My adolescent life was a playground swing.

Back and forth:

Between Mom

And

Between Dad.

I never knew where to go, nor where I belonged.

I didn’t know where home was, for I couldn’t be close to them both.

I have often wondered why, in the long history of the Church, we do not hear more often about saints who lived through difficult family situations. Surely there were plenty, but it is not usually the aspect of their lives that we hear about. And so learning of St. Eugene’s life, and reading through his letters, I found myself grateful to know that I had a friend in heaven who understands my particular pain. Even someone who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Eugene, experienced similar trials and emotions that we do in the 21st century.

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.

However, the whole point of Lent is to do things that bring us closer to the heart of Jesus. And, if I want to be free to love someone in the vocation of marriage one day, how will I be able to do that if I am still carrying around resentful anger towards my parents? Do they deserve this reaction? Probably, but God loves them just the same as He loves me. So I embarked on a forty plus day journey of loving my parents through the eyes of Jesus Christ, whose love was so big that He died on the Cross for sins that He did not commit (cf CCC 598).

For adult children of divorce and parental separation, having trusted resources for the healing journey is important. The burdens and wounds caused by parental separation or divorce can have a significant impact and last a lifetime. That is why I think it is good to know about and consider if the Litanies of the Heart and a Catholic approach to Internal Family Systems might be something to add to your healing tool box.

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.

I desire to make decisions from a place of authentic love and not respond from the wounds of my past and present. Wounds that make me feel trapped—make me feel like I do not have a choice in the matter— with no control. For this reason, when I first heard about St. Josephine Bakhita, I was drawn to her: a woman who was kidnapped as a child, sold into slavery, and ultimately lived in the freedom of the Lord’s love as a religious sister.

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.

From day one it seemed like my parents were divided over my name. Well at least my first name because both of them shared the same last name before marriage. Each parent wanted me to be named after their dad. As a result, one side of the family calls me David and the other Andrew. By the time I was four, this division was complete and definitive by way of their divorce. As most children of divorce, I certainly felt divided and split in two; exemplified by my two different beds, two different sets of clothes, two different sets of toys and two different first names. 

But my mom was human. Both my parents were human. And the very fact that in spite of the deep pain and abuse that my mom went through for most of her life, she still tried…SHE TRIED. That is the difference.

As I travel into the deeper places in my heart, in prayer and in therapy, I have found a deep craving for silence, right alongside a deep fear of silence. At the core of my fear, is the fear that God will not ‘show up’ in the silence. Growing up, and to this day, my relationship with my dad has been marked by an empty silence.

As a teenager, I began to experience mere anger, seemingly without any other emotion or feeling that I had no control over, and had no idea where it came from or why it would get so out of control. ... This was a tomb that I suffocated inside of for years throughout much of my adolescence.

A few weeks back, Life-Giving Wounds social media coordinator Jen made a short reel for our Instagram page. The reel, a mere five seconds long, featured this audio clip: “This might be an unpopular opinion, but I’m going to share it anyways” with this text on the screen: “Divorce impacts the children involved and causes a deep wound.” ... But what happened next surprised all of us.

About one year ago something very traumatic happened... My precious, amazing mom passed away... My world shattered the day that I lost her. Watching her suffer for months and being powerless to help her made me feel like I could relate in some way to our Blessed Mother, to the agony and helpless that she must have felt in watching her beloved Son die.

So, when we pray to forgive those that have hurt us, whether it’s the first time we are forgiving them or the seventy-seventh time we have forgiven them for the same offense, let us ask the Lord for the forgiveness powerful enough to conquer sin and death in our loved one.

...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.

Forgiveness is hard. I can attest to that. I was born angry (by the looks of my baby picture!) and my parents’ divorce cemented that anger even more. I was the queen of holding grudges; I literally held them for years. But that was before I reverted to Catholicism, and I heard about forgiveness on a daily basis through the Lord’s Prayer and the teachings of Jesus.

I’m fifty-fife years old, and up until recently I spent most of my life after my parents’ divorce in pain and not knowing why. I also spent my life running from that pain— into the arms of men, towards the bottle, and literally running for exercise, all of which gave me a brief reprieve from my problems.

Keep in mind that forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation (which takes two people), but sometimes must be offered unilaterally. It is a difficult process, but it is also freeing. Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting, condoning, or approving the harm done, and it goes hand and hand with setting healthy boundaries. Seeking out therapy and empathizing with the other person’s own struggles helps.