Healing Begins: Naming the Loss After Betrayal

“Mom…where are you going? Hello? Mom!”

My nine-year-old’s voice jolted me out of a trance. I blinked at the road ahead and realized I’d taken two wrong turns and found myself on the other side of the lake. Again. It was the third time that week I’d driven somewhere other than my intended destination.

I tried to laugh it off. “Just exploring our new neighborhood!” I said, my voice pitched higher than usual. In the rearview mirror, her worried eyes met mine. She knew I was lying.

Tears pooled behind the oversized sunglasses I’d started wearing everywhere. They had become my mask—shielding my daughters from mascara-streaked cheeks and the deep, dark circles that came from too many sleepless nights.

I was trying so hard to hold it together for them. But even my ability to drive without losing my way had vanished overnight. My hands clung to the steering wheel, knuckles white, but my mind was nowhere in the car. Scene by scene, word by word, I replayed the weeks leading up to the night my husband sat across from me on the sofa and said, “Okay, you really want to know? Here it is…”

I knew things would never be the same. In the days and weeks that followed, a hard truth settled in: I had lost more than my marriage.

Simple routines I once did without thinking—reading, cooking, driving—now felt impossible. My thoughts scattered. Sleep disappeared. My stomach churned in constant revolt. Parenting became something I performed on autopilot, terrified my pain might spill onto my girls.

My world had gone dim. Laughter no longer came easily. Even my connection with God, once my lifeline, felt distant, muffled beneath resentment and confusion.

Betrayal hadn’t just fractured my marriage. It was as if it had walked through my life and emptied every room, leaving echoes of what once was.

This was betrayal trauma — but it was also more.
It was grief.

The Practice of Naming

One quiet Saturday morning, a few months later, I sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and a candle flickering beside me. The house was still, the sun just beginning to edge through the curtains. I’d recently heard someone say, “Healing begins in the naming”, and I’d been thinking about it ever since.

Part of me wanted to keep the losses buried. I was afraid that if I named them, they’d grow stronger—that the grief would pull me under and I’d never find my way out. But the silence was heavy, and I was too tired to keep carrying it.

So I opened my journal and wrote a single question at the top of the page:
What have I lost?

At first, my losses centered on my marriage. I wrote,
My best friend.
The laughter that once filled our kitchen.
Conversations I thought were honest.
Feeling safe with him.

Then the losses shifted inward:
Feeling safe in my own skin.
Believing I was enough.
Trusting my instincts.

And then more surprising griefs came:
A full night’s sleep.
The energy to play and be silly with my girls.
Taco Tuesdays and movie nights.
The sound of my own laugh.

The more I wrote, the more losses spilled out of me. With each line, I was surprised by how far they reached—and yet, something inside me loosened. My breath came easier, as if naming them made more space within me.

Naming the losses wasn’t intensifying the pain as I had feared. It was giving the pain a place to go. The words settled safely onto the page, and somehow I sensed that they were being held—not just by the paper and ink, but by something greater than me.

Held, Not Fixed

As I kept noticing and naming the losses in the weeks ahead, I discovered something I hadn’t expected: healing wasn’t happening because everything was fixed or repaired. The losses weren’t being reversed.

Healing was happening each time I allowed myself to be fully honest about all that I had lost—and realistic that there were still losses waiting to surface.

Nothing about my circumstances changed right away. I still felt the deep ache of everything that was gone. But like unclenching a fist I hadn’t realized was tight, something in me released.

What I thought would amplify my grief was actually making space for healing. What I feared would drown me became the very act that allowed me to surface for air.

Naming my losses became a kind of prayer for me—a way of saying, Here it is. This is what hurts.

And whether you imagine that release being met by God, by a Higher Power, or simply by your own compassion, the point is the same: You don’t have to hold it all alone.

An Invitation

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of losses, can I offer you a small step?

Name one thing you’ve lost. Just one.
Not to dwell there. Not to fix it.
But to bring it into the light.

You don’t have to hold it alone.
You are already being held.