn't it? What is possible for me today? It takes the pressure off. It gives us a break. It allows us to nap. To be angry. To sob into our pillows. It accepts the truth that today is just...today. It is not forever. It is not necessarily predictive of anything other than what we can manage right now. What a way to live our lives – moment my moment. Hour by hour. Day by day.

I'm often asked how I got through those horrible early months post D-Day. And it was like crawling over broken glass. But broken down into those moments, it was manageable. Not pleasant. Often painful as hell. But manageable.

We get through not by trying harder. We've done that, haven't we? It didn't work out so great. But by resisting less. By being easier on ourselves because healing from betrayal is, perhaps, the hardest thing we've ever done so we deserve some kindness, some gentleness, some nurturing, some, yes, forgiving. We get through by unclenching our jaw. By letting the house be messy. By letting our kids watch TV for the 24th day in a row. By screaming all our lost dreams into the pillow. 

What is possible for me today? What's possible is to try, just the tinest bit, to release yourself from having to feel better. From having to forgive either him or yourself. Release. Try it. 

What Anne Lamott Can Teach Us About Forgiving the Other Woman...and Ourselves

Writer Anne Lamott tells a story in her recent Dusk Night Dawn about the time she came face to the face with the Wife of the man she'd had drunken sexual encounters with before she got sober.

Lamott began by reaching out by mail. "I tried to make amends to her," she writes, "for having a drunken and sporadic affair with her husband."

Lamott did not expect forgiveness. She writes that she understood the damage she had caused to this Wife and, she says, her children. She wrote not expecting forgiveness, noting that "sober friends" suggested that whether or not the Wife could forgive "was her business."

It's advice I've given to Other Women who've come to this site looking for direction on whether they should contact the wives they've hurt. Only if you can do so without asking them for anything, including forgiveness, I've told them. Only if your intention is to acknowledge their pain and your role in it. 

Many can't do that. The same self-absorption, moral ambiguity and emotional immaturity that got them into an affair with a married man (who, incidentally, shared those characteristics) gets in the way. And so they reach out to us trying to explain themselves, to defend themselves, or to ask for some sort of absolution for the pain they've caused. In far too many cases, they're centering themselves and their experience. 

Lamott didn't do that.

The Wife responded by letter, telling Lamott that, as a Jew, she was compelled to forgive. She told Lamott that she had already forgiven her. "She hoped that I was able to stay sober and that, because my guilt had alienated me from humanity, God, and myself, over time I could forgive myself."

Lamott wept.

Lamott tells us she was, with time, able to forgive herself. That she wanted a life that was "lighter...with looser chains." 

Years later, she tells us, "the craziest thing happened."

Imagine. You come clean, thanks to the 12-steps and a small church community (and no small amount of determination). You write to the Wife you hurt, in part because the 12 steps require that you "make amends". You become a bestselling writer. And then, one day, in a class you're offering to aspiring writers, a woman shows up. The same women whose husband you had an affair with.

They hugged.

Yes.

They hugged.

Imagine. 

"You can't get there from where either of us was," writes Lamott. "This is no straight route."

I can vouch for that. While I have not hugged the OW in my situation, I have let her go. She never wrote me a letter. Never apologized. She never asked for my forgiveness though I, like the Wife of Lamott's affair partner, hope that my husband's OW got sober, gained an understanding of why she sought intimacy with other wive's husbands, and eventually forgave herself.

Because I believe that in true self-forgiveness there is more than just loosed chains, there is a refusal to again hurt others. Only when we can look directly at the ways in which we harmed others, and therefore hold ourselves accountable and do the necessary work through that pain, can we put ourselves on an alternate path.

This is no plea to Other Women to write letters to us Wives. For one thing, they're not likely the ones reading this.

It is, however, to remind all of us that forgiveness is possible. That a true apology can soften hearts. And that, whether or not the Other Woman asks for our forgiveness, it is still in our power to give it. That by extending compassion to others, even when they are at their least deserving, it reflects back to us and allows us to extend compassion to ourselves too. 

Lamott's story reads, to me, like a parable. It has been more than three decades since she cheated with this Wife's husband. Decades since she got sober. There has been much time for the messiness, for the pain to heal. For the story to become myth.

But it nonetheless shows us what's possible. It shows us how we can heal when we center ourselves and our experience. When we refuse to let the bad behaviour of others alter our own humanity, our own moral compass. When we see it as the product of damaged people, rather than looking at ourselves as damaged.

"The experience left me longing to be more like her, to evolve toward deeper goodness and courage...," writes Lamott.

To feel whole. To feel worthy. 

In the wake of infidelity, that is often our job too. Not to make them feel that way but to remind ourselves that we already are.

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

Thursday's Thought

 

Being a Human Is Hard

2021 was ushered in by our family with a trip to the emergency room. Our eldest, who has a long list of mental health symptoms, has been struggling for many months with intrusive thoughts telling her to kill herself. Exhausted by fighting back, she began swallowing pills. One after another after another until the bottle was empty. She didn't want to die, she tells us and the doctors. She just couldn't fight any more. The thoughts were louder than any telling her that her life was worth anything. That she was worth anything. 

I read an obituary last night for the son of a US politician who took his life on New Year's Eve. This was a kid with everything. A loving family, scores of friends, an Ivy League education, a promising future. And depression. That too. And, as he said in his note, "my illness won today."

It was also reported that he often reminded people around him that "being a human is hard". It was a plea for kindness. A reminder that we're all doing the best we can with what Anne Lamott calls our rusty bent tools. 

We forget that, don't we? We put such high expectations on everyone, especially ourselves. We should leave. What sort of person stays with a partner who cheated? No, we should stay. What sort of person breaks up a marriage with someone who wants to stay married to them (even if they did cheat)? Why can't we stop crying? What aren't we crying? Why can't we feel anything? What's wrong with us? What's wrong with us? What's wrong with us?

And, don't get me started, but what's wrong with them? The cheaters, the enablers, the affair partners, this culture that celebrates infidelity as sexy and forbidden and titillating?

Being a human is hard.

This is not an excuse. Not at all. It is not a way out of accountability. It does not free any of us from what we owe to other human beings – honesty, decency, kindness, respect. It is simply a reminder that it is almost impossible to extend compassion to others, true compassion, if we cannot give it to ourselves. 

It is, rather, my own plea that each of us suspend judgement as often as we can. That each of us recognize that we haven't a clue what battles others are waging. Hurt people hurt people. Sometimes with intention. Often not. 

My daughter is okay. She has good care and a treatment plan. But being a human is hard, particularly a human with a persistent disease that is difficult to treat and that many continue to deny is real. It's a particular type of pain we feel when others tell us it's not there. That we're not trying hard enough. That we're overreacting. We know that pain, don't we? Invisible to so many.

Being a human is hard. 

Here's How We Set Ourselves Up. Let's Stop

Because I didn’t feel like I deserved love. Showing up and asking for love without having anything to offer in return was out of the question. I would have to be of service in order to earn love. I would have to be sexy and funny and larger than life. I would have to dance on tabletops. I would have to win and keep winning. I would not be able to rest.
~Dear Polly, The Cut

If there was one overwhelming belief I had about my husband's betrayal, it was this: I was not enough.
He cheated because I was not sexy enough.
He cheated because I was not thin enough.
He cheated because I was not beautiful enough.
Smart enough.
Fun enough.
Adventurous enough in bed.
Succesful enough.
I was, clearly, not enough.
There was plenty of evidence to the contrary but that didn't alter my belief. Not one bit.
Because my belief – that I was not enough – was something I had carried around with me since childhood. Though I was barely conscious of it, I had built my life around proving to others that I could be enough, if they would give me the chance to show them.
Every friendship felt like an audition.
Every relationship felt like probation. 
Though I tolerated no end of others' bad behaviour, I didn't allow myself a single mistake. I made mistakes, of course. We all do. And then I would sink into shame so deep, I could hardly breathe. That's the problem with perfection being the only acceptable bar. It's impossible. And when we brush up against that impossibility, it makes us so incredibly angry that we're ready to just burn it all down. The system is rigged. 
Yes, it is.
But we're the ones doing the rigging.
We're the ones demanding perfection of ourselves.
We're the ones choosing the wrong people. And then blaming ourselves when it all falls apart.
And so when my husband admitted that, yes, he was having an affair, somewhere deep down inside was a voice that said of course, he was. Because you are not enough.
We talk a lot about our deep knowing here, on this site. It can be hard to discern which is our deep knowing and which is the voice of the critic. But let me tell you this: Your deep knowing will never tell you you're not enough. Your deep knowing is a voice of love. It is a voice of acceptance. It is, if you're religious or spiritual, a voice of divine love. It is, if you're not religious or spiritual, a voice that speaks the truth of every person's value. 
Your deep knowing will never tell you you're not enough. 
Your critic most certainly will. 
We've all had critics in our lives and, far too often, their voices take root in our bodies and chastise us decades after the actual speaker is gone. It might have been a parent, a sibling, your fifth-grade teacher who laughed at your dream. It might have been a boss, a friend, a bully.
But you have thrown the door open to that critic to move in with you, to offer nothing but reminders that you are a profound disappointment.
Critics are absolutely not the voice of truth. They speak nothing but lies. 
My critic insisted for years that I was not enough. Not matter how fast I danced, it was never fast enough. No matter what I achieved, the critic would move the finish line further ahead. 
The system was rigged.
But it was us doing the rigging.
Let's unrig the system.
If there is a silver lining to my husband's infidelity, it was that, with a whole lot of work and some new truth-telling glasses, I could finally see the flaw in the system. I could see that I was setting myself up. 
What I wish for all of you is that same revelation. 
He didn't cheat because you are not enough.
He cheated for any number of reasons that – and this is the truth – have nothing to do with you.
He cheated because he believes he's not enough. He cheated because someone paid attention to him and it felt good. He cheated because it made him feel young. He cheated because his moral compass is broken. He cheated because it distracted him from money woes, an empty nest, a special needs child, a sick wife, a dying parent.
He cheated, as Esther Perel reminds us, because he was looking for another version of himself.
Your work, in the wake of his infidelity, is to unrig the system that you've rigged against yourself. To refuse the system that our culture has rigged against us. The one that says we're not allowed to age, to soften, to choose for ourselves.
The good news is that we have everything we need for the challenge ahead. We have ourselves. And that is enough.

The Unstoppable Spring and What It Reminds Us About Resilience

We live stitch by stitch, when we’re lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching. And maybe the stitching is crude, or it is unraveling, but if it were precise, we’d pretend that life was just fine and running like a Swiss watch. This is not helpful if on the inside our understanding is that life is more often a cuckoo clock with rusty gears.

In the aftermath of loss, we do what we’ve always done, although we are changed, maybe more afraid. We do what we can, as well as we can.

~Anne Lamott, Stiches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair

Two weeks before we were told to "self-isolate", my 21-year-old daughter, young, healthy, active, woke up unable to walk and in excruciating pain. A few hours later, from our local emergency room, an on-call surgeon was summoned. She had sepsis in her hip and the surgeon needed to remove the infection. Immediately. 21 was hospitalized for five days, during which physiotherapists helped her walk and she had the steady drip, drip, drip of antibiotics delivered to her system. 

It was a frightening time, though her prognosis was good. The infection seemed to come out of nowhere and reminded all of us that life is fragile, that our lives can be upended at any moment.

As if those of us who've survived infidelity can ever forget that.

And now, here we all are, confined to our homes, urged to avoid others. Heading out for groceries feels worthy of a war medal. Our heroes, more than ever, are those who show up to work at hospitals and clinics and, yes, grocery stores and pharmacies. 

All this uncertainty can dislodge old fears, long thought put to rest. It can conjure up old ghosts, around grief and loss, around chaos and foreboding, about scarcity. 

More than ever, we must interrogate our fears: Is this real? Is this old stuff? How can I respond?

The "big picture", as Lamott puts it, feels threatening. And yet, the stitches – the tiny actions taken by each of us, paints a different picture. So many stories of coming together, of helping each other, of reaching out.

Life is not fine right now and it's certainly less fine for some than others. While many of us fear getting sick, the virus will take a bigger toll on those who are older, immuno-compromised or otherwise vulnerable. While lots of us have to make room for 24/7 family togetherness, others are more isolated than usual, lacking any opportunity to venture out.

And I know we've all been reminded that in times of crisis, we can become our best selves, that can be hard when we are feeling more frightened than usual, more vulnerable than usual. Our best selves can get lost when we panic. When we forget that we're all in this together. 

Factor in a fractured relationship in the form of betrayal and it feels as though we can't trust a thing, not even our formerly functioning society.

But though it might feel that way, the truth is that the sun came up this morning, didn't it? Just like it did yesterday.

I look outside my window and spring refuses to self-isolate, refuses to pause. I have sprouts pushing their way through recently thawed dirt. The birds are singing their hearts out, in defiance of a quarantine. In defiance of despair.

And in that unstoppable spring, I find hope. I find comfort. 

Life isn't fine, right now. Not for all of us.

We are changed. We will be changed further. What that change looks like, whether it contributes to our integrity or strips it from us, is a choice that remains our own. 

We must do what Lamott says: ..." what we can, as well as we can."

Transforming pain? Or transmitting it?

I have elevated "do as I say, not as I do" to an art form. I preach Dalai Lama but I practice Taylor Swift. Which is all a way of saying that although I want to float above the fray, to go high when others go low, sometimes I find myself in the mud, slinging away with the others.
"Those who don't transform their pain transmit it," says Father Richard Rohr, a Jesuit priest, speaking words that transcend any religious doctrine.
And when I'm in pain is, of course, when I go low.
When I'm scared is when I go low.
When I'm angry is when I go low.
For instance, I recently read about a well-known misogynist who's suffering health issues. My first thought, "wow. He's in real trouble." My second? I'm ashamed to say it was to mentally give karma a high-five.
I catch myself. I don't want to be a horrible person. I want to be serene and generous of spirit and empathetic, even to awful people who make life harder for other people. And I often succeed. Or, at least I succeed when I can connect with that awful person's vulnerability. When I can see that awful person's pain.
I was finally able to release myself from the festering hatred of the OW when I could recognize her pain. The second I was able to extend even the tiniest bit of empathy toward her, a miracle occurred. She no longer occupied my thoughts. She no longer poisoned my soul.
But what about those times when I just can't? When their pain isn't visible, when I can't conjure up empathy? When their cruelty seems so gleeful, when they seem to be benefiting from it? Well, then, I generally offer up a hearty "fuck you". Maybe not overtly. But my heart has a helluva middle finger.
The math goes like this:

My pain + the ability to see another's pain = compassion/transformation.
My pain + inability to see another person's pain = transmission

The problem with transmitting our pain is that it isn't like something I can pass to someone else, leaving me pain-free. Rather, it's like a virus. I still have my pain but I've also infected another through cruelty or just a lack of compassion.
Anne Lamott puts it this way: "Some days the only thing that can cheer me up is something bad happening to someone I hate."
Yep. Exactly.
Except the times in my life when I've spewed that bile, when I've wished horrible things on horrible people, when I've celebrated another's misfortune, I've been the one who feels horrible. My pain, transmitted, re-infects me.
When what I want is transformation.
What I want is mercy. We all do. Or, as Lamott says, "I am starving to death for it, and my world is, too.
I've been on the receiving end of mercy and it's transformative. I've been given the benefit of the doubt when I probably didn't deserve it. I've been given a second chance when I messed up the first one.
Which is why I want so badly to extend that mercy in a way that transforms. To rid myself of the desire to see others hurt, even if they really really deserve it.
Cause that's another tricky thing about mercy. Most of us don't deserve it.
Our husbands don't deserve it.
They messed up their first chance and probably their second.
Feeling empathy for them isn't exonerating them. It doesn't mean that what they did to us was okay. It isn't about giving them permission to do it again.
Rather, it's about refusing to infect another with our pain and refusing to allow them to infect us with theirs.
Not easy. Especially when we're festering in our hatred. When our pain feels radioactive.
But the alternative to mercy – to instead keep transmitting our pain – does little for our own healing.
Only when we can take responsibility for the only thing that truly IS our responsibility – our own actions – can we begin to feel free of our pain. And of theirs.
As Nadia Bolz-Weber puts it: "Option 1 feels like poison. And Option 2 feels like freedom."
And doesn't freedom sound lovely?

Thursday's Thought

Harnessing your suffering

How did we all get so screwed up? Putting aside our damaged parents, poverty, abuse, addiction, disease, and other unpleasantries, life just damages people. There is no way around this. Not all the glitter and concealer in the world can cover it up. We may have been raised in the illusion that if we played our cards right, life would work out. But it didn’t, it doesn’t.
~Anne Lamott, Almost Everything

It didn't. It doesn't. She speaks the truth, doesn't she? 
I fell firmly in the if-I-just-do-everything-right camp, then I'll sail through life. I never dreamed that the guy I married, the guy who wasn't the cheater that I dumped before I met the guy I married, would turn out to be a cheater too. I thought he was the most principled man I'd ever met. I was so certain of that. Not a doubt in my mind.
H'mmm.
My running partner, who's still reeling from betrayal and a husband who just doesn't quite get how devastating his emotional affair was, said that it was as if, in the midst of an argument, her husband had punched her in the face. Even if he somehow apologized, even if he felt terrible about it, there's no way to un-punch someone. And no matter that it only happened once. No matter that he just acted on impulse, that he didn't "plan" to punch her, forever after he's someone who just might punch her in the face. 
We all got punched in the face, didn't we? And not all the glitter and concealer in the world can cover it up.
And it has nothing to do with whether we played our cards right. 
That's the thing with hope, with a naive conviction that life owes us ease and pleasure and safety. Eventually, all of us, every single one, faces a reckoning in which we come to understand that life will hurt us. And when your heart is broken, out of betrayal or loss or grief (which are all pretty much synonymous), it doesn't matter whether you're sobbing into a silk pillow or a gutter. 
But you know what does matter? What we do next.
Maybe not immediately. You're allowed to stay down until you've had a good, long cry.
But then...
Then it's time to consider your options.
And hopelessness – cynicism – isn't one of them.
It's tempting. It's so tempting to just decide that life equals pain and that nobody will ever love you and that you might as well just get used to being miserable. I see people like that all the time. They're angry and bitter and if they laugh at all, it's brittle and at someone's expense. 
I understand the impulse. It's wrongheaded, I think, but I get it. Just armour up and treat every relationship – from the grocery store clerk to your boss to your sister to your ex – as warfare. Better to hurt others than be hurt, right? Better to eat than be eaten.
But what if there's hope for something better that isn't just rose-coloured glasses to soften the truth? What if what we do next comes from a belief in our own goodness, in our own strength? What if our next step comes from a place of self-respect?
That sounds good, right?
Cause sure, life will damage us. Just ask my yoga instructor who's buried two children from suicide but who remains the most open-hearted woman I know. She's turned that pain into compassion for others. She has nursed her students through cancer and the death of a spouse and diagnoses or mental illness. She doesn't hide her pain, she harnesses it.
Not right away, of course. She honoured her grief. She cried a million tears. And then...she decided to keep living in spite of the damage life had inflicted. There's no glitter and concealer on her pain. She wears it. But she wears it in a way that's a badge of strength and resilience, not bitterness.
We can wear that badge too. We can harness our pain too.
It happens every single day here on Betrayed Wives Club. A woman comes aching with grief and loss and you all rush to her, using your own pain and your own stories to lift her up, to remind her she's not alone, to invite her to follow the light of those further ahead.
And that's the point of life, I think. Not to avoid the inevitable damage life inflicts but to wear it as a badge of strength, a symbol of our own resilience. 
None of us is spared. Maybe their pain won't be betrayal but it will be something. And maybe something that the rest of us know nothing about.
For the newly betrayed here, let yourself absorb the grief and the loss. Cry your million tears. Your next right step can wait for now.
Those of us further along, let's reimagine our pain as a badge of strength. Let it remind us to keep our hearts open because closing them won't prevent further pain, it will only prevent further joy.
And let us use our hope to create change in our lives. Hope that uses the tools the self-respect, self-care, compassion to build. 
Life rarely works out the way any of us think it will. But, as long as we accept our screwed up, damaged selves as nonetheless worthy of deep self-love, it will work out. 

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...

How to Heal From His Affair: Marshalling Kindness From Yourself

"...when I got to the point where I really thought I had lost my mind, another voice inside me stepped in, grown-up and gentle. This one said, "Well? Who knows. Maybe not..." ~Anne Lamott, Small Victories: Spotting Improbably Moments of Grace

In the days after learning of my husband's affair, I felt I was going mad. The world seemed insane. My life seemed insane. But I, most of all, seemed insane.
I screamed. I sobbed. I was inexplicably calm. I threw a pizza at my husband. I pulled a television set off its perch. I smiled benignly at moms when dropping my children off at school then returned to my car to unleash huge racking sobs when a sad song came on the radio.
Who is this person I've become? I wondered in rare lucid moments. I began to wonder if the saner, former me had been an illusion. If I'd always been this crazy and if that's why my husband cheated. It didn't help, of course, that he called me "crazy".
It also didn't help that I'd spent much of my youth being accused of being crazy. As in, "Of course everything's fine. Don't be crazy." This, despite my nine-year-old self listening in my bed to my parents hurling accusations at each other, the sounds of smashing dishes, slamming doors. It took me well into adulthood to understand that calling me "crazy" was code for "don't tell me what I don't want to hear".
Which brings me to the voices in our head we experience post-betrayal. Those of us blessed with loving, healthy families of origin are often better equipped to recognize those voices as belonging to a crazy person. We might hear, "he wouldn't have cheated if you were a better wife" but are able to see those words as the rantings of a lunatic and respond with "he wouldn't have cheated if HE was a better husband."
Those of us, however, who grew up being told that black is white and up is down might struggle a bit more with crazy. When we hear those voices in our head suggesting that he cheated because we're not skinny enough, or he cheated because we nag, or he cheated because we're lousy in bed, we're far too likely to listen and nod our heads in agreement. Not only do we not recognize crazy, we take it as truth.
Betrayal is undoubtedly a crazy-trigger. Even the most sane of us pre-D-Day can fall victim to the seductive lure of inner dialogue that confirms what our culture encourages: men cheat because their wives get old and frumpy and they fall victim to the irresistible sex appeal of an Other Woman who's a porn star in bed. That narrative can be a hard one to ignore. Even when there's ample evidence that it's a cliché rooted more in romance novels than reality.
When crazy comes calling, however, it's time to marshall your inner sane person as defence. Call out crazy into the light of day.
Remind yourself that you did nothing NOTHING that made his cheating okay. That this is on HIM to recognize and make amends for. That it's on HIM to deserve that second chance he's asking for and it's YOUR choice whether you give it to him or not.
Next time those voices in your head are berating you for not being enough, or battering you for not knowing what was going on, or warning you that you're going to get hurt again, I want you to try and listen for that tiny still voice that's so much harder to hear but sounds a lot more like truth. The voice that says, "Well? I don't know about that. But what I do know is that you're in pain. And that you need support and kindness and compassion. And I'm just the person who can give it to you..."

Baptized in Tears: How your grief can reveal your truth

Grief is just so scary. Our grief and rage just terrify us. If we finally begin to cry all those suppressed tears, they will surely wash us away like the Mississippi River. That’s what our parents told us. We got sent to our rooms for having huge feelings. In my family, if you cried or got angry, you didn’t get dinner.
We stuffed scary feelings down, and they made us insane. I think it is pretty universal, all this repression leading to violence and fundamentalism and self-loathing and addiction. All I know is that after 10 years of being sober, with huge support to express my pain and anger and shadow, the grief and tears didn’t wash me away. They gave me my life back! They cleansed me, baptized me, hydrated the earth at my feet. They brought me home, to me, to the truth of me.
~Anne Lamott in an interview with Salon

Wow huh?
She's right, of course. How often do we cry those tears and then feel ourselves cleansed? Our problem might still exist, the pain might still be there, but somehow it feels smaller. Somehow we feel as those we've paid respect to our pain. Acknowledged its legitimacy.
Unfortunately women's tears have had a bad rap. Men, having typically been told since they were toddlers that "boys don't cry" have long stuffed their sadness, expressing it instead in anger or addiction or affairs. We women were given a bit more time to get our emotions under control. It was acceptable for us to cry until our teens. And then, because it often made the males in our lives uncomfortable – our boyfriends, our bosses – we blinked the tears back. Otherwise we risked being called manipulative, "turning on the waterworks", too sensitive, emotional.
My mother, who cried booze-tears instead of the real kind, often looked at me, her hyper-sensitive child, like I was some sort of alien being. "Why are you crying?" she would ask me, genuinely curious. Why was I crying? Well...my mother didn't understand me, she drank too much, I felt lonely and, well, sad. But I got the message. Tears were weakness.
But those tears saved me. I couldn't have stopped them if I  tried, and frankly I never saw the point in trying. Consequently I felt my feelings instead of numbing them. My mom eventually unearthed her own pain but not before she'd stormed through a decade, cauterizing her sadness with alcohol.
Thanks but I'll take a cup of tears. A thousand cups.
The agony of D-Day and the subsequent weeks and months of anguish brought with it an ocean of tears.
My therapist, soaked to the knees in my tears, told me that some cultures believe that we have a finite number of tears to cry before we're cleansed. You, she told me, just haven't reached that number. In other words, let the tears flow and trust that the day will come when they will dry up.
That permission was crucial. Equally crucial was the understanding that, eventually, the tears would dry. Implicit in that is the recognition that the sadness will lift. But for now...cry.
The grief, as Lamott promises, won't wash you away. It will baptize you into this new world that holds pain but also love, sadness but also joy. Those tears will, if you let them, bring you home to the truth of you. That you are whole. That you are worthy. That you are sane and human and okay and sad. Right now, you are sad.