With being an Adult Child of Divorce comes a healing journey that is complicated and messy, at best. This is the most succinct way to describe my own personal healing journey. It is one that I am very much still on, but I know that I am healing and am on the up and up. Like you, my journey has not been linear by any stretch of the imagination. It is one of many turns, bumps and painful feelings resurfacing—but that is because I, like you, am still healing. Healing is not linear;  however, the healing journey is always oriented towards heaven, so we are always headed heavenward in our healing. In this post, I will share six points that have been instrumental and life-changing—for me—in my journey towards healing.

In life, more often than not, we do not get the apology that is due to us. And when we do, it frequently falls short of the words we need to hear. I have come to realize, for my personal situation, there are no words big enough, or deep enough, or sincere enough to compensate for what has been stolen from me.  With this realization, I finally stopped asking and waiting for the apology that does not exist. My pastor says, “It takes one to forgive.  And it takes two for reconciliation.  One can forgive without reconciliation, but one cannot have reconciliation without forgiveness.” I chose forgiveness.

For those not married who believe they are called to marriage, you may know quite well the brokenness that keeps you in patterns that delay your readiness for the type of relationship that would lead into marriage.  In whichever category you find yourself, I submit that marriage has the potential to offer you significant healing.  For those who are married, when your marriage becomes difficult, and it will, the key is to turn toward – not from – your spouse.  The more you turn toward your spouse, with Christ, the more healing you will find.  This is because holy matrimony is a sacrament that heals, and it heals through the communion and sacrificial suffering modeled after Christ’s own sacrificial suffering to restore communion between us and God.

Jesus has called me to serve Him now, and our community, in attending to the Eucharist.  Christ asked me to be a Eucharistic Minister in the fall of 2021.  I love being a Eucharistic Minister! I serve at Mass as well as bring the Eucharist to the sick and homebound.  Being spiritually and physically this close to Christ during mass, adoration, as well as bringing the Eucharist to the sick, has provided me much intimate time with Christ, where I have  received much healing grace as an ACOD.  And I know that Christ is guiding me to new ways to serve and attend to Him in the Eucharist. 

Though I hid, self-protected and continued to wear the masks that I thought gave me some value, Jesus never stopped seeking the real me underneath.  He never abandoned me.  All the while, He was patiently working on me, preparing my very calloused and guarded heart to be broken again through the second loss of my dad.  But this break would be healing and redemptive, because it would finally let Love Himself enter in.  And He came in through another father, His father and now mine – Good St. Joseph.  I truly believe everything started with my simple prayer after that providential homily.  St. Joseph became the guardian of my healing journey and continues to be my strong and faithful pillar along the way, in both explicit and sometimes hidden ways.

Upon entering religious life, I tried to hide in the coping mechanisms that had worked for me growing up, such as people-pleasing and anticipating others’ needs. I desired to please the Lord, could follow community customs and was good at serving others. Not only was I good, but was praised for my attentiveness to the needs of others and my generosity in service. As I continued further in formation, those coping mechanisms started to unravel and the truth of the pain I was in surfaced.

It was a few months into my freshman year of college; I was at daily Mass with my friends. At this time, I was really beginning to become aware of how much pain my parents’ divorce had caused and continued to cause me. I remember sitting in Mass, attempting to calm myself, but feeling rising panic each time the priest said the word...

Jesus, Jesus, I am scared.

Rescue me.

You awake and calm the storm

around me.

But there is still a storm

inside me.

You look at me and ask:

Will you show me your hurt?

Will you let me embrace you?

Will you accept my healing grace?

...my version of “forgiveness” was simple: never let anyone get close enough to hurt me. But the Lord broke through my defenses and gradually brought me back to Him through a reversion to the Catholic faith. ... When I first attended the Life-Giving Wounds retreat, my heart overflowed with awe and gratitude as I heard the truth about God’s intention for the love between mother, father, and child.

In addition to this invaluable spiritual support, we need to shore up strengths and acquire new skills to heighten and expand our ability to love. Understanding our temperament can help us do this. This is not a theory of fixed personality traits identifying unchanging characteristics that put people in a box. Rather, understanding temperament helps us identify our strong and weak tendencies to react in certain ways in certain situations. 

The year we got married, Dan’s parents completed their divorce proceedings, which had begun more than a decade earlier when they separated while he was in middle school. It felt ironic and deeply sad that we were beginning our life together as his parents were definitively ending theirs. And it caused some anxiety in us: Could we make it work? Would we last?

Knowing that I am made in the image and likeness of God brings a lot of comfort on the days that I don’t feel like I know who (or Whose) I am. I can still struggle in understanding my identity because of what happened with my parents, but now I’m in a much better place.