Partners Need to Celebrate their Wisdom and Strength with Carol the Coach

Carol the Coach will be interviewing Michele Saffier who will be speaking about her work with partners struggling with betrayal trauma.  Discovery forces partners into an existential crisis of self. The choice they are faced with has very little to do with external decisions about their life– divorce, reconciliation, therapy, polygraphs and disclosure, why the betrayer did what they did, etc. There are two paths ahead. The must choose one.                                  The path on the left is the relationship healing journey – individual therapy, partners group, S-Anon, marital therapy, accountability, etc. This path manages the acute crisis yet wellness still depends largley on the “we” and not the “I”.  The path on the right far more difficult; it is a Heroes’ Journey.  They will battle two-headed dragons, angry monsters and, the scariest monster of all, their own dark side (shadow self).  If they hang on for dear life and stay on their journey, they will emerge, like the Phoenix rises from the ashes, transformed.  Death and then rebirth.  Partners must slay their own dragons to transform themselves.  In the spirit of Kintsugi, brokenness is not to be hidden with gorilla glue but rather it is to be celebrated and mended with gold.  She believes that partner should be celebrating the wisdom, beauty and strength in their brokenness.