Before what we in the infidelity community call "D-day," my life was full—full of gratitude, challenges, and mostly good. My life was nowhere near perfect—punctuated with the losses one experiences when we are lucky enough to live long enough. I had lived a largely intact existence blessed with friends, a beautiful place to call home, and good food on my table.

As a function of my positive, benefit-of-the-doubt attitude, I'd taken difficulties in stride. I mostly found solutions or learned to live with, and even celebrate reality.

And then came D-day.

Yes, I was aware of my unfaithful husband's (UH) tendencies to procrastinate, to not follow through, to leave me to fill in the gaps. Yes, I knew he was, at times, uncomfortably focused on sex, how to get more from me and frustrated that I was not sexual enough for him.

The beautiful, sturdy vase of many colors that was my life still shone day in and out as a testament to my positive look-forwardness and super energy to make things work, even if to 'work' was not what I'd imagined. I was resilient, flexible, and forgiving of the world's imperfections and mostly happy.

My UH's choice to blow up my world shattered that vase of beauty–scattered the fragments of what I thought had been my beautiful life–into a million smithereens. In the space of time it took him to utter the words, "Affair," and "Since 1989." My love-lit, light- lit world detonated into darkness, dust, and the scattering of those lovely shards of happiness that used to be me.

How could this happen? Hadn't I played life in all sincerity—giving and loving to the best of my ability? Why would the world deal me such a blow? Why would the man I thought loved and protected me instantly be exposed as my life's greatest threat and heartbreak?

I reached for the pieces. I fell to my knees and tried to gather as much of what remained as I could. I wept over the pile of sparkle and dust in my lap, knowing I could never glue it all back together. My life as I knew it was gone forever—in one horrible moment.

Even now, as I write, my throat tightens, and the weight of the truth presses against my chest, and a tear is brought to my eye. I grieve for the woman who gave everything she had to a dream that was not real—a dream that was being manipulated to look pretty. In reality, it was actually infused with the evil of addiction and the thinking/actions such emotional immaturity brings with it. Such brokenness disguised in a coat of many colors as a faithful husband. Beneath that cloak were lies and justifications and resentments.

>ver the past six years, I have searched for the fragments of my life. I've looked through the many dark nights of my soul, through the vail of tears, through books, blogs, and workshops of experts helping thousands such as myself try to make sense of the fragments that used to be their lives.

The experts helped. The books helped. The workshops, mentors, helpers, and counselors helped. Yet no one and none of it could help me piece together what was once my heart. None of them knew my intimate heart...but me.

And so, I have worked tirelessly to reconstruct our finances after he decimated them on the altar of self-aggrandizement and bottomless need for adoration. I realigned the money ducks into that metaphorical row. And then two and a half years later came the sexual infidelity bomb that made my re-gluing all the more complicated—and impossible. No neat rows of numbers, no methodical counting and saving would do now. I had to come to terms with the fact that there was no way to glue together this level of destruction—no way to EVER have a better past that was protected and cherished by a healthy faithful spouse. That would never be my reality. It was smoke and mirrors. I hit rock bottom of my soul. I was never loved as I had loved.

The beautiful, colorful sparkles and beauty of my life vase would never be able to be reconstructed—never look anything like it had.

I spent three and a half years collecting what was left: the sparkly bits, the raw umbers, and rich golds; the bright, sunny, yellow pieces, the deep lapis, and pearly whites. And so painfully, slowly, on bended knees—bent over the cold, barren, hard floor of my new existence, I began to lay down one tiny shard at a time. I began forming a new pattern of broken pieces into some semblance of a new world: A reality that still held beautiful cloudless days, soft summer nights, tall golden grass on rounded California hills, gardens that sprouted tender new life and the birth of new faces into my day-to-day. The shards meandered like a lazy stream seemingly in a ramble toward an indistinct future.

Slowly, so painfully slow on the hard floor of reality, a pathway, a stream, a new life burst of a million colors began to form something that might even be called exquisite: My new life–my mosaic never dreamed of, never courted, never meant to be in my mind's eye–a reality. My new reality that can and is still something good...even beautiful.

My mosaic.

My life.