Shift Happens

“When will I stop feeling so awful?”  “Will I ever be normal with friends again?” “How long does it take before I don’t care what people think?”

So many women with whom I speak one-on-one just want to know how long it’s going to take after discovering their husband or boyfriend has a secret life for their own lives to settle down and feel normal. Being traumatized is no picnic. Nothing seems safe, normal, or uncomplicated. The life you discovered you were in is not the one to which you were committed or the one you wanted.

No matter what we do, the problem remains. Whether we stick around while the treatment industry sucks the money out of our pocket and we slowly throw out our values, hopes and dreams, or whether we stay for a while and “work hard at coupleship” just in case he changes and then get out when he doesn’t, or whether we leave because you know right away this mess does not have our name on it and can’t be fixed—our recovery takes time. Processing the facts to form the truth of our life takes time. Getting grounded again in reality takes time. Dealing with the people who may or may not be value added in our monumental task takes time.

But shift does happen. If we get at it, shift happens. Things sort themselves out. They aren’t necessarily the same. But they are what they need to be.

As the last month of blogs have indicated, I’ve been using my various trainings and certifications to provide resources and leadership to groups needing information and guidance about leading through a traumatic event (aka pandemic). But that hasn’t been without more personal processing—even ten years down the road from discovery. 

Speaking with clerical and lay colleagues within my denomination about the training and experience I have to bring to ministry personnel and lay leaders has been stressful. Most of them did not make it stressful for me. It was just hard for me to speak with anyone in the church after having been set adrift in the narrative my ex had carefully and strategically planted. 

The first group meeting at which I spoke about dealing with trauma in ministry was less than I wanted it to be. It wasn’t a disaster. It was just not my best. I was shaken by that, but I also trusted the regional executive who had invited me, so I reached out and confessed I wasn’t that pleased with my work. She assured me it wasn’t a failure at all. And suggested maybe I could speak at another meeting. Kindness and encouragement. Such a rare gift for wives and partners that even now it still finds something to heal. And that’s how this shift happened.

I spent some time letting that kindness and encouragement muck about in the now old ruins of that vocational wound. I revisited the sense of having been abandoned. I considered carefully that while some of that could be due to them not knowing how to handle my traumatized presence, a lot was just the standard “disappear the wife” that I had witnessed often in any clergy divorce (whether the wife was also ministry personnel or not.) And just as I tried to lay out all the arguments to justify feeling abandoned, I noticed something new. I didn’t seem to have any interest in it anymore. This caught me off guard.

As I thought about it all, I asked myself “If one of those colleagues called you up now and wanted to hear the story of what happened, what would you do?” I knew the answer right away. I didn’t want to tell them anymore. The time for that conversation was past.

And after ten years, the shift happened. That topic was no longer about feeling abandoned. It was about me deciding that the clock had run out on story-time. It was over. I had lost interest in telling them.

Chump Lady calls it reaching the land of “meh”. The timing, she says, is “Tuesday”. For me, it was like a dramatic long badly grinding gear shift that finally finished and let me pull away and leave that story in the dust. Shift happens.

But it was just the story I left in the dust. The colleagues I did not leave. I’ve attended a few more regional meetings of that group as a participant. It’s been so much easier to be with them. I have felt stronger and participated in ways that felt like “me”. I’m taking it slow. But I’m showing up.

The bonus round is that I’ve also had three more speaking opportunities with other regions and more booked, still. Each one has been better than the one before it. It’s not that I’m doing them the way I used to do workshops and presentations before dday—confident, highly organized, and leading with strength. It’s different. I’m different. I’m leading as a trauma survivor. I’m also getting steadily better at doing my work well when my colleagues are the audience, in the way I know I need to do it now.

When we are gathered, I feel moved with compassion. I see them the way I see my clients from this site—as whole people who are worth everything. I listen to them the way I listen to you—waiting for the part where the wonder of the person can’t be missed. I accept them. And I have accepted myself living this new way with them. It’s what I want, now. 

So, that’s what’s been going on in my life while this pandemic winds its way through the world. And that’s why it’s been hard for me to keep up with my blogs, too. But hey, it was time to tell you. My story is safe here, too.

Shift happens. And keeps happening. Even after ten years.

With you,

Diane.