Tag: complex ptsd

Lessons Learned in the Fetal Position – Lesson No. 1

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emotional/Spiritual Recovery, Encouraging Stories

At this time of year, when we, in the Northern Hemisphere experience the shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice, the beginning of winter, I’m often reminded of one of the first lessons I learned about myself from the worst experience of my life. On the day when we experience the most darkness, we also recognize that we’ve turned a corner, so to speak. The days begin to get longer. Every day, we get a little bit more daylight, imperceptibly at first, but by February, it’s noticeable. One day in February, we wake up and realize it doesn’t feel like we’re living in darkness all the time anymore. And we realize the long sunny summer days are coming again and will be here soon enough.

The months that followed my first husband’s abandonment of myself and my children were dark days. I remember the fear and hopelessness I felt. The loss of identify, the loss of my story, my past, my future, my present. What did anything mean? I couldn’t get out of bed some mornings, but most days, I did. I plodded along, trying to make sense of the bomb that had hit my life. Mostly I stayed in the game and kept getting up and going through the daily motions of life, formulating and working a plan to deal with all the fallout that kept revealing itself. I carried on for my children. My four innocent children who needed me. They needed me to figure things out, to stay strong and to be brave. Things were grim. There were financial concerns; I had a house to sell and it wasn’t going well. My soon-to-be ex-husband wanted to make some money off the house even though we had barely moved in before he ran off with the other woman. He refused to lower the price so that it would just sell, and I could see into the future; I could see that if I couldn’t sell it by the time I moved to another city to take the engineering job waiting for me at the end of the children’s school year, we were going to lose the house altogether. This was only one of many problems.

I felt mostly dead inside for those months. I never clearly formulated the thought, but deep down, I wasn’t sure if I believed I would ever have a reason to feel joy again; I didn’t know when or if I would laugh again – I mean really laugh because of the lighter side of life. I wasn’t sure if I would ever know that again, or feel that again. Ease, peace, a sense of calm and surety about my life. Were those things available to me anymore? I didn’t even know. I had never been in such a dark place or for so long. I didn’t know if a light at the end of the tunnel even existed for a tunnel this deep, dark and long.

Then, one day, I was in the kitchen with my four year old girl. She was so cute and little and I tried every day just to try to be the relaxed easy going reassuring mom I knew she would need. I tried to make things as normal for my kids as I could. We kept on with the visits to the park, walking the dog together on Sundays, making crafts and cookies, music lessons and sports activities. I was really trying to keep things normal for all my children. So, this one afternoon, my littlest came into the kitchen while I was working in there, and I had just dried my hands. And out of the blue, I grabbed her and just started a tickle fight with her right there on the kitchen floor. It was unexpected, unplanned, spontaneous and so “normal”. I did it hoping to make her smile, to make her giggle and to bring a bit of enjoyment into her young life. I did it so she could feel her mom’s attention and interest in playing with her, being with her, getting on her level. But something amazing happened to me in that moment, as I was on the floor with her, listening to her little peels of laughter rising like weightless, shiny bubbles, floating on the air. I had this intense moment of joy course through me, caught up with her in the fun of the moment. I felt a hope, a glimmer, really, that a light somewhere at the end of the dark tunnel I felt myself in could exist. For the first time since my husband had left and I had discovered the heart wrenching emails between him and his affair partner and felt the sting of the de-humanizing ways they talked about me to justify their actions, I considered and even believed that I would find joy again. In that moment, I learned the first and most important lesson about myself of many that would follow – I understood that no matter how dark things felt, I was going to find myself and my joy again someday; that I was capable of finding joy and love again. I believed for the first time that I wasn’t going to have to spend the rest of my life in that dark place. The sun was returning.

And just like that day in February, that first day each winter after driving to work and home in the pitch dark every day for months, when suddenly it seems, the sun lasts long enough to see the sun go down on the way home, and you remember that summer and sunshine are not too far off. 

How I Stopped the Bitter/Angry/ Resentful Train and Got Off (Part 1)

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emotional/Spiritual Recovery

A few years after my first husband ran off with someone else, after living a double life for the entirety of our marriage, I fell in love again and re-married. My children and I were living in a small, remote northern community and it worked out better for my children and I to move to where my second husband lived. My second husband just happened to live near the large city where my ex-husband and I had lived for 5 years when our 3rd child was born, 10 years earlier. He also happened to live in the same part of the city where my ex-husband and I had previously attended church and participated in our faith community. I had only positive thoughts and hopeful expectations when I considered that I would be returning to a congregation of people that had known me when I was married to someone else. After all, I was still me, and I knew that the divorce and what myself and my children had been through was not my choice or my doing – I would have been willing to try almost anything to keep our family intact if that had been an option, but it’s hard to address problems that are being so carefully hidden and avoided, it was far too late by the time I knew about them. It had only been 7 years since we had attended this faith community – surely things would not have changed all that much and I had memories of friendships and a warm, welcoming atmosphere. I looked forward to seeing everyone again and thought that myself and my children would really benefit from being in the familiar setting.

Eleven years later, my children all grown, I left the faith community I had been a part of for a combined total of over 15 years to find another, taking my resentment and anger with me. I’ve spent many hours thinking about what transpired during those eleven years, while I raised my teenagers, built a career, discovered I had married the same problem a second time and finally made the internal shift I needed to leave the emotional abuse of betrayal behind me for good. In journaling about the causes of my anger and resentment, largely felt towards certain “good” members of the faith community I had left behind, I realized that while there were far more people who reached out in love, caring and support to myself and my children during those years, it was the ignorance, micro-aggressions, silent judgements and ostracizing actions of only a few that had left me feeling marginalized, misunderstood, and hurt. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

One of the first times we went to church after we moved back, I saw someone I recognized after the services were over. Her husband held a prominent position in the faith community. We hadn’t been that close, but her husband and I had gone to the same university (he was two years ahead of me) and we had all known one another while we were students; it had been almost 15 years since we’d seen one another. I started walking towards her and began to say hello to her, and looking directly at me, she turned her entire body away from me and then turned to face another direction, obviously pretending not to see me. She was sitting alone in a comfortable arm chair with no good reason to do this (by this, I mean, she wasn’t talking to anyone else around her, even though there were several people milling about). A little surprised, I puzzled over why she would do something like this.

Later, at a large out-of-town event, I happened to be sitting at the same table as another woman, the wife of the clergy in our faith community. It was quiet, we were waiting for something and there weren’t that many people around. Our high school aged children had known one another since they were 2 years old, and when we returned to the area, they had become good friends again, attending the same high school and spending lots of time at their home. We’d never been close friends, but we were chatting and I happened to mention something in passing about one of the challenges we were facing with my new situation. Everyone knew my kids were away every other weekend visiting their father – we didn’t live close to him and we spent close to 10 hours driving every other weekend in order to make the visits happen. Maybe I made her uncomfortable, or maybe she thought I had crossed a line in our relationship, which was perhaps much more superficial than I’d realized. But she immediately shut down and the conversation completely fizzled out. I felt silenced. I felt like I was being told to sit down and stop complaining; that, whatever it was I had to say it, she did not want to hear about it.

A couple years later, I was meant to work with the same woman on a volunteer assignment, but over a period of several months and after a consistent effort on my part to make arrangements to get together, I realized she was just avoiding me and making excuses so that she wouldn’t have to work with me. That really hurt. I had never been treated like that by anyone before. When I was married to my children’s father and attending that faith community previously, everyone was happy to associate with me. I had a hard time understanding that even though I was still me and I knew I was still doing my best to be a good person and raise my family as best I could, some of the people that had known me before were not interested in being around me anymore, even though the only thing about me that had really changed was the configuration of my family (and that were going through a lot of difficult challenges).

Another incident that left me feeling unfairly judged happened at Christmastime, after my second oldest daughter had left home to go to university. She was visiting for Christmas, we had just finished our Christmas service and we were standing around socializing with other members of the congregation, enjoying the festive atmosphere. My daughter and I were joking around about how my children had so much fun teasing me while they tried to get me to reveal who my favourite child was by comparing things I did for or with each of them. Another prominent member of the congregation, a woman whose daughter had been friends with my daughter back when we had attended services with the children’s father, joined the conversation and chimed in with a tone of carefully veiled superiority, “Well, in OUR home, we argue over who LOVES each other more…’I love you’, and ‘No, I love you more’…” I could feel and hear in her words that without ever really getting to know me, she had come to the conclusion that I had somehow “done it wrong”, that my misfortunes were my own fault somehow and that she had something she could teach me so that I could do a better job with my family and maybe be more like her. It was terribly offensive. So condescending. How could she possibly know how much I’d sacrificed in order to keep my family together and safe; how I’d done my level best, how unlikely it was that she had some secret sauce that I didn’t know about? No one had tried harder or been more resourceful than me, I knew that for sure.

After awhile, I saw the dismissive, marginalizing, judgmental, ostracizing behaviour all the time when I went to church, I had practically forgotten the real reason I was there in the first place – and it really wasn’t ever for the social life. I remembered how often our family had been included, invited for dinner, how we’d had guests at our home from our faith community when we had attended as an intact family. All that was gone. I was busier than I had ever been, trying to parent my children, build a career, rescue yet another failing relationship and then on my own again. I couldn’t address it, I couldn’t put my finger on how I was feeling. I saw members of our faith community treating my children the way I was being treated, then I heard from another mother in a similar situation as mine tell me that certain women in our faith community that had “intact” families were actually telling their children not to associate with the likes of ours. My anger and resentment grew. But this was not who I wanted to be. People wonder why discarded, betrayed, abandoned women become bitter and resentful – well, now I know. Anyone can end up this way when things go so terribly wrong, when all one’s best efforts seem to only be met with despair; and then, if that’s not enough, there are people that blame, judge, criticize or worse, look right past you. Talk about feeling kicked when you’re down.

Most of the time, the discarded woman hasn’t done a thing to deserve her predicament, and instead of reaching out in the spirit of empathy and inclusion, the “privileged” women in faith communities push her outside the warmth of the community. I had spent my life in this faith culture, learning that we’re meant to all look after one another, to grieve with one another and help one another carry the burdens of life. There were three times as many people and far more examples of people around us that DID respond this way to us – so, why was I still so angry six months after I’d moved to another faith community, and why these specific kinds of incidents and people? How come I couldn’t stop focusing on the hurtful, ignorant, privileged few?

In our communities, in ALL kinds of communities, we hold up ideals. I don’t think this is wrong. But, the inherent problem with this is that when someone just can’t live up to it, how do they NOT feel marginalized or “not good enough”? In a faith community where ALL are supposed to feel welcome, if the faith community holds up the intact family as ideal, anyone that doesn’t fit the mold, is prone to struggle and to feel that they don’t belong. This was my situation. And, this is also why it was the small slights and offenses from specifically the more prominent women, the ones in the faith community that had the privilege of an intact family and the support of a loving husband, that I had the hardest time forgiving their insensitivity. I thought these women should know better, and that maybe they even had a responsibility to be empathetic and understanding towards someone like me. But they weren’t. Instead, they were human. They didn’t really try to understand, they just made incorrect assumptions. Their fear of ending up like me drove them to separate themselves from me by looking for ways that I had brought my challenging, less than ideal family circumstances upon myself. If they could find some identifiable flaw in me (presumed or otherwise) that they could convince themselves that they didn’t have, then they could believe they were safe from the fate I’d suffered. They looked away from me and my children when our grief was unmistakable and written all over our faces because most humans are afraid of grief – we know it’s coming for us, all of us eventually, one way or another, and we don’t want to see it.

In my time away from the people and situations that were the source of my anger and resentment, I got the space I needed to think these things over. The new faith community was in a smaller, less prosperous town, where most of the people were aging, humbled by life and a lot more wise than the younger, perfection-addicted, striving women I was trying to avoid. I knew I needed to do something about my bitterness and resentment – first and foremost, to understand it. I had noticed it off and on over the 15 years after my first husband left, this feeling of negativity and cynicism towards happy newlyweds, or young couples with small children, all smiles and giggles. Don’t they know how it could all end? Didn’t they know that I had done all I could to deserve the same kind of happiness? Then, why not me? The unfairness of it sometimes felt so crushing…

…to be continued in “How I Stopped the Bitter/Angry/Resentful Train and Got Off (Part 2)”

Journey Out of Shame

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emancipation Encouragement, Emotional/Spiritual Recovery

READER BEWARE – THIS ONE IS LOOOOONG…

Why is it that victims of abuse and betrayal feel shame when they are the ones being harmed and wronged? There’s something very counterintuitive about the shame victims of emotional/psychological abuse, and abandonment feel. Adults who were abused as children also often feel this way – even though logically, a child is not responsible or at fault for the harm caused by their abuser(s). It’s almost as if the victim’s feelings of shame represent a joining with the perpetrator in the all-too-common victim blaming that goes along with abusive relationship dynamics.

It wasn’t until recently I recognized that it was shame that caused me to hide my first and second husband’s sexual acting out (once I knew about it), flirting, narcissistic behaviours, lying, compulsive pornography use, pre-occupation with money/wealth/materialism over family priorities and other integrity issues. But shame didn’t only drive me to hide the pain I was suffering in my marriage from others, it also drove me to try to hide it from myself. For years, I did not want to face the fact that the person that had promised to love and care for me would behave in ways that could be so harmful.

In my first marriage, the evidence mounted for years before I really started to question my husband, I just didn’t want to see what he was doing to me – I didn’t want to face what it would mean. But, another reason it took so long for the evidence to become overwhelming enough for me to start to see my situation for what it was – he was also a really good liar. He was skilled at manipulating, blaming and gaslighting me. From the first time my first husband confessed to me that he had started developing a relationship with another woman at work (and this, when our first child was 18 months old and we’d been married only 2-1/2 years), I took it on. I determined (with his help of course) that there must be something wrong with me and that I had to be perfect to earn his love or keep him. I didn’t realize at the time, but now I see that he was emotionally abusing me. He wanted me to feel this way – and, some of the things he said to me to make me believe that his fidelity needed to be earned by me (even when he was busy carrying on and secretly acting out anyways)…it makes my skin crawl thinking about it now. But tearing down a woman’s self esteem is a tool abusive men use to control them – blaming, shaming and generally making their wife feel like they aren’t good enough and that if they don’t do XYZ, or look like a model, or keep the house clean, or make dinner every night by 5:00…then bad things will happen in the relationship – fill in the blank. For me, I was afraid he would start up another extra marital relationship but take it all the way next time and leave us.

My first husband threatened me in covert ways with his potential for infidelity more than once and it kept me in line for a long time (and after all the backflips I did, in the end, he betrayed and abandoned me regardless). One time, my first husband told me that the only reason he’d married me was because he knew I would always stay skinny (I was 25 years old and became a 104 lb marathon runner after that); another time, he told me that a lesser man would have left me a long time ago (we’d only been married 2-3 years at that point and I had been in university, we had a new baby and he worked nights – sure, things were hard and we’d had what I thought were normal marital disagreements for two people trying to get through school with a new baby… but, why did he have to make it about me?). Another time, my first husband remarked, as I was killing it in every aspect of my perfectionist life, that I was his “trophy wife”, and I actually felt proud of myself in that moment. I guess I thought I was “winning” somehow. But the lack of connection to him that I felt, the fear of what he might be doing while away on business trips, the sense that I was on some kind of hamster wheel all the time, just to keep him from humiliating me and hoping no one else could see what I felt – it was all too much sometimes. Being a trophy just means you make someone else look good while you sit on a shelf neglected. I recall speaking with clergy right after he left our family to go off with his affair partner and they said, “he loves you, he’ll come back”. His own parents said, “he worships the ground you walk on, he’ll come back”.

But, without really knowing yet that I had been in an emotionally abusive marriage for 14 years, and not understanding how common it is for abusive men to create an outward facade of devotion and caring for their partners – I knew they were wrong. He had fooled everyone else, and even me for a time, but not anymore. I recognized that I had not felt valued or loved by him for many, many years. In fact, I had felt on a cellular level that he had discarded me many times over the years, from fairly early on, without really knowing why. The shame and humiliation I felt when my first husband left me and our family was so difficult. I could no longer hide or hide from the fact that my husband did not love me and that he was discarding me openly.

Unfortunately, at the time of my first husband’s abandonment, the most common treatment available to me were various forms of covert victim-blaming, including telling me I was co-dependent, even though I did not exhibit co-dependent behaviours in any other relationship in my life. All of the therapy I received was geared towards helping me taking responsibility for “my part” in what had happened in the marriage. We like to feel in control, and I felt so much shame, and had been blamed so much by my first husband for his secret sexual life (especially after he left, the blaming and emotional abuse got much, much worse), that I spent more than 10 years after he left trying to figure out how I had contributed to the demise of my first marriage. But, after watching him bounce from relationship to relationship, and spiral into drug and alcohol abuse, I concluded that while I was far from perfect, he would have lived a secret sexual life no matter what I had done.

I probably embraced this freeing perspective around the same time I realized something similar in my second marriage.

One night, while attending a women’s conference, several years after marrying my second
husband, a speaker I was listening to briefly touched on the fact that women like myself who had been betrayed and abandoned often felt shame over these events occurring in their lives. Despite my best efforts to find someone to talk to about what I was going through (especially someone who had been through it and could really relate), I hadn’t found anyone to confide in, and it was a light bulb moment for me to hear this. I felt for the first time that maybe I wasn’t the only one that had been through betrayal and abandonment that also felt shame because of it. I was not alone.

In my second marriage, despite discovery of an affair 5 years into the marriage (which was ended immediately by my informing the affair partner that her new “boyfriend” was in fact in a committed marriage – she honestly did not know and was horrified to find this out), I continued to imagine that I could “fix things”, driven by the motivation to avoid a second divorce, and the shame that I felt would accompany another failed marriage. But after discovering many other inappropriate online relationships, actually speaking with some of the women my husband had asked to send him “pictures”, speaking with another woman who had actually been on dates with him, and catching him on a date with yet another woman one year after the first time I caught him having an affair, it still took me two more years of hiding the truth from extended family and friends while I got up the courage to face the shame of marital failure again. And I finally left him. I had learned what narcissistic abuse was like – he seemed to have no remorse or empathy, to feel entitled to his extra-marital activities and to have no sense of accountability or responsibility for his actions. I learned to accept that you just can’t change another person, no matter how hard you try. I had tried to go back to my old tricks of “giving it my all” as I had done in my first marriage, and it didn’t motivate my second husband to change anything. If an emotionally abusive man is committed to their entitlements, and their need to control you, nothing you do will change them. I felt shame again – but this time, it wasn’t because I didn’t think I was good enough – this time, I was ashamed for not recognizing the red flags at the beginning, for not getting out sooner, and for allowing myself to be cheated on, lied to, manipulated and hurt again.

6 months ago, I was still struggling with feelings of anger towards family, friends and members of my faith community that I felt didn’t or wouldn’t try to understand what I was going through. I felt judged and blamed; I felt the expectation that I “should be over it” after 15 years. I felt shame about two failed marriages and apparently not being able to let it go and move on. I felt ashamed of my own anger. Then, I came across podcaster Anne Blythe (see btr.org), and things started to change. For the first time since my first husband disclosed his work affair 26 years prior, I heard things that made me feel validated and understood. I learned that what I experienced in my two marriages was a form of covert domestic abuse – it was emotional and psychological abuse (with some sexual abuse, financial abuse and spiritual abuse sprinkled in for good measure). I used to wonder why battered women (those who experienced physical violence) couldn’t leave relationships and had “studied” the cycle of abuse as it was defined in the early 80’s as part of a school project in elementary school. During my second marriage, while trying to make sense of what I had been through with my first husband, and also trying to figure out why I couldn’t seem to leave my second husband, even when I knew he was hurting me, I thought, “I’m acting like a battered woman.” But at the time, I didn’t realize, that’s because the impacts of ALL forms of domestic abuse cause the same reaction in women, and even though I’d never received a scratch – I WAS AN ABUSE VICTIM TOO!

The realization that I had been a victim of domestic abuse was freeing. It was the turning point in my journey (a journey I’m still on, by the way). It was kind of like how Einstein had said that when solving a problem, the first 90% of your time/effort will be spent in defining the problem – once the problem is properly defined, THEN, you can solve it. After finally defining the problem of what was really going on in my first two marriages, I understand now that the abuser WANTS his victim to take responsibility for his abuse. As long as I was feeling shame, and taking responsibility as if I had brought the abuse upon myself – as long as I thought that somehow I was flawed and that it was because of my flaws that I couldn’t get my marriages to work, I was not able to see that the problems in my marriages were HIS abuse problem, HIS sexual acting out, HIS lying, HIS manipulation, HIS responsibility…and I had been unable to begin real, true healing.

Finally, the healing began. The true healing. Don’t get me wrong, I got along for 15 years after my first husband ran off with his affair partner. I raised four kids, built a career, ran marathons, traveled, did lots of great stuff. But my emotional healing was going nowhere.

Recently, while reading Brene Brown’s new book, Atlas of the Heart (and can I just say, I’m a super fan and have read all her books at least twice, and listen to BOTH her podcasts – what Brene Brown has contributed to the world’s understanding of shame and the development of my own emotional intelligence is nothing short of amazing), I came across a quote that stopped me in my tracks. She says:
“We know from the research that unwanted identity is the most powerful elicitor of shame. If you want to know what’s likely to trigger shame for you, just fill in this sentence stem: It’s really important for me not to be perceived as __________.”

So for me, and ALL the women that have been abandoned by their (so-called) committed partner, cheated on by their (so-called) committed partner, abused by their partner…or for all those that haven’t left, who maybe feel like they can’t yet (or ever)- as women who truly value marriage or committed partnership, who have families and are doing what we do (which is everything we possibly can to nurture and strengthen our partnerships and families), the blank in Brene’s quote above would be “discarded” or “rejected” or “not good enough” or “unlovable”. The unwanted identity of the discarded, abandoned, rejected, betrayed, unloved woman is the worst for us. And so, the shame.

Having come to a place where I understand, after a long journey that started with my own victim-blaming and looking for “my part” in the relationship problems, that the shame we feel naturally because of an unwanted identity truly belongs elsewhere. It belongs with the perpetrator of the harm done to us, caused by all the lying, secrecy, manipulation, gaslighting, betrayal, smear campaigns, blaming and general tearing down of one’s self esteem.

And I have a new identity now. I’m a survivor, a thriver and a Shero. No shame in that.

Leaving an Abusive Relationship/Marriage is NOT only for the “Privileged”

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emancipation Encouragement

Girl, I know leaving is hard. And I also know why sometimes you just decide to stay. I was there. I wanted to leave, but I’d never had a broken bone or a bruise because of my husband’s emotional and psychological abuse (gaslighting, lying and manipulating me and others while he carried on a deeply harmful secret sexual life of betrayal). No one would have understood if I left, I would have been blamed…he was Mr. Charisma, and I was quiet, a bit angry, confused, freaked out, anxious. I would have looked like the source of the marriage failure. Everyone thought he was a great guy. There was a lot of pressure from family and our faith community to make things work, and sadly, much of the social scripting about whose RESPONSIBILITY it is to keep a family together falls on the woman, even when her partner clearly has issues that she has nothing to do with. I didn’t have any proof of domestic abuse, or his infidelities – it’s hard to come up with proof when there are no bruises or clear evidence of affairs and sexual acting out.

Plus, when I first started thinking about leaving, I was pregnant with baby number 4, it had been 5 years since I had graduated university and I had stayed at home with our kids since graduation (so, no work experience). How would I survive financially? I knew by then my husband would cut me off financially, he was bad with money and dishonest. I didn’t have family to fall back on either. There would be no financial support or help available for me to help me get on my feet. At least none that I was aware of.

I didn’t think of going to a shelter or reaching out for community resources because I didn’t realize I was being emotionally and psychologically abused and even if I did know, I thought shelters were only for the “battered” woman (those who had the bruises, broken bones and police reports).

Lack of education, loss of self-confidence (all too common in victims of abuse), no financial resources or work experience, new baby on the way…I decided to stay where I was.

Every situation of domestic abuse is unique. The financial resources available to women, their husband/partner’s particular brand of abuse (including fear of retaliation if they leave), children/no children (fear of impact on children), working/stay-at-home (lack of education, employment opportunities), available family support, availability of community support – these are some factors affecting a decision to stay or go.

One thing we should never ever do is judge women who choose to stay, who are not ready to leave. I heard an interview with a woman who had endured years of psychological and emotion abuse, sexual acting out and betrayal by her partner. Her story was the kind anyone would have asked, “why are you still with him?” She explained how her husband had given her good reason to believe that if he was ever left alone with their children, the children could also be in harm’s way. And, her reason for staying – first to keep a close eye on their children when they were around her husband, then to keep a close eye on their grandchildren – I understood, and my heart went out to her. How exhausting it must have been to raise children with someone and feel like you could never leave them alone with him. Since hearing that story, I don’t question why a woman doesn’t leave, or her timing, if she does…it’s a personal journey and a decision no one can make for you.

Recently, in a private Facebook group for betrayed/abused women, I saw one woman make the comment in response to a post by another woman, that the option of leaving was only for the “privileged”. I can understand someone making a comment like that because definitely, one of the biggest barriers to women getting out of abusive situations is lack of resources (especially financial) and there’s no doubt that some segments and members of our society have more financial resources than others. (According to Anne Blythe of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, http://btr.org, “the number one reason women don’t leave abusive relationships is because they don’t know they’re in one”. This was certainly true for me.)

The problem I have with perpetuating the idea among women experiencing domestic abuse, that leaving is only possible for the “privileged”, is that it joins the abusers in creating stuck thinking about the situation. Men exerting coercive control over their partner want her to feel like she can’t get out. PLEASE, don’t give abused women more reasons to feel like the obstacles are overwhelming by labeling the way out as only available to the privileged few. At some point, if a woman wants to leave badly enough, she will, and no lack of resources will stand in her way. It’s called MOTIVATIONAL DISSATISFACTION. It’s a difficult and scary experience to leave an abuser, sometimes fraught with severe challenges that can follow us for YEARS, but if someone wants out bad enough and plans and prepares, learns about the resources available, calls the hotlines, reaches out for support in a safe manner, I like to believe that ANYONE can make it out.

Compared to some, I could have been considered “privileged”, but I still thought I couldn’t leave. Privilege is relative. I was privileged in one way because I happened to have completed a university degree in mechanical engineering – a lucky thing considering I’d had my first child in the middle of getting my degree and found the challenge to complete it overwhelming (I nearly quit). But, I had very little, if any, financial support or help available from family. My perceived lack of resources when I was pregnant with my fourth child and fears about how I would get a job and work with a new baby on the way made it hard for me to see a way out, but if I had wanted to leave badly enough, I know now, looking back on what I’ve had to do to survive my first husband eventually abandoning me and our four children, then later escaping a second abusive marriage, I realize, I could have made it work – I could have found a way.

So, ladies, let’s build each other up in our self-confidence. In our self-esteem. In what we know we deserve and what is possible. Let’s encourage each other in our Shero-hood – we are powerful, strong, and beautiful and capable of doing hard things to survive. Just look at all we’ve been through. Let’s try to avoid placing restrictive ideas and attitudes around a situation that for many, many women is already tough to navigate and figure out. Privilege is not a pre-requisite to your emancipation. You can do it, no matter what you have going for you (or not going for you). Take courage, dear heart.

Thoughts on Forgiving

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emotional/Spiritual Recovery

What forgiveness means to me: forgiveness is freedom. Freedom from all the hoping that the past can be different. Freedom from the burden of taking on the responsibility of making sure that justice is done. It’s recognizing that in the end, only “the Universe” or a “Higher Power” can take care of the enormous debt I’m owed.

But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I didn’t always feel this way about forgiving someone that has done immeasurable harm to me and my children. And I don’t think it would be “normal”, after what my first husband put us through, to have an evolved attitude towards forgiveness without the years of painful struggle and growth between the time he abandoned me to now.

I recall screaming to my first husband when he left after discovering his affair and 12 years of a secret sexual life, “You’ve ruined my life!” Like the victim of a terrible snowboarding accident, the starting point of my forgiving journey was like laying on the snowy ground with every bone in my body broken, not sure I would ever walk again. You would no more ask a person in that situation to get up and walk down the hill to the waiting ambulance than you would suggest forgiveness to a woman that has just been abandoned and has discovered years of lies, manipulation, betrayal and deception.

Forgiveness is a very advanced concept for someone that is experiencing betrayal trauma, and yet, people seem to forget this (or not understand this) and bring it up far too soon, further traumatizing victims.

I get that the people close to a woman that is losing her marriage over betrayal issues find it difficult to see their loved one suffering, but I found suggestions from family members that clearly just wanted to see the whole thing resolved and fast forwarded to the part where I had settled into a new life, healed and moved on, to be selfish and completely unrealistic. For example, my father, a very peaceful man, that might have had concerns about my ability to fund a long legal battle, and the emotional wear and tear it might have on all involved, suggested that I should not fight in court for child support at all. It felt like he just wanted me to bypass the messy parts of my story. This also made no sense to me considering I had been a stay-at-home mom for nearly 10 years, we had four children ranging in ages from four to thirteen at the time my first husband abandoned us and paying child support for the care of the children you’ve participated in bringing into the world is THE LAW! It was bad advice. I was facing the reality that I would need to get out into the world, jump start my career and try to provide for the needs of my children for many years, starting from zero because we lost EVERYTHING when my first husband left (a story for another time – let’s just say it was a very poorly planned divorce if there is such a thing as a well planned one). There was no way in hell I was going to finish raising our children alone without at least holding my children’s father accountable for his financial obligations. Deep down, I knew all along, as badly as I wanted him to be held accountable for what he did to our family, making sure he didn’t get to just walk away and leave his kids with no financial support was the ONLY real justice I had the ability to seek.

So, I did hold him responsible for what I could, and have had to pour my time, emotional energy and resources into doing so, but I don’t think it hindered my progression towards being able to forgive for one reason: the financial debt (child support owed) could be calculated and looked up in a table. I was backed up by the legal system. Unfortunately, that’s where justice ends for victims of betrayal trauma – for our trust, love and commitment, women and their children are rewarded with many years of suffering with no way to make things right when a man chooses to abandon his family.

This is the part I found the hardest to swallow. I saw him on Facebook, travelling, partying, spending money he should have been using to paying for winter clothing, bus or lunch money, soccer and dance classes while I willed myself through day after exhausting day for years doing the best I could to provide for my children and keep myself from succumbing to the stress and exhaustion. It just felt so unfair.

Speaking of introducing the topic of forgiveness too early…I was assigned a counselor, provided by my faith community’s counseling services, for several sessions beginning within only a couple weeks of my first husband’s leaving. I didn’t discover my first husband’s affair until he had been out of the house for 3-4 weeks. I was in counselling at the time I found out about the affair, so the counsellor saw me when I was in the worst possible way – the emotions were extreme to the point that they were almost unmanageable. Probably about a month after discovering the affair, my counselor pointed me to a passage in our religious text that suggested that when someone has wronged us in an extremely egregious way, and has absolutely no intention of admitting it, taking responsibility or even trying to apologize or make restitution (which has been the case with my first husband), that all one can do is turn the situation over to God and allow God to be the judge. I felt settled by that..clearly, I was not the perpetrator in my situation.

but, as the years passed and the offences piled up (the harm doesn’t stop just because you’ve separated or divorced), and I struggled with feeling like my life felt like such a nightmare at times, and I couldn’t understand if I was always trying to be a good person and loved God, why was there so much apparent injustice in my situation. During those times, forgiveness seemed impossible, and I realized how long it was really going to take to reach that place of peace, a place of forgiveness and freedom. I realized that the counsellor’s suggestion that I even think about forgiveness so early in my experience was badly timed. On top of everything I was going through, I felt guilt all the time, that I just couldn’t “get there”.

I read books about forgiveness, I talked to counsellors about it, I worked at it, I latched onto ideas such as “forgiveness is not permission” and “forgiveness is letting go of all hope that the past can be different”. In the end, it took time and effort to create distance between the life I thought I had and the new one, the real one, that I was creating for myself; and recognizing too, with the passage of time, the many ways “the Universe”, or Karma had balanced the scales of justice. In the end, though poorly timed, my faith community’s counsellor’s advice to turn the problem over to my Higher Power, was where I was finally able to put the burden down. I had created enough new good in my life and admittedly, recognized enough deserved consequences take shape in my ex-husband’s life, that I could honestly say, if given the choice, I would choose the life I have now and all that I’ve learned over the fake life I had before. I’ve let go and let God handle it and now I’m free.

Introductions

by chandralaframboise, posted in Emancipation Encouragement, Encouraging Stories

Hi, my name is Chandra. I started this website to help women like you and me. Women who feel alone and are just trying to figure it out. Women who find themselves in committed, monogamous relationships that hurt, that are confusing, that don’t feel right and that have either ended because of betrayal and/or abandonment or might be headed in that direction.

After a harrowing journey through two marriages that failed because of betrayal, lies, manipulation, gaslighting (ie. emotional and psychological abuse) and porn addiction, I broke free from the cycle of betrayal and abuse in my intimate relationships and have become my own Shero.

In practicing radical self-care, and relentlessly pursuing and believing in my own happy, peaceful, beautiful life, I emancipated myself from bad relationships and if I can do it, I know you can too.

This betrayal recovery lifestyle blog is the supportive friend or family member I needed, but did not always have on my journey of recovery. If you are need of a friend and cheerleader to walk with as you become the Shero of your own story, I’m here for you.