Rewrite Your Shame Story: An Infidelity Story with Amy Ganz
A few weeks ago, we had guest podcaster Amy Ganz of Ames and Olives Catering on to share her story of overcoming the shame of her husband’s infidelity, the messiness of the divorce, the pain of the process.
Very few details were spared in this episode, and yet none of it was at the expense of her ex. Amy shares candidly of her experience of walking out shame and the recovery because she knows that talking honestly with vulnerability about the process is ultimately what pulled her out.
“I remember just like this sinking feeling in my stomach that I was like, I'm going to hear something really bad. And I don't know what it is. But I just feel like it's gonna be really, really bad.” Amy recounts the day everything came out which was really the beginning of the end.
And when everything began to crumble around her, and the shame swept over her like a tidal wave, it wasn’t her own strength that got her through.
Yes she chose to show up and have grit to take the low road, but there are always 2 key elements to breaking free from shame and that is:
Self compassion
Community
And in that moment where it all fell apart, Amy recounts a dear friend and pastor that began to break through the cloud of despair by saying “we're not going to abandon you to your trauma to your grief into your pains, and we're gonna help you through this. We're not leaving you here. We're actually going to sit with you in this.”
Because the thing is… when shame sweeps in, it’s out for blood. It’s not a benign force that we can keep around. It’s out to suffocate, isolate, abandon, and cut off.
And one of the most essential things we need to do if we are going to overcome the shame of our experience is allow others in to the process, allow them to love us through all the ugly stages betrayal forces us through, and walk us through the fire to the other side.
In order to not stay stuck in our emotions, we have to feel everything, including the emotions that we don't like, including the emotions that make us feel bad about ourselves. And otherwise, it's going to come out in some other kind of way, like physical illness or chronic illness or, you know, mental illness, you name it.
