Midlife Isn’t a Crisis, It’s a Comeback: Maddie Corman on Being Accidentally Brave

Jen Hatmaker: All right, Maddie, we are so happy to meet you. I’ve grown up with you. You’re so familiar to me.

Maddie Corman: Well, I’ve grown down with you, Jen. My soul has steadied with you. I’m happy to hear you know who I am. I’m a big fan and I love the podcast. I’ve learned a lot. You too, Amy. I’ve learned a lot from you. Just the other day, what did I hear? Self-comfort, not self-care, those are two separate things. Love that.

Jen Hatmaker: We occasionally get some zingers on here, don’t we? I was just telling Amy before you popped on, Maddie, that you are in one of the absolute best movies of all time, clearly and certainly one of my favorites, which is Some Kind of Wonderful.

Maddie Corman: Yeah, that was good. It’s so nice because I was one of the only actual teenagers in that film. Everybody else was playing younger. I was playing a little bit younger, but I was 16 and I am no longer 16 and it’s great that it’s held up. I had the time of my life making that during the worst time of my life. My mom…

Jen Hatmaker: Yeah, that’s right. Wow. Is that right?

Maddie Corman: My mom was in the hospital when I had my callback for that film in New York. I went back to the, this was in the eighties. We didn’t have cell phones. We had pagers. I can’t even remember the name of it, a payphone. I was in the hospital where my mom was, very sick. I used this thing we had to hold up to the phone and you could get your voicemail. I don’t know if anybody had that, but it would go beep beep beep and it would rewind and play your voice messages. They said, I must not have been checking in, of course, because my mother got sick quickly and surprisingly. But I checked and they said, you’re supposed to be at this place across town. I went in a taxi in my shorts and T-shirt. I was not prepared. I came back to the hospital and I told my mom that I got the part. But of course I had no idea whether I had gotten it. Nobody said, you got the part. I just told her to make her feel better. She died a week or so after that. That was all I thought about. About two weeks or a month after I got a call back because they wanted to make sure this 16-year-old was mentally okay enough to go make this teen comedy, which I was very offended. I was like, of course I’m fine. But of course they did. Anyway, I went and met John Hughes and then I actually did get to go shoot it. It was a dream. It was wonderful. My little brother and my dad and I went out to California and got to forget about life by day and then we’d all cry at night. It’s a very special part of, and I wasn’t miserable while I was making it. I was thrilled. It was great.

Some of those people are still very much in my life. Eric Stoltz is one of my dear, I mean, I still call him big brother and he calls me little sister, which is somehow he hasn’t aged and I have, but yeah, we have a very close friendship.

Jen Hatmaker: Let’s get serious. You both look amazing. You look exactly the same. There is just your face and it’s the same face that was that face. That’s true. So you are absolutely killing it. It’s just amazing to watch your career. You have such an interesting career and you’ve been film and TV and stage and…you write your own material and you perform other people’s material, you just, you like run the whole gamut of being an actor and a performer and it has to feel pretty amazing. Are we the same age? How old are you, Maddie?

Maddie Corman: I’m 55. I like that I get to be between 50 and 55. Yeah. Who cares? I know.

Jen Hatmaker: You know, at this age, there’s a 15-year range where I’m like, we’re all the same age. That’s this like 47 is the same as 59.

Maddie Corman: Especially if you’re an actress. Once you’re 45, you may as well be 90.

Jen Hatmaker: That is so true. That is so true.

We love having you here. We have been in a series called Midlife Renaissance. And we had some really amazing guests on and we’re talking about this age, being our age and what it looks like to reinvent in a thousand ways. So whether it’s like some of our relationships or our relationship with our own bodies, for some people it’s what their faith has evolved to or from. And you are our final guest in this series. And we’ve just been really looking forward to you because we’re interested in this idea of reframing midlife, sort of. You know, historically it had this connotation of just kind of being a crisis, like, well, life’s over gals, you know, like you had a good run and reframing it toward more like a season of awakening and of clarity, but while also acknowledging that this season of life often comes with some loss. The loss of what we thought we had, maybe, a lot of us have a loss of a marriage or a key relationship. We’re losing some of our roles. Our kids are growing up and moving out. Just it’s interesting to hold loss in one hand at midlife and reinvention in the other.

Maddie Corman: Yeah, absolutely. Yep, absolutely.

Jen Hatmaker: And so I’d love to hear, some of your thoughts on this, like maybe I remember when I used to think 50 was the tipping point. That’s when you’re old.

Maddie Corman: Well, I have been listening and it’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating time to be a woman now, to be turning this age now. I have outlived my mother. I didn’t mean to make this whole interview about my mom, but I could.

Jen Hatmaker: No, I love it, Talia. We’d love to hear about her.

Maddie Corman: You know, well, she was awesome, really awesome, Irene. And people I find who lose parents don’t say their names, especially if it’s a mom. We just say my mom. But my mom was Irene and being the age I am now and that you guys are now people are losing their parents and I didn’t know anybody who had lost a parent. So that was the beginning of my otherness. Something I talk about in the show I wrote about myself was that when a new trauma happened, I promised that this time around I wouldn’t say I’m okay before I actually am.

Because when my mom died, I just was so aware of how other people, it makes other people uncomfortable when you are in deep grief. Or at least that was my impression and I think I was correct. I’m really good at taking your temperature and then figuring out how I feel. And I was like, they don’t like this. So I’m gonna just say I’m okay. I knew I wasn’t, but I also knew I couldn’t share it with you. And I thought if I did share it with you, that my grief would swallow you and me whole. So being at an age now, middle age or whatever we wanna call it, where other people are doing grief so beautifully, I have amazing girlfriends. I have guy friends too, and I have a husband who I love. We’ll get to that. And children who I adore. But my female friends are really my guides in a lot of ways. I try not to make them my higher power, but I do sometimes by accident.

Jen Hatmaker: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, me too.

Maddie Corman: Watching people lose a mother or a father and walk through it with going…No, grief isn’t linear. No, I don’t feel okay today. No, I’m not coming out to the dinner because I’m too in my feelings. Or, yeah, I’m going to come, but I’m going to be quiet. Like, modeling that and learning I’m allowed to do that. And so that to me is partly what this time of life is about. And…Being a motherless daughter from the time I was a teenager, I think it really affected the way I raised my kids, not always in a good way. And I’m trying, they’re young adults now, but I’m still trying to, it was so hard for me to ever let them feel any discomfort or sadness because I just knew what that felt like.

And when I would drop my first especially at nursery school and she would be crying. Just, you know, I wanted to lay on the floor with her and then I would call. I mean, I was that parent, you know, who would call. I think it was a two and a half hour day, by the way. This was the first kid. This was the first kid. By the second and third, I was like, you’re fine. But the first one, I was like, no, she misses me. I would call and her teacher would say…

So I think this time for me, being an empty nester has been really awesome. I thought it was going to be terrible, but I love it. I’m still talking all about my kids, but letting them have their relationships with each other. One of my sons, I have twin boys and a girl, and one of my boys is doing a semester abroad, and the other two siblings took a trip and met him.

I don’t know what this has to do with my time of middle life, but somebody said to me, you having FOMO? And I said, not at all. To me, the fact that they’re together and no one’s looking at me about what are we gonna do for dinner, I was like, this is the best. I love that they love each other, that they wanna be together. And I love that I don’t have to, because even when they’re not asking me to, when we’re all together as a family, we all just go back to our roles and suddenly the same me who tonight might eat out of a tin, you know, like whatever is left and that’s fine. Like I would never do that when my kids, like I would give them a plate of something. So perhaps I should look at treating myself better, but I also find, I find this age to be a relief.

Jen Hatmaker: Yeah, yeah.

Maddie Corman: I have outlived my mother, so there is something really powerful about that. Feel like, not like I’m on borrowed time, but almost like bonus time. I went through a really, really big, traumatic situation with my marriage and my family and my life. It’s coming up on 10 years now. Yeah, me too. And I am… So if that’s something that we’re going to talk about, I do want to let people know that my kids, they really don’t like when I talk about them, but I really feel like they’re not listening to this podcast. They might be, but I feel pretty good.

Jen Hatmaker: I agree. I don’t think they’re in the target demo. Huh. Yeah.

Maddie Corman: I feel like I feel like who I’m talking to right now might really need to hear that after a really big, really big trauma that I thought was really going to destroy my children. Like I thought they were not going to be okay and they are thriving and funny and sensitive and smart and caring and annoying and they love me and I drive them crazy I’m sure. But I just wanted to share that because I feel like that was what saved my life was somebody saying my kids are okay who had gone through something again like, not the same story, but a betrayal and a betrayal that was known to the kids and known and and that she could reach out a hand to me and say my kids are awesome and they’re better than awesome. Anyway that was that was very important for me to hear so that’s one of the reasons I like to come on and talk to people like you guys.

Jen Hatmaker: I love that you included that. Think it very much is on point for the conversation to discuss what it is actually like to have growing young adult children because we have a billion kids. I have five and four and mine are all now in their twenties too. But the thing that we thought when they were, you know, little/elementary/middle, is well, that’s the end of it. That’s the end of joy, you know, or whatever we thought. But, it actually matters, I think, in the context of a midlife conversation to talk about, no, no, no, what it’s really like to have grown kids and watch them launch and endure and be resilient and recover and then thrive. And it’s a much better story, I think, than the one we were handed, right, when we were young moms? For sure. Much better. We’re always talking about it. I love the young. I love the bigs.

Maddie Corman: Yeah. I love it too. And it’s scary. I don’t have anyone I can look at. You know, one of the things about my mother, which I aspire to be, is that she could, I swear to God, from the way I closed the door go… Hmm tough day or what you and I was like, how do you and now I get that, you know, the umbilical cord goes all the way to Rome, Ohio, California. You know, my kids are not nearby right this moment and none of them I’ve always had one within driving distance and right now I don’t…

Jen Hatmaker: Yeah.

Amy Hardin: There’s so many cultural narratives around midlife, it being a decline, word crisis is always used. Why do you think that story that’s so powerful has stuck around for so long? And what do you think is the real story?

Maddie Corman: I mean, Amy, that’s such a good question. The woo-woo warrior part of me is like, well, it serves mankind with maybe an underline on man to keep us believing that this is not the most powerful time of our lives. We also, you know, I love TV and film and stage. I love it. I watch it. I’m in it. And we weren’t given a lot of examples, at least on TV that I saw of really, really powerful women coming into their prime when I was growing up. So I do think that it’s important for us to feel it and to show it to the next generation.

And I don’t know why, because I’m not that smart, but I don’t feel the way I thought I was going to feel at 55. And I don’t look the way I thought I was going to look, for better or for worse. But I feel stronger than I did when I was 25.

And…I wish, you know, it’s kind of like what I say about the trauma in my life and my marriage. I wish I could have all the gifts because there are gifts, but I wish I could have the cash and prizes without all the consequences. I wish I could look like I looked when I was 25, but feel this strength and this connection and this, I mean, I did so many things I didn’t want to do and I really try not to do that anymore. I thought it was just because I went through so much, it sounds like a lot of a lot of us, regardless of whether there’s that big shake up or not, can tap into that. I mean, for me, it was such a desperately sad thing to say this isn’t what my life was supposed to look like. It put me down. I was on the bathroom floor saying that very thing. This isn’t what it was supposed to look like.

And now, I just have had to redefine what success is and what it supposed to look like doesn’t really matter so much because it looked really good, but it didn’t feel good and it wasn’t real — a lot of things in my life. And it’s still hard. Aging is hard. The other day I got up and I was like, did I twist my ankle in the night? Like how is my ankle hurt between going to bed and going to pee?

Jen Hatmaker: That’s right, it doesn’t make sense. Uh-huh.

Maddie Corman: So, and I want to be able, I love that people are talking about perimenopause and menopause because, you know, I never thought to ask my mom about that before she died and I think that a lot of my friends who have moms didn’t ask them or aren’t asking them about it.

A friend of mine, who you guys should have on the show, Susan Dominus, wrote an article about menopause. And my father, my 89-year-old father, because it was in the New York Times, he read it and he was like, hey, Maddie. I go, Hey dad! How’s your menopause? I was like, what? But it was so great. It was actually really wild.

And then we we spoke a little bit about hormones and I actually said to him I wish mom were here and he said this is such a I keep bringing up weird things you guys are I’m off script but but Irene… so my mom died so young she had melanoma but we didn’t really know it but, she wasn’t sick a long time but my dad said well I and my dad has a new wonder, not so new, a wonderful, wonderful wife who’s my stepmother and has been since I was 19 years old and I love her, Pat, love, love, love. But I didn’t get to talk to my mom about menopause and my dad said, well, now I’ve been with two women who’ve been through menopause. And I was like, so I actually learned that my mother, even though she died at 47, had had early perimenopause, which I didn’t know. And… So it was actually the fact that my father could talk about this. So I do think there’s a power in this generation. And we’re a weird, wonderful bunch who I think we’re in between the women who put up with everything and the women who said this younger generation of whom I am related to and they’re so brave and they’re so ballsy and they speak up about everything and and I’m like, wait We only talk about it if it’s really extreme like cuz we don’t want to be. And so I’ve learned from both the older generation and the younger generation around this but I love that there’s a power in, I mean…

I’ve learned this from you Jen and from Brené Brown and Glennon (Doyle) and Liz Gilbert and all the women who say I can be vulnerable and honest and be powerful.

Jen Hatmaker: That’s right.

Amy Hardin: That’s the only way.

Maddie Corman: Yeah, I thought I could really curate my story and curate my personality. And when, you know, my husband got arrested and it was in all the papers, like I couldn’t do that anymore.

Jen Hatmaker: Yep. The gig is up.

Amy Hardin: Well, we’ve referenced it. Yeah. A couple of times, but let’s talk about Accidentally Brave. It’s a beautiful movie. It’s now on HBO. It started out as a one-woman play off Broadway that you wrote and performed in solo in front of live audiences. It’s so deeply personal and raw and vulnerable. What made you decide to put this part of your life on stage? And what did you learn about yourself through this particular creative process?

Maddie Corman: Yeah, you know, sometimes I wonder what made me decide. It didn’t seem like it was that crazy. Looking back, it’s like, wait, what? But I tell stories. I tell, I usually do other people’s scripts. And honest to God, when all of this was happening, and for those of you that don’t know, I know the details can be really upsetting. They were certainly upsetting to me, I just, you know, trigger warning for everybody. My husband was arrested early, early one morning, coming up on 10 years ago. And it was a complete shock. My three children were home. I was on my way to work. And he was arrested and charged on with charges of downloading illegal pornography, child sexual abuse pornography. And I say it’s triggering because obviously I’m going to talk about my experience, but I want to be really clear with you guys in the audience that I am completely horrified by this. And there are real victims that do not include me or my children. But the young people who are in these horrible videos.

So I had no idea that anything like this was going on. My husband, well there’s a lot to say, but you can watch the film, but he went to rehab. He was a secret porn addict. It had gotten to this terrible, terrible place. And within 24 hours or 48 hours, I can’t remember, it was this news was in the paper. It was all over Facebook. It was all over our community. Lived in a very small suburban town and every and he lost his all his work. And my kids were there, so they knew.

And that’s the crazy beginning of the story, but there was so much. So the reason I call it accidentally brave is the story was out there. I don’t know what I would have done if it had not been public. And obviously not all the story, and it’s still not all the story. I still told, I really wanted to tell them apart of the story because I talked earlier about being on the bathroom floor, but I was there a lot. And when the person that you love the most is not the person you thought they were, and you can’t talk about it with anybody, and you’re trying to protect your kids,

Jen Hatmaker: But everyone else is talking about it. I mean, I just can’t imagine.

Maddie Corman:  It’s the loneliest I’ve ever felt. And I’ve mentioned that I lost my mother, which was devastating, but when you lose your mother people bring a meatloaf over and when your husband’s arrested and you say I think he’s a sex addict and a porn addict there’s no meal train that’s coming. Maybe there would be now you know maybe there would be but I was not looking I was too scared to even ask for what I wanted or needed. And it was so scary and I just and it wasn’t like I should write a solo show about this but I did think, one day, I hope I can show people what this felt like instead of, now today I may not look that great, but I worked hard to look like I’m casual and okay. But like, I really wanted to show the messiness of this because that was what helped me was when I started to find other women and men who had been through this, mostly women.

I just, it’s so out of control. And there was something about, didn’t fully trust myself as a writer, but I trusted myself as an actor and storyteller to show this part of it. And it was important to me. I can’t fully explain why. I can’t fully explain how I wrote it. It really was, I mean, talk about your spirituality getting kicked up in middle age. Like I had to, I always had had kind of a secret like relationship with God, but there was nobody else.

There was no place else to go. And so I really had to get really quiet. I also had to listen to myself in a way that I hadn’t had to or wanted to. And there was just something in me that said, you can be of service. I didn’t do it right away. I mean, it seems soon to a lot of people. It was a couple of years in, but I was like, I don’t know what to do with this. So I just started writing it. I certainly didn’t think I would perform it. I just started writing about it. And some of the details felt so painful and important and I didn’t want to be the spokesperson for explaining sex addiction or porn addiction or anti-pornography. I just wanted to say this is what it felt like when my whole world fell apart and I wanted to put my arms around my kids and I wanted to hide my head under the sand and I wanted to kill my husband and I wanted to love my husband and I didn’t know what to do. And every time I poked my head out there were people saying you cannot stay and there were people saying you cannot leave and there were so many opinions and like I said earlier, I didn’t even realize how much I care what you think of me and that was taken away. I couldn’t. It was, it was, I just needed to see if the kids could be okay, and in that moment, maybe because I had lost a mom, maybe because I had had a 20-year marriage that was full of some really great stuff, maybe because I just saw this good man who had done a really, well looked at some really, really horrendous things. There was something that told me to just, and maybe because I found the world’s greatest therapist who said, if you stay or if you leave, you’re still gonna have to do this work because you’ve just experienced severe third-degree betrayal trauma. And that partner betrayal trauma is such a real thing. And I hadn’t read about it. I hadn’t heard about it. I had never heard anybody who had my story. But the people, the woman who reached out to me, who I reference in the film, this angel person, had not had my story. Her husband’s story was different, but she read the salacious details in the New York Post and said, there’s a family there that needs my help. And she was kind enough to say, hey, me too. And not, my God, I can’t even imagine. Which a lot of people say with deep love, but that was so, my God.

Jen Hatmaker: But that makes you feel lonely.

Maddie Corman: But she said, I can imagine. And you got this? Your family’s gonna be better than okay. And here’s where you go and here’s what you do and there are books, they’re just not, and there are doctors and there are more of us than you’d think. And this person is beautiful and successful and in all the old ways I define success and the new ways. Just, she didn’t need to do this and she wasn’t broken by her experience. And I just thought, well, she’s a little crazy, but I’ll be her project. And at one point I did say to her, what can I ever do for you? She really doesn’t need anything from me. And she said, just do this for someone else. I don’t think she thought I was gonna actually then write a show and have it turned into a movie, but that’s the way that I, and now I actually went, just, I’m taking my finals exam. I’m getting my coaching certificate to help, I do feel drawn to women in betrayal trauma. There are some men, I don’t mean to gender it, but it’s mostly, in my experience, women. And wow, you guys, the stories I have heard, the women, the warriors that I have met, who nobody knows their story, nobody. And so they have had to be way better actress than I have ever been, because they walk through the world with a smile either because they don’t want the kids to know or they don’t want the world to know. And I’m not talking about all illegal action. I’m just talking about women whose partners have betrayed them in one way or another. So I think that answered the question.

How I did that show eight times a week, I don’t know. I look back, I’m so tired now. Like after this, I’ll have to take a nap. But somehow…I guess, you know, I lived it, so that was harder than performing it. And also when I performed it, I was in control once again. Yes, I told the story. Yes, I felt those feelings, but I also got to go, okay, and then there was this crazy part. And now I can tell you that I am okay. Look, I’m standing up and I’m taking a bow and I’m going out into the lobby after to give you guys a hug. And it was, you know, this is one of, I think the biggest challenge about being so public is definitely that my family isn’t 100% thrilled. I do care, I am still married. It’s almost 10 years later. I do care very much about my partner. I care even more about my children. And this is their story to tell too. And they didn’t have that choice. And then their mom went and made it more public. But that’s one of the empowering things I think about being this age. I want to say to them, this is helping other people and I do believe that’s true. I was less comfortable saying to them, this is helping me. I was really, really, I don’t think I said that until this go around with the film. I think with the play, I was much more comfortable saying, this is service, this is service. But it did help me. I felt like my, I didn’t feel like myself at all. And suddenly I felt like…

Jen Hatmaker: Here I am.

Maddie Corman: The best of myself. I was absolutely willing in my marriage and my life to say, just put me in your stuff. Like I didn’t, I did not feel a burning desire to write or produce or even star in anything. I’m not that kind of actress. I really love being in an ensemble. I’m maybe a little bit lazy. I love good writing. I love somebody else’s, but with this piece, there was nobody else that was going to be able to get it right. And I think I did and I’m proud of it, which is hard for me to say. That’s harder for me to say than all the things that I can tell you that I don’t like about myself and the movie.

Jen Hatmaker: Well, you should be. We’ve seen, of course, the whole thing and it’s so powerful. And I’m super struck. And you certainly portrayed this, but you actually lived it. Admiring your performance is the same thing as admiring the story you lived, right? It’s all in the same bucket because you told the truth about the truth. So observing your capacity to hold like the truth in one hand, which is a brutal, a brutal truth, just an absolute scorched earth, brutal, before and after, never the same truth. And then also like grace and compassion in the other hand was a marvel to watch because I mean, in the show…

Maddie Corman: Yep.

Jen Hatmaker: I mean, we get parts of you where you’re literally with your physical body, crawled on the ground screaming is a part of the performance. And then we see these other portions where you are tender and soft and forgiving and gentle and so, so compassionate. And so I appreciate that because that’s just how life is. Like we don’t pick one or the other, you know, we get both of those, but I’d love to hear you talk about your own personal journey between figuring out how to not abandon the truth for full unmerited compassion, but not abandoning compassion because the truth was so hard.

Maddie Corman: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s both and, right? And I certainly had days where I was both full of grace and full of rage and full of fear. And then you might’ve seen me on the subway and you wouldn’t know any of those things, you know? And I think that is what I wanted to show also that I was interested in telling the story of not, those people got divorced. Those people stayed together. It doesn’t matter what the end of the story is. The middle is really hard. It’s not like, well, you left, so everything’s fine. Or you stayed together, so I guess you were full of grace and acceptance and forgiveness the whole time. Absolutely not. And I think that anyone who has loved an addict has to reach inside and go, I’m going to take a leap of faith and I’m going to start working on myself because I can’t, I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I am a person who very much wants to know what’s going to happen. I want control. I thought I made really smart choices in my life that were kind of like groovy and cool, but safe.

And suddenly all of that was gone. So I think the question that you asked, I don’t fully have an answer for, but I know that a lot of people wanted to know, like, when did you find forgiveness? And I think a more important part for me was acceptance because I didn’t, like you said, it’s like one day it’s one thing and the other day you go, wait, I missed this thing that was, where’s my history? What is my life? Who am I? Who are you? And it’s not acceptable, but I had to accept it because it’s what happened. And to just walk around and have lunch with people and not talk about it to come on this podcast and go, I don’t want to talk about that part. I just want to talk about like Some Kind of Wonderful, like, I just don’t know how to do that. And that’s why, you know, somebody once said, why did you do the show? And I said, so I didn’t have to have lunch with you. And I mean, that is kind of true. Like here’s what happened in the last couple of years. Like I don’t want, but I also, I also do want people to know that it’s not one thing.

Also the good parts. That’s just like I said, I’m more comfortable telling you the bad parts I find with my particular story in my particular marriage. I feel just as I Feel uncomfortable sharing how much I love my husband and how Intimate and how intimacy can change and grow after betrayal that feels more like I want to sink in my chair. Then, and I think that’s part of our culture right now too, is, and by the way, I wanna be really clear, I just interrupted myself, but say, I am not a martyr, I am not a stand-by-your-man, you made vows, absolutely not. In my particular case, I believe I was with someone who was sick, who I gave a chance to get well, and that is part of our story.

But in so doin, I had to then go, I need to look at myself. I need to stop turning everything over to making a husband my higher power. I think I made my mom my higher power. I think, I know what I was gonna say. Sorry. I get very excited to speak to you guys. But I think there’s a lot of stories out there and I watch them, I enjoy them, where it’s like kick the bastard out. You got rid of the bad guy, you win, and life is good. And in my experience, life is just more complicated than that. And in my story, life is more complicated than that. And I wanted to tell the truth about that because I know how lonely it is. And I see a lot of women who I coach now privately saying, I don’t want to tell my best friend because I think she’ll hate my husband or she’ll yell at me or she’ll and that’s just then that puts too much pressure on the marriage and it puts too much pressure on women to be these people who never have a problem or have a problem and then get rid of the problem and then and then it’s fine.

So I don’t wish this on anyone obviously especially I think public shame is a whole other level but some of the gifts that I’ve gotten to be strong and to understand that I’m willing to tell the truth even if it’s ugly and messy have actually reminded me of the girl I was before I got married and had kids and before I started to worry about that I was wearing the wrong thing or that my body was weird. Like there is something powerful about going here’s the worst stuff. And I’m the one now that you’re looking at with weird eyes and thinking, I hate it. I hate that people look at me and go, poor her. That’s OK, too. And I don’t have to absorb that anymore. I still do sometimes, but I try not to read the comments anymore.

Jen Hatmaker: That’s right.

Amy Hardin: You talk about in the show and we all understand healing is not linear at all. And we know about your angel that you talk about in the movie, but what other practices helped you through those hard moments? And at the beginning of the show, you talk about being terrible at meditation.

Maddie Corman: I am. Still am. I was meditating this morning. I was like, I’m going to meditate because I’m going to talk to these two badass ladies. And then I was like, wait, you’re thinking about how you’re going to answer. So that’s not meditation. Stop it. Well, but now if you’re not going to meditate, you may as well practice some good answers. Like these are the voices. So I really do want to start a program called Maddie’s Mediocre Meditation.

Jen Hatmaker: Oh, that’s amazing. Love that.

Maddie Corman: But I do it, I do it because even if I get 30 seconds that the chatter stops, that does help me. And in early, early trauma, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get quiet. But meditation helps, therapy, I know this is a privilege. I threw a lot of money at this and I have, I highly recommend if somebody’s in a betrayal trauma to get someone who is trained in trauma specifically for me it was important to go to someone who’s a CSAT that’s someone who’s trained in sexual addiction and compulsion specifically because for me to go to somebody who was like and looked stunned that wasn’t helpful for me. So I’m a big fan. Also, don’t, I think this is allowed for me to say, cause I’m talking about my own recovery and this is free. I go to a lot of 12 step. I love it. It has been incredibly helpful. There’s a program called S-ANON, which is basically AL-ANON, but for family and people affected by the disease of sexaholism. I love Al-Anon. I thought they were going to kick me out because my initial issue was different. Nobody has kicked me out yet and I’ve been going for 10 years.

I love groups. I loved my therapist put together a group of betrayed partners. That was vital for me. Vital to be around other people that I could laugh with and cry with and who were without judgment. So that was, and you know, that was my therapist put that together, but there are free resources. I went through this pre-COVID, but now there’s so many Zoom meetings, podcasts.

I will say that in my own recovery, another thing that’s really helped in the last couple of years.. I feel like I was holding up a car. For like eight years and now I’m still holding up the car and no one’s asking me to. Like the kids are not under the car, the husband’s not under the car, but my nervous system is still like, I got it, I got it. So doing, and I love to talk, but I’ve heard enough of myself. So I’m doing a lot more body work. I love somatic work. Yoga’s really helpful for me. Breath work.  I just did, I co-facilitated a retreat for women, betrayed partners with a therapist. And we had a sound bath, we had breath work, we had specific yoga that was specifically targeting trauma centers. And I think keep going and find things that work for you. You know, I, things that used to make me feel good when I was in the throes of this catastrophe, did not feel good anymore. The yoga place I went to was filled with people who I felt like were looking at me, either with pity or with terror. That wasn’t good for me. So I had to go sitting still.

Things literally tasted different. I didn’t know what would be good. So I had to keep trying. I couldn’t do 20 minutes twice a day of meditation. So I found a person who told me that three minutes was okay. I loved being in groups. Some people hate groups. So I just think really, really listening. It’s so funny because when you’ve been betrayed by the person that you trusted the most, your gut is like the last thing you think you have. I was like, well, clearly I have no idea what’s going on. But something in me knew something was going on. And so I actually did have to go, okay, what do I like? And what, even things I used to like were probably because, well, the kids also liked them or it made my husband happy. So this was good for me in some weird way, but I really think also, if you’re feeling like, I’m talking to a specific group of people, but if you’re feeling like, my God, I can’t do all of this all the time, it’s not forever.

I mean, I still do a lot. I still do a lot in order to be moderately okay. But I was aiming for breathing. Like I couldn’t, I was not okay in any way. And I have exceeded serenity. Like I’ve gone to joy. I’ve gone to silly, I’ve gone to delight and I was all I wanted was for my kids to not be destroyed and to be able to breathe like I was not aiming high. And so I’m really I have. I have discovered delight again, but that took a lot of work and I am all about finding what works for you and making it a priority. You know, I heard you guys say on another episode, we always talk about putting the oxygen mask on and I was told to do that, but I didn’t even know what the oxygen mask looked like. I was like, where is it? I’ll do it. But just what it like, just give it to me. And nobody gave it to me. I had to figure out what it was. And it was easier for me to get the help I needed because I said this is for my kids.

Jen Hatmaker: Mm.

Maddie Corman: It ultimately had to be for me, but I don’t think I would have done it except I couldn’t move. And I was like, she has to go to the dentist. So in order for me to get off the floor and get in the car and drive her to the dentist, I think I need to make a phone call to someone who’s going to say something.

And I kept my circle really small.

Anyway, sorry, I have a million resources because that’s the other thing. I had lived 47 years or something when this happened and I had never met another person who had gone through anything like this. P.S. It turns out I had. They just didn’t share about it and now they have.

So if I know I’m gonna get negative and poor you guys will probably get negative feedback for having me on, but there are people who need to hear that you’re gonna be okay.

Jen Hatmaker: That’s right. That’s right. I love everything that you said and learning to find and then use and put into practice all those tools and best practices is a lifeline. You can just never know how much I identify with all this. If we had 400 hours, I could just be like, same, same, same, same. I did that too. Me, me, yes, yes.

And looking back, it’s just, it’s an inch at a time. You inch your way back to the sunshine and it’s so slow. And at the beginning you just think, well, everything’s ruined. I think I heard you say, well, I’ll just never be happy again. So that’s my new baseline. I’ll never be happy again. So let me cobble together some like sad life that just gets me to the finish line, I guess. But the truth is, it’s stunning how much we can recover and how resilient we are and how resilient our kids are. And it is actually shocking. I had somebody else call me kind of like your angel. Just out of the blue, who’s fancy and famous and she’s like, get a pen. I’ve got one hour. I’m going to tell you everything there is to tell you. And I was stunned. Those words absolutely saw me through the first year. I went back to them like a Bible.

I would love as we kind of wrap this up here, thinking about the women that are listening, because to your point, particularly in your context, this very disproportionately affects women, wives, wives and female partners who find themselves in your shoes. So I’m thinking about that person listening. And so just, if you had a moment to tell her something, let’s say she’s at the beginning, she’s at the base of that mountain and it’s so impossible. It’s all just so impossible, right? It’s just like everything’s destroyed. It’s all impossible. I’d love just to hear you give her some guidance. What would you say?

Maddie Corman: Hmm. Yeah, I think I would say I see you. I am you. I got you. You know, that’s all I needed to hear. It was like, if you don’t have any faith left, just borrow some of mine.

Jen Hatmaker: Hmm, I’ve said that before.

Maddie Corman: And I loved what you said, Jen. One inch at a time, one day at a time was way too much for me. It was 10 minutes at a time, and it hasn’t been linear, just to be clear. My recovery time is quicker, but I get triggered still, I don’t love that word, it’s a little overused like journey. But damn straight, when I look at it, when I see something on Instagram and go, that could have been, you know, there are still days I miss, I live a couple houses now from my old house. That’s really hard. I lost my house, but I have, I know a house is just a house, but it’s still hard. And I think sometimes sharing that is helpful too.

Jen Hatmaker: Yeah.

Maddie Corman: It’s not like everything’s perfect now, but it’s so much better. And yeah, there are so many of us out there and you’re gonna be okay and you don’t even have to believe it, but find some people who do and be careful at the beginning. Be precious about who you share. I didn’t have a choice. My story was out there. I do think there are some gifts in that, I do. It took me a long time to understand that there was a gift to not having to decide who to tell. There’s no curating how you think you’re gonna, anyway.

I don’t wish that on people, but also there is something about secrets and how exhausting it is to carry the pain, but also keeping it a secret and also having to keep up appearances. So I that people who watch the film can go, oh wait, she’s also not, I mean, sometimes I’m a crazy person, but I am not that exceptional. I’m really not. I mean, women are doing amazing things all the time. But I’m also not that crazy. Like this happens to a lot more people and we don’t talk about it. It’s not fun to talk about. It’s not fun to talk about.

Let me tell you, we don’t have all the time in the world, but the movie that won the Oscar about sex workers is so triggering to so many of my people in my world. And, you know, we just are watching the Oscars and, and God bless her. I think that Mikey is a great actress, but there’s a lot of people. Yeah, that this, this is not, and that wasn’t my partner’s particular form of acting out. I’m sorry to just like slam this into the end of the episode, but there are people walking around who when you walk past a certain store or make a certain joke, it is killing them. And I guess I just want to say to those people, I see you, and you’re not alone and there’s a lot of help out there. Go on my website and write me an email and I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you more.

Amy Hardin: One last question before we go. What story are you going to tell next? You dreaming up a fictional story or do you have your own story to tell?

Maddie Corman: Well, first of all, I do kind of… I feel like a big lazy bum because I haven’t written that much more. But, but that’s my own issue. I do want to do kind of the epilogue to Accidentally Brave because it really was about the most terrible time and there’s so many great things happening now. But my children might never speak to me again if I do that. But I did write a fictional fiction, fiction, fiction, TV series about two best friends, women. One is a suburban mom, very type-A with three kids and a dragon, and a cat, and a dog, and all the life. And her, one of her best friends. That character’s based on me. And one of her best friends who’s based on my collaborator on Accidentally Brave, the director, Kristen Hange, and we co-wrote this piece about the other friend is a very groovy Broadway director who’s very into plant medicine, and she convinces her more conventional friend to go on a road trip to a plant medicine ceremony and hilarity ensues. It’s called High Heals, H-E-A-L-S. So that’s my next writing project. Thank you.

Jen Hatmaker: Huh. Clever. Clever. I like how Maddie is low key. Like I feel really lazy. I did write a TV series. Like, okay, sis, you’ve got some issues.

Maddie Corman: Yeah. That’s my, that’s the next issue. Yeah, I’ve got some issues. Yeah, I’ve got some issues. The other thing I didn’t mention in the things that helped me when we were talking about self-care versus self, what’s the other one? Self-comfort. I love self-comfort and I’m a big fan of terrible television. I do not go high brow. I go super low. And I have a really, really great group of girlfriends that showed up for me as best they could when this was not their world and have been I’m so happy that I’m not the lead story anymore that I can just go Hang out and support them.

Jen Hatmaker: Same. Yeah. I love that. I really, really love how clearly you have discussed your own recovery and healing process in the context of community and other people, be it group, Al-Anon or all the 12-Step spaces, your own personal best friends. Like in my experience, that’s, that’s the only way. Well, I don’t have imagination for anything outside of it. I don’t have any imagination for managing our traumas and pain and loss alone. So I really, I hope that that came through loud and clear for the women listening today, that the very, very, very exact thing that you do not wanna say out loud that feels so terrifying or humiliating or shocking or whatever, that’s the very thing that you say out loud and that’s the beginning of your recovery. And so it’s a terrible truth, but it’s how it works.

Maddie Corman: And you do lose some people because of that, you know? But I have had a lot of people say, have you lost friends? And the answer is yes. And the people that are in my life are so awesome. It’s not like I have the dregs of humanity. I have like the most incredible people who show up when you do tell the truth. But. I also am very lucky that my family kind of circled the wagons on both sides and that is not everyone’s experience. But the people who show up within the world of recovery, who knew before I knew that this was an addiction issue, I’m so grateful to them and they’re so fun. They’re like the greatest, greatest people. So I really also want to say it’s not that you lose…you do lose certain things. I have lost certain things, but I’ve gained extra community. And I thought that was gone too. I was like, well, guess it’s just you and me. So.

Jen Hatmaker: Yeah, yeah, great point. Will you just tell our listeners, because you mentioned, where can they find you? Because you’ve got this pile of resources to share and…

Maddie Corman: I do. And I want to share them with everybody. I did start, you know, privately, doing private Zooms because I couldn’t keep up with all the, you know, people just reaching out. So if you go on maddiecorman.com, I do have that, but there’s also resources on there. And I’m on Instagram. I think it’s @MsMaddieCorman, but I could be just Maddie Corman, but you’ll find it. Yeah, and.

Jen Hatmaker: Where?

Jen Hatmaker: Mm-hmm. Listen up.

Maddie Corman: And I am on Facebook, but I don’t like being on there. So I really am more of an Instagram gal.

Jen Hatmaker: Yep. Okay. Thank you for coming on today. I just, we just could have gone on and on and on for a thousand more hours. And I’m just, I’m just grateful that you have chosen to share this with the level of candor and transparency that you have. Cause I’m just, these are the kinds of stories that are a lantern held up on the darkest path somebody else is walking. And they are just like, don’t know, I cannot see the next step in front of me. And then there’s a lantern that appears and they matter, they get us home. So yours is a lantern on a path that a lot of people are on. And so well done, well done. And we’re delighted to see you 10 years after the fact, thriving and beautiful and happy and whole and your kids are all the same. Your husband is in his own recovery. We’re just, it’s just great to see. So thanks for inviting us in behind the curtain of the story of your life. And we’re just so glad to have you today.

Maddie Corman: Thank you, really, it’s been really awesome to get to know you in real life or virtual real life.

Jen Hatmaker: It’s real life now. It counts. It counts. Okay. Thank you, Maddie. Thank you, Maddie.

Maddie Corman: Thank you so much you guys, what a treat.

 

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

 

Some Kind of Wonderful film (1987)

John Hughes

Brené Brown

Glennon Doyle

Elizabeth Gilbert

Accidentally Brave Play

Accidentally Brave on MAX

Partner Betrayal Counseling

Find a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT) Therapist

Find a 12-Step Program

SANON International

AL-ANON Family Groups