Looking to understand betrayal recovery? I had the pleasure of interviewing Vanessa Cardenas, a betrayal recovery specialist with an incredible story of resilience and healing. Vanessa shared her deeply personal experience of betrayal, starting with the moment her husband confessed he had met someone else. This devastating moment triggered not only an emotional collapse but also brought up unresolved feelings from her childhood. Vanessa spoke about the importance of asking for help and how mentors guided her through a journey of self-love, forgiveness, and growth. She explained how something as simple as listing 20 things she was proud of became a turning point in her healing process, helping her rebuild her sense of self-worth.

Vanessa’s advice for anyone going through betrayal is to seek support and avoid trying to heal alone. She talked about the ups and downs of recovery and how vital communication and goal-setting are in both relationships and personal growth. Vanessa shares her excitement about upcoming speaking engagements at Harvard and Columbia, reflecting on how far she’s come.

About Vanessa Cardenas:

Vanessa Cardenas is a seasoned Betrayal Recovery Specialist dedicated to empowering individuals to heal and thrive after betrayal. With a Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Psychology from Baruch College, Vanessa combines her academic background with a diverse range of certifications, including Trauma Coaching, Life Coaching, and Mental Fitness Instruction. She is also certified by the prestigious Post Betrayal Transformation Institute and is a Six-Phase Meditation Facilitator.

Drawing from over two decades of experience as a C-Suite Executive, Vanessa brings unparalleled empathy, understanding, and insight into the challenges faced by her clients. Her personal journey through betrayal has fueled her passion for guiding others toward recovery and personal growth. Vanessa’s holistic approach blends professional expertise with personal experience, ensuring her clients receive compassionate, tailored support that addresses their unique needs.

Vanessa is deeply committed to helping others reclaim their self-love and trust. Her personalized coaching methods foster genuine transformation, empowering individuals to heal and rebuild their lives with purpose and resilience. Whether through one-on-one coaching, group workshops, or engaging speaking engagements, Vanessa creates a safe, supportive environment for her clients to heal, grow, and thrive.

Social Media Handles:

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/UnderstandingEar/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanessa_understandingear/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Vanessa-Cardenas

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessa-cardenas-understanding-ear-b4011a311/

CONNECT WITH SHANNAN MONDOR:

Website: shannankym.com

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fulfillment-in-faith/id1653165886

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shannankym

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shannanmondor

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shannanmondor

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SHANNANKYM

Book: https://www.amazon.ca/How-Hell-Did-Get-Here/dp/0228871220

Email: shannan@shannankym.com

When you have faith in yourself you will have fulfilment in all areas of your life!

See you next week and blessing to all!!! 

Hello everybody, and welcome to fulfillment in faith. My name is Shannan Mondor, and I am so excited to have this lovely, lovely lady, Vanessa. How are you doing? Vanessa,

this is a goosebump moment. Can you feel it?

You know what I it was a goosebump moment, from the moment we got onto zoom, because I'm excited for the audience to hear your story, because when we did our meet and greet, you got a little bit into your story, and then we stopped, because I wanted to hear everything for the first time as well, too, just like the audience, because what you are about to say, and I got goosebumps again, is because what you are about to say is going to be so impactful for everybody out there to hear this, because that what you're about to tell us is something that more and more people are coming into the realization of number one and number two. For people that aren't in that realization, they definitely will be for sure after this one for sure, and then they're going to be like, Oh my God, there's going to be so many light bulb moments through your experiences that people are going to have on their journey right now. And so this podcast, of course, is all about healing. And what you're about to tell people is definitely going to heal a lot of people out there and start them on their journey, and give them a direction of where they need to go, also, because there's somebody like you that's out there to help them as well, and that's what I'm so excited about. So anyways, I want you to tell everybody a little bit about yourself, where you are from, and then if you can get right into your your story, that'd be wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, here we go.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. My name is Vanessa Cardenas, and I am a betrayal recovery specialist.

That's powerful. Yeah, it is.

And when I go to events and I introduce myself, the first question I get asked is, have you ever worked with anyone famous? Yes, I leave it at that they realize they're not going to get any more information out of me. Then the next question that I get asked or a friend, yes, they they want to lean in and ask me a question for a friend, yeah. And that question is, how do you know when somebody's cheating on you? And it's an interesting question. And then the games begin, like we're off to the races, but I'm getting ahead of myself, so I'm going to answer that question after I share my story and how I got involved with betrayal, recovery. See, for me, it was a beautiful, beautiful day in New York City, not like it is today, because it's hot and sweltering, but it was a gorgeous day. It was one of those crisp days that you can just smell the air and it just the colors are so vibrant, and it's just a spectacular day that my husband and I both had the day off, which was very unusual for us, and we decided to walk through Central Park, but I was so giddy, I just couldn't get enough of the sights and sounds, and I could hear in the distance my husband call my name, Vanessa. Let's sit down. There's something I need to tell you. And I you know, I was all happy, go lucky. And I sat down, and I turned to look at him, and my husband has the most beautiful chestnut brown eyes that have a hint of gold in them, and how I know that is from almost 30 years prior, when he asked me on my very first date to go see a movie because I leaned in close to him, because he almost whispered it, because he was so, so shy to be able to talk to me, and I had to lean in to figure out what he was trying to ask me. And that's when I saw them beautiful chestnut brown eyes. And now I turn to look at him in Central Park, and I see those eyes glistening in the sun, and I'm thinking to myself, Man, I love this man, I absolutely do, and then he said three words to me, and my whole world completely went upside down and shattered into a million pieces. I've met someone. I fell apart. I absolutely fell apart, how I was not arrested that day. I have no idea. I turned into the worst Godzilla you've ever seen. I let loose. My inner critic just came out, guns blazing. Oh, and I was a mess. I couldn't understand. Understand why I was such a mess, because not for nothing, I'm a smart woman. I have a psychology degree. I'm in the C suite. I help employees and team members for 20 years through their professional and personal problems. Now I'm on the bedroom floor. I can't pick myself up. I am a shell of myself, and I realized that this betrayal was stacked on micro betrayals I had had throughout my entire life that I never put a name to, that I never recognized that all of the adults in my life as a child would diminish it. They would diminish my feelings when, you know, my best friend was suddenly not my best friend, and she was friends with someone else, and she told that someone else all my secrets. You know, granted, it was second grade, but to me as a six, seven year old, that was betrayal, that was betrayal, but I didn't have a word for it. I didn't have the language for it, but I remember going home and crying about it and being dismissive. Oh, you'll have other friends. Don't worry about it. Well, no, it hurt. And then throughout my adolescence, I had other betrayals that I just never processed. So now this monumental one, this monumental betrayal after almost over two decades of marriage, let alone the fact that we knew each other 10 years prior to getting married, I just I fell hard, and I really, really struggled. And you and I share something that was very interesting when I listened to your last podcast where you got very, very vulnerable with your audience, and you really, you really laid it on the line for them, and you had mentioned that you had gone through therapy, and it got to the point where therapy capped out like enough of talking about the past enough. You know, I need to find someone that can talk about the present and give me hope and faith for the future. That's what I needed at that point. Because, again, the past was just it. We had dissected it and opened it in Pandora's backs and all these little micro betrayals and trying to work on all of those. Yeah, we got to that point, but then I was just standing still, and it wasn't until I asked for the proper help. Proper help. Help me. Help me. I can't do this alone, and who is around me isn't really necessarily helping me. And when you find yourself in that situation where you're stuck, where you're stuck, you're not moving, yes, you're asking for all this help, if you're brave enough to, because asking for help is probably the bravest thing that you can do. It's asking for God's Spirit source. The people around you need help. I need help. And they they help you. They do. But it gets to a point where it's, it's it's stagnant, and then you need to move in a different direction. And that's when I discovered so many great mentors that entered into my life, because I made space for them, and I needed to hear them, and I needed to hear the words that came out of their mouth. And one in particular that was really, important to me. Early on, I had heard it and I dismissed it. I was like, yeah, no, no, that no, that doesn't feel right type of thing. And what it was was though something terrible had happened to me. It wasn't about me. And I was like, of course, it's about me. There's something I didn't do or something I did too much of to cause my husband to meet someone else. It must have been my fault, and I took on all of the blame, all of it. And I heard that line, I heard the person say it, and I was like, yeah, no, no, I'm not buying that. But several months later, oh, it was a lightning bolt moment for me when I heard it again, because at that moment it clicked for me, and I realized, yes, that's exactly it. Though something terrible happened to me wasn't about me. It truly wasn't about me. And I decided to heal out loud. Similar to you, you healed out loud. I had my heart in my hand, and I was telling everyone around me, you know, I need your help. Need your help. Let's let's help me see the present. Help me see the future, because I've already dug through the whole past, and the past is very painful, and there's lots of labels that we put on certain things. And I didn't want to be a NASCAR driver. I didn't want to have the the jumpsuit that had all of the labels all over me, because there were a lot of them, because we don't know what we don't know. We just don't. When I was 16, my mother, you know, decided that they were moving my mother and my who she was with at the time, and my younger brother, they were moving. I wasn't going to move with them, so I needed to figure out what I was going to do, and I did. I was resourceful, and I tried to make it work as best as possible. And when I shared that story, not with my therapist, because I shared it with my therapist, and my therapist didn't pick up on this, but I shared it with my coach, and my coach says to me, so you were homeless. And I I looked at them like they were like, what? It wasn't homeless, because I had a vision of what homelessness was. And she says to me, you didn't have a home. You didn't have a safe place to pack your bags and put your bags down and have a dresser and have a bed. You know, if you lived in a shelter, would still be classified as homeless. Oh, that was a really big revelation for me, because, again, I never saw myself that way. 30 years later, it took somebody to say it to me to say, Hey, hold on a second. You have permission

to think of it that way, because that's what it is. In reality, that's exactly what it is. And I found myself really exploring my entire past to see it for exactly what it is through the wisdom that I now had, again, we don't know what we don't know, but when we see it and somebody opens our eyes to it, Whoa,

yeah, I know it's, it's unbelievable, isn't it? And then you can actually see why and how everything unfold unfolded the way that it did. I got chills. So, oh yes, and that that is, that is huge. It's huge, and that's what gives us the gift to help others out there. Yeah, unbelievable.

It's so, so true. And I'm, I'm I'm grateful.

I know.

I mean, when I, when I say that to people. People are like, what? And I'm like, I'm grateful. You know, if you ask me if I would go through my entire life exactly the same way, say yes, yeah. Why? I love who I am now. I love looking in the mirror. I love getting my photo taken, which is very, very odd, because for almost 20 years, anytime a camera got whipped out, I was off to the side like you could not see me, or I offered to take the photo. There are 1000s of photographs of my children and my husband. I think I'm in like three, and it was, like forcefully type of thing, because, no, it just I was so uncomfortable in my own skin, but I didn't realize it, because I was everything to everyone around me. I was I was the wife, I was the mother, I was known that way. Oh, that's Jeremy's mother. You know that? That's, you know, David's wife. You we be. We take on the identity of the people around us. We lose our identity,

exactly. And that that's the thing. Like I used to wear so many hats, like you did, and by wearing all those different hats, I never got the opportunity to really find out who Shannan really was or really is. And there is nothing so freeing now that when I walk into a room or wherever I go, there's only one hat and that that hat is Shannan wander, yeah, yeah, that that's so true, right? There's only one hat. It's Shannan Mondor. Take it or leave it. But you know what, I love who I am, and that's that's why, like, when I'm in the process of doing networking and stuff like that, like, I've got some big events coming up, and. September, where I'm going to be meeting so many people down in the US, and just knowing that I'm going to walk into that room with my power and knowing who I am, that is the most freeing, most vibrant, most vulnerable thing I can do. But you know what? It's so wonderful. It's so so wonderful.

It's liberating. It is. It is truly liberating. And what it entails is letting go. And I know that that's really hard. It truly is. I really, really, really suffered from that. I held on to things so tightly because I didn't want to let them go. And then I realized there's this great expression that I absolutely love. If you let go of a little you'll have a little happiness. If you let go of a lot, you'll have a lot of happiness. But if you let go completely, you will be free. Yeah,

yeah. And let go to also means taking responsibility for things from your past as well, too. And that was one thing that I I really realized, you know, especially with my background of addiction and everything, yes, I was portrayed my whole entire life. And then, of course, from there, then, you know, I had feeling sorry for myself and the pity and all of that, you know, came with it, and that's what made me want to drink even more. But then that pivotal moment for me, when I decided that I had my awakening to awareness, like what happened with you as well? And it was just kind of like, wow. Okay, so where do I go from here? Where do I go from here? Like, I these things that happen to me in my past, a lot I didn't have control of, but now that I am aware of it, where do I go from here? How do I take responsibility? How do I forgive myself? How do I forgive others? And you would have went through that process as well, too, and that betrayal of actually seeing these things for the first time that really hurts. It, does it? It's all of that. What was a pivotal moment for you when that all happened? Can Can you? Can you go through the process? Because I we always remember that awakening so clearly, what was it for you?

It was such a key moment for me, and it spans a couple of days. It wasn't an instant.

It's not like that. I understand that, but we always remember. We always remember, correct

for me, what it was was I, I tried to numb myself. Some people numb themselves with alcohol, some with drugs, illicit drugs, you know, wine, things of that nature and whatnot. For me, it was binge watching. Yeah, yeah, I was very much into just watching mindless television. I just wanted to just see pictures in front of me that weren't my own, my own movies in my mind. And YouTube was in its infancy, but still had lots of videos on there. And then the algorithm was pushing things in my direction. And I stumbled across a video that kept showing up in my feed, and I kept skipping over it because it only had like 500 views at the time. And I was like, yeah, no, no, this doesn't sound right. Doesn't sound like what I need. Because I, of course, was researching everything related to cheating and portrayal, and and and infidelity, and you name it, related to my topic. I was all over it, but this video kept showing up, and one night, I finally gave in, and I watched it. It was a 20 minute video that really changed my life, not at the time. What it was was it was talking about a theory called the hindsight window theory, and what it stipulates is that it's the time in between a devastating event, and when you can see the gift and opportunity in that event. And I was like, yeah, no, I don't think so. And I watched it all the way through, and the gentleman on it, you know, was going through various stories explaining this theory, and I was like, I'm gonna prove him wrong. I'm gonna prove him wrong. And I searched him out through his help desk, and I sent him a long email saying, how might I how might I see the gift and opportunity and my husband of over 20 years telling me he's met someone else that he betrayed me, my epic love story is completely shattered. We had the perfect what I thought was perfect marriage, perfect life, two kids, the house, the cars, the career, everything I checked off all the boxes of certainty I was inoculated from anything to. Terrible happening to me, because, not for nothing, I had a terrible childhood that I didn't even recognize was a terrible childhood until I had to go through therapy because you betrayed me. And now you know, so not only do I have that betrayal to deal with, I got all that crap to deal with as well, because now it's come flooded back. So I sent the off this email. Fired it off, you know, all my anger I directed at him, like, Okay, I'm gonna prove you wrong. And a few days later, I get an email back and not some canned, uh, sorry to hear that. Good luck with that, or, you know, some other kind of nonsense. No, I got a two page email back that was so heartfelt and so laid out his theory of how, yes, it hurts now. It hurts so much, but you will get through this. His email was so filled with hope. He didn't know me, but I felt like he did, like he said all the right things and gave me hope. And for me, that was a very pivotal moment, because suddenly somebody in my life was acknowledging how I felt, validating all my feelings, telling me, yes, you're going to hurt everything else, but you are going to pick yourself up, buy your bootstraps. You are going to do whatever is necessary to start healing, because you are going to ask for help. You are going to not going to numb yourself with Netflix or food or anything else. You are going to do the work necessary, and I challenge you to not only help yourself, but help someone else. This was a key pivotal moment for me, because I had learned back when I got my psychology degree, one of my professors said something very profound. I want you to take notes as if you need to share it with the person next to you. Yeah, that forced me to write my notes much clearer for me to really think about what was said in class, so I could write it down, so the person next to me could understand my notes. That uses a different part of your brain, and now I have someone else. Fast forward 25 years saying the same thing. Not only do you heal for yourself, you're going to help someone else.

That's so funny that you say that because after I wrote my book and I was all done and I was sending it to the publishers, and I would actually sat down and I was reading my book, and it was like, I once I was done reading it, I just kind of sat with myself, and I was like, Oh my gosh, a lot of shit happened in my life. And then I was questioning myself. I was like, well, is that normal? Then I come to the conclusion that, no, it wasn't normal. Then my next question was, how many other people have gone through the amount of stuff that I had gone through, and I didn't know anybody. And then it was a light bulb moment for me, and that was when I knew that I was to share it with others, because you don't go through all these different things and just keep it to yourself. There was I knew that there was a reason why that had happened to me. I knew it, and then that gave me the strength to go forward and to start speaking openly and honestly and to get me where I am today. So everything that you're saying absolutely, I totally resonate everything that you're saying. I'm going

to take it one step further, because for me, okay, I help someone else. Okay, great. I joined a support group. Now, because of my C suite career and being in leadership, I tend to hijack meetings. Just do sorry it happens. So I joined a support group for betrayal, and I meet 11 other women, plus the host. And, you know, we're going through the motions and process and whatnot, and I become the unofficial sponsor for all 11 women, which is very interesting. And I enjoy it. I thrive on it. I love it. You know, absolutely everybody's sending text messages and encouraging each other and whatnot. And the host pulls me aside after one of the meetings, she goes, Vanessa, you're being selfish. Whoa. What's he talking about? Like, wait a second, I'm always here. I'm always available. That what you're calling me selfish, like, Who do you think you are? You know, type of thing she goes. You're only helping the other 11 women here. You need to be on a bigger platform. You need to write a book, you need to write blogs. You need to get out on YouTube. You need to have Instagram. You need to be on Facebook, you need to speak on stage, you need to speak on podcasts. And I, I was so taken back by that, but deep down inside, where we have our gut and our intuition and our cheerleader, because our inner critic has now turned into our cheerleader in perfect harmony. Yes, yes, you need to do that. And from that moment on. So that was the second little awakening that I had. Was, wait a second, I'm I'm playing too small and doing it too small. I need, I need to get out there. I need to make it bigger. And I like you, I sat down and read my book after I read it, and I was like, wow, this is so the book I needed. I needed this book on my nightstand for hope, because I read every single book that I could get my hands on about betrayal and this we're talking almost a decade ago, where there weren't too many of them, and I found several of them to either be too scientific for me, like I just couldn't process all of the terminology. I was just like, please tell me how to feel better. Just, please tell me how to feel better. Or it had a lot of religious guilt undertone to it, where it was my fault and I didn't like that. I wasn't comfortable with that, so I wrote the guidebook that I needed just practical. Here it is again, I'm from New York. I'm straightforward. You know, here you need to do XYZ, and then you need to do A, B and C, and there's no fluff in it, or any of that other type of stuff in it. And I I love it. I love it. I love the response that I get from people, because you and I are in a very challenging realm where it's filled with shame and guilt and people really struggle to come forward and either have the courage to ask for help, but then when they ask for help and they get the help, they're a little hesitant to tell everybody else about the help that they're getting. So for example, you know, with my book, I have people emailing me separately, not giving me a Google review or an Amazon review, because they don't want their name out there. Of you know, they got services and whatnot. And I get the most beautiful emails and beautiful cards thanking me and that that fills my soul. It makes it all worthwhile. So we circle back to I'm grateful. Yeah, I am grateful for it. I wouldn't change a thing. And I know I went through so much hurt and so much pain and so much digging through my past and really coming to grips with who I am, but now I love who I am. I absolutely do, and for me, it was Mirror work, mirror work where I had to look in the mirror. I had to look deep into my own eyes, see the green in my eyes, and remind myself and make commitments to myself, forgive myself, hear the words out of my mouth, not in my head, but out of my mouth, I forgive you for not seeing the signs and

when people Yeah, yeah. And I was going to say that too, you know, like with the whole forgiving ourselves, a lot of people, when they're first on this journey, they don't see where they need to forgive themselves. But as you go on that process, it just comes to you naturally. Because, like I said before, I was in that state of blaming others, and it was like, Well, where do I need to where? Where am I in all of this? Because all you can see is outwards, and once you can actually see inwards, it's like, holy smokes, there, there's, there's so many things that I need to forgive myself for because we're so hard on ourself and we're in denial of that correct.

And somebody mentioned to me that my name Vanessa is butterfly in Greek. I haven't quite verified that yet, but I'm going to run with that for the moment, because butterflies, Monarch butterflies, butterflies, in general, they can't see their own wings. They don't see their own beauty. And I found that really interesting, because I now see it. I didn't see it before, because, again, my insides were just they were just clogged with so much emotion and rage and insecurities and guilt and shame and all of these negative emotions they were they were strangling me from the inside out, and once you start to clear that all away, you make room. You make room. For the good stuff,

yeah, yeah. And going back to the forgiving yourself. That was the biggest thing that I had to forgive myself about is the shame that I had, and all of us have that shame, and it's really hard to forgive yourself for that, you know. And it's now, it's just all a part of the process, you know. And or, the fear that I carried for so long, or me being that people pleaser, or me being that chameleon, or me not me not seeing things for what they really were, I think that was the biggest thing, is me not seeing the things that were really happening in front of me, not wanting to, you know, and it's like, okay, that's that's okay. It's okay. Through your whole process. Vanessa, the experiences that you went through, what are the we always have, all these experiences and these light bulb moments. They're, you know, these awakenings. But what is it that you learned the most? Do you think through that this whole journey that you went through?

How important love actually is for yourself. We love our children, we love our pets, we love our plants, we love our house, we love so many external things. Beatles said it best, all you need is love, but you need a lot of self love. You need to fill yourself up with self love, because this is it, and it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. Why is it beautiful? Because we're all unique. We're all unique as our fingerprint. That's why our relationships are unique. There's no two relationships that are exactly the same. I tell my clients right out of the gate, I'm like, I am not the be all, end all. I am not the be all, end all. I will make a lot of suggestions to you that have either a worked for me or worked for my clients, but if they don't work for you, that's fine. We're going to find something else. Absolutely it's not a one size fits all. It doesn't work that way because you are so unique. And you're unique because of your past experiences, how you process all that past stuff you're right here right now, and how you look to the future. Do you look to the future with apprehension and a little bit of nervousness, or do you look to the future with excitement? They somewhat feel the same. The difference is the outcome. Because when you have excitement, kind of know the outcome. You know what's going to happen. You know it's going to happen. It's going to be good. When you're nervous, you don't quite know what the outcome is going to be, and you agonize over the outcome. Make it happen, do it that's

wonderful. I really, really like how you said to love yourself, to start loving yourself, because when we have our children, that's that is a natural, unconditional love. It's, it's there, it's, it just comes out of us. But then when we think of loving ourself, that's on a totally different level of love. So you get all these different experiences. And when I look at myself now and I love myself, it is in the aspect of accepting me for who I am and knowing that I am going to make mistakes, but that's a Okay, or you, and it's, I don't know how to explain it how I feel, but you know what I'm talking about. If you can put that into words for me or but, but it's, it truly is. It's a totally different level of love and it, it is 100% acceptance and knowing everything's going to be okay and that I've got, I can wake up the next morning and you know what? I can start all over. It's just one big ball.

Mm, hmm. It transcends time, space, everything, yeah, just does. And you

learning to not be so hard on myself either, and it's just like, go with the flow. It's good. Yes, everything's gonna work out in the end. Lots of self talk. Don't you agree?

Oh yes, self talk is so important again, because we have that inner critic, who I lovingly, affectionately call my nasty chick voice, because she can come out, she absolutely can, especially for judgment and be very judgy, especially when we become warriors with our thumbs. We can swipe up, we can swipe down, we can swipe left, we can swipe right, and now we can be very dismissive with our thumbs, or we can fire off what we're thinking without any filter. Ooh, that's kind of dangerous. That can be very hurtful. I know Sticks and stones may Big Brown bones, but words will never hurt me. Yeah, ask anybody. Has anybody ever said anything to you that's really hurt you? Yeah, there's some words that have hurt more so than any kind of sticks or stones. Yeah, most words come from within. We are brutal to ourselves. All day long. We are having an internal dialog with ourselves. Think about how you talk to yourself, because we all do it. Some of us talk out loud, but others, we're having the dialog in our head constantly. We need to change that dialog to be empowering, to be a cheerleader. Yes, you can do it. Yes, you can do it. Why can't you do it?

And that's the funny thing, Vanessa, when you brought up Sticks and stones may break your bones. And growing up, we heard that, you know, always going to school and stuff like that. And I had a really good conversation a couple months ago where that was an absolute lie. Bones do hurt you. They hurt me my entire life. Those words of, I'm dumb, you're stupid, Shannan, you're never going to mount to anything. Those words destroyed me. Those words actually became my identity. And so the words that you put out into the world, or the words that you think about yourself, you really need to be careful, because your own dialect is what can destroy you. And that destroyed me for years, but I had let my abuser say those things to me. I believe them. I'm not going to say I let I listened to them for years, and it wasn't until I got older and I took control of who I was where I was like, wow, those are lies. Those are total lies. And that's why I'm really extremely careful now, of the words that come out of my mouth towards my children, because that is so, so important, and also the words that I say to myself, and a lot of people need to hear this, and need to realize, you know, when you're calling your kid an idiot all the time. What? What do you think you're doing to that child that you supposedly love? You're making him think that he is a total idiot, right? Totally self esteem away. Yes,

even if it's said in jest or with a giggle at the end, you know? Yeah, the the words that we use, especially around our children, yeah, because they also mimic it. So now they're telling Johnny in class, you know. So now Johnny's getting it, you know, and we're just spreading it. No, we don't need to do that. We don't need to do that to lift each other up. And one of the best exercises that I did early on, and actually it was my business coach way back at the start of my career that suggested this, and I actually really liked it, and I incorporated into what I do now is when I ask my clients, I want you to write down 20 things that you're proud of. They can't think of anything beyond like five or six. They really, really struggle with it. And this business coach that I had advised me, he says, you know, once a year, reach out to the people around you, your colleagues, your directors, the people that work a couple levels down or a couple levels above, and say that you're doing something for your own improvement, for your own sense of moving forward. And you'd like to get an idea just three words that they would use to describe you. It's a very interesting exercise, because if you get a sample of 15 people that write back, you know, Vanessa's X, Y and Z, Vanessa's A, B and C, Vanessa's A, B, X, you know, and you get all these different words, you'll start to see the patterns of how people actually see you. It's very liberating to see that, because then suddenly you have a frame of reference for that inner critic, and that inner critic rises. You can look back at this list. This is the list of what your colleagues think of you, and that will help get the ball rolling for you, for you to think, not that I want you to think of how others perceive you. It's an idea to jump start how you see yourself, because sometimes we're blind, sometimes we see the world through rose colored glasses, but when we look at ourselves, they are the darkest sunglasses. You can barely see through them, because we don't look at ourselves, right. More beautiful, truly, truly are we just we need to let it out. We need to let our wisdom and our beauty out from the inside, out.

On that note, Vanessa, people that are listening to this podcast that are going through really hard times when it comes to betrayal. So what advice would you give them?

Right out of the gate, ask for help. Do not do this by yourself. It is so challenging to get through this process of healing from betrayal by yourself. You are not alone. You are not alone. There are so many resources available for you. I have five different ones to be able to go through the process, either self paced, on your own, where you want just a little bit of a touch point, or if you want to work one on one intensely, to get through it all in a timely manner, because you can't rush it. It's not a situation where you can, you know, how many days is it going to take me to heal from betrayal? And you throw that into Google, and you put in all kinds of criteria. I've been married this long and I have two kids, and this zip code, and I have this much money in the bank, and it goes, you'll be healed in 87 days. It doesn't quite work that way, however, with proper guidance and going through all of the various different stages of betrayal, because it's not linear. It is a roller coaster. You go up and down, similar to a merry go round, but you do get off the merry go round, and you do have an opportunity to plant your feet on the ground and get a sense of confidence, of knowing you know what I'm going to get through this. I'm absolutely going to get through this. And

it's a journey of transformation, of total self discovery. And as you go through that process, it's like an onion is being peeled and being peeled. Everything is being shed from you. And there's going to be a lot of things that come up, that pop up that you didn't even realize that you that you were hurt by and then, and then you're going to get off stream a little bit, and then there's going to be something else that comes along, and then you're going to come back to your own self, and it's like, oh my goodness. And it's just layer after layer after layer. And you know, just as well as I do that as humans, we are going through this process for the rest of our lives. And you're, you're never, ever, ever going to be completely 100% healed, but it's the process that you go through is what is, what counts that you're actually doing it and you're doing the work. Beautiful. Vanessa, just beautiful. So tell me and the audience where you are now.

Oh, where I am now. Well, I'm so excited. I am going to be speaking at Harvard in the fall, as well as Columbia. Thank you. I just spoke at Humber College yesterday, which was great, because it gives an opportunity for me to speak to the next generation and to let them know that it's okay to express themselves. They have such challenges because of so many outside forces that come at them in social media. Yes, it was designed to pull us together, but, oh, it can tear us apart as well, because we lose the art of conversation. Just being able to talk, be able to listen, to be able to engage. Ah, it's so beautiful to do that. So where I am right at this moment is I am still married. We celebrated 33 years this year. We have a little asterisk that we put next to the 33 because we did have some challenging years that we needed to work through, but we did work through them, for which I am ridiculously grateful for, as as it turned out in my particular situation, we did want to stay together. I, of course, on that day, took off my wedding rings and handed them right to him. With that being said, he fought very hard he did. I give him 150% credit for what he did those first couple of months of me laying on my bedroom floor, he really did not expect me to fall apart in the way that I and it was a very good good's probably not the right word, a very cleansing part of our marriage where we were really able to start communicating, because we had we had fallen into micromanaging pretty much everything in our lives, our kids and our schedules and our work and even our relationship. We were micromanaging. We lost that initial intoxic. Vacation. You know the feeling when you first fall in love and those butterflies, and you get dressed up to go out and you have a date? And now, and I always thought it was really humorous when our friends would talk about date night, and I'm like, date night, yeah, that date night. Now, yes, yes, that's a very, very important part of any relationship, is having date night, having that opportunity to talk to talk about the present, to talk about the future, not from a micromanagement point of view, but to dream and dream big. And my husband and I, our favorite game, our favorite favorite game, is the wouldn't it be nice. Wouldn't it be nice? Oh, that is such a fascinating game. Why? Because when we were playing it four or five years ago, I said, Wouldn't it be nice if I got to speak on stage? And then he says, Well, what stage do you want to speak on and I started rattling off stages. He reminded me of that a couple of weeks ago. He says, Do you remember when he played the what if game? And I said, of course, we play it every once in a while. We haven't played it in a while, but I'd love to. And he said, Yeah. He says, You mentioned speaking on stage at universities. Did? Yeah? You did. I remember it because I thought it was such a lofty goal, but I saw it. He saw me on stage, and now it's coming it's coming true. Because you have to use your words. You have to say your dreams. What do you want to do? Where do you want to be? We underestimate what we can do. We overestimate what we can do in a couple of months, but we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.

What I love about your story is you are the possibility. That's like my story. I am the possibility. And you know, what we're doing for our children is just huge. You know, for them to see, you know, you and your husband in a loving, loving relationship, showing them what a marriage should be like, and now they're going to create that marriage for themselves. Is huge, massive. And I just love that about your story.

Thank you.

Well, at this time I'm going to wrap up our interview. There's just so much that you talked about, and it's absolutely beautiful story. It's beautiful. And if anybody wants to get a hold a Vanessa and find out more about her. All of this is going to be in the notes on the podcast, so please share it with friends and like and subscribe to the podcast as well. And at this time, Vanessa, I want to say thank you so much for being a part of my journey. I loved every minute with you. So thank you

likewise. Thank you so much.