Loss of Trust vs. Betrayal

Loss of Trust vs. Betrayal

This has been a hot topic on my mind for---oh---the past 7 years of my life. It started out as something I didn't understand and wanted to learn about. But somewhere down the road, I started to figure out how these particular labels are applied to my own life. How does loss of trust affect me versus being betrayed by someone?

When someone is dishonest, our first reaction is to lose trust in them. This seems like the obvious reaction, no matter how long it may last. I think of this as a chain breaking. One of the links snaps and the chain separates.
Although it takes some work, a broken link of a chain is fixable. Depending on how many links have broken, it may take a while but it isn't hopeless.
You can reattach links and even work hard to make them stronger than the last time.

But betrayal is different. Betrayal is taking that same chain and placing it on top of a bomb. When the bomb goes off, the chain is broken into a thousand tiny pieces and some of them hit you. How do you put that chain back together? How do you fix the wounds you now have?

Betrayal throws reason out the window.

Betrayal always involves a loss of trust. But a loss of trust does not always involve betrayal. 
Betrayal is an action, a verb. The dictionary defines it as "to disappoint the hopes or expectations of; be disloyal to". According to the dictionary, betrayal goes far and wide beyond lying. It is deceit. It is telling someone you're going to be loyal and directly contradicting your words by your actions.

A few months ago, a friend was asking me a series of hard questions, most of which I refused to fully answer. Questions like, "Should I stay? Should I go? Do you think there's a betrayal 'point of no return'?" Each of these questions has individual answers---not individual to the question but individual to the person asking.

Should you leave him?
I don't know. 
That all depends on how much you can handle. If you've lost yourself and are miserable, maybe you should. But maybe you have hope that you can trust him again if he is willing to make changes.

Betrayal seems like the definition of GREY. It isn't black and white ever. Ever ever.

Everyone who has felt a form of betrayal has their own unique experience.

For me, betrayal caused anxiety. I had never dealt with anxiety of this magnitude ever before in my life. Betrayal caused me to need medication to function for a while---which I am completely ok with. In fact, I'm grateful for it.

I can remember a time at the beginning of this past school year when I was waiting in the pick-up line for my daughter. It was the first time of the day where I had a quiet 20 minutes to myself and each day, as I would dwell on things I needed to get done and people I needed to see and places I needed to go, a surge of anxiety would take over my chest and I would have to close my eyes and take deep breaths.
Most of the time, I would tell myself, "Suzanne, calm down. You know nothing is wrong right now. Nothing bad is happening. You shouldn't be getting anxious." but every once in a while, I'd get impatient and angry with myself.

As I was telling my counselor this last week, kind of proud of myself for usually being patient but also recognizing that I wasn't always dealing with it very well, she asked me if my words were self-honoring to my anxiety.

Self-honoring.

She said those words and for a while, I wasn't focused on anything else she said (Sorry, therapist...) because those words were the perfect label for what I was trying to make sense of in my head.

I wasn't honoring the fact that I am dealing with a lot of betrayal trauma. I wasn't allowing myself to feel anxious without trying to shut the feelings down as quickly as I could.

I have a strong belief that betrayal trauma is real. I am trying to be more accepting of the thoughts in my head and the feelings in my heart---the good and the bad---because each thing I think and feel has a purpose. Each reaction I have, even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else in the world, is a part of my reality.

And it's ok.

It's ok to work through trauma and act super crazy sometimes. It's ok to have fears and anxiety. Because I have been betrayed and I understand why those feelings come and go. I understand why I get anxiety. If I looked at my story as someone else's, I'd tell that girl, "Give yourself a break. Don't get upset when you get anxious. You have been through a lot. It is scary. And you're doing the best you can right now."

Because I am doing the best I can. I am hanging on by a thread sometimes and thriving other times. I stay up until 2am and I go to bed at 8pm sometimes. I cook my kids a healthy dinner sometimes and other times, I hand them a piece of bologna and a banana and call it a night.

Each and every day, all we can do is try to do the best we can---not the best our sister or neighbor or best friend can---just the best we can be.

Anchor to the Good

 Sky high and fearless---that is a real picture of me when I was a little girl. I used to climb to the top of our incredibly tall swing set and feel the wind on my face and just breathe. I'd sit on the top metal bar and watch the cars go down the streets and the people walking on the sidewalks.

That was my place.

Very few times did the fear of falling come to my mind but it never stopped me from climbing up to the top and feeling like I was on top of the world.

As a young girl, it was a fun place to climb. As a teenager, it was a place I would go to escape my pain.

My kids play on that swing set now. I watch them from my parents' kitchen window and imagine I am the young version of myself again, the little girl who needed someone to understand her a little bit better.
Sometimes I mourn the parts of my childhood that were sad. Other times, I smile because I love that little girl so much. I love 'young me'. Maybe that seems weird but whenever I see things in my children that remind me of myself as a child, it makes me happy.

Because I am her and I know what she needs. I know how she felt. I know all of the genuinely compassionate things she felt as a little girl. She is incredible to me.



Last week, I had a super rough night---or couple of nights. I wish the hard nights would stop but I guess that's never going to happen. But as I laid in my bed and wrote in my journal, I was thinking about everything that has happened and I was starting to blame myself all over again.

This is what anxiety does to me. 

I was worried that my divorce was too fast and that I had jumped into this new life without waiting for a fourth or fifth answered prayer that this was right---as if the first three answers were no longer valid. 

I started to second guess my friendships to some of the most amazing people I have ever met. I couldn't believe that they really love me. I started to think that I was probably just a girl with a sad story who everyone feels sorry for so they invite her to hang out.

I was crying while messaging a friend about my pity party and she stopped me right in my tracks and said, "Ok, I'm stepping in now! No No NO! Now you're making that up in YOUR head because you anchor to all of the self critic talk, instead of anchoring to what you know is true. You're amazing. You have awesome friends who are trying to protect you. You have been through hell and back and you don't give yourself enough credit for the amazing amount of crap you've been through and have to deal with. Let yourself feel those feelings of hurt but don't anchor to them. Anchor to the good."

Anchor to the good.

That phrase really spoke to me. Anchor to the good. I like simple messages that carry deep meanings. They are easier for me to remember and apply.

The next day, I went straight to my white board and wrote that beautiful message on it.

I pass by it multiple times a day.

When my friend first said those words to me, I thought they would be easy. I am a generally optimistic person and I've always felt like I can pick the good out of the situation and focus on it most of the time.

But it has been harder than I thought! Because I've been dealing with so much anxiety and shame that finding the good isn't always easy.

Often times it bothers me that I haven't yet figured out who I am now. I am a different person than I used to be and sometimes it's hard for me to understand myself. It's hard to understand the anxiety or the anger or the shame because even though I have felt all of those things in my life, I didn't recognize them as much as I do now. They weren't as debilitating as they are now.

And a huge part of me resents that. A huge part of me gets angry with this new person because I just want her to calm down and stop being so scared of life.

I want her to trust. 

But if I take a step back and look at her as if she isn't me, I can see why she is scared and why she doesn't like to trust. I can see why daily activities can give her anxiety. Because the day she was hurt the most was just a normal day with normal activities and it changed her life forever.


I hope that someday I will be able to overcome my fears. I hope that I will be able to live more freely and trust and love and commit.

But today all I feel like doing is climbing back into bed and never coming out of my room.
Because at least my bed is safe. 

What I Wish I Would've Known: Divorce

 I've been thinking lately about my divorce and how the last year {or even two years} played out. I made it through some pretty awful days but there are things I look back on and think, "Wow...I could've handled that a lot better than I did."
Because trauma can cause you to do some pretty crazy things and feel some pretty crazy feelings.

So I wanted to talk about that today; what I wish I would've done differently in my divorce.

I wish I wouldn't have yelled so much.
I wish I wouldn't have yelled at my husband and my parents and my children and myself. I wish I wouldn't have projected my anger at the people I love the most. Maybe my husband could understand why I was yelling because of the pain his choices were causing me. But my family members? No. Even if they understood and were patient, I could have dealt with my anger a little more healthy than I did. I could've smashed plates or thrown rocks at the wall or punched my pillow over and over instead of stuffing my anger until it exploded randomly at whoever was nearest.

I wish I wouldn't have gone numb for so long...and I also wish I could've stayed numb longer. Because right after he left, I went into fight or flight mode and I chose to fly away as far as I could go and pretend like everything was fine. I convinced people I was amazingly strong and that I wasn't lonely but the worst part was that I convinced myself I was amazingly strong and didn't need to grieve like a normal person.
So when the numbing went away, it was horrible. Instead of feeling the pain and heartache in the moment, I was flooded with it all at once, months after the fact.

I wish I wouldn't have doubted myself.
When my husband left, I was firm in my belief that my ability to cook and clean wasn't the reason he left. It didn't matter that he had told me those exact words, I knew it wasn't true. But after the numbing went away, I started to doubt my ability to be a good wife, mother, sister, daughter, and really, I just doubted my ability to be a good human being. I felt like I was worth nothing. My husband had never in our marriage said anything negative about my weight or my looks but because it was an insecurity I already had, I projected that as "the actual reason he left". It was the only thing that made sense to my broken brain. I didn't love my body so I just assumed he didn't love it either.

 I wish I would've asked for more help and felt less guilty when I received help.
Help during divorce is necessary. It just is. There were times I would be crying and a friend would stop by and just take my kids---no questions asked. I had so much help in some of my darkest times. But there were times when I needed help and should've let someone else into my home when I wouldn't. I felt guilty asking for more help but because of this, I had days that were harder than hard but that didn't have to be as hard as they were.

 I wish I would've thought about me more.
I thought about how divorce would affect my kids, how people would judge me, how people would judge my ex-husband, how my family would accept everything, and how unworthy I was. What I didn't think about was how much I was hurting and how much compassion I needed to have for myself. It was so easy having empathy for the hard things my children were going through and I even got to a point where empathy for my ex-husband became possible. But empathy for myself was non-existent. Instead I spent all of my "free time" at the gym or obsessing over my food intake or dreaming about dating and feeling anxious that no one would want to date me and making sure I was still spreading my time among my friends and dishing out time to new friends or numbing my mind with television.
I wasn't thinking about my heart and empathizing with the pain. I was beating myself down for all of the reasons I wasn't good enough. Self-care was non-existent even when it looked existent because I was doing things all for the wrong reasons. I was punishing myself, not loving myself.
I needed my own empathy. I needed to give myself compassion. And I didn't do it.

 I wish I wouldn't have gone off my anti-depressant.
Yup, it's true. I take drugs! I was on anxiety medication the day we separated because I had been getting anxiety for months leading up to the day that huge bomb was dropped on me---I now refer to that as my psycho-good intuition because there wasn't really any proof that things were really wrong. But I was worried that the numbness I was experiencing was as a result of my medication and I was worried that I'd go off the medication a year or two later and all of a sudden, I'd have all these pent up feelings from my divorce. So I went off of them right after our separation started. Weird. And the worst part was, it took me a while to realize how much that affected me during that time. I felt like the same old Suzanne but inside, I was going crazy. I was feeling crazy. I was experiencing anxiety that felt like what PTSD is described to feel like.
In case you're wondering, I no longer feel shame associated with my medication. My goodness, who freaking cares what people think of me swallowing a Zoloft every night? I get to choose what is best for me and I am choosing to help myself have a better life! So I'm sorry if you don't agree with that---actually I'm not really sorry but I do respect your opinion.

The main thing I wish I would've learned a year ago is that people make mistakes and that's ok.
A year ago, I was angry and I wasn't ok with the imperfections of others and my own imperfections. But it's ok that I made mistakes. It's ok that my ex-husband made mistakes. It's ok that my parents made mistakes.
Everyone does it.
We don't have some guide book to help us through our rough times. We figure it out on our own and sometimes, that includes a little trial and error {or a lot of it}.

Although there are things I wish I would've done differently, I've accepted that I can't change the past.

And the greatest part is, we've made it out alive so far! And not only are we surviving, most days we are thriving.

Divorce isn't the end of all happiness and peace.

I am happy. I have found peace.

Grief: Part 1

 

Truth:

I am not always doing as well as it seems.

 

Truth:

I deal with pain and trauma every day.

 

Truth:

I do not cry often because I hate feeling like I'm not in control of my emotions.

 

So here's a big truth...I usually write about my struggles in past tense form. When I'm in the midst of doing horribly, I don't like to talk about it here because I don't want you to think I am always angry or sad or ungrateful.

 

But I'm here today to tell you some truths. These are present tense.

 

Lately, it has all been hard; trauma from divorce, motherhood, finding myself, resolving my anger. I often fear that I will never get better because I go through these small ups and huge downs. I fear I won't be able to resolve the fact that I cannot trust anyone with my heart.

 

I am angry today. Actually, I've been angry for a few weeks. Well, in all honestly, I've been angry for a year now. But never like this.

My grieving process is so much slower than I anticipated and I'm just now hitting anger, real anger. And when it hit, it hit hard. I've resented a lot of these things that I have to accept as 'my story'.

 

Seriously? I'm a divorced 26 year old woman with 2 kids? Is this some cruel joke? This certainly can't be real. WHEN DO I GET TO WAKE UP?!

 

I'm trying to accept it. I really, truly am. I'm trying to be ok with my messy life because of the beauty it holds but sometimes, I just cannot see the beauty. Sometimes I just cannot focus on anything but the ugly, messy, screwed up parts of my life that make me question everything I've ever learned.

 

It's a mess, really.

 

I'm a mess.

 

In 12 days, I will have to come to grips with the anniversary of the day my husband left me. Ouch. It is a pain I cannot even begin to describe. It was the ultimate rejection. It has been an extremely painful year. I have made some really stupid decisions. I have cried more tears than in all of the other years of my adult life combined. It was traumatic.

 

And I'm still grieving.

 

Remember how I once said you just cannot put a timeline on grief?

Yeah.

I did put a timeline on my grieving. It wasn't a conscious decision but I now realize that I did that. Because I assumed that by a year, I would be fine. I assumed that by a year, I would be free of the shame and the guilt and the pain.

 

But that didn't happen, friends. I was wrong.

And the fact that I was wrong, the fact that I am still so broken makes me so damn angry.

 

All I want to do is be strong and happy and ME. I want to be me.

 

I wish I could accept that life is hard and uncertain and scary sometimes. That is my goal. I want to be ok with letting God take the reigns. I want to be ok with not knowing.

 

So today I'm angry.

And tonight I'm going to punch my pillow and scream swear words because, well...therapy!

 

The Gray Area of Heartache

I come here tonight as a broken piece of a puzzle. I come here to let you know that trials don't just magically disappear. They just don't.

I used to look around at a room full of people and peg which trials should be dealt with progressively and which ones would just be easy to get over. I used to judge based on the trials I had been through---eating disorder, rocky relationship with my family, fake friendships, bad decisions, loneliness, judgment from church members---and feel like I knew so much about the world. Because I had been through so much. (Ha!)

I used to think that I was so very mature for my age. I believed in my capabilities. I believed in my uniqueness. I loved it when people would compliment me on my choices. I thrived on praise.

But I never fully felt like I was enough. Praise would keep me going for weeks, sometimes months, but it wasn't something that stuck. Because I didn't believe in myself as a whole person. I believed in bits and pieces but I didn't fully trust myself to make decisions that were smart and worthy.

I married a man who didn't recognize all of the potential inside of me. Although that isn't my battle, it felt like my battle. It felt like a lifetime of disappointments all leading up to that particular day on August 24th, 2013. I felt like that was my grand failure moment. His choices caused me to second guess decisions I had made for the past seven years of my life.

My brain sometimes reels with the things I could've done differently. But that does nothing for me.

I guess tonight, I just come here to tell you that I am no longer a judge. I can look at a room full of people and I can understand why their trials are still causing them pain. Just getting over it isn't as easy as it seems to be from the outside looking in. Life will throw you on the ground and stomp on you and it's ok to lay there for a while. It's ok to stare into the sky and cry out and yell or scream. It's ok to punch your pillow and to not be ok with the things that are happening. It's scary to feel like you are not in control of the things happening in your life. It is just downright scary.

You aren't alone in this world. I have felt so many moments of loneliness in my life. One of my most reoccuring trials has been loneliness for one reason or another. It's something I've dealt with a lot. I thrive on the company and support from others. And when it isn't present, I don't always deal with it well. Satan tries to prove to me how lonely I am right now and it's hard to shut him out. I haven't been a very good friend to some of the most important people in my life because I've been struggling all month. I'm sure I've coined this before but this has seemed to be the hardest month so far. It has been a grueling path full of ups and downs. I need to just stop convincing myself it can't get harder---because apparently, it can!

Nine months later, I'm not better. Actually, there are still things I'm learning to recognize as triggers and painful heartaches. There are still things that surprise me throughout this journey that bring me back to square one. I am in the process of learning how to be a single me and quite frankly, I'm exhausted.

When you've been through a traumatic event, you almost instantly realize how uncertain life can be. You can see why controlling people are on the fritz when their lives make sudden changes. It makes you feel crazy and scared and you do everything you can to control the things in your life that are actually in your control.
You kinda just go crazy---minus the "kinda".

I've learned a lot on this journey but so many things, I have yet to learn. I know there are reasons but I also know these things happened because of the decisions of imperfect human beings. This isn't something God placed in my lap. This happened because we have free agency.

I pray for those of you who feel alone tonight. I pray for those of you who feel heartache and pain and are feeling hopeless. I have faith that life gets better. I have faith that God doesn't ever abandon us.

You can do this because you are strong.

You Would Never Know

I'm going to try really hard to be more open with you today because for some reason, I get the feeling that someone needs it. Maybe that someone is me, maybe that someone is you...

Everyone has a story. Everyone has a background and a childhood and unique experiences.
No two stories are exactly alike.

It is so easy to judge. It is so easy to look a person up and down and think we know everything we need to know about them to make perfect assumptions about their life.

Have you ever seen the kid at the restaurant that is so extremely obnoxious that you wonder why the heck their parents brought them out in public? Did you find yourself judging this child's parents? Did you find yourself judging the child? If you knew this child's story, would you feel differently about this situation? What if this child was autistic? What if this child was being bullied at school and was insecure? What if this child's parents were going through a divorce?

You would never know, would you? And yet, a lot of times, we still judge.

When I was first faced with the prospect of divorce, one of my main worries was judgment. I felt like I had this neon sign flashing on me at all times that said, "I am divorced" or "I am proving the statistic".

I failed. I failed so badly at something that I should've succeeded at.
I blamed myself for marrying way too young. I blamed myself for ignoring red flags. And I was extremely scared for how I would be perceived as a divorced mother of 2.

A month or so ago, I found out some pretty devastating news about my marriage---news that would rock anyone's world. It was during this time that I started struggling even more and wondering how in the hell I was going to get past this. I worried about what other's would think if they knew the truth. Would this create a paradigm shift for my story? Because certainly this caused me to feel like the victim all over again. He lied. He made horrible decisions. He left because he chose other things over me. I was really angry.

A huge part of me wanted to shout from the rooftops what was going on because I have already been faced with ridicule from others for my divorce. I have already experienced the judgment and I have had people place the blame solely on me for my failed marriage. I thought, "If only they knew..." and I wanted them to. I wanted them to see my side. I wanted them to understand.

But I was worried they would judge---not necessarily judge me but maybe judge him? Or maybe judge the situation unfairly? I was just so worried about judgment.

And I'm really freaking sick of worrying about judgment.

I am so sick of  giving "judgment" so much credibility in my life.

So today, I am going to level with you a little bit. I am here to tell you that although I am not perfect, I know I couldn't have saved my marriage on my own. I am here to tell you that if you are feeling alone right now, I have two perfectly good ears to hear your story. I want you to know that the world cannot determine how we perceive our story---we are the only ones who get to decide.

I look at my story and a lot of the time, I get discouraged and think, "Well my story sucks." but so many beautiful things are a part of my story. My story has forced me to utilize my New Years resolution of bravery. My story has given me the strength to fight so many evils in our world. My story has granted me opportunities to meet some of the most amazing people I've ever been privileged to be around.

Although so many parts of my story come with heartbreak and betrayal, my story is worth it.



*I've thought a lot about switching over to a new blog for our family because there are a lot of posts on here that are really painful for me and I feel like I need a fresh start. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do or how I'm going to do this but if it happens, you will be the first---or second---to know.

The Togetherness Project

A month or so after my husband moved out, one of my friends from high school messaged me on Facebook with some supportive words and a link to a blog post that she thought might help me.

Pioneer Woman was a post that changed my perspective and helped me feel like there could be support in the decisions I was making. I was feeling backed into a corner and I wasn't sure whether to fight or flight.

I felt an instant connection to the words on Jacy's blog and I spent some time reading posts upon posts upon posts to learn more about this Brave Warrior Woman who I had never met.

Gathering from her blog posts, I assumed Jacy lived in Utah so when I emailed her to tell her how much her blog had helped me in my journey, I was surprised when she emailed back to tell me she lived literally 20 minutes away from me. What?!?

I kept on reading Jacy's blog and she would sometimes refer to The Togetherness Project and I was a bit intrigued by what seemed like a community of women who had been in similiar situations as myself. But I was nervous. Oh so nervous. I knew NO ONE besides my friend and at the time, I wasn't sure if she was going to attend the conference.

But through Jacy's blog, I came across an incredible post written by Tc and from there, I reached out to her and met her in person...kind of by force. :)

What I'm trying to say from all of this blog tagging and name dropping (because in my world, these people are famous) is that I feel like my connection to The Togetherness Project was a bunch of tiny little pieces that created a completed puzzle.

So I finally signed up. I did it. It was a step of bravery for me and this is my year of BRAVE so I did it.

Weeks upon weeks before TTP (The Togetherness Project) and I started to look forward to this band of amazing women who were very supportive of me. Countdown had begun. I had hope that I would find new friendships and a healthy amount of support and also that I would be able to support other women and love them.

My vision of TTP was almost spot on. Support, love, friendships---it was all there.

Mark Bell started the day off with a bang, teaching us about empathy vs. sympathy. "Sympathy drives disconnection. Empathy is feeling with people. When does an emphatic sentence start with, "At least."?" I connected to this message because having gone through a few crappy things in my life (infertility, divorce, etc.), I've heard a lot of these messages. At least you have two kids. At least your husband didn't die. At least you get breaks from your kids every other weekend. For the most part, I could understand that when people would say these "At least's", they were trying to help me feel better but once in a while, those sentences just plain hurt. The phrase "at least" seems to minimize the pain I'm feeling because at least I don't have it worse.

The other message I wanted to touch on was a class taught by Marilyn Tenney. If you've known me a long time, you might know her as well. Marilyn was a youth leader in my church growing up. I was so excited to attend her class just to see her and her class ended up being my favorite! I really related to the things she spoke about regarding "Codependency as a Trauma Response". I have had a hard time in my outside world (my world outside of TTP and the women who get this trauma) explaining how traumatic this has been for me. I feel like I get a lot of weird looks when I refer to my divorce as betrayal trauma because it's not like he did anything to me. I wasn't abused.Abuse is outwardly traumatic and everyone agrees but it's hard to recognize trauma that is all emotional. There is no proof and it's harder to understand. I felt shame for even feeling like I had suffered trauma because I felt like maybe I'm just overreacting. One of the first things Marilyn taught was, "If it affects how I see my world, that's trauma." Then she went on to explain that I need to, "Identify the truths and lies of my shame." Why am I feeling this shame? What are deep-rooted feelings behind all of this?

I could go on and on about codependency and what I have learned from those feelings. I had a late night/early morning talk with a great friend (you know, the night before the conference when we pulled an ALL NIGHTER) about how I hate myself when I start feeling codependent. I can hardly stand it! When I start feeling lonely, I get angry at myself because I WANT TO BE INDEPENDENT!
My friend taught me that there is a difference between being codependent and lonely. They are not the same thing. When I'm lonely, it isn't because I'm weak, it is because we, as human beings, want to feel connection with other people.

Honestly, I'd pull an all nighter all over again, despite the effects on my body from 2 days post-all-night, to learn what I learned that night---and that was BEFORE the conference had even started!

There were so many other amazing speakers and classes that I attended. I learned so much about myself, about my situation, and about the strength I CAN have in any situation!

Not only can we do hard things, we can do AMAZING things! As human beings, we have the power in any situation to come out on top.

Together, we can rise above.

Distant Memories

 Sometimes it seems unreal. Sometimes it seems too much to try and remember the good.

Because the good from back then is just a distant memory.

It isn't because I don't want to remember or even that I can't remember but once everything came crashing down---not last August but 2 Augusts ago, I felt like that was when my life changed forever.
The tension was different.
The hope was different.
The trust was different.

We were a dying bush that needed so badly to be nurtured. We needed care and patience and we got that, in the form of marriage counseling.
Because my marriage didn't survive, you might think I'm not a believer in marriage counseling but wholeheartedly I am. Marriage counseling brought something dying back to life for a while.
Marriage counseling taught me. I believe marriage counseling made it so when I was abandoned---a word I don't use lightly but that describes exactly my feelings from that day---I was able to pull through and not break down completely. I was able to function as a mother and I was even barely functioning as a person in society.

Marriage counseling showed a less active dad how to become more active. Those memories are now foggy and hard to fathom because if we were doing well, why? If those memories were ones of joy and laughter, why? Maybe we were just doing well raising our kids together...


I feel a lot of betrayal. Betrayal, abandonment, and betrayal trauma are words I think of when describing all of this. This wasn't a death, it wasn't abuse, but it was traumatic. Going from learning to trust someone to realizing you trusted someone at the very moments you shouldn't have has made this all an experience that feels like a thorn in my side.
I feel stupid for not recognizing the signs, for not recognizing the problems. I feel stupid for not seeing the lies or trusting my gut---because my gut was telling me there were problems.
I feel a huge pressure to be this awesome person and this awesome mother all of the time and when I fail, I'm harder on myself than ever. People often tell me how strong I am and how amazing I am and this buoys me up for a bit before I started questioning why they believe that.
Do they just read my blog? Are they just an acquaintence? Is this someone that spends enough time with me to recognize how imperfect I am?
This is Satan, my friends. Everything I just described above is Satan. It is his way of reminding me that he will always be there, tempting me and telling me I'll never get better and that I'll never get away from horrible things. He tells me not to trust. He tells me not to believe in my future. He tells me that I suck at being a mom and that I'm too fat and too stupid to succeed.

 He doesn't want me to be carefree and to find my brave self. He doesn't want me to believe in a world where I can be mother, friend, counselor, and even a good wife again.

But I do.

Yes, I struggle with these beliefs often right now but they haven't completely left. When I fail to be the mother I know I want to be, I can work harder the next day. When school seems like it is too hard to handle, I take it a day at a time and just try. And when I'm feeling like it would be impossible for a man to love this person that I am, I try to remember that God has placed me on this earth for a certain reason. He sees the potential I have. He recognizes all of the good I have.

I just need to start recognizing it with Him.