As we greet another year, we give thanks to God for all of his blessings in 2025 and look forward to the gift of another year to serve the Lord and help bring healing to adult children of divorce.

Here is a short recap of some of the best highlights of 2025, and some goals and dreams for what is ahead in 2026:

The other day I was walking alone and went down the sidewalk on the way to that house. The little girl inside of me said, I want to go home. I wept yet again, taking a tender moment to be with that little girl and allow her all those big feelings. Rather than shaming her, feeling embarrassed about it, or trying to move on to other things, I just waited, listened, felt, breathed.

At this Christ-moment, as we wait for the infant Jesus to be born in the mangers of our hearts, let the love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit fill you—LET THE JOY RISE!  Put aside whatever inflicts you; LET THE JOY RISE!  We are the Body of Christ! Praise the Lord!  LET THE JOY RISE AND OVERFLOW!

What does this mean for the adult child of divorce? Jesus’ human parents...certainly did not experience the pain of divorce...If He experiences all that we experience, how can He truly know my pain? I think the answer lies in chapter 40 of Isaiah: in the all-knowing otherness of Almighty God. He who created the universe and foresaw everything...also created and foresaw me.

In this third Sunday of Advent, Gaudate Sunday, we are invited to welcome the joy of belonging to God’s family. While the wounds in our family may be a source of division and sadness, Jesus comes to bring us into a new family, the family of God. We are invited to celebrate the coming of Jesus and the joy He offers to each of us, the joy of being beloved sons and daughters.

To celebrate a “big” birthday this year, I went on a pilgrimage to Italy. When I booked it, I did not realize I would be going in a Jubilee Year and that I would walk through the Holy Doors. Once in Italy, a fellow pilgrim asked our Spiritual Director what we should do to prepare to step through the Holy Doors.

Excellent question!

In this week’s meditation, Fr. Alfredo speaks about the fire of the Holy Spirit. He tells a story of his visit to a glass blower’s shop, where he sees firsthand how the intense heat of fire can be used to purify and to allow the silica to be shaped into the vessel that the maker has designed it to be. It is not difficult to imagine how this applies to our own lives!

The flood of emotions—the fear, the anxiety, the distrust, the silence, the ache of not belonging, everything—can feel like reason enough to build walls around our hearts. These walls may be built of self-protection, hardness, or numbness. But, these walls do more than just shield us from those who may have caused harm. They harden our hearts and shut out our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who wants nothing more than to enter in, heal, and be one with us.

As our hearts were warped by the tragedy of divorce, and the wounds that compounded afterwards, Fr. Alfredo’s message reminds us that the Word can come into our hearts and provide new life.

My mom and I lived about one mile from Papa Dave and Mama Marge. My early childhood involved frequent sleepovers at their house. I remember I would often wake up early in hopes of sneaking cookies, only to find Papa Dave watching Winnie the Pooh by himself. Maybe he was waiting for me? I do not know.

Every time I would go back to that house...I would silently walk into my old closet. I would spend some time there staring at all of my clothes which seemed to shrink as the years passed. ...At some point, however, it became glaringly obvious that I would never fit into those clothes again. My closet became a time capsule, a glimpse into a life that I once lived.

The Seven Sorrows Rosary is a chaplet prayer that commemorates the seven sorrows of Mary. Each sequence on a seven sorrows rosary has seven beads instead of ten, and there are seven sets of beads... Throughout the devotion we meditate on the maternal sorrows and sufferings of Mary that she lived through as the Mother of God. This is a devotion that I would highly recommend as an ACOD.

Bergsma’s [book] ... for an adult child of divorce ... is like life-giving water for a parched soul. For me, it offers a healing lens to view marriage, not through the brokenness I witnessed growing up, but through the understanding of God’s original design as revealed in His Word. In reading this book, I found not only clarity, but also hope...

This Fall, I have been reflecting on two works that embody this mystery: Mahler’s Titan Symphony No. 1 and Duruflé’s Requiem. On the surface, one is a grand orchestral symphony and the other a prayer for the dead. Yet both works enter into the depths of grief and mercy, showing us how music can transform wounds into beauty.

All ACODs have some story as it relates to the separation of their parents as a family unit, even if that story is that they never knew their parents as a unit. One author who did remember his parents together for a time is the late Shūsaku Endō (遠藤 周作, Endō Shūsaku), author of Deep River (深い河, Fukai kawa).

Eventually, I found myself at a Blessed is She retreat in which Father John Burns shared a stunning Scriptural message of our Heavenly Father’s love…. Receiving the words he spoke proved to be a pivotal moment in my life.

In a recent study put out by the Center for Economic Studies, data shows that children of divorced parents have an elevated risk of jail time, elevated risk of mortality, increased risk of teen birth, and reduced adult earnings...This study marks a milestone in our scientific community’s recognition of divorce as a trauma...and is a great piece of scientific leverage for our ministry to stand on.

...there are certain situations that can re-open past wounds and bring old pain back to the surface. Taking care of my father in his illness is one such situation. ... my father is facing Lewy Body Dementia in a nursing home. He’s been battling this disease for about eight years, and I have gathered a few insights along the way that I would like to share.

In these recent days, I have been in Rome for Youth Jubilee events as part of the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope. Since 2019, I have come to Rome on pilgrimage once a year, but this year I was compelled to time my trip for the Youth Jubilee for a special reason: it was precisely in our childhood that our parents’ divorce affected us (ontologically, if not also chronologically).

...I was excited to receive a request from Life Giving Wounds to write a book review for Unshakable Saints Around the World... Since I had received so much healing from children’s books already, it made sense to me that a children’s book of Saints would be wonderful for ACODs, both for personal healing, as well as it means for sharing that healing with the children in our lives.