The email subject line looked harmless enough: “I’d like to chat.”
Expecting the kind of promotional pitch I usually deleted without a second thought, I opened it — and froze. The message on the screen read: “I’m sure (your husband) never told you about me; we were married briefly. I’d like to talk.”
A wife before me? One he had never mentioned?
I had no idea how to absorb it. What was she hoping to tell me? What did she want from me? And, after everything, did I even want to know?
Her note landed just as I was getting ready to publish my memoir about my marriage to this man, an alcoholic. By then, we were already divorced. And while the revelation of a hidden former wife had never crossed my mind, I had been bracing for messages from unfamiliar women.
I expected to hear from secret lovers, perhaps even stunned colleagues, as the details of my former husband’s concealed life began to surface.
The warning signs of his unhealthy drinking emerged a few years into our marriage, though I didn’t recognize them as alcoholism at the time. My understanding of addiction came mostly from movies: staggering, arrests, smashed cars, DUIs. I knew nothing about high-functioning alcoholism, especially the kind carefully hidden behind professional success.
Like so many stories shaped by addiction, ours was not without love. But it was also marked by painful conversations, short separations, divorce threats and stretches of sobriety that appeared solid — until they proved to be temporary.
Dana Killion had written a book about living with her alcoholic husband when his ‘secret wife’ got in touch
Killion is pictured alongside both of her sons – Alex, left, and Zach, right
Therapy had been encouraged, then insisted upon. Instead of sobriety, he began drinking vodka straight from the bottle.
Periods of abstinence gave me hope, fueling the belief that we could have a life without fear each time he got in the car with the kids. Nothing brought sustained sobriety. Eventually, I forced a choice: ‘You can have me or you can have vodka.’ He packed for an in-patient treatment center.
The weekend before his program was to end, we sat alone during visitation hours. He was telling me how much he liked his therapist and that they’d spoken about an incident a few years earlier that nearly ended us. Business trip, drunken night at the bar, hotel room with a strange woman.
Blah, blah, blah…
I stared at him, my body flooded with pain at the memory, while he stared at a spot on the carpet.
I don’t know why I chose that moment, but I asked him a question I had asked before. ‘Have there been others?’
His elbows heavy on his thighs, he didn’t look at me, then replied: ‘What? You want a number?’
Oxygen drained from the room. Twenty-plus years of marriage apparently had all been a lie.
The years immediately after that revelation were an excruciating blur of shock, heartbreak, therapy, indecision, lawyers and the messiness that comes with devastating betrayal.
Journaling became one of my healing practices, using words as my tool. Already a novelist, I set aside the book I’d begun plotting and transitioned to memoir, feeling the need to help other sober partners.
When Killion asked how many times he had been unfaithful in their marriage he replied: ‘What? You want a number?’
This is when the secret wife found me. She’d provided enough information that I knew their relationship was decades in the past, yet she wanted to chat. I called her.
She’d discovered infidelity a month into their marriage, infidelity he refused to explain. Decades of never understanding or finding the closure she needed followed.
So, I told her what I believed to be true of the psychology behind his bad-husband behavior and how I was coming to grips with my forced reevaluation of our love.
As someone whose own heart still stung, the length of time she’d gone without closure was painfully close to home. Was that my future?
I went into the conversation hoping I could help and wanting to show her the grace our shared husband couldn’t. But later, as I reflected on our call, I saw it was a gift I hadn’t anticipated. A gift to me. I realized I’d put my husband’s behavior into perspective. I understood his buried brokenness and knew its source. I wouldn’t wait decades for closure.
I wish I could say that was the end of my trauma and that my memoir brought new happiness. But there was another horrific turn of events to come.
Three months after the release of that book, I received a text mid-day from my youngest son asking if I could talk. The memory of that call is trapped in fragments.
‘Alex.’ ‘Found dead.’ ‘Drug paraphernalia.
My youngest son was telling me that my oldest son was dead.
A year and a half of sobriety, days before he was scheduled to transition out of a halfway house, he used, and it killed him. Alone in his room with his cat, he died, and his body was found when he didn’t show up for work on Monday.
I’ll never know what his last moments were like or if he was aware he was in trouble. I’ll never know what the fear was that caused him to tempt fate after so much success. I’ll never know if fentanyl was his drug of choice or a first use.
What I know is that he saved all the notes I’d sent him while trying to stay sober.
Fentanyl was the weapon he chose that day, but fear killed him. Fear of facing his insecurities, fear of judgment, fear of failure. Fear of living. Fear caused him to use in the same way fear caused my former husband to drink.
Both were incredible men, with access to every tool available, but still struggled to face themselves.
I’m not alone in my trauma story; far too many of us have experienced the worst. Where the conversation needs to go now is: What do any of us do about it?
Killion’s younger son called to tell her Alex, her eldest (left), had died of an overdose
‘I’ll never know what [Alex’s] last moments were like or if he was aware he was in trouble,’ writes his mother
Alex’s mother adds: ‘I’ll never know what the fear was that caused him to tempt fate’
Being vocal about the most horrible events in my life is one tool I have. Not for sympathy, but because the underlying theme in all private traumas is emotional well-being. Speaking of our pain is difficult and essential to healing, yet we’re confused by how to talk about it and to whom.
A technique that helped me release the anxiety was to develop three versions of my trauma story: a one-liner, a short story and a novel. The novel length is the version for your therapist or select intimates. The one-liner is for those who don’t need details. The short story is what you’re reading here.
The men in my life wrongly perceived their emotional challenges as weakness and struggled to express their pain. Their inability to prioritize emotional health and speak of their hurt left them broken.
We can’t heal what we don’t acknowledge.
The secret wife part of my story holds another critical lesson. To speak with compassion, I needed perspective on my former husband’s behavior. I needed to have achieved a level of closure to speak with neutrality, not anger. A bitch session wasn’t her goal or mine.
My former husband couldn’t explain his behavior because he hadn’t done the work to analyze his deep wounds, so I did it. For me, not for him.
It’s what I call the story of why.
I took what I knew, speculated where needed, formed conclusions, and created a story that allowed me to stop cycling through the primary unanswered trauma question: why.
Our brains are wired for story, and when our trauma is incomplete, we stay stuck in pain or self-blame, or resentment. By creating the story of why, I took control of my healing. I found closure. I didn’t wait expecting someone to provide it.
When my son died, I did the same.
I wish both men had been able to face their stories, but that wasn’t something I could give them.
Far too many of us live without closure after what’s harmed us. But if we don’t close that trauma loop, we don’t heal completely. Trauma is then carried forward, leaving our hearts empty and pain ready to infect those around us, too.
Prioritizing emotional health is our prevention process. The story of why is our closure process.
Dana Killion is the author of the bestselling Lies mystery series and the memoir Where the Shadows Dance, which explores marriage, addiction, betrayal and healing. Her work has been shaped by her own experiences with loss and trauma and her belief in the power of telling difficult stories. Her new book, Becoming Unbreakable: A Big Sister’s Guide to Trauma, will be released in September 2026 and is available to pre-order. More at www.danakillion.com.
