Good riddance to 2020...may we greet 2021 with courage and hope

 

On Drowning in Grief and Learning We Have Gills

It was like I was drowning, I was so weighed down by my own heartbreak. Then one day I decided to just dive all the way down into it, sink into this unbearable ocean of grief, only to discover that I had gills. For weeks, it was like I lived at the bottom of my own soul, digging my feet into soft sand at the depth of an ocean, learning about the quietest, scariest parts of my soul. And, when I was ready, I kicked off and swam.

~from https://bossgirlproblems.com/f/becoming-fireproof---grief-longing-and-resilience

For weeks, I struggled to breathe. I, too, felt like I was drowning. And when we're drowning, we often panic. We fight for air. We flail. We exhaust what little energy we have. 

Surrendering to the pain feels terrifying. We are so sure we'll never recover. We are convinced that we will drown in our own "ocean of grief" created by our tears, that if we're not fighting to survive, we'll die of the heartbreak. 

And then...the opposite happens. We learn, as the writer says, that we have gills. We learn that surrender isn't giving up at all, it's accepting. All the flailing and panicking and fighting and denying in the world isn't going to save us from the pain. What will? Accepting it. Inviting it in. "Diving all the way down into it." 

I know it's terrifying. I also know it's necessary. In all my years of hearing your stories, listening to those of you who've healed from this, navigating my own path through heartbreak, I've come to the conclusion that there is no other way back to a fully-lived life. Sure you can survive this without diving into the grief. And, honestly, in those early days, surviving was my goal. I couldn't imagine anything on the other side of survival. It would be enough, I decided, to just not die from the pain.

But then, as it became clear that I would survive, it also became clear that survival wasn't enough. And that meant diving into my grief. That meant I had to stop pushing my pain away and invite it in. It meant sinking into this unbearable ocean of grief. I discovered not just the heartbreak of my husband's betrayal there but so much more. Heartbreak I hadn't allowed myself to acknowledge. All the ways in which I had been betrayed and all the ways in which I'd betrayed myself. It's a lot. Having a therapist handy with a life-ring helped. Having friends who could sit with me in my pain helped. Having my mother, the source of much of my long-buried pain, able to acknowledge it with me, to tell me again how sorry she was. Having a dog into whose furry neck I could sob until I felt empty also helped. 

You also don't have to do this alone. But, if you want not only to survive this pain but to emerge with your heart still open to love and life, then you do have to do this. You have to surrender to the grief. You have to stop flailing and fighting to stay at the surface. You have to "dive all the way down into it, into the unbearable ocean."

But know this:

What happens when we reach that bottom is we learn we have gills. We can stay there, still breathing, as long as we need to. And then, I promise, we rise. 

Thursday's Thought

 

In reaching out, we save ourselves

I feel as though a sob is lodged in my throat and will emerge at, likely, the most inopportune moment. It has been there awhile, though it shrinks occasionally when I've had a particularly good day. It's my 2020 sob, a lump of sadness for all the pain felt by so many this awful, horrible year.

We're among the lucky ones. I live in Canada, where the virus has definitely wreaked havoc but nothing on the scale of our neighbors to the south. I only personally know one person who has had COVID – who died from it – and she lived in Florida. My husband and I have not lost our jobs. Our two older kids have had to do remote learning, which sucks but they have access to laptops and high-speed Internet and incredibly patient, hard-working teachers. Our youngest has had part-time in-person classes with equally hardworking teachers who have shown up in person and who have been a godsend. We have food, shelter, each other. Rarely have I felt so privileged on a daily basis to feel safe.

And yet...so much pain. So much sadness. So many alone. So many who've lost jobs. So many going to jobs where they feel unsafe. Where they are unsafe. So much anger. So much vitriol. 

But also, so much gratitude. When the world feels dark, a whole lot of us find ourselves grateful for even the tiniest bit of light.

It's not unlike those early days and weeks and months following D-Day. When our lives have been upended but we aren't yet sure what shape our new lives will take. When we can't imagine that the day will come when we feel a sliver of joy or gratitude. How could we? And yet, we do. A child's laugh. A friend's smile over Zoom. A dog bolting across a yard to greet us. A cat's contented purr. A good book. A cup of tea. A starlit night. I promise you, those moments are there if you look for them. Looking for loveliness, a friend of mine calls it. And she makes it a daily practice.

The New York Times asked listeners to The Daily podcast to share good news stories. People called in with tales of new babies, falling in love, learning to play the trumpet, riding a bike, a boys' successful cancer treatments and so much more. Light within the darkness. 

One listener noted that our instinct is to seek out connection, which looks so much different in 2020 than it did the year before. "In reaching out, we save ourselves," he said. 

I had to pause and rewind it to hear those words again. In reaching out, we save ourselves. The sob in my throat grew and a few tears leaked out. It's what happens here on this site all the time. It's what I've witnessed for more than a decade, since I first created Betrayed Wives Club in 2009. You reach out, first with your own story. Others read it and see themselves in your pain. Me too, they write, though not always in those words. I know that pain. I know that loneliness. I know that fear. That loss. That grief.

Thank-you all for what you do to keep this space a bright spot. May you find your own light this season. May it remind you that always, always the light will return and grow stronger the more we tend to it. In the meantime, may we continue to reach out to each other and, in so doing, also save ourselves.

Finding Your "Self" In Trauma and Transformation

 Healing from betrayal is very different than healing from other crises...because the self has to be rebuilt.

~Dr. Debi Silber, Post-Betrayal Trauma Institute

The self has to be rebuilt. That phrase brings tears to my eyes because, for me, it was the absolute truth. I was so shattered by my husband's betrayal that I had days when I felt like a ghost. A shell that contained only pain. I questioned my value. I considered suicide. I felt erased by him, as if everything I had done as his wife, as mother to his children, as his best friend didn't amount to anything. 

What betrayal also exposed was just how fragile my "self" was. I wasn't made of stone but of glass. But though betrayal levelled me, it also created the space for transformation. As Dr. Silber puts it, "if your house is levelled, don't build the same house". Whether you apply that statement to yourself or your marriage (or both!), the idea is the same. This is your moment to rebuild in a way that's stronger. 

In my case, it meant revisiting a whole lot of childhood trauma (which I had never considered "trauma" so much as just "shitty"). It meant paying attention to how things that I thought benign or ordinary had lain the groundwork for me to tolerate things that I shouldn't have. Consider this: My brother often beat me up. He was three years older, infinitely stronger and with a temper that frightened my parents too. They rarely stepped in. To me, it was garden-variety sibling stuff. Didn't everyone get the shit beat out of them by their siblings? Well, no, according to my horrified therapist who pointed out that my continued struggle with other people's anger likely had its roots in those early experiences where I learned that anger meant violence. 

Rebuilding my shattered self meant reexamining things I'd long believed or accepted and deciding what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to toss. It was a sort of psychological/emotional Marie Kondo-ing of my inner clutter.

That's available to you too. "Trauma is the setup for transformation," says Dr. Silber. The key is moving out of the trauma. I know, I know. Not easy and might require the help of a professional. I finally turned to EMDR when I found it too difficult to move past the trauma. I felt stuck in trauma, like the cement was hardening around my feet. But, as we've all discovered, the only way out is through. Which means feeling all the feelings, crying all the tears, moving through the stages of grief. 

I say that I discovered my self was built of glass, not stone. And yet...that self held seeds of this self. That self transported me to this place. Right here, right now. In which I consider myself worthy and lovable. In which I know myself to matter. It took strength, which must have already been there. Yours is there too. 

Justice for the pain? Or witness to the wound...

One of the most difficult things about healing from being hurt by others is how to put wounds to rest when those who have hurt us will not give air to the wound, will not admit to their part in causing the pain. I have struggled with this deeply. Time and again, I find myself confusing the want for justice with the need for a witness of the wound.

~Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

One of the more common laments I hear on this site is how the OW isn't "paying" for what she did. If she was single, well, she just moves on. If she's married, we imagine that her husband either doesn't know (and most don't want to tell him) or that he's chosen to move past it. So really, what we're saying when we want the OW to pay for our pain is that we want to see her pay. We want it to be public. Oprah once said that the downside of the karma bus was that we rarely got to see it run over those who did us wrong.

And I get it. Justice. We just want justice, right? Except that focusing on justice – the price we think she should pay (and our husband should pay, for that matter) – often keeps us focused outwardly. Away from the pain. Away from the wound.

But what I've learned through healing from betrayal is that focussing outward keeps us a step removed from our wound but connected to the person who helped create it. It's like being in the middle of the road with a broken leg and trying to chase down the person who ran us over. What we need to do is fix the break first. 

But a broken bone is one thing. It shows up on x-rays. A broken heart is another thing entirely. We don't know how to effectively treat a broken heart. And so we tell ourselves that we're being pathetic. We chastise ourselves for our tears. Why aren't we over this? What's wrong with us? We need a witness for our wound, as Mark Nepo says, and yet we can't even do that for ourselves. Far easier, it seems, to stalk her Facebook or Instagram for signs of her misery. Far easier to drive by her house and see the curtains pulled tight. 

None of this is easy, my friends. Healing from infidelity just might be the hardest thing you'll ever do. But it starts with acknowledging your pain. Acknowledging just how deep the wound goes. And summoning other witnesses to it, who can assure us that they know it's there too.

It might not erase our desire for justice, our need to see those who hurt us somehow pay for the damage they caused. But it also might. By the time I began to feel healed from my own broken heart, I no longer cared about the OW. I knew by then she had remarried and had a baby. And I hoped, for the baby's sake, that she had done some healing of her own. I hoped for the sake of other women that she never wanted to cause such damage in another's marriage again. But that was nothing I could control. And so I let go.

Thursday's Thought