Where to Start with Healing as Adult Children of Divorce
When helping an adult child of divorce or separation, I’m often asked, “Where do I start with healing?” I have tended to resist giving a one-size-fits-all answer to this question because every person’s situation, suffering, and healing journey is different. I prefer knowing about a person’s unique circumstances before offering suggestions. The path of healing does not lend itself to easy calculation or a tidy ten step guide, although guides can be helpful if you relate them to your own unique situation.
Nonetheless, based on my own experiences as an adult child of divorce, and many conversations over the years with other men and women from broken homes, I offer the following five general tips that adult children of divorce or separation have found helpful for starting their healing journey.
1. Realize that healing doesn’t mean a complete removal of suffering
It is important from the outset to understand what healing is from a Christian point of view or you may become disillusioned and give up on healing altogether. One of the chief mistakes I have seen people make about healing is thinking that it is the sheer removal of suffering. Removing and alleviating suffering is important whenever this is possible. However, there are some wounds you just cannot remove fully in this earthly life; there are life-long wounds. Your parents’ divorce or separation is a life-long wound. It “rears its head” throughout life: at holidays, vacations, milestones, weddings, Sacraments, and family get-togethers, not to mention the many ongoing, dysfunctional elements it introduces into ourselves and our relationships with others. “Divorce is deceptive,” say researchers Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee. “Legally it is a single event, but psychologically it is a chain – sometimes a never-ending chain – of events, relocations, and radically shifting relationships strung through time, a process that forever changes the lives of the people involved” (from the book Second Chances). It is a life-long grief.
But this fact alone should not cause us to despair, because it is possible that right alongside our grief we can also live another reality: a life of joy, peace, happiness, and love. These are not mutually exclusive realities; healing is precisely there at this nexus. Because of this, healing does not mean ‘having no more wounds’ or the absence of pain. Healing has to do with your attitude, thoughts, heart, and embodying certain virtuous characteristics in response to the wounds. We cannot do this healing work on our own or even with the best psychological tools or moral willpower alone. We need deep spiritual healing; we need God’s mysterious grace, especially in the Sacraments. Healing, therefore, is a way of life with Christ in response to the wounds that eventually becomes a part of your daily spiritual life. It means accepting and living that Christ did not come to remove all suffering from this earthly life, but rather to fill all suffering with His presence. This is what we are aiming for with healing, not a mythical state of perfection that does not exist.
2. Be unafraid to confront the past with Christ
Our spiritual advisor Fr. Dan Leary wisely says that the predominant emotion facing adult children of divorce is fear. We have many fears, including one that can be a major obstacle to our healing: the fear of confronting the past. We think that if we go into the “mess”, we will be worse off than if we just went along with our lives, ignoring our past wounds. We are scared that if we dig too deeply, then the past may destroy us. To help face this fear, we must become aware of how our past affects us; the past is never simply the past and the present is never simply the present.
As persons, we embody a unity of time in ourselves through the amazing gifts of memory, thought, feelings, etc. The past filters how we live and see the present, and the present can transform the impact the past has on our thoughts, memories, heart, and lives. A healed present can transform past experiences into part of a larger story of redemption. This larger story should be one of Christ’s love working in our lives within the pain. We are often not aware of His presence until much later – maybe even decades later. But Christ transcends time and can go back and heal the past. This is not an “undoing” of the past event or denial of past pain, but a transforming of our past suffering into a resource of His love. Every layer of the wound is a lesson for love, so we need not fear discovering new layers of wounds with the Lord. So be not afraid to confront your past.
3. Give voice to your wounds and grieve
Your wound is real. It is a deep, long-lasting, and at times traumatic and devastating wound that needs to be grieved, whether your parents divorced one or twenty years ago. Do not let anyone tell you that simply because it happened so long ago that you should be over it, especially if you have never felt the permission to grieve it. At the beginning of healing (and throughout healing), it is important to give voice to your wounds, ask God to reveal them fully, and grieve them, following the examples of the Book of Psalms or the Book of Lamentations (lament means a passionate expression of grief or sorrow!).
We need to grieve our wounds throughout the healing process because the reality is that you will know more about your wounds 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 years from now, and you’ll discover new layers here and there as the life-long grief of your parents’ divorce confronts your spiritual and daily life. There is always more to discover about your suffering, especially as you draw closer in prayer to Christ, who sheds light ever-more on the darkness of wounds and suffering. So grieving is not a one-and-done act, but an ongoing form of love: mourning the loss of some goodness that Christ wanted for your life.
Also, we need help from others to grieve, especially those who have been similarly wounded. Grief is an invitation to communion, first with God and then in community with others. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). We often need to hear other people’s stories to understand the different layers of our own wounds, to learn the pathway of healing better, and to have friends who are able to receive our wounds. Mediating Christ’s loving gaze and compassion in person helps us confront the suffering. These are all reasons why Life-Giving Wounds exists, to give voice to your pain and grieve with you, and also why we are predominantly a peer-based ministry of adult children of divorce.
4. See the interconnectedness of the wounds and allow the Holy Spirit to lead
In our ministry, we’ve identified six major wounds that adult children of divorce commonly experience, no matter when their parents divorced:
the wound of silence
the wound of a broken identity
the wound of loss of faith
the wound of unhealthy self-protection and a damaged
vision of marriage
the wound of a fractured emotional life
the wound of unforgiveness and dysfunctional family
dynamics
On the Life-Giving Wounds Retreat, we discuss these wounds at length, as well as our response to these wounds that may have resulted in peace and healing or confusion and sin. Sin and temptation from wounds grow stronger in our lives, the more we hide it from ourselves, others, and God. This is why the Sacrament of Reconciliation is crucial for the healing process.
What’s important to realize as you begin your journey of healing is that all of these “layers” of the wound are interconnected. So, for example, if a person is struggling to trust and open up to a significant other (from the wound of unhealthy self-protection), perhaps they are also struggling to believe themselves worthy of love (from the wound of a broken identity). The hard work of healing over time involves taking a “thousand-foot view” of ALL the ways that our parents’ divorce or separation affected us, and also seeing how those wounds are interconnected.
This can feel daunting. But trust the Holy Spirit: by getting everything “out on the table,” the Holy Spirit can help you identify where exactly to begin and what to address first. (A good Christian therapist or spiritual director can help with this too; and reading and listening more in depth from others’ stories and advice, such as the resources listed on our resource page or our Life-Giving Wounds blog.) And as you see healing happen in one or a few areas, that can give you confidence to press on to find healing in places that are even more deeply wounded.
5. Have hope and draw good from your wounds
Throughout this whole process, and especially during the low points in your healing journey that will inevitably come, it is important not to give into discouragement and to recognize that every cross along the way will help lead you to a resurrection in your own life if you unite your suffering with Christ’s own wounds. At a very elementary level, this is what we Christians call redemptive suffering. It is so important to have this faith perspective on suffering to avoid falling into a non-constructive approach to suffering that is simply pointing fingers at our parents or wallowing in self-pity.
Similarly, we can also be tempted to give into the victim mentality, which is so destructive to healing. The victim mentality is a hypersensitivity to what we lack and our woundedness that results in the belief that even with God’s help, we are powerless to change things for the better. This victim mentality is equivalent to grieving without hope, and a rejection of the incredible power of Christ’s redemption to change our lives and, yes, even our suffering. As Saint Paul says, “we must not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thes 4:13). We must always look for a path forward with Christ and allow him to draw good from our wounds. “We know that all things work for the good for those who love God” (Romans 8:28). This is the beautiful paradox: the wound of our parents’ divorce or separation will last a lifetime, but it does not have to be life-draining. In Christ, we can respond to the pain with greater life-giving faith, hope, love, and joy than we are capable, turning our wounds into our greatest resources.
Conclusion - We’re Here to Help!
If you’d like help with these steps, your healing in general, or simply want to learn more about the effects of parental divorce on your life or how to heal given your unique situation, then we’d encourage you to join us and sign up for one of our retreats or support groups as the next step in your healing journey! We’re here to help ALL adult children of divorce. You are not alone and until we meet we’ll be praying for you.
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Dr. Daniel Meola is the co-founder and co-director of Life-Giving Wounds along with his wife Bethany. He received his MTS and PhD from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, DC. Dr. Meola has over fifteen years of leading retreats for various groups and ages. As an adult child of divorce himself, his passion is reaching men and women from broken homes with the healing love of God.