Dear Heart,

Every day, it feels like I am learning more about the intricacies of my relationship and subsequent breakup, and how those events have since affected me.

For instance, I was listening to a podcast episode where the host, Jason Evert, interviews a young woman named Magdalena. She shares her experience with her own relationship and how she has been affected, more accurately wounded, by her partner’s pornography addiction. She explains the nature and effect of sexual betrayal trauma on the partner and how women need to know they are not alone.

As I listened to Magdalena’s testimony, my eyes welled with tears, and I wept, knowing that someone in this world had experienced the same awful thing that I had. That she, although in pain, had a certain courage and light in her voice. She vowed that healing is possible. Not only was it possible, but she and her partner were also in the very process of healing themselves. She was living out the healing graces for which I had been praying incessantly for months.

She shared some amazing resources for recovery, including support groups, free courses on SBT (sexual betrayal trauma), and a blog that helps educate on the manipulative behaviors seen in similar relationships.

When I say I now know another person who had shared this experience with me, that is not to say I arrogantly thought I was the only one who had. I know logically others have suffered the same as I, but it felt enormously different to hear it from her own mouth. For her to share every thought and feeling she had in this turbulent period was like hearing an echo of the cries of my own heart.

She vulnerably expressed feelings of being undesirable, disposable. Never had I heard someone else articulate my own words back to me with the same measure of betrayal I sustained. Every word out of her mouth reiterated my thoughts, worries, obsessions even. I was reassured I was not crazy or alone; other women, real women, not just stories told secondhand, shared my pain, my quest for healing, and my desire to be loved truly.

Up till now, I had been too nervous to seek out a support group of my own for the fear of re-traumatization. This, I know, is a weakness of mine- absorbing the trauma of others- one I haven’t fully conquered or mitigated. But hearing her story and learning where I could find more support was enough for the moment.

I pray every day for healing wounds of the past, the strength to forgive those who have harmed me, and the courage to find joy. May I find that which I seek.

Your humble Heartsmith

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