Denver Newsroom, Sep 12, 2020 / 04:51 pm (CNA).- Snuffy the Snuffleupagus’ parents were supposed to have divorced in 1992. The brown, fuzzy Muppet-quasi-mammoth, a beloved feature character on the PBS show Sesame Street, was going to chronicle his experience of the split in an episode intended to address a difficult topic with children.
But the episode never aired. Reportedly, during its screening, it “made preschoolers cry” and did not further their understanding of concepts surrounding divorce, and so it was pulled. It wasn’t until a decade later that the kid’s show would again take on the topic of divorce, in a small segment posted only on their website.
Divorce is a difficult topic to discuss with children, even though an estimated 1 million of them experience it every year.
Today, an estimated one-quarter of young adults are children of divorce – and many of them feel they were failed as youngsters in addressing their pain from the experience.
“That can come from messages from society, like a ‘happy divorce talk’,” Bethany Meola told CNA. The messaging of those talks often goes something like: “kids are resilient, you’ll be fine.”
But divorces and separations often cause deep emotional, spiritual and psychological wounds in children that can last well into adulthood – and that are rarely formally addressed. This is why Bethany, along with her husband Dan, co-founded Life Giving Wounds, a Catholic ministry offering healing retreats, talks and resources for adult children of divorce.
“Our ministry looks at a number of the common wounds that children of divorce experience,” Bethany said. She added that the ministry is for adults whose parents divorced or separated when they were children or young adults.
“The first wound we address is the wound of silence,” she said. Children of divorce often feel like talking about the pain caused by the divorce is not allowed – that it just further burdens their parents, or that divorce is normal and therefore should not be a big deal.
“There’s a lot of testimonies now from adult children of divorce that they felt like, ‘I don’t know how to share this or where to go with this, or even if anyone will care’,” Bethany said.
Bethany herself is not technically an adult child of divorce – her parents separated a few times but got back together, and remained married.
But her husband Dan, co-founder of Life Giving Wounds, is an adult child of divorce. His parents separated when he was 11, but didn’t formalize the divorce until he was 26. That left Dan feeling like he lived in “somewhat of a limbo, though it was pretty clear they weren’t getting back together,” he said.
Dan said as a kid, he felt confused by the separation at first, and then hopeful about his parents possibly reuniting. It pushed him towards God, towards prayer.
“I was praying like crazy for my parents. A lot of rosaries, a lot of Divine Mercy Chaplets in grade school, sixth, seventh, eighth grade.”
But his understanding of those prayers was kind of “cold,” he said. He thought if he just prayed enough prayers, God had to grant him what he wanted. That eventually led to a lot of disillusionment and anger, Dan said, when it became clear a few years into the separation that his parents were not going to get back together.
“You’re caught between anger and love with your parents,” he said. “As a kid growing up, even as an adult…it’s still hard to navigate that – those complex, warring emotions.”
Dan waffled between not wanting to talk about the divorce – because the emotions were just too confusing and because he was worried how his parents would react – to feeling overwhelming anger because it seemed like there was an “unspoken rule,” particularly around his parents or siblings, that the divorce was something that was not to be talked about.
It wasn’t until Dan was a junior in high school that he really started to seek healing through the Church from the effects of the divorce, he said. He went on a retreat and he talked to some priests about what he had experienced for the first time. He told his parents he was seeking healing, and they were accepting of it.
“That really ushered in a path of healing that was going to extend over four more years very intensely,” he said, even though the process was “haphazard.” Not much existed in the Church to address this specific issue, and he had to seek out a lot of resources on his own.
As he studied marriage and family in graduate school at the Potificial John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America, Dan was part of a focus group that studied the effects of divorce on adult children. The project, called Recovering Origins, inspired him to create retreats that would help adult children of divorce – and these retreats would soon become the ministry, Life Giving Wounds.
The name of the ministry is taken from 1 Peter 2:24, “this beautiful passage which is, ‘by his wounds, you are healed’,” Dan said.
“It’s Christ teaching us the spirituality of redemptive suffering and helping people live that.”
That healing comes about in several ways, Dan and Bethany said. The first goal of the retreat is to “give voice to the pain,” to let retreatants know that their wounds as a result of divorce are valid, and giving them a place to grieve what was lost.
They share their stories and get their wounds “all out on the table.” Those wounds can take many shapes, Dan added, from protective behaviors like promiscuity and cohabitation, to broken relationships with parents or other family members, to identity crises and strained relationships with God.
Then they bring those wounds to the Holy Spirit in prayer, he said, and invite healing in. They also help facilitate further conversations with parents, spouses, friends, and therapists as needed.
“We also provide them resources on our blog to follow up with a support group. We give them recommended reading, so we give them a lot of the tools that they need in those different avenues, and we’re constantly creating more things,” Dan said.
Jennifer Cox was one of the first participants in a retreat for Recovering Origins, when Life Giving Wounds was still taking shape. Cox’s parents divorced when she was 7 in what she said was a kind of “best case scenario” divorce, at least on paper. Her parents were respectful to each other, they lived close enough to one another that bouncing back and forth between them was not too difficult. They both remained very involved in her life, attending her swim meets and other school events. Jennifer graduated college, became a nurse, and owned a home. By all measurable accounts, she was a successful adult.
“When I was in high school or my early twenties, if somebody said to me, ‘Wow, I’m so sorry that your parents are divorced. That must be really hard for you,’ I just would have looked at them like, ‘Okay. Well I mean, thanks, but I’m fine’,” she said.
But Cox started to notice something was wrong around her late 20s, she said. Although her life was seemingly going well, she experienced depression and anxiety, despite having normally been a very positive and upbeat person. She struggled with self-confidence and had an outsized fear of failing.
She now recognizes that many of those wounds came from a place of not wanting to disappoint her parents and make life even harder for them. She said she also realized early on that she took it on as her “job” in the family to make her parents happy, so that they would not be sad because of the divorce.
“I started therapy, I started really digging into some of my struggles and a lot of the dots connected back to my parents’ divorce,” Cox told CNA. “And I was shocked, honestly. I just had no idea, because my parents divorce was a ‘good divorce’ and we had minimal issues. I have good relationships with both of them.”
The beauty of the retreat, Cox said, was being able to unite her wounds to Christ and to realize that she could use them to help others.
“When he was on the cross, Jesus suffered and had the ultimate woundedness of obviously physical wounds, but also the huge woundedness of being rejected,” Cox said. “Then that was redeemed. He rose again…he did that for all of us.”
“So for me, and specifically this wound of my parents divorce, in being able to acknowledge it and share my story…it makes it worth it somehow.”
Cox now volunteers with the ministry and helps coordinate content for their Instagram page. She said she would recommend the retreat to anyone whose parents have separated or divorced.
“If their parents are divorced, I’d want them to really take the time to reflect, to see where they are, did their parents’ divorce affect them. I think there are so many people walking around struggling with all sorts of things, but not realizing that there might be this route to (healing) that maybe we need to focus on. Think about it, pray about it, bring it to the Lord. Don’t ignore it, really lean into that.”
Samuel Russell is another participant in a Life Giving Wound retreat who now volunteers with the ministry, helping edit their blog.
Russell is a convert to Catholicism but grew up in a Christian environment, he said. Two years ago, when he was engaged to his now-wife, there were family issues and wounds that arose as he prepared for marriage.
Russell’s fiancee was the one who found Life Giving Wounds, and recommended that Russell try one of their retreats.
As someone about to get married, Russell said he was struggling with not having grown up with a marriage that lasted.
“It was the question of: Am I able to do this? Is this something I can actually do, live with? The phrase in the vows – ‘To have and to hold all the days of my life’ – not having that modeled, and having actually a broken model of that, it’s like you’re carrying that with you into something where you’re planning to say: ‘for the rest of my life’.”
“It was a challenge trying to grapple with the psychological level of, yes I can do this,” he said.
Russell said one thing that really struck him during the retreat was a song, Waiting in the Wound, by Michael Corsini.
The song “helped reframe how I think about Christ because…The song implies that Christ is already there. He’s in that wound that you know you have and he knows you have. He’s just waiting for you to come so he can heal it,” Russell said.
Russell said he encouraged other adult children of divorce to explore their own healing when they felt ready.
“I want people to know that they’re not alone in their suffering or grief on this issue,” he said. “And it’s okay to address it now, or address it in the future at a time when you feel more comfortable exploring it.”
Dan said he hopes that Life Giving Wounds helps spark more conversations about healing from divorce in the Church, where sometimes there can be a stigma attached to the topic.
“I think the stigma is there for different reasons, like ‘Oh, I don’t want to bring up woundedness, that’s such a sensitive topic,’ or, ‘I don’t want to treat them as fragile,’ or, ‘I don’t want to upset their parents’,” Dan said.
“I would just say, I’d rather err on giving voice to the pain than saying nothing at all,” he said. “(Adult children of divorce) are getting the message, by and large, that this is something not to talk about, I can’t go to the Church and talk about this, I can’t go to the priest to talk about it. I haven’t heard many homilies from priests about divorce and the effect on children. I don’t know any I’ve heard in the last four or five years.”
Like countless ministries this year, Life Giving Wounds has had to cancel their in-person retreats for 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the ministry is hosting an online retreat starting in October, the details of which can be found on their website, LifeGivingWounds.org.
Bethany said while they are disappointed to cancel their in-person retreat, they are hoping the online option makes it even more accessible.
“If you’re a child of divorce and you have seen ways that it’s affected you, it’s a retreat to go on. Or, if you’re not even sure, if you’re thinking okay, I’ve never really taken a good look at this, it’s a great retreat to go on for that, too. There will be people of all different places on that spectrum,” Bethany said.
“No matter what happened with your parents’ marriage, no matter when they divorced, no matter if they ever even were married, if your parents are not together, then the retreat is for you.
“You’re not alone,” Dan added.
[…]
No Catholic in good standing can vote for any candidate who campaigns for the killing of unborn defenseless children.
Nor for a grossly immoral candidate who flaunts our constitutional form of government and has even waffled on pro life issues. A man who is dangerous and can’t be trusted. Friends we are in serious trouble!
It is sad and funny that Catholics criticize Trump on moral grounds. The most disgusting immoral President was the JFK and Biden is nor far behind in his lack of morals. JFK almost got us into WW3 and Biden has started 2 wars so far.
History credits JFK with getting us out of the cuban missile crisis with back door diplomacy through the work of Bobby Kennedy allowing Khrushchev to save face. I am no fan of the Kennedy family but this is a fact that we can’t ignore.
O my goodness, and how the bishops pandered to Hispanics by trashing Trump, having Mass at the wall with the press in tow, cozying up to Biden … only to find out Hispanics are as smart as most other Americans. Now, bishops, you’re out there on a limb. Hope you don’t land too hard and trash your miters. That’s right, you’ve squandered your teaching authority once again. And you wonder why regular Catholics no longer pay you any mind? And you’re going to find out soon enough the pay off for jumping on the BLM/George Floyd bandwagon last election cycle. You have it coming.
jpfhays, you put it so succinctly and accurately. Most of our bishops are feckless sycophants – followers of that Great Accommodationist, Francis I.
I’m guessing the US bishops are already aware of this but more & more Hispanics are Evangelical & Pentecostal & those are socially conservative folk.
Biden is a “Catholic president”?
Well then…
Hitler’s family was Catholic. So I guess that means Hitler was a Catholic fürher, eh?
I know, I know. It’s disrespectful — and not accurate — to compare Biden to Hitler.
You’re right. I’m sorry.
After all, Germany only murdered three or four dozens of millions of people during Hitler’s rule.
While Biden’s holocaust numbers in the many hundreds of millions around the world during his half century in office.
Recently, I heard a statement I found interesting: Democrats have not carried a majority of male voters (all males – white, black, Hispanic) since LBJ in 1964. My very limited research tends to support this as accurate. I’m willing to be corrected by the really smart CWR readers.
No REAL Catholic would choose to vote in the ’24 election.
Any Catholic who decides to vote this year is announcing to the world that their faith means less than nothing to them and politics are more important than Jesus. 😡
This message was brought to you by the Biden/Harris Campaign Committee.
🙂
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do NOTHING.” If you fail to vote, you effectively join the crowd with blood on their hands.
Its like voting for a third party candidate who you know CANNOT win as away of virtue signaling. It steal votes from the better candidate, and effectively allows the side that lies and cheats to win.
Some choice. Most Americans do not want this choice, but here we are. Again and again, we are faced with the “lesser of two evils.”
the last person i want in the white house is that no good loser trump
hmmm…so i guess its ok for trump to fool around with porn stars and support abortion???
you people drive me crazy. trump belongs in prison, not the white house!
So, I guess it’s ok for Bill Clinton to harass multiple women and for Hillary to help him cover that up? I guess it’s ok for Andrew Cuomo to harass 14 women and counting? I guess it’s ok for Barack Obama to sow racial divisions in the country and support partial birth abortions? Is voting for a democrat really any type of morally sound alternative when you look at the facts?
Ideally, I prefer my politicians without porn stars. But I have yet to meet a person who is perfect and without weakness. In the final analysis, I am MORE concerned about how their POLICIES affect our country and our people. We are voting for a President, not a saint. Only the dimmest cant see that stirring up accusations about a persons sexual activity is simply a way to damage them politically. I would not vote for a political party like that with a gun to my head.
Answer honestly. What does more damage to more people? An open border, a refusal to enforce criminal laws, and a two tiered justice system, or a politician dating a porn star?
I prefer my presidents without porn stars too, LJ.
😁
But we take what we can get and there are only two viable options at the moment. One’s associated with porn stars, the other with cognitive decline.
Not that very long ago, Democratic elected officials like Joseph Biden DID vote for pro-life bills, and the Democratic Party was considered “the party of the little man (and what is littler than an embryo or fetus?!). But now the few pro-life Democrats who are strong enough in their soul to remain prolife, e.g., Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois, are basically hounded and hated out of office. The problem is that the basic concept of the “Republican” party is individual freedom–which means that there will still be plenty of pro-choice” Republicans. The only hope is to pray for more private citizens to recognize the scientific and spiritual reasons to be “pro-life” and demand that their elected officials of ANY political party support the right of the unborn to live! Voting Republican is no guarantee that pro-life laws will be passed and upheld. I do plan to vote for Pres. Trump at this time (not only because of pro-life issues but because he has a better grasp of what is necessary for a strong economy, and he is respected (or perhaps feared?!) by other world leaders. However, we still have a few more months for God to work a miracle!
Alex, for 500 points. Question: Who wrote the following:
“… it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life.”
Answer “Who is Ted Kennedy” (1971)
Hard to believe but true: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-story-behind-kennedy-s-pro-life-letter
Thank you for sharing that article, Ron.
What a sad example of how we betray our faith for worldly success. I’d say betrayal of our convictions also, but that assumes a sincere conviction in the first place.
For every Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden there’s a lifetime of Catholic clergy who have enabled them to get to that place of moral error. At Judgement the shepherds will be held to a higher accountability than the sheep.
Happy Mothers (Mary and own mother) Month . Catholics who vote for Trump did not comprehend, imbibe and get well the Catholic values taught by their mothers. How could one vote for a narcissist, liar, cheat, misogynist, sexist, racist, rapist, insurrectionist, criminal defendant, who has no God but himself.
My mother had commonsense Deacon Dom & she taught me to make practical choices.
Based upon the performance of either candidate while they were in office, I’m choosing Trump. I base my vote on previous performance , not campaign hype.
Well, you supported the Clinton’s and B. Hussein Obama. What does that say about your own faith and values?
You are basing a lot of your accusations of Pres. Trump on a corrupt and ultra-liberal media’s slant. These folks lie through their teeth. I’m sure some of it is true, but…if you want an indication of how Pres. Trump lives in his private life, just take a look at his children, including his youngest son, Barron. These kids are amazing–they started working in their dad’s company when they were 16 and were required to work at every “job” to be able to understand what the employees do. After Pres. Trump was elected, Barron came under an attack by the “media”_-and Melania (his mom) promptly left the White House with her son and took him to a private place in NYC where the media couldn’t get at him. Pres. Trump had no objection. I would suggest that you read VP Mike Pence’s biography in which he discusses Pres. Trump in detail and for the most part, until the Jan. 6 debacle, is quite complimentary about Pres. Trump. Pence has been a devout Christian from his childhood–he grew up Catholic and converted to Evangelical Protestantism later in life–so he’s not one to stretch the truth or tell lies. And be wary about believing the media. One “story” about Pres. Trump that they haven’t reported is all the “small charities” that he has funded, including an amazing organization in NYC called Figure Skating In Harlem. In the beginning, the coach spent all her own money funding this excellent organization, which has a 99.9% high school graduation rate among the mainly minority girls who are members. Donald Trump heard about the organization (he was involved with re-building a NYC figure skating rink) and stepped in with a large donation. I don’t know if he is still involved, but at this point, Figure Skating in Harlem is supported by many A-list celebrities who also serve on the board (e.g., Al Roker). But it was Donald Trump who kept it alive in the beginning. You’ve never heard that, have you? Maybe Pres. Trump isn’t as bad as you think.
“criminal defendant”
I’m going to ignore the rest of what you spewed and focus on this.
You do dealize that being a defendant in a criminal case doesn’t mean that a person is a criminal, right? There’s a little thing called “presumption of innocence.”
And even in the cases of people convicted, there are also some who are wrongly convicted, and prosecutors who abuse the law to promote their own political agendas.
Happy Mother’s Day/Month. Those Catholics who vote for Trump must have failed to comprehend or imbibe the Catholic values taught by their mothers. How could they vote for a narcissist, liar, cheat, misogynist, racist, rapist, insurrectionist, criminal defendant, and who has no God but himself.
Most German voters in the early 1930’s didn’t think the Nazis were serious about all that extremist stuff, either. History has a way of repeating itself.
It seems to be doing that on our college campuses today, Marlene. Plus ca change…
To Deacon Dom, and some others in this comment section – even if she were alive, we are never going to have a Mother Theresa running for president. Trump gave us Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe and sent it back to the states. All of the national and state pro-life groups that I saw praised this at the time. So, going back to the states wasn’t as good as many of us hoped. Hardly Trump’s fault.
Given the choices that we have, I don’t see how anyone cannot see the difference between Trump and Biden, who is not only for abortion but wants to increase it with a national pro-abortion law. Biden, and his campaign manager have said that their key campaign issue is going to be a stand as the pro-abortion candidate.
If Trump does win, I believe that we will then be hearing from the bishops, calling out Trump by name, for trying to close the border to illegals.
The democrat party is the pro death party as evidenced by their platform which calls for the killing of unborn babies anytime, anyplace, for any reason, paid for by the government.
I get the impression that so many Catholics are so tied to the democrat party that they refuse to see moral realty, and that goes also for bishops, half of whom in my state are registered members of the party of death.
Bravo, Crusader!
The Democratic Party is indeed a death cult. They are in favor of:
Abortion, to the tune of a third of the children conceived in America for the past half century; open borders, over which deadly drugs are allowed to pour in unimpeded; the mutilation and sterilization of “trans” children without the consent of the parents; drug legalization; foreign aid for the nation that is the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world; some ten million illegal aliens, totally unvetted, being allowed into the country and receiving welfare and services while U.S. families struggle to survive; euthanasia — and so much more.
Catholics who vote for Democrats should look to their souls.
A Catholic would make a big mistake voting for the figre head in the White House or not voting at all. That Catholic would be contributing to the victory of a clear pro abortion candidate and party (I leave out the many other anti Christian and anti national positions they hold). With all his folds, DT is on our side; the other is not. DT has appointed more pro life judges than any president. He is pro life. The other is not. DT tries to save as many children as possible with his leaving abortion to the states, not the Feds. The other wants the Feds to control and push abortion. DT is against all the anti children policies the other holds from transgender to lgbtq plus, etc. Catholics, this is a no brainer decision. And by the way, with all his faults, see what a good bunch of boys DT has raised, who love his father. Compare with the present figure head and his children, one of whom he used to take showers with when she was a girl, as she has recollected in her diary, found in a house for drug addicts (she has drug and sexual promiscuity problems). Once more, folks, this is a no brainer at election time. Go and vote for the much better candidate.