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...

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. 

During Covid some people learned to bake bread, some planted gardens, others drank too much wine. My Covid experience was time with Father God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, fully aware that they were changing me. I became like the unrelenting child who asks too many questions. But my unrelenting was a prayer, “Heal my heart, Lord. Please heal my heart.” He did it when he knew I was ready.

As an interdisciplinary field, Interpersonal Neurobiology draws together insights from Biology and Psychology in the context of human relationships....I thought it could be helpful to choose a few key terms and concepts and explore how they relate to our reflection on attachment.

I remember making an entire ritual and event when Taylor Swift released “Mine” in 2010, the single from Speak Now. I curled up on the couch and put in my earbuds, pressing play with all the pomp and circumstance a fifteen year old could muster. It was the first time Taylor was releasing a single since I fell in love with her music—but that wasn’t why I remember that moment so vividly....

I define the ‘sexual orphan’ as ‘anyone who has been deprived the protection or advantage of their parents’ formative witness in regards to the physical, moral, psychological, or emotional dimensions of human sexuality because of parental divorce, separation, or neglect.

We are privileged every day to walk alongside men and women seeking healing from the myriad ways their parents’ split has affected them and, keeping all ACODs close to our hearts, we wanted to share a “wish-list” for what we would love to see included both at the Synod and in the Vatican document.

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.

Trevor Jimenez’s animated short "Weekends" is a striking narrative that conveys the trauma of parental divorce in such imagery. The autobiographical film tells the story of a young boy spending weekdays with his mother and weekends with his father. Although the boy seems fine on the outside, his inner turmoil is exposed through a series of dreams and struggles.

As we continue this series on Attachment Theory, building upon the key concepts we explored in Part One, we now turn our attention to how attachment facilitates human development and the ways secure and insecure attachment impact mental health.

A couple of months ago, I was attending a women’s retreat... where glossy tiles of neutrals and shades of blue formed a gorgeous mosaic of the Blessed Mother. I kept returning my gaze to it, and I heard in prayer: “I see you looking at my mother—her maternal love is so different from what you have seen… My mother is tender, approachable, truly sacrificial, and only able to love fully and purely…”

I have to be honest, I never thought that my world as a Catholic and my world as a professor at a public institution of higher education could ever meet together, yet coincide beautifully into one. But with God, anything is possible, so I continue to remain in thankful awe as to how He brings about good works.

Last Friday, June 16th, I was blessed to attend the wedding of a dear friend of my husband's. Like me, my husband's friend is an ACoD. When I realized earlier this week that his wedding date coincided with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, I decided that I wanted to make a special wedding card for the couple.

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.

Attachment—I used to think of it as a bad word, something we must avoid at all costs. I believed that attachment and feelings of dependency were signs of weakness, and I wanted to be strong. I thought Catholics needed to be detached from all things in order to serve God. I was mistaken.

Five branches from the trunk of the split tree

Four girls and a fella, that’s my siblings and me

In Three years we went from complete to shut down

Two people once in love

No one left to be found

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.

If you come from a background of family brokenness, I would like to offer encouragement as you look ahead to your wedding day. Brides and grooms—choose wedding customs and traditions that are meaningful to you. You have the freedom to make the choices that express who you are and what you hope for your future marriage and how you want to remember or to celebrate your past.

I searched my heart for months and I accepted how I felt about this situation and made a decision. I realized that if I did not take care of them my guilt would have been much worse than I had experienced in my life. My father remained at his home with home health care and I oversaw his care. My mother eventually spent the last nine months of her life at home with my husband and me.