the part of healing nobody warns you about
- Shawn Haywood, PhRD
- Apr 21
- 3 min read
Something strange happened this week.
YOU LAUGHED.
A real one, not the painted-on laugh you've been wearing for months.
And for a split second, before anything else kicked in, you felt like YOU again.
Like the woman before everything was still in there somewhere.
And then the guilt crashed in.
"How can I be laughing like this? My entire world is falling apart."
So you pulled yourself back into the pain, because at least the pain makes sense.
At least that feels like what you're supposed to be feeling at this point.
But what if that guilt is lying to you?
Because it is.
Your nervous system has been running in protection mode since the day you found out.
Scanning, bracing, on high alert every waking minute.
That constant state of being on guard became your normal.
So your brain started treating it as the baseline, the way things are supposed to feel.
So when a good moment breaks through, your brain doesn't trust it.
It feels wrong.
Not because it IS wrong, but because your body has been braced for pain for so long that joy doesn't feel safe anymore.
And that sick feeling that creeps in the moment joy shows up, like you need to punish yourself for forgetting what he did?
That doesn't mean you don't care enough.
It's your brain saying "wait, we're supposed to be on guard still."
If reading this is the first time someone has told you that your good days aren't something to apologize for, I want to help you hold onto that feeling.
I need you to really let this sink in : a good moment does NOT mean you're "over it."
It doesn't shrink the weight of what you've been carrying.
And it does not mean you've betrayed yourself by feeling okay for five minutes.
Something in you was brave enough to drop the armor for a moment.
Healing from betrayal doesn't move in a straight line.
You'll have days where you're underwater and days where you catch your breath, and both of those belong to the same process.
Your bad days don't erase the good ones.
And a good day doesn't mean you're skipping over what happened or pretending the pain was smaller than you know it was.
You're still in there.
Still whole underneath what he left behind.
And your body is slowly, carefully, finding its way back to you.
So the next time a good moment shows up and the guilt tries to pull you back under, try something small for me.
Put your hand on your chest and say out loud: "I am allowed to feel this. A good moment is not a betrayal of my pain."
Just once. See what shifts.
You don't have to justify your good days.
They're not a reward for suffering enough.
Those good moments are the first quiet signs that your HEALING has already begun, even when everything else still feels uncertain.
Five days of small, guided steps to help your body feel safe again, at your own pace.
Warmly,
Shawn 💛
P.S. If that guilt has been sitting heavy on you, or there's something you've been carrying that you haven't said out loud to anyone yet, send me an email and let it out. I read every single one. Or if you want a quiet place to process what's surfacing, sink into the Beyond the Betrayal Workbook and pour it onto the page. Either way, you allow yourself to let some of it go.
About Dr. Shawn Haywood
Dr. Shawn Haywood is the founder of Reimagine Love. She is a classically trained therapist, as well as a life and marriage coach, who loves to work with women and couples to help them heal fully after an affair. Over the past 25 years, she has helped thousands of women move from the cycle of disconnect to one of unbreakable love and connection, while healing fully after infidelity, in a fraction of the time of traditional marriage counseling.
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