Ten Things That Helped Me Heal

What helped me move forward after an affair—and might help you too.

Reading the Bible Daily

I read to refocus my gaze on the character of Christ and take my focus off my feelings. Every day, I came back to who He is: faithful, merciful, just, and near to the brokenhearted—also powerful, holy, and opposed to those who remain prideful.

That clarity helped me begin the long process of seeing myself—and my story—through His eyes.

And when you read His Word, you get swept up in the grand purpose of His story. You begin to walk through life with an acute awareness that we live for Him, and that the truth of life is far grander than the things our flesh tends to chase.

Telling the truth to my husband and a small circle of trusted people, without protecting myself.

When the affair was exposed, I told the truth. Then, I kept telling it. I told it before I understood it, before I could frame it well, before I had processed what it meant. I didn’t dress it up. I didn’t try to make myself look better. I just spoke it plainly: what I did, what he did, how it happened. I invited people to respond. I received grace. And I learned that real trust isn’t rebuilt on curated stories—it’s built on truth.

Grieving honestly—so I wouldn’t return later and romanticize.

I didn’t minimize what the relationship meant to me. I let myself feel the weight of it—the grief, the longing, the confusion. I wrote about the moments that felt real. I honored the connection I experienced—not because it was good, but because it was real to me at the time. If I hadn’t done that, I think I would’ve kept circling back, wondering what might’ve been. Instead, I let the grief do its work so the romanticism couldn’t take root.

Focusing outward.

Sanford Meisner, the renowned acting teacher, taught that there’s always something going on “over there”—that acting begins when you stop thinking about yourself and start paying attention to what’s in front of you. That idea was a salve to me because it gave me a practical way to show up in the world during an unbearably difficult time.

When I stopped looping on the past and started investing in my students, my friends, my husband, my family—anyone in front of me—I started to feel connected again.

Everyone wants to be seen, heard, and appreciated. I had the power to offer that—as a token of gratitude to God, and as a way to sow love and attention into the people He placed in front of me. I've never had more random conversations with sales clerks, Walmart greeters, or random students waiting for their next classes to begin in my life! And what a blessing that has been.

Working with a trauma specialist and pastoral counselor who both pointed me to Christ.

In the five weeks after the affair was exposed, I saw my trauma specialist and pastoral counselor every week. They didn’t shame me. They didn’t let me off the hook either. They pointed me to the truth: about Erik, about myself, and about the character of God. They reminded me that I was not defined by my worst decisions, nor by the worst things done to me. They helped me return to my identity in Christ—something I had begun to lose sight of. For me, identity was one of the deepest wounds. That’s where the healing had to begin.

Guarding what I consumed artistically.

I avoided movies, music, and books that reminded me of the affair, not just the ones Erik and I shared, but also the ones that glorified emotional entanglements or made infidelity look romantic. I didn’t want anything clouding my judgment or softening what needed to stay sharp.

Years ago, a friend told me she wasn’t coming to a show I was in because the description said it involved an affair. “If you’ve lived through one,” she said, “you can never see those stories as entertainment again.” At the time, I thought she was being dramatic. Now I know she was right.

Art is powerful. It doesn’t just reflect reality—it reshapes it. And when you've walked through something like this, you become highly attuned to how easily destruction can be disguised as beauty. The tragic lover. The misunderstood spouse. The magnetic chemistry that defies conscience. These stories aren’t neutral. They can be seductive in all the wrong ways.

Coming out of the fog required clarity. So I stepped away from anything that romanticized what I was trying to heal from. I needed art that told the truth, not art that tried to make betrayal look like longing or made devastation feel like fate.

Turning over every stone until they lost their power.

I don’t know that I’d recommend this to anyone else, but I worked hard to understand the affair from every angle. What I did. What he did. How it affected everyone else. What he meant when he said this. What I said and why and how and when... it was absolutely exhausting.

But I kept examining every piece for as long as that piece still held power.

The therapist I saw after working with my trauma specialist and pastoral counselor, who is still amazing and whom I love, once told me I was intellectualizing the path the relationship took. She was right. Some of it was a defense mechanism against pain. But much of it was simply the way I dismantled and disentangled myself.

It was hard work. It felt like strapping myself to an anchor and throwing myself into the deep end of the ocean.

But I can say this now: there isn’t one aspect of the affair I haven’t revisited with eyes wide open, which is a wonderful feeling on this side of two years.

Learning how and when to talk to each other.

As you might imagine, my husband and I had a lot of long, heart-rending conversations, especially in that first year. These are two of the most glaring mistakes we made: talking when one of us was angry or tired, or springing the topic on the other without warning.

Through trial and error, we realized there were triggers neither of us could predict. We might be discussing something broad and neutral, and suddenly one of us would be blindsided by a memory or thought that led to anger, despair, or shame.

So we made a simple change: we started asking, “Is this a good time to talk?” If one of us needed to step away mid-conversation, we’d say, “Thank you for this conversation, but I need to stop now,” and we’d respect that boundary, no questions asked.

One of the most surprising consequences of all this has been the way it strengthened our communication and our respect for one another. In a season where everything felt fragile, we found a way to preserve tenderness.

Understanding that I couldn’t heal my husband.

One thing my husband and I agree on is that not all advice about healing from an affair is helpful. One idea we’ve both come to reject is the notion that it’s the wayward spouse’s responsibility to guide the healing of the betrayed spouse.

Let me be clear: I have responsibilities. Rebuilding trust, reopening communication, and helping restore confidence in our relationship—those things are vital. I try to be consistent, honest, and open. That said, if my husband had waited for me to repair the damage my choices caused in him, around him, and to him, he’d still be waiting.

Not because I didn’t care. But because I couldn’t. I didn’t have the capacity to carry both my own healing and his.

My husband said it best, “The idea that your spouse should help heal you sets up a false expectation. For a while, I was looking for you to act a certain way—like the books and articles said you should. And when you didn’t, I felt disappointed and confused. But eventually, I realized: you didn’t have the capacity to carry both our healing. What mattered is that I could see you never stopped doing the work—never stopped attacking your own process so you could heal, and eventually, return to me.”

That’s exactly what happened.

I don’t say any of this to avoid responsibility. I say it with humility, and yes, sometimes regret. I couldn’t be his healer. That job was too big for me.

Pretty early on, our prayers became simple: Please continue to heal me, my spouse, and our marriage. We began to trust that if we were both earnestly seeking Christ, and if we kept communication open, we would keep moving steadily (most of the time) in the same direction.

Refusing to let other people define the meaning of the story.

There were moments when I felt like I had to explain myself to everyone—moments when I feared what others might think, or how they might frame what happened. But I’m the one who lived this. I know what it cost. I know what it meant. And I know what it became.

Others might see only the affair, the collapse, the fallout. But I’ve lived the long process of repentance, truth-telling, and redemption. I’ve seen what happens when you stop hiding, when you name what’s true, even when it costs you something. I’ve seen what God can grow from what was shattered.

There is no version of this story that is easy. But the right to name it—to say what it meant, what it broke, and what it built—belongs to those of us who lived it.

Telling the story didn’t begin my healing, but it helped finish the work. It took what had been hidden and gave it form. It allowed me to see it clearly, objectively, and honestly.

In theatre, we say that once a story is told, it continues to live through “subsequent performances.” It becomes something slightly different each time it’s brought to life and witnessed, because every person involved brings something new. That’s what this has become. Not a performance, but a story that lives beyond the moment it happened.