...empowering women at challenging crossroads
with Cynthia Leeds Friedlander
The artful Liar
The Artful Liar presents an examined life to the reader. It tells one woman’s journey and her reflections on surviving deception and betrayal. It’s meant to be a gift to women of all ages everywhere who struggle with dishonesty, cheating, infidelity and relationship loss. It’s a call to every woman to be strong, to pay attention, to listen to her gut, to rid herself of betrayers and deceivers, and to claim what she wants.
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When you discover someone’s been lying to you for years, it means you’ve been living a lie. You feel a kind of collusion with the liar. Somehow you know, even though your gut often told you something else, you chose to believe the lies. You feel dirty, like your very identity has been a lie. You’ve loved someone who isn’t what he claims he is. She could feel herself not even wanting to breathe when she thought of how much she’d believed in Mathew, how she’d built and held onto truths about him that could no longer shine or be real.
She felt lost from her home bearings. She’d agreed to be hidden, to be a part of a grand falsehood. She’d come to feel devoured by deception as if she’d been slowly eaten by a monster, one mouthful at a time, one day at a time, leaving her feeling destroyed, detached and devoid of her true self.
When she thought about their intimate life together, her heart ached as if a dying ember would always smolder there to impede her breathing and cloud her desire for anyone else.
Her feelings ran the gamut like the inside of a kaleidoscope with all the many broken pieces constantly changing their configuration. She told herself she had to think of her dilemma in a kaleidoscopic way. There was a myriad of patterns for her to examine and learn from. She wanted to appreciate and see beauty in her ability to break away from Mathew, to find benefit from what she’d gained from her loss and then to make good choices and move on with joy and radiance.
Mathew was like a snake who could slither away in almost any direction, leaving you wondering if the truth you’d just seen had even existed. It always came to Mathew instantly to re-represent; he was gifted that way.
She was determined the writing she was immersed in would be much more than simply cathartic. She wanted her writing to be her platform of solidarity, her link to the future. She wanted to bring hope and healing to others who had been betrayed and deceived. She wanted to unite with them so her belief in the good that comes out of adversity, pain, and loss could be divided and doubled through her connection with those who were traveling through similar challenges. She wanted to build bridges to self-worth and contentment that many could travel across and then multiply their well-being among many more. She wanted to pay it forward.
Excerpts
“For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
“Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.”
― Sharilyn Kenyon, Invincible
“The truth will never hurt as much as the exposure of a lie.”
― Guru Sophie
“I think scars are like battle wounds – beautiful, in a way. They show what you’ve been through and how strong you are for coming out of it.”
― Demi Lovato
“Sometimes your disappointments make you a stronger person for the future.”
― Blanka Vlasic
“Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.”
― Oprah Winfrey
Quotes on Betrayal and Deception
About the Author
Cynthia Leeds Friedlander has coached thousands of working women to master difficult conversations, to develop dynamic speaking and presentation skills, and to excel in all their personal and business communications.
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Leader of Today’s Empowered Woman, Cindy has been helping women lead empowered lives for more than three decades.