2025 Highlights and 2026 Dreams
Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash
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:
2025 HIGHLIGHTS
Growing our staff – again!
Erin Fabian - Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Our team continues to grow! In 2025, after a highly competitive search, we welcomed Erin Fabian as our Marketing and Communications Coordinator. Erin has brought so much expertise to Life-Giving Wounds, from marketing strategy to newsletters to website search engine optimization, and much, much more! We are thrilled to have Erin on board to help get the word out more effectively about Life-Giving Wounds and what we have to offer ACODs.
You can help Erin in her work by liking and sharing our social media posts or forwarding our emails to your friends and loved ones who will benefit from learning about Life-Giving Wounds.
New Resources for Healing
We launched a few new things this year! These include:
An interactive quiz about how your parents’ divorce affected you – followed up with a personalized guide to take the next step in healing;
A digital 8-day “Guide to Grief” that distills some of our key content into an accessible mini-retreat meant for those just starting on their healing journey or those looking to go deeper;
A new sacred art image: “Create in Me an Intact Heart” by artist Belem Gallaga, which is available as a print or on prayer cards (English or Spanish); and
A new prayer that goes on the back of the new prayer cards, about the five wounds of Jesus – you can read it here.
5-year anniversary
Dr. Daniel Meola (LGW President), Kyle Craft (Board Member), Erin Fabian (Marketing and Communications Coordinator), and Alex Wolfe (Assistant Director of Programs and Development) show the special cake celebrating Life-Giving Wound’s 5th Anniversary celebration. Clinton, MD - September 2025.
This summer marked five years of Life-Giving Wounds as an official non-profit, and we threw a party to celebrate! Alumni and supporters in the DC area joined us at St. John’s in Clinton, MD (where LGW offices are located). It was a joyful time!
And more broadly, reaching five years as a ministry felt like a tremendous landmark! It is amazing to look back at where God has taken Life-Giving Wounds since our tiny start in one archdiocese to now reaching across the country and beyond. (You can read previous yearly recaps here, here, and here to see the growth. Also, you can see what our website looked like five years ago on April 15, 2020, here.)
Retreats, support groups, and more!
The joyful conclusion of our launch retreat in Louisville this year! Hats off to Family Renewal Project.
We held forty-four retreats and support groups this year, all around the country, in Canada, and online–what a joy to know that each event gave another opportunity for an adult child of divorce to be seen, heard, loved, and supported. This is the heart of what we at Life-Giving Wounds do, and it is tremendous and humbling to see the work continue to grow and bear good fruit!
We also welcomed several new chapters to the Life-Giving Wounds family:
Austin, Texas
Cincinnati, Ohio
Detroit, Michigan
New Orleans, Louisiana
Louisville, Kentucky
Media Spotlights:
On June 30th Catholic News Agency author Emily Chaffins spotlighted the mission of Life-Giving Wounds in a thoughtful piece featuring co-founders Dan and Bethany Meola. The article shared personal stories from alumni and emphasized the growing response to the wounds of divorce and separation.
Earlier in the year, on February 26th and 27th, Dan and Bethany were guests on “At Home with Jim and Joy,” on EWTN! Fr. John Paul Mary, MFVA, Chaplain to EWTN Employees and close friend and collaborator of LGW, was also on the show! Both appointments were enriching for attendees, viewers, and participants alike. There are two interviews: Part 1 & Part 2.
Read more on our media mentions page here.
2026 DREAMS
Continue growing our team
As the ministry reach continues to expand, we continue to need more workers in the vineyard! Our next dream hires include a fundraising and development professional to take the reins on that side of the operations, which are so essential to any non-profit. We would also love to grow our capacity to onboard new LGW chapters and nurture them, so that is another hire we are dreaming of. We will see what doors the Lord opens in 2026, and who he puts in our path!
Keep an eye on our careers page for announcements.
Continue growing our campus and seminary programs
We have made some great progress in conversations with Catholic campus ministry programs around the country, and we believe many of them will start to be active in 2026. It is still very much on our hearts to cultivate LGW’s presence at colleges and in seminaries, where young people are often grappling with their identity and background in a deep way, or discerning their life’s path. We look forward to seeing what fruit this will bear in the upcoming year!
If you would like to bring Life-Giving Wounds to your campus or seminary, consider being a chapter host.
Expand more opportunities for healing
Two big projects that remain dreams are our “Perfect Love Casts Out Fear” program for couples (which made some great behind-the-scenes strides in 2025). It has long been on our hearts to have a program that speaks directly to couples (dating, engaged, married) where one or both of them come from a divorced home, and addresses the unique challenges that ACODs experience in relationships—and the opportunities ACODs can bring as well.
We also hope to continue expanding our current online ministry into a more robust platform that provides continual, ongoing support for adult children of divorce. We are praying for the people and the funds to make these dreams a reality!
If you would like to volunteer on either of these, please let us know here.
There are of course more dreams than these! But hopefully this gives a sense of where our hearts are heading into 2026, and where we are praying to see doors opening. Come, Holy Spirit!
Prayer
Pope St. Sylvester I, whose memory we celebrate at the close of the year, you oversaw a great period of transformation and growth within the Church after a long period of immense suffering. Please pray for the Life-Giving Wounds ministry: that we, like you, may respond to how God is calling us at this moment in time and that we, like you, may share the healing love of Jesus with a wounded and weary world.
Your gift enables us to provide this vital ministry for our Church and culture. It helps to heal wounds in adults with divorced and separated parents and to change the tide of the family today to be healthier and stronger for generations to come. Please consider making a donation to help us reach our goals in the coming year.
