The bottom dropped out of my marriage on February 29, 2016. It had already been severely rocked by financial betrayal and the emotional abuse/isolation of living with a man who had a secret life and multiple addictions. The revelation I had been cheated on since 1989 informed me of my widowhood. In reality I had been living in a one sided marriage for those twenty seven years. To find out brought the darkness of death to the man I thought I knew. In an instant, my husband died.

I was plunged into a grief I have never imagined. Real life demanded I hide behind a mask of isolating secrecy and the shame that brought. I was weighted with an unrepentant partner who had betrayed me in hundreds of ways for years, sexually, emotionally, physically and financially. I felt violated, dirty. No choice whether to expose my children to this ugliness. He dropped the d-day bomb on me in front of them. I was cast into silent agony.

Grief stricken, broken and burdened, I struggled to breathe at the loss of everything I thought my life would be.

The husband I believed I knew was dead. I was a widow.

I stared out at an unrecognizable world with hollow eyes, uncomfortable, fearful, confused and frozen in heartbreak. Nothing made sense. Nothing was clear. Tears forced their way out from behind my lashes, blinding me, yet demanding I speak my truth. I yearned for it to all make sense, for it all to be a lie, for it to stop hurting.

My body coursed with adrenaline right down to my fingers. I hid to keep others from seeing them shake; struggled to keep the tone of my voice calm even as cracks broke through. I was desperate for affirmation where none was to be found. I risked reaching out to my new co-worker, hoping she might help stop my merciless pain.

“Thank you,” I said. Words impotent to convey the gratitude I felt for this woman who validated my grief.

“I’m glad you are here,” she offered in authenticity.

As my story unfolded in fits and spurts over the weeks, I hesitantly spoke the words ‘affair’, ‘lost retirement funds’, and paused to see her response. Would she flinch? Roll her eyes? I added, “grooming another woman” and waited to see if she’d recoil in disgust. No, in fact, she offered encouragement, even in her gentle silence.

“That sounds devastating”, she said.

I felt heard. No criticism, advise, judgement or deflection. Just her empathic ear welcoming me into what would become my only safe place.

Days turned into weeks turned into months. I looked to move on with one therapist, then two. Nice women, but not trained in betrayal trauma nor experience with its devastation. I will never know if the one local friend I had turned away from me because she too had experienced infidelity or whether she feared being tainted by the lurid nature of my now life story. Did she flee under the guise of her life challenges or simply avoidance of the discomfort of my story? No matter the truth, I now feel she is repulsed by my story.

I was alone. Unlike the kind of widow recognized by the general public as they understand the term, I have no compassionate support system. My husband has not left me with a supportive life insurance policy and the promise of financial stability. My new reality promised quite the opposite.

As the months passed, the sum of fears grew. I worried about my own health. It was so hard to eat, sleep, exercise or do most things approaching ‘healthy’. I worked daily with what felt like a fifty pound weight strapped to my body. Immense, invisible, it was tightly bound. No one saw the veiled burden I carried. My heart physically hurt. Palpitations now common.

It is exhausting to smile at clients, at people in the store. I wondered what they might be thinking of this shell of my former self so obvious to me.

Church used to be my safe place. Attendance now brought nothing but unwelcome tears and silence from my higher power. No peace. No comfort. I felt like an outsider.

Ever so slowly over the months, nay, years, a glimmer of who I am began to return as a flicker in my eyes reflected in the mirror. A slight uplift at the corner of my mouth as occasional smiles of real joy filtered across my face. I was, I am beginning to wrap my arms around the strong woman I have always been, now stronger through the gauntlet of betrayals.

I knew this fight consisting of support group meetings, deep reading, writing, research would determine my life, my future, my very being. I still see the dark shadows under my eyes representing the grief and exhaustion.

“When will this be over?” I ask myself, I ask Google, I ask the universe.

“I don’t know,” the reply.

“Will I be strong enough?”

I have grown to believe, emphatically, YES!

I am another widow of betrayal. My kind of widowhood is unique to the normal definition. Sadly all too common in reality.

We don’t receive benefits from a life insurance policy. No unconstrained hugs of empathy from our community. No casseroles brought to our door.

But I am amazing. We widows of this kind are amazing. I am tenacious, resilient, courageous, reliable, brave and so much more.

“Strength is not having the strength to go on; it’s going on when you don’t have the strength.” This, a precursor quote attributed to Teddy Roosevelt… and the beloved “Man in the Arena”

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

We widows epitomize the woman in the arena. We are “going on.”

If you know one of us—the invisible widows, offer a loving ear—and a casserole.