Spirituality Today Review

Betrayal comes to all of us at some point in our lives and in somewhat differing ways.

When it does the way that we respond to it will vary according to the Soul lessons that are delicately woven into the heart of the experience.

For Sandra Lee Dennis the lessons that she had to learn from her earth-shattering betrayal experience invoked a sense of trauma that she did not at first recognize.

As a reader of her personal account of the aftermath of the experience one is left feeling deeply humbled by someone so prepared to bare her pain to a wider audience, to relive what was so evidently a deeply challenging time in her life and then to evaluate the broader and more universal ramifications of a society that singularly fails to integrate the deeper and more spiritual elements to trauma.

Sandra Lee Dennis comes over in her book as a woman with deep passions and it seems that this powerful aspect to her nature helped pulled her through and out of a traumatic experience—one in which lesser mortals would have probably drowned.

The result of the story that our author tells regarding the pain, anger, resentment, fear, loathing and emergence of other darkly repressed facets to her own character is dark, honest and deeply inspiring.

As a reader I became deeply engrossed in this fraught exploration of the darkest corners of a wounded psyche and watched events and insights unfold as she gradually fought her own demons and emerged a stronger, more awakened and sympathetic person.

Whilst the story of the journey of emergence that Dennis took is captivating—one that is brought to life through its sheer quality of writing, I actually found the interplay between the author’s personal experiences and the mythic quests that reside within all of us central to making this book such a powerfully epic tale.

The result is an outstanding publication—one that no single person is likely to emerge from reading without being deeply moved and more than a little bit transformed.

The story of Sandra Lee Dennis’s journey through betrayal, deep trauma and eventual healing is not only a triumphant tour-de-force but is a humbling reminder that the true path to the light is indeed through the darkness and spiritual confusion that can descend upon us at unannounced at any time in our lives. This is an epic tale told by an equally epic woman! —  Spirituality Today

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Our Rating: 5/of 5 STARS!

Lovefraud.com  Review 

If you’re like most Lovefraud readers, you may find it difficult to put into words the depth of the pain romantic betrayal causes. Discovering that your romantic partner, the person who claimed to be your soul mate, proclaimed unending love and promised a future of golden togetherness, was lying all along and totally deceived you, causes indescribable agony.

Sandra Lee Dennis, Ph.D., has put your suffering into words.

I recently read her book, Love and the Mystery of Betrayal — Recovering your trust and faith after trauma, deception and loss of love.It is the best description I’ve ever read of the emotional, spiritual and even physical pain of romantic betrayal.

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Book Review “Love and the Mystery of Betrayal” —by Maria Mar, blogger and author of “A Place for Roses”

—named 2014 BOOK OF THE YEAR at mariamar.com

“From all the books I’ve reviewed in 2014, this moving story and compelling journey is the uncontested winner!” 

If you are drawn to this book, it is likely that you or someone important to you is responding to an urgent call to open up a pained past or dive into the swirling seas of a currently upended life. And, if this book finds its way into your hands, you are fortunate, indeed. Receive the blessing and ready yourself for profound healing.

To say that it is an excellent book seems trivial. Sandra Lee Dennis has achieved a rare marriage of soul, body, emotions, mind and spirit in her language, in the journey of healing through which her book takes us, and in the knowledge she shares with us. This book is a rare find—it is a sacred experience of healing through a deep dive into the transformation that betrayal brings into one’s life so that it can be cleared, healed and transmuted into a higher frequency of love. In this way, this book works like a miracle drug.

If you have gone through a betrayal—romantic or otherwise—it may have left pieces of poisonous thorns embedded in your soul and you may have left pieces of soul embedded in the time-space continuum of the trauma. A shaman would tell you that you need to do a soul retrieval.  For me this book has the qualities of such a sacred ceremony or sacrament, that puts us in touch with both our human frailty and our superpowers.

If you have been betrayed, you may not realize it but years—even decades after the trauma of betrayal—these unresolved pieces can result in health issues, relationship failures, or blind spots that grow into toxic fields and flood your life. These are psychic lakes of amnesia where your memory and awareness goes to sleep. You can close off entire aspects of your sacred self, your emotions and even your trust and faith in life.

The good news is that it is never too late to retrieve these lost parts of your soul. And this book is your alchemical codex to free yourself from the limiting and traumatic impact of a betrayal you may not even recognize. If you have gone through the trauma of betrayal, no matter how long ago it was—get this book immediately and clear time not just for reading; but for the healing of your body and mind.

For the journey through this book is a healing experience that helps us to understand what we’ve gone through, to name the invisible, hidden cracks this trauma inflicted on our psyche, to validate our soulful intuition, and, finally, to help us emerge from the confusion and ashes into an ecstatic experience of self-love and higher love.

If you are going through the trauma of betrayal now—get many copies of the book. One is for you. Another is for your closest friends and relatives; your support system, and one or two are for the healers or therapists of your choice. This book is your blueprint through the dark stormy seas of betrayal into the harbor of radiant health and will help those trying to assist you to understand what you are going through.

If someone you love has gone or is going through a betrayal—get two copies. One for you and one for that person. Read yours carefully so that you know how to talk to this person in ways that truly support her and how NOT to talk to her so that you don’t join the many insensitive voices that add salt to injury.

As the author points out, because betrayal often comes accompanied by personal shame, social embarrassment and relationship awkwardness, its devastation is swept under the rug and the person is expected to “get on with her life.” This leads to a social gag order that compounds the problem, making the person feel that they are alone, and that there must be something wrong with them that they cannot “move on.”

One of the things that appalls me about our modern world is our insensitivity to grieving. Sandra Lee Dennis does an amazing job of addressing our cultural blindness to the grief and trauma of betrayal. Just recognizing this will help you maneuver through this crisis without shame, guilt or alienation.

Another Important topic that she introduces is our secret tendency to measure trauma based on how long, how tragic, or how dramatic a trauma is; so that betrayal seems trivial in the face of death, serious car accidents, murder, rape or physical violence. She shows how, despite these prejudices, so many of us have been so deeply traumatized by seemingly “minor” betrayals that they have stolen essential parts of our self, limiting our lives and haunting us for years; perhaps for all our lives.

Sandra Lee Dennis has broken the silence behind the trauma of betrayal by sharing her own excruciatingly painful and gloriously sacred journey from betrayal to the deepening and expansion of her capacity to love. She blows the whistle on our blindness and insensitivity in a society that minimizes this terrible interpersonal trauma.

This author, who is also a doctor in psychology, writes this book in the voice of a sacred warrior who walks through fear into freedom, through pain into power. She also becomes a priestess of the blessed darkness who guides you through a journey into the dark night of the soul, revealing ancestral wisdom from the very womb of the holy mystery of relationship that has been held by priestesses in ancient feminine schools of wisdom.

Trust your heart to this author-healer-warrior. Walk inside this book to walk inside yourself and find your way back to your heart.

I give this book 5  out of 5 stars because my rating does not allow me to give it ten!

(Originally published at: http://mariamar.com/book-reviews/book-review-love-and-the-mystery-of-betrayal/ )

Interviews with the Author

Interview on Making My Mark

Interview on Reading to Distraction