I don't know if time is a healer but I do know that as time passes new growth starts to show. After a forest fire new growth does occur.
I lost my wife recently to death but I lost her long before to her new way of thinking. She became a staunch exJW leaving both the religion we were married in and me as well. Though we continued living in the same house she withdrew and could not understand why I decided to remain in our religion. I did not like the idea of her leaving the JWs but I was fine with it if, if, we could somehow have peace at home. But peace flew out the window when my beloved wife, the woman of my life, started looking at me as one who was a traitor, false to all she had come to know and believe. When she looked at me she no longer saw me but the Watchtower and all she had come to dislike or even hate including the Bible.
We took our marriage vows in the Kingdom Hall but suddenly a new vow became operative a vow that led her to believe that "truth" was the only important thing and that truth found outside the Watchtower was the only truth in her life. I became a relic of a past life, a fading shadow.
She had moved on without me and I found myself angry, bitter and alone though we slept in the same bed.
How I loved that woman! How I still love her!
We will meet again and embrace, of this I'm sure. I was not always able to give her the support she needed and she did not understand why I could not follow her out and so bitterness became our bed partner.
I am using my wife's email account which she proudly named "exjw" and find myself somehow close to her while posting here though she would know that my heart is still in the JW religion. I cannot walk her walk but I am nonetheless finding peace in accepting her life and her choices. Both of which she was free to make.
For my Diana.