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Once upon a time, I was blissfully happy. No, my life wasn’t perfect or easy. Instead, it was real. Messy, but meaningful. I lived and worked passionately within the world of pornography addiction and betrayal trauma recovery, with a job I adored and the marriage I’d always wanted. And then, without warning, it all came crashing down. My story is a bit […]

Preface: This article focuses on the experience lived by partners of sex and pornography addicts. However, if you’re a porn user yourself, I warmly invite you to keep reading! If your partner is able and willing to do so, he or she may play a positive role in protecting you both from the potential trauma of exposure to more

Have you ever wondered why sexual betrayal feels keenly similar—yet remarkably different—to losing a loved one who’s physically died? In my work with women healing from sexual betrayal, I’ve identified two words that completely reframe the experience of loss and trauma we so poignantly share. Those two words are… abandonment grief. How do I define sexual abandonment? Abandonment

Last Thursday was Babysitting Day. My husband and I woke up early, hopped in the car, braved morning traffic, and arrived in time for breakfast with two of our favorite family kiddos. The way I see it, Babysitting Days were made to be legendary, packed-to-the-max with high-energy fun, excitement and activity. This one was no

Historically… I hate gardening.  Growing up in the midwest, my mother spent hours planning and planting beautiful gardens around our home. She solicited my brother’s help for weeding, trimming and watering. My dad helped with heavier tasks like digging new beds and shoveling soil. Thanks to the three of them and their hard work, ours

Addiction is a disease. End of discussion… right? As practitioners within the field of behavioral health and wholeness, we’ve all heard the message, loud and clear. Many of us subscribe to the concept without question, confident in our convictions that “addicts are sick people, not bad people.” Some of us have built our careers upon this assertion, while others espouse it personally, within

You know those times when life just gets heavy? When you’ve absorbed yourself SO deeply into something SO significant, you lose track of time and space and any responsible sense (gulp) of basic self-care? When you pause for a quick breath, only to realize that you’ve been SCRAMBLING forward, so fast and so frenetically, you

In this blog post, I’m going to share an intimate experience from my past, a story about one form of language trauma I experienced at the end of my first marriage. I’ve never put this story into writing before, and it feels unspeakably (yes, that’s a pun!) vulnerable. But I KNOW that trauma doesn’t heal

In my mid-twenties, I spent two years living and working in Jerusalem, Israel. My Hebrew language skills were conversant at best—good enough to order coffee, take a taxi or ask directions. I worked in an English-speaking office, publishing an English-language magazine. But after work each day, when I walked outside those office doors, my environmental