BONUS EP 5: Melissa’s Listener Essay

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Hey guys, it's Andrea Gunning.

A few weeks ago, we put a call out for your listener essays.

We wanted to hear from you about resilience after a devastating betrayal.

And we received so many incredible essay submissions.

So for this episode, we're going to feature the first of two listener essays that really moved me.

This one is written and read by a listener named Melissa.

Pain has been both my burden and my teacher, breaking me open in ways I never wanted and shaping me into someone I never expected to become.

As a teenager, my world fractured in an instant.

My father, my anchor, was ripped away, not by death, but by his own betrayal.

He was sent to prison for raping a teenage girl.

The man I looked to for protection became the reason I no longer felt safe or sure of who I was.

It wasn't just the act he committed.

It was the way it shattered everything I thought I knew about love, trust, and family.

That wound didn't heal.

It seeped into the fabric of my life, dictating the person I became.

The echoes of that betrayal followed me like shadows, coloring every decision I made, lingering over my shoulder.

and even scaring away some who learned the truth.

In my desperate need to find stability, to build a life that felt whole, I married a man who was battling his own demons.

He was a secret addict and an alcoholic, someone who hid his pain while drowning it in substances.

When I learned of his struggle, I thought I could save him.

I believe that what I went through early on would give me the strength to push through.

Maybe, deep down, I thought saving him would somehow redeem the parts of my life I couldn't.

But love cannot survive where it is consumed by unrelenting chaos.

We bore a son together, my saving grace.

I stayed with my husband until I couldn't anymore.

The strength to leave didn't come all at once.

It came in fragments, small moments of clarity, of exhaustion.

And finally, after a friend reminded me of my strength, I was given a new understanding that trying to save him would mean losing myself.

Walking away was one of the hardest things I'd ever done.

It meant accepting that I couldn't fix everything.

It meant carrying the weight of yet another failure, another loss,

another broken family.

But leaving wasn't the end.

It was the beginning.

Pain has a way of carving you hollow, but it also creates space.

Space to grow, to rebuild, to transform.

Slowly, I began to see my pain for what it was.

A relentless teacher showing me how to live with open eyes and an open heart.

The wounds I carry, though deep, have given me something unexpected.

The ability to see what others try to hide.

I see the hurt in those around me, the silent struggles, the stories etched into their eyes.

And when I meet someone who is carrying this pain, I've learned to love them through their own traumas, through their own burdens of guilt and feelings of unworthiness.

Raising my son has been my greatest redemption.

Every day, I strive to teach him the things life has taught me, to be kind even when it's hard, to be strong but never unfeeling, to hold compassion as his compass, and to walk through life in a way that brings light to a dark world.

He is my proof that something beautiful can rise from the ashes of a broken past.

I've chosen to live with curiosity instead of judgment, to approach others not with condemnation but with a desire to understand.

Everyone carries their own wounds, their own betrayals, their own burdens.

I've found that sharing our traumas creates a mutual trust, allowing us to release the weight of that burden together.

My pain has taught me to find beauty in the shattered pieces.

to see the sunbeams that filter through the dark clouds.

It has taught me that even in brokenness there is grace, and even in hurt there is healing.

The journey hasn't been easy.

There are still days when the weight of it all feels unbearable, when the memories rise like tides and threaten to drown me, when I'm reminded how the family I once had is no longer.

But I've learned to let those waves come, to let them crash over me without pulling me under.

I've learned to stand in the storm.

and let it pass.

If pain has taught me anything, it's that we are all broken in some way.

But brokenness is not the end of the story.

It is in the cracks where the light shines through.

It is in the healing that we find purpose.

My pain has become my strength, my compass, my gift.

It has taught me to love, to forgive, and to see beauty where others see ruin.

I've transformed my hurt into healing.

not just for myself, but for those who cross my path.

I give my time to those who need it most, offering compassion and a listening ear to those who have also been broken by life.

I share my story, not knowing how it will be received, but trusting in the power of vulnerability.

Time and again, I've found that sharing creates a connection, a reminder that none of us walk this path alone.

I've chosen to live with an open heart, welcoming the messiness of life and finding grace and peace within it.

My pain will always be a part of me, etched into who I am, but it no longer holds me captive.

Instead, it has shaped me into someone stronger, someone free, someone who can rise from the ashes and be an example and encouragement for others to do the same.

When we come back, our producer talks with Melissa about her writing process.

And stay tuned until the end of the episode when we'll be sharing the theme of of our next listener essay.

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I'm going to hand it over to our producer, Mo, who talked with Melissa for this episode.

Can you tell me a little bit about the process of writing this?

What did that look like?

I was listening to the podcast while I was sitting in the waiting room of the passport office, and I had about 45 minutes.

And I heard right at the beginning of the podcast that you guys were doing this essay submission.

And I was like, you know what?

I've got time.

I'm going to do it now.

And I just sat there and I just started thinking about

my pain and thinking about how it's affected me in good ways and bad.

And I just started writing in my notes on my phone and

just kept rereading it and editing it, rereading it and editing it.

Honestly, I wanted it to be more about the healing than the pain

because I spent so much of my life focusing so much on what the trauma was.

And I always thought, you know, there's going to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm going to look back in 20 years and I'm going to see how much good this did in my life.

And honestly, that's not the case.

More often than not, the trauma that I went through was just all-encompassing.

And the pain was debilitating a lot of times.

That's definitely like the inner voice, right?

Like every time I share it, I'm like, do I really need to share this?

Does somebody really want to hear this?

It really can mess with what you think about yourself.

And so I really wanted that to be what this essay was about.

It's really not about.

coming out on the other side and like, oh, the trauma's gone and we're all good and everything's fine.

I mean, I'm sure you guys hear it a lot from people emailing you in like, wow, this story was incredible.

And this was so helpful for me.

But there's so many people that are not writing in that are feeling the same thing.

So as I was sitting and writing it, it was very important to me that I focus on the aspect of

using this trauma for good.

And yeah, when you do share it with other people, it really does create this amazing connection.

Like I feel like as humans, if we did a lot more of this sharing, that it would heal a lot of very broken people.

I wonder what your encouragement would be for people who are listening who might want to share their story.

Yeah.

I think in my experience, both in my professional career and in my personal life, I've come across so many people who feel that they're not able to do something that they want to do.

A lot of it, like with imposter syndrome, is just like, you know, you don't think you're good enough or people aren't going to take it the right way or it's not, I'm not going to say you have the right words.

And honestly, the only way that I was able to do this was just to spit it all out on paper and send it.

I probably spent less than an hour in total.

in writing, editing, and then just hitting the send button.

And some of that for me was just getting the words out on paper and wanting to get rid of them.

You know, like I've put this down and I need it to be out of my hands.

Wow.

Our whole team is really grateful that you wrote in and shared this with us and shared everything you've learned in this essay.

It really means a lot that you guys asked me to do it.

I was honestly very shocked when I saw the email.

I was like, oh my gosh, not only did they read it, but they want me to.

But I am very, very, I'm very, very thankful to your team and everything that you guys do because it really is important.

So please don't stop.

Thank you so much for listening.

And thank you to the incredible listeners who wrote in to share their essays on the theme of resilience.

We were so moved by your submissions that we're bringing you more of these listener essays.

And our next theme will be the moment everything changed.

Set the scene.

Take us back to that memory.

Describe the feelings and thoughts you had in the moment when everything changed for you.

The limit is a thousand words.

If your story stands out, it might be featured in a bonus episode.

Please save your submission as a PDF and email it to betrayalpod at gmail.com.

If you would like to reach out to the betrayal team or want to tell us your betrayal story, email us at betrayalpod at gmail.com.

That's betrayal, p-od at gmail.com.

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And don't forget to rate and review Betrayal.

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A big thank you to all of our listeners.

Betrayal is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

The The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Faison.

Hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

Written and produced by Monique Laborde.

Also produced by Ben Fetterman.

Associate producers are Kristen Melcuri and Caitlin Golden.

Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Jessica Kreincheck.

Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio.

Additional editing support from Tanner Robbins.

Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines.

Music library provided by MIBE MIBE Music.

And for more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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