I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 187, Making Room for It All – Lessons from a Wedding.

Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast for courageous women
learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become the
boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves ever.
If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently living but
don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place. Stick around
to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it
possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles.
Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

(00:50):

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Heal from and Fidelity.
Thank you for being here Today, we’re going to be talking about emotions,
about feelings, about highs and lows, about how to make room for all of it.
Before we dive into that, I want to remind you that there is a brand new
course that I’ve created, a brand new class about deciding to stay or go
after infidelity. I’ve already been getting such great feedback, people who
are hearing it and learning from it, and being able to really assess where
they are, why they are there and where they want to go, and feeling like
they can take personal responsibility for that, rather than waiting for
something to happen before they do, I invite you to go get it. It’s in the
show notes. It’s only $47. It is a deep, deep masterclass in addition, a 38
page workbook that goes along with it.

(01:51):

That’s a deep dive into the things that we talk about. So you can really go
deep and leave with so much more understanding of where you are. This is
for you, even if you’ve already decided, but struggle with your commitment
to that decision and sometimes wonder and sometimes go, do I really know
what I’m doing? Do I really want to be here? So go check it out. Again,
it’s in the show notes. Go grab it. Okay, so why did I choose this? Because
one thing you can count on me for is to keep it real and to be authentic
with you. And last week was beautiful, and last week was also really
intense, and I’m going to tell you a little bit about it in hopes that it
will help you. Okay? Last week, my daughter got married, and this is my
oldest biological daughter, the first of my biological daughters to get
married.

(02:45):

I’ve had bonus daughters get married, one during Covid. So we had a very
small wedding and one here in Montana. This is the first biological
daughter to get married. It was out of state and organizing it all to be
out of state and then all the guests and all the things, and it was a lot
to pull off. It was a lot to pull off. But going into it, there are some
things I was a little nervous about, but I was just confident that I was
going to be able to pull it off, that it would be okay. I worried sometimes
that I was going to forget some big things. And so I’d go through my
checklist again and again, I did not sleep much days leading up to it
because I was just running through all the different things like, okay,
what about this?

(03:28):

What about this? Did I remember this? And so the day of, I was just a lot
of adrenaline kicking in by this point because I was physically exhausted
already and then had to pull off this wedding and traveling and figuring
out all the things for accommodations, being out of state, all of that. But
it was wedding day and we were up early and getting ready for the long day
and off we went. And during that day, it was really, really beautiful,
really big turnout. So we had members of my first husband’s family, several
of his siblings, his parents, cousins. We had many of my current husband’s
siblings, many of them came, his parents. We had my parents and some of my
siblings, and then of course my new son-in-law and his parents and
grandparents, both sets and aunts and uncles. So we had a pretty big
turnout.

(04:28):

And I had people show up that I have not seen in such a long time that it
was wonderful to just give a hug to and thank them for coming. I had some
good friends come, and it was wonderful. It was wonderful. Now, what
surprised me, and I’m going to just be real with you here. What surprised
me is what happened the day after the wedding, even the night of after
everything was done, after they drove away, even watching them drive off,
there was just this ache in my heart and I’d kept it together all day. And
at that point, I was standing next to the mother of my new son-in-law, and
we just turned to each other and hugged, and I cried on her shoulder. And
just this moment there she goes, there she goes, my daughter’s married. It
makes me cry to even record this.

(05:18):

It’s still pretty tender, so much joy for the happiness of my child. She’s
so happy. They are well suited to each other. I think they’re going to have
a good life together. But they’re also, that night was some other things
that came up for me. And the next day and the next day that were pretty
intense. And I’m sharing them with you because I’m hoping that it will help
you as you navigate similar emotions, similar things that you can take to
heart the things that I’m sharing and use it for yourself, okay? That
night, there were some things that happened that were 100% out of my
control. There was an issue with the food, and I’m not going to get into
it. I don’t even want to give energy to the thing that happened with food
by talking about it, but there was a pretty major thing that happened with
the food that was somebody that I had hired to be in charge, drop the ball
big time on.

(06:18):

And it was disappointment about what happened with the food, but also
disappointment in how I handled it and thinking, oh, you should have said
this. You should have done that, right? There was disappointment in some
comments that were made to me that day that stung by different people.
Nothing major, not like multiple comments, but just little comments or
comments that were made to other people that I heard about later, not
necessarily about me, but just in general. And that night, I didn’t sleep
much again, and I was so tired, but I was kind of replaying the day and
going, oh, did I mess that up? What about this? Should I have done this?
Should have done that. And so by the time morning came, I was not in a
great head space. I was so tired for one, just so tired. And also, I was
being hard on myself and thinking, I wish I would’ve done this and this.

(07:11):

I wish I would’ve done that. And I was going through a checklist of the
things that I should have done differently when in reality what I was not
making room for in that initial moment was the wave of letting my daughter
go. The wave of loss, the wave of grief, A wave of it will never be the
same. It will never be the same. And I didn’t give myself a whole lot of
room for that leading up to the event. I had set my own intentions on how I
wanted to show up in the family situation, where knowing my first husband’s
family would be there, and knowing that he was missing it, my first husband,
that he was missing the whole thing, that he wasn’t there. He died making
room for that feeling. So much love and gratitude for my current husband
who was there and danced that father-daughter dance with my girl and was
beautiful and supportive and loving and feeling joy and gratitude there,
and grief and loss in the other hand.

(08:20):

So I wanted to record this today to go through this with you for yourself
so that you can remember too, that real emotional maturity, real healing,
is an ability to hold both. It’s an ability to not have anything, any
emotion that we’re too afraid of or that we reject within ourselves. I can
tell you a couple days in this is what happened. I was having all of these
emotions, and then I was judging myself for it. Like, oh my gosh, what’s
wrong with you? Come on, Andrea. And so what I did is I reached out to, in
a group, some coach friends of mine, and said, all right, this is what’s
going on. And there’s a few of them, three of them that I left a message
to, and all of them came back with, of course, this is what you’re feeling.
Of course, this is what’s happening.

(09:14):

And kind of challenged me on my own judgment of myself, and I instantly
felt a lift. I felt this lift of like, oh, it doesn’t mean there’s anything
wrong with me. It means that I’m a tenderhearted mother who just had a
really big day with a lot to handle, a lot to hold a lot of feelings for a
lot of people in a situation that is not simple. And the second I allowed
myself to just go, oh, what if it’s not a problem? I felt relief from the
intensity of the emotion. I was making it so much harder for myself by
judging myself for having the feelings I was having. Isn’t that
interesting? Okay, so now I want to jump into a few main points that I want
to make sure to touch on today. Part one of this is the myth of just pure
happiness.

(10:11):

We have a lot of cultural expectations around big days like weddings that
they should just be joyous, just so happy, just joyous. I’m thinking of the
birth of a child. I’m thinking of graduation days, graduation from high
school, college kids, flying the nest, all these big hallmark days that we
have that we think of as joyous. But where do we talk about the other hand
of that? Which is all the other feelings that we feel as humans. We are
humans. We are emotional beings, right? We are meant to have feelings and
meant to have emotions. So why is it that when we feel something other than
joy, this can make us feel broken or guilty? I’ll tell you, for me, the
words that kept coming, Andrew, you’re just too sensitive. Guess where I’ve
heard that? I’ve heard that my entire life. See, Andrea, you’re just too
sensitive.

(11:10):

Here you go. You’re feeling too deeply. What’s wrong with you? And truly,
the second I release that, oh, this is actually not a problem. Okay, and
where are we making ourselves wrong for feeling what we feel on days that
should look a certain way? It goes both ways. Sometimes there are events
days, things that can happen where we think that we should be feeling
negative emotion. I have clients that will come to calls and say, you’re
not going to believe it, but I just had the D-Day. It was the anniversary
of D-Day, the discovery day, and it was a great day, and I planned
intentionally, and I allowed myself to feel what I needed to feel, but I
didn’t even need to go there. And I actually felt so much gratitude for
being where I am if we were just to go along with cultural expectations
about how we should feel, bummer, right?

(12:10):

Yeah, that’s a lot of heavy emotions for a long time. If we just believe
those stories, even going to a funeral, the death of somebody that we can
maybe feel some relief, that person’s not suffering, maybe feel joy for
some reason, and then we judge ourselves, what’s wrong with me? That I
would feel this way? It goes both ways. We are allowed to have mixed
emotions. Joy does not cancel out. Grief and grief does not ruin joy or any
other emotion. They can sit side by side. So what was present for me that
day, what was present for me was one, so much joy in seeing my daughter so
beautiful. She just looked so beautiful and looked so happy, truly happy,
and she was so loved. So many people came to support her. People that I
hadn’t seen in years, cousins of my first husband, friends that I haven’t
seen in a long time, just to support them.

(13:15):

I felt such joy having so many people that I love in the same space and
seeing my daughter soak it all in. She was truly a beautiful, graceful,
lovely bride. And behind the scenes, I saw moments of stress and worry, or
her physically not feeling good that day, that same day, but her also being
able to hold it and to hold that, the discomfort of her physical sensations
and being able to appreciate all of the love that was being shown to her. I
felt so much joy when after they drove away, she sent me a text thanking me
for being her mother and for making her day perfect, so much joy. And
knowing that when she was off with her husband on their honeymoon, to know
that she thought to reach out and to say, thank you, the grief, the grief
of it will never be the same.

(14:16):

The grief of this child’s life who has experienced so much life in her
young life, the big loving, amazing, supportive family that was there, so
many people, and the reality that her life looks nothing like I thought it
would. The grief that is wonderful is it is that she married into a
wonderful family, that she now has two families, and that I have to make
room for that for visits to his family. That’s not just going to be coming
home to us. Pride in my child, pride in who she’s become, and the many
people that came up to me to tell me how much they love her and the pain of
seeing so many people there that were supportive and loving, but that maybe
weren’t quite sure how to show up because it’s not your typical situation.
And what is true is that nothing was wrong with any of those feelings.

(15:17):

They were all welcome. Where I hurt myself is by thinking that I was wrong
for the intensity of what I was feeling, that maybe there was something
wrong with me and judging myself for it. And some of that, again, was
judging myself for wishing that I would’ve handled a couple situations
differently. Alright, now, in this next part I want to talk to you about why
we resist feeling it all after the fact. I decided, this was a few days
later when I was still just emotionally so tired, physically, so tired. I
sat down with my journal and I journaled for a long time, and just piece by
piece kind of dumped my brain onto the paper so I could see all the
thoughts that were there. And piece by piece, what I could see is that I
was trying so hard to make this perfect day because I didn’t want to deal
with my own disappointment.

(16:14):

Isn’t that interesting? I didn’t want to have to feel it. I didn’t want to
feel like I dropped the ball or I let anybody down or I was being judged or
anything like that. Why? Because I didn’t want to deal with that feeling.
And so I was able to see how with all the work that I’ve done, there’s
still this knee-jerk reaction in me to avoid pain. None of us want pain,
but when I was able to see that, I was like, oh, yeah, I was totally trying
to do things perfectly so that I didn’t have to feel anything after as if I
couldn’t handle it. And then when those emotions were there, because I was
planning on not having to feel any of it, I judged it. I thought I failed
somehow. Isn’t that so interesting? Where do we do this? After infidelity,
often what’s happening in your healing is you are learning to hold two
truths or 17 truths at the same time, that there can be gratitude that
finally, we’re in a place where we can really get to the bottom of things
and really tell the truth.

(17:24):

And I hate that it happened this way. We can be grateful for our own growth
and still so hurt that there was a betrayal on and on. I could go on and on
with examples here. Here’s the thing though, emotions are not actually the
problem. They are not a problem. Emotions are not a problem. They’re
literally just an experience that we’re having, an emotional sensation that
we’re just having, that we can just allow to move through us. And where we
get ourselves in trouble is where we attach a ton of meaning to it. If I
were X, Y, Z, then X, Y, Z. And once I recognized that man totally turned
everything around, totally turned it around to remember that truth, this
thing that I already knew and forgot, right? I just forgot. And the second
I remembered by the help of a coaching friend of mine, I’m like, oh, yeah,
I know this.

(18:26):

It’s not a problem. What? It’s not a problem. I’m not being overly dramatic
or overly sensitive. I’m just a person having feelings about my daughter
getting married and some of the things that happen, oh, that’s not a
problem. Right? So what does become possible when we allow it all? Let me
repeat what I said before, which is that emotional maturity means the
ability to hold many truths at once. When we allow it all, we grow our
capacity to hold more. What it means when we allow ourselves to feel a lot
of grief and loss is that we also deepen our capacity for joy, for
receiving, for the things that we do have. Pretty incredible, right? When I
could look at my daughter and see how many people traveled from really far
to celebrate her, to love her, and to love him, how amazing is that, that
so many people love my kid enough to make it a priority to come?

(19:33):

Despite all of the things that have happened, to have so many different
people from so many of my different walks of life there, I could hold the
grief and the joy and gratitude in one place. I could look at my beautiful
daughter and see her and see how amazing she is and how proud I am of her,
and also feel this painful loss at the same time. This is the work that
you’re doing right now. It is not just about fixing the relationship or
fleeing the relationship, it’s not about fixing yourself. It’s not. It’s
about growing your ability to hold complexity, to hold many truths, both,
and that you can be grief stricken and so sad and so hurt and so angry, and
also have somewhere in there this understanding that maybe you wouldn’t
wake up to what was going on any other way. And here you are, and boy is
being awake painful, but knowing you’re not going back to sleep, and that
the only way forward is through, not by going backwards.

(20:48):

That’s a pretty great place to be, even if it’s really uncomfortable,
because what it means is that you are elevating your own life. You are
raising the standard for your life moving forward. That’s pretty awesome,
even if it’s painful. Now, I want to remind you, for those of you listening
to this, that might be in a season where there’s a lot of feelings
involved, that you might feel a lot of mixed emotion, hope, fear, love,
pain, grief, loss, gratitude. You’re not doing anything wrong, my friend.
You’re not. I also want to remind you that you don’t have to wait until the
hard stuff lets up to celebrate what’s good. What this means is even in a
relationship you’re in, you don’t have to wait for it to arrive at a
certain point before you can be grateful for where you are. Most of all,
please hear me on this.

(21:48):

You do not have to wait for you to arrive to a certain place before you can
be really proud of yourself until you can remind yourself that you’re doing
just fine. That there is nothing wrong with you. I want you to do what I
finally a couple days in reminded myself of, oh yeah, all of me is welcome
here. It’s all welcome here. There’s no part of me that needs to be off
limits. It’s the same for you. It’s the same for you. All of you is welcome
here, and the more we can make room for every part of us that’s healing,
that’s healing. It’s not the cutting off of parts. It’s allowing room for
all of them and not making any of them wrong for being there. To wrap this
up, it’s not about cutting off certain feelings and making certain feelings
wrong. It’s about honoring our humanity and our complexity.

(22:48):

There is no emotion that’s too big, too small or too messy to belong. The
more you let yourself hold it all, let it be there, the more full you live
let we make certain things off limits. We’re cutting off part of the human
experience. So how can you make room for everything that you’re feeling
today? How can you make room and not make any part of you wrong? All of me
is welcome here. How can you give that to yourself today? I invite you to do
so. I invite you to practice this. Please be kind to yourself. It was such a
good blessing to me about the old parts of me that used to punish myself
pretty harshly, and to go back to that place of making myself wrong for my
feelings and to go, oh, that’s what’s happening. That’s why this is so much
more intense. And to be able to instantly stop when I realized it, like,
man, I don’t need to do that. I can just let that go and not make myself
wrong, and to feel such a relief in that. You can give that to yourself
too. Okay? And I encourage you to, alright, thank you friends for being
here, and I’ll see you next time.

(24:08):

Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would
like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast
episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly
email. You can subscribe at https://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/.
Again, it’s https://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you
next time.