The image of the Pieta by William-Adolphe Bouguereau was an image I had glanced at a few times over the years, but I believe the Lord had a specific time for me to be moved by that image, so that I could be led to love Him and His mother more deeply, and to be loved by them both in a new and profound way.

I spent years of my young life praying my parents would divorce, as it seemed like the only option for any peace in my family. I had witnessed my Dad hurt my Mom and attempt to kill her several times. The last time, he tried to kill us both. I absolutely believe our Guardian Angels protected us! Eventually Dad became seriously ill and the violence stopped.

This year, my husband went on a Life-Giving Wounds retreat, and I am now forever grateful to this ministry. My husband left with a lack of understanding of his pain and his story, but returned to me and our family with the gifts of knowledge of himself and his pain, and a deeper understanding of his story. He was understood on the level of the heart that only something like this ministry can give. He came home with a correction of “oh, it doesn’t affect me” to “it affects everything in my life.”

Rebuilding my trust in God’s goodness has been quite the disaster relief project. Some days it feels like only pebbles are being added to my rebuild; and other times it feels like the whole building collapses down upon me again and it’s time to start all over.

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. 

I was at a crossroads. My heart ached for this love to be true, I wanted so badly to believe it was for me, but I was so scared what that might mean. How silly! My life had changed 180 degrees over those 7 years, so what the heck was I waiting for? What was I scared of? I was scared that God would change his mind, like I thought love did when my parents divorced when I just a baby...

This is a poem about my parents’ divorce. The title “Flight 1015” refers to their wedding anniversary on October 15th and in the poem their love is metaphorically described as both the turbulence and the airplane itself. The poem is also a modern dialogue with Robert Frost’s famous poem about marriage entitled “The Master Speed.”

Between Two Worlds is not a hateful attack against parents who did divorce (and neither is this review), but it is a strong cautionary warning to those who seek to minimize or invalidate the wounds of adult children of divorce, wounds that deserve recognition, validation, and most importantly, compassionate understanding so that healing can begin. Because after all, adult children of divorce deserve no less of a quality life than any other human being. But this realization can be hard for an adult child of divorce to embrace because they have often been asked to sacrifice or settle on their own expectations for their lives, starting from the moment of their parents’ divorce.

One of the most common requests we receive in Life-Giving Wounds ministry is that we speak more to the issue of annulments. Even though this would be a great topic for a support group meeting (and may well be addressed in that format in the future), I thought I’d share my own thoughts on the matter. In this post, I hope to provide a few pointers and some encouragement.

Spiritual direction is the art of guiding someone or being guided to greater growth in the spiritual life and ultimately to the goal of becoming the saint that God has created each one of us to be. Put simply: our goal in this life is to get to Heaven, become holy, and enjoy eternal happiness, and a spiritual director helps us to get there. The true spiritual director is the Holy Spirit, and so both the spiritual director and the directee must be in relationship with the Holy Spirit through prayer and the sacraments to be able to listen to His voice and follow where He is leading.

As many of you can surely relate, my relationship with my mom was never easy. I struggled with how to relate to her, agonized over her health, and beat myself up for never “feeling” love towards her. But one thing I have learned throughout this whole ordeal, that I will likely need to be reminded of many times, is that love is an act of the will. Feelings are a side-benefit. I rarely felt excited or looked forward to calling my mom on Sundays. But I did it, and this act showed my love towards her, even though I did not feel it. 

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?

Mary Magdalene is an excellent example of healing and transformation through mission. Her wounds did not disappear after the Lord’s forgiveness, but were used as a wellspring for love and her mission from our Lord. When your wounds seem overwhelming, do not despair, but turn to Mary Magdalene. She will show you where to point your feet.