Ep 26: Hope And Healing Support with Michelle
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Steve, James and Kayla sit down with the owner/administrator of the website hopeandhealingsupport.com. While running a website to bring people to Christ, she found that her website was being inundated with questions about addiction and recovery for the betrayed. So she started the website hopeandhealingsupport.com. Her website has information for women affected by the sexual addiction of a loved one.
Michelle began by discussing what hopeandhealingsupport.com is all about. She talked about how much her eyes opened to the need of help with betrayal trauma. She mentioned the hope that the betrayed and addicted feel after going to the website forum. The entire reason why Michelle decided to start this website was to bring people together and provide hope during a dark time in people’s lives. Steve and Kayla also expressed the positivity of what the website was able to do for them during the first stages of their recovery.
Kayla mentioned that all of these types of resources assisted her in understanding how to go through this recovery for her and what things she changed because of available resources like Hope and Healing. Kayla said that she learned about surrendering her control of Steve and his addiction over to God. She also understands that this is Steve’s choice whether he surrenders to God or not. That gives Kayla a lot of peace that she can control what she decides and leave the rest to God. Kayla also mentioned she cannot be the fixer of his problems. She realized that God is the only one who can take it from Steve. This was not very surprising to Michelle.
Michelle talked about how she sees patterns of how the betrayed begin their journey and those who truly want to recover from the trauma will follow it. She also realized that the gospel is much deeper than just checking boxes. She has been able to see a deeper part of God’s plan for agency because of seeing the betrayed surrender. This was one of the key principles that women have to understand before they can truly recover.
Michelle also describes that women must get out of isolation quickly. The resources available can assist the women in healing more quickly. However, it can be difficult to find a community of healing; especially, when women are too embarrassed to talk about it openly. But, there are those resources. There are online meetings, phone meetings, and meetings in different churches. These are only a few select number of resources.
Another resource for women is therapy. Most loved ones will need therapy when dealing with betrayal trauma. Women need to understand self-awareness about their trauma. Women also need to reconnect into their own self-care with other women. They also must reconnect to their spiritual self-care. They cannot go into the “try-harder” gospel. Isolation is not the solution. Trauma patients need to adjust the way they do things to recover from the trauma. Which brought up a question about “God trauma”.
Kayla said that God trauma has been pretty big for her because it was so clear that she was supposed to marry Steven. She was shattered when she found out about Steve's addiction. She wanted to know why she felt so sure that God wanted to marry Steven even though he was so broken.
Kayla understands now that God gave her Steve because she needed to see that despite Steve’s brokenness, she found the gratitude in how good a man Steven is. Steve is one of the good ones because he is trying to recover. She also sees that this trial came to pass. She said that her marriage is better than it could have been, had they not gone through this. While some betrayed get to a place of gratitude for their trials, there are still those who decide to remain in anger and shame.
The question was asked about why there is still so much anger and shame around addiction and recovery. Michelle mentioned there will always be anger and shaming websites because when those who have been betrayed first reach out, they want to fix it and so they try to fix the outer problem first. When they are ready to fix the inner problems, that is when they turn away from the anger and start to heal through love and connection. It was an amazing opportunity to meet with Michelle and see just how much she believes that there truly is hope during the healing process.
We greatly appreciate Michelle sharing her heart with us. If these stories resonate with you, or you know someone who might benefit from them, please feel free to share the link to the episode with them. At UnashamedUnafraid we are here to spread the words of hope and healing through Jesus Christ. Please subscribe and follow us on Facebook and Instagram @UnashamedUnafraid.