Thanksgiving can be a beautiful holiday and a brutally complicated one when you’re healing from betrayal.
As the world around us leans into gratitude, gathering, and connection, you may find yourself sitting with emotions that feel anything but thankful. Your body may still be carrying the shock, grief, and distrust that betrayal creates. You may be navigating a relationship that feels uncertain, or holding the ache of what’s been lost. And you might be wondering how, in the midst of all of this, you’re supposed to take a deep breath and offer thanks.
If that’s where you are this season, I want you to know this: there is nothing wrong with you. In fact, it makes perfect sense. Gratitude can feel inaccessible – or even painful – when the foundation of safety and belonging has been shaken. We cannot force our hearts into appreciation when they are still fighting to make sense of harm.
But here’s the hopeful part: healing doesn’t ask you to manufacture gratitude. It invites you to notice the smallest, quietest signs of your own resilience.
Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be a declaration that everything is okay. It can simply be an acknowledgment that you are still here. Still choosing healing, still moving toward clarity, still reaching for steadiness inside a story you didn’t ask for. That kind of honesty is its own form of gratitude. A grounded, gentle, fiercely truthful gratitude.
If you feel grateful for anything this year, let it begin with the ways you’ve kept going even when the path felt uncertain. Let it begin with the moments when you told the truth about your needs, or set a boundary that protected your heart, or paused long enough to regulate your overwhelmed nervous system. These small, courageous choices matter. They are the beginnings of self-coherence: the alignment between your inner truth and your outer actions that becomes the bedrock of healing.
And if you’re not feeling gratitude at all? That’s okay too. Sometimes the most hopeful thing we can do is honor exactly where we are. Healing after betrayal is not linear. Some seasons are about survival. Some are about rebuilding. Some are simply about allowing your heart to rest.
My hope for you this Thanksgiving is simple: may you feel some small moments of rest, comfort and connection as you navigate this holiday weekend.
About the Author:
Michelle Mays is a Licensed Professional Counselor and expert in treating sexual betrayal and trauma. She’s also the author of the new book The Betrayal Bind: How to Heal When the Person You Love the Most Has Hurt You the Worst. Michelle has created a new treatment model to address the devastating dilemma that betrayed partners face when their significant other is unsafe to connect to, yet connection is the key to healing.
Braving Hope® is a ground-breaking coaching intensive for betrayed partners around the world. Working with Michelle will help you to move out of the devastation of betrayal, relieve your trauma symptoms and reclaim your life.
