“She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else–Let them believe that they’re loved and wanted, and then show them that it’s all a sham.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

Understanding the power of betrayal is part of the healing process for women who have been rejected, estranged, and shunned by their biological families. Naming their behavior for what it is, betrayal, allows us to more clearly focus our healing treatment. We have to recognize and understand our wounding before we can recognize and understand the medicine.

“We say, ‘It wasn’t that bad. It was all my fault. I’m making all this stuff up.’
All my life, I spoke bitterly of my mother’s treatment of me as a child.
Friends asked, “What did she do to you?“ I couldn’t really describe it, and in frustration would say, “Well, she didn’t lock us up in closets.” In fact, my mother behaved much worse than that, but by focusing on the empty closet, I avoided looking at what waited beyond it.”  ― Sarah E. Olson, Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder

Healing betrayal is about recovering our inner self that trusted people who are supposed to be, by historic, religious, and cultural concepts of family, those who are fundamentally infused with the charge of trustworthiness above all others.  When they willfully and unapologetically fail us, it can be incomprehensible. Regaining our sense of stability and our trusting, not just of others but of life itself, is the needed antidote to the biological family’s poison.

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.”― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are