Found here
Hi, I’m Teri Lynn
I hope this helps you get to know me, figure out if I know what I’m talking about, and decide if I’m the right person to help. Listen to your gut. I trust it’s guiding you. I think there might be a reason you found yourself here.
Before we dive into the cheating chapter of my story, I hope it’s ok if I start with some more recent events. Knowing what I’ve walked through lately might help get to know me best. It might explain how helping women through life’s toughest challenges has become my soul’s calling.
Do you see those pictures of me below? Climbing mountains, racing my motorcycle, skiing, skydiving, boxing, running races, bungee jumping, etc.? Cool right? I certainly thought so.
That version of me died July 13th, 2020…
I was riding my motorcycle when a car swerved into my lane. I launched 40 feet off my motorcycle (Scarlet ;), crushing my bike and body. The impact collapsed my lung and lacerated my liver, spleen, and adrenal gland. It broke 21 bones, blew an artery that almost killed me on site, shattered my wrist “like sawdust,” cracked my helmet in half, and left me with a brachial plexus injury. I endured five surgeries, a second brush with death (a mistake left me drowning in my own blood for 9 hours), and three weeks in ICU.
It’s taken three years to recover my ability to work, live and function. The brachial plexus injury permanently paralyzed my left arm (my broken ‘wing’), and I lost the ability to do most of the cool things that defined who I was. (I also initiated a divorce while in the ICU, but that’s a story for another day)
I’ve experienced levels of physical pain that I thought would kill me and some days wished would. And losses. Ugh. The big ones were swift but strangely, easier to accept. Motorcycles, waterskiing, having to cut all my hair off. But the little losses. These still take me by surprise and hit me more deeply. The first time I realized I could never clap again. Or gesture with two hands, (“It was this big!”) or hug my sons with both arms.
So, I understand a little about overcoming hard times
I understand pain. Emotional and physical. And I know how hard it is to lose stuff. People, things, relationships, even ideas of who you thought you were or were going to become.
Getting through this has taken every ounce of strength, grit, and courage I have. I‘ve become good at ‘loss’. I know how to deal with pain, grief, and trauma. What to do with it. I’ve had to lose everything and reinvent my life several times.
Creating meaning out of life’s difficulties
Tough times have taught me that I can create meaning and grow personally from even the most horrible experience. Not by pretending to be positive or ignoring how difficult it is. But, by always reaching for something deeper. By staying open through the pain. Working with the trauma.
My accident has brought more depth to my relationships with my sons. I’m a better mother because of it. (And I’m so grateful I’m still here for them) I’m also a better human. I listen more, talk less, and cherish more deeply.
I appreciate my body differently. When you come close to death when you can’t breathe when you have so many injuries you think you will die….and you don’t…. well, it fills you with gratitude for your body’s unbelievable ability to survive. Your body can mend broken bones, vessels, tissue, and organs….and it’s simply miraculous.
I dropped a lot of judgment and found compassion for people in pain or unable to get off drugs. Specifically opioids. It’s a heroic accomplishment.
I appreciate the gift of being pain-free. You can’t truly understand what a genuine gift it is unless you’ve experienced the kind of mind-numbing pain that makes you not want to be here.
I actually ‘see’ disability now too. With different eyes. I didn’t before. I didn’t ‘see’ it at all. And for that, I’m glad.
And gratitude! People get hurt and die all around the world, every second of every hour of every day. Even while you sit here reading this. Just waking up healthy each morning is somewhat miraculous. And the Doctors, Nurses, EMTs, Firemen, Dispatchers, and Police who work to save our lives. They saved MY life. It still brings tears three years later. We often forget that to be alive in this beautiful, but dangerous place is a miracle.
There’s much more. But the most meaningful to me emotionally has been coming to peace with who I am. I have nothing left to prove. I spent most of my life trying to be special in some way, trying to be seen. Not feeling like I was enough. But walking through these losses in my life the way I have…… dealing with the injuries and extreme levels of pain I’ve endured….somehow it’s created deep respect and reverence for myself. I’m proud of me.
I think I can show you how to be proud of you too.
Onto the cheating chapter…..
A few lifetimes ago, I walked out of a 15 year marriage damn near overnight (about nine weeks) for a man I fell in love with. I had never cheated before. I had never flirted. I had never done anything inappropriate or even thought about it. I found myself in unknown territory with no idea what to do. But I knew I couldn’t stay. I actually loved someone else. Staying felt crueler than leaving. I had two kids and not enough income to survive. I was terrified. But I knew I couldn’t be a cheater AND a liar. So I confessed, and then…I left.
Not lying was one of the few things I could hold my head up about while enduring a decade of shame and judgment for being a cheater. As well as guilt that I will carry for my lifetime.
As for the guy, I loved him. But turns out, he was a serial cheater. I learned that much later. There’s not enough space on this page to cover that whole story. But I can promise you that eight years of living in a cheating hell forged an incredible resource of knowledge and wisdom. There is nothing I didn’t learn about cheating during that time. Why people cheat, if they will cheat again, the motives of the person who cheated, AND the motives of who they cheated with…… there’s not much I can’t see through. Now.
When you’ve walked through a fire…
I never wanted to become a cheating expert. I lived in shame about my cheating for so many years I certainly didn’t want to advertise it to the world. But, when I tried looking for help for myself, I didn’t find it.
No one seemed to genuinely understand that when you are cheated on, it threatens every aspect of your psyche. You stand to lose everything that defines you. Your partner, home, money, self-esteem, social structure, and even your family and children. It’s a threat at every level, and your brain interprets this like your life is literally at stake. Being cheated on equals potential rejection, banishment, and abandonment from our ‘tribe.’ Our primitive brains equate it to potential death.
Most coaches or therapists I found didn’t quite get this. They may have been great practitioners, but without personal experience, there was just something missing. Others were religion based and preached only to “stay.” Concrete, practical, relationship-specific advice was lacking. As was a genuine understanding of the depth of irrationality and fear you feel. The destruction of your self-worth. Let alone the practicalities of dealing with the other woman.
I understood all of this. Not just as someone who had been cheated on, but as someone who had cheated. I knew I had the experience and wisdom to help others. But, I didn’t want it.
That changed one fateful day when I heard, “When you’ve walked through a fire, it’s part of your journey to turn around and extend your hand to the person behind you.” I burst into tears. Knowing those words were for me. I was afraid. I’m STILL scared some days. But I’m also incredibly grateful I found the courage to make that choice.
Courage, Truth, and Strength are found within pain.
Life is beautiful and also devastating. People will hurt you, and you will hurt them. Things happen that change your life in an instant. You will lose things. Relationships, possessions, money, jobs, dreams, loved ones, and sometimes like me, even physical functions or parts of yourself. It doesn’t mean life is over, even though it feels like it. Life will and does go on. We don’t control what happens, but we do control the meaning we choose to create from it.
Whatever your loss is, will it be something you never let go of or get over? Or….. will you decide to work with it? Pain can wound you, close you off, shut you down, and leave you less than you were. Or, it can crack you open, push you into something more and grow you into a woman you can be proud of.
If you need strength, courage, guidance, and someone to show you how to get through,
Here’s my hand.