Four years ago, I discovered my husband wasn’t who I thought he was. When he left the house, he didn’t secretly fight crime or possess any cool superpowers. Instead, he had lived a double life for over a decade.

I heard my parent’s generation speak about where they were when they learned that President Kennedy had been shot. Everyone remembers where they were when the news broke about the first plane crashing into the Twin Towers.

When the D-day grenade went off in my life, I was sitting alone in my car in the parking lot of Costco. I could hear everything and nothing all at once. An internal dialogue started to surface within minutes and it wasn’t pretty. I was not only preparing to wage a war against my husband; I waged a war against myself over the rage I felt for not doing everything to prove the infidelity sooner, even though I eventually did.

I remember thinking, “Okay, Candace. Here it is. This is the moment you’ve been accusing him of for years, and now that you’ve got your proof, look at you: you’re pathetically catatonic in the Costco parking lot. Put on some lipstick and pull yourself together.”

So, that's what I did. I went from catatonic to can-do in less than an hour. No, that’s not a flex. I didn’t know it yet, but that would be a big problem. The few people I told had similar comments: all were very complimentary about how well I was handling my Costco crisis.

What they didn’t know is that while I appeared to look and act very normal on the outside, I was having full-blown panic attacks while hiding in my closet more days than not. My heart would race as if I was running to escape a mass murderer, and my body would tremble as if it were less than 10 degrees in that closet, even though it was the middle of summer.

Yes, I could calmly relay what happened to a friend or my therapist, but I felt totally out of body… like I was talking about something I saw in a movie or read about in a book. What my friends admired as composure amidst crisis, I would later learn, was PTSD playing out in the form of dissociation.

I started to live life in 20-minute increments. Anything longer felt overwhelming, and anything shorter seemed irrelevant.

We could collectively write our own dissertations on how triggers can consume our thoughts and terrorize our minds. I want to tell you today that they won’t always impact you the way they might be right now. Thanks to the winning combination of time plus recovery work, the vast majority of my triggers have morphed into what I now consider associations. My brain will still associate a name, a place, or a song, but they don’t knock the wind out of me anymore. I no longer feel like I am being held hostage by them. Yes, I am even able to shop at Costco.

Do I still have hard days almost four years into recovery? No. Do I ever have hard moments? Sometimes, but the pain is a fraction of what it used to be, as is the time it takes me to rebound.

I feel very privileged to stand here and speak to you today. Based on my own story and those of others, I want you to know:

• You’re not alone if you went full into CSI mode or pursued an honorary degree in forensic accounting to finally prove that you weren’t just jealous, insecure, or crazy.
• You’re not alone if you didn’t have a clue and got totally blindsided.
• You’re not alone if you went country song crazy after D-Day, or if you’re like me and deep down you REALLY wish you had.
• You’re not alone if you’ve had to accept the fact that an affair partner not only vacationed with you and your children, but then you learned they were in your home when you were not.
• You’re not alone if you can’t stop crying, or if you can’t shed a single tear because your trauma has your tears trapped inside your tormented body.
• You’re not alone if you believed your partner when they swore on your children’s lives that they’d told you the whole story, only to discover that Rock Bottom apparently has one hell of a basement.
• What happened to you is not a reflection of you. The infidelity trauma that was inflicted upon you does not and will not define you.

I believe you can and will recover from the 3rd degree emotional burns caused by all the gaslighting.

There will not always be flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks.

What happened to you was not okay, and there’s nothing you did too much of or not enough of that is to blame.

As I leave here today, I want to tell you that despite the trauma that I endured, I am okay. You are going to be too.

You and I both have a 100% success rate of surviving our worst days thus far.

Whether you can already take it one day at a time or you are living life in 20-minute increments like I was, you are moving forward.

Even slow progress is progress. Let me say that again, even slow progress is progress.

Please be kind to yourself.

I wish I could give every single one of you a giant hug. Buy you a cup of tea or a glass of wine and assure you that you are not alone.

If you have been betrayed, I would like to personally invite you to join me for a day of progress. A day of healing. A day of learning. A day of being seen. A day of screaming or crying or laughing...whatever it is that you need to do...

You don't have to do this alone. You GET to heal from this. Let’s make even more progress. Together.

Join us for Hope Rising 2024.