Finding My Rhythm: Healing, Leading, Becoming

I never trusted therapy.

As a child, I had been in it briefly. I remember sitting in the chair, silent. Watching the clock. Not speaking. I don’t think I even knew what I felt, let alone how to say it out loud. And even if I did, it didn’t feel safe. So I stayed quiet. My mother was a licensed clinical social worker, yet somehow that never made therapy feel more accessible—if anything, it made me more wary. Maybe I was afraid of what someone might find if they looked too closely. That they’d see how broken I really was. That maybe I was… crazy.

So for most of my adult life, I avoided it. Even as my marriage began to unravel, even as I unraveled inside it—I told myself I was strong, smart, capable. I could handle it. That was the lie I lived inside.

Until everything exploded.

My husband accused me of having an affair. Not with another man—but with my friend. A woman. He told the children. Framed it like a confession of concern. “Mom is sick. She needs help.” Then came the ultimatum: end the friendship, or he would leave me and take the children.

I was terrified.

No, I wasn’t having an affair. But I was unraveling. I was emotionally wrecked. And the only time I felt safe—the only time I felt like me—was when I was with my friend. Her presence was a lifeline. It was calm. Nonjudgmental. There was no manipulation, no criticism. Just space. I hadn’t had that in years.

And yes, I pulled away from home. From the children. From the roles that once defined me. Looking back, I think I was breaking. The only way I could survive was to escape, even briefly, into that feeling of safety. It’s still hard to admit: that I distanced myself from my kids—my whole world. But I couldn’t help it. I was drowning. I didn’t yet know what had broken me. I only knew I couldn’t hold it together anymore.

Then came the “family meeting.” A staged intervention. My husband shared his accusations, his narrative, with our children present. He turned our private pain into a performance. A weapon. And I felt stripped bare in front of the people I loved most.

That was the moment I agreed to therapy. Not for healing. Not for clarity. I went because I had no choice. Because the only way to keep my family intact—or so I thought—was to fix myself.

We began couples therapy. Really, it was therapy for me. I entered that office certain the therapist would see what he saw: a woman unraveling. A woman unfit. A woman whose story made no sense.

My heart pounded. My palms were slick with sweat. I was ashamed. Afraid of being found out.

Several sessions in, the therapist asked to speak with me privately—with his permission. He agreed. I followed her to a smaller room, barely breathing.

And then, gently, she said the words that shattered the illusion I had built my life around:

“… you know you are a victim of emotional abuse, right?”

I froze.

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

The phrase hung in the air, unfamiliar and familiar all at once. Emotional abuse. I’d heard of it. I knew what it meant—in theory. But it couldn’t apply to me. I was educated. Accomplished. A doctor. A mother. I was strong. I wouldn’t let someone abuse me.

But something clicked.

I thought of my friend Bess, who had said it too—“LC, this isn’t normal.”

And for the first time in years, I allowed myself to consider:
What if it wasn’t all my fault?
What if I wasn’t crazy?
What if the story I’d been fed about who I was—ungrateful, unstable, unlovable—wasn’t true?

I was shaken. But I was also… relieved. Validated. Seen.

That night, I went home and read everything I could. Psychological abuse. Gaslighting. Coercive control. Victim blaming. Isolation. I devoured books and blogs and articles, each one shining light into the corners I had kept dark for so long.

This was just the beginning. There was still so much I didn’t know—about abuse, about trauma, about healing.

But now, there was language.

There was a crack in the mirror he had held up to me for years—the mirror that only reflected my flaws, my faults, my supposed madness. And through that crack, I saw something truer.

I was not crazy.

I was not broken.

I was a woman who had been emotionally abused.

And I was finally, painfully, beginning to wake up.