Finding the path to spiritual healing for the adult children of divorce – Catholic World Report

Divorce has become an incredibly common feature of life, especially over the last 70 years or so. No matter how common or “normal” divorce becomes, the fact remains that it always inflicts a profound wound on families. The couple themselves are certainly affected, but the children of a divorced couple are perhaps impacted more profoundly. Whether young or grown, the divorce leaves a wound that can pain them for the rest of their lives, if left untended.

Dr. Daniel and Bethany Meola are the authors of Life-Giving Wounds: A Catholic Guide to Healing for Adult Children of Divorce or Separation (Ignatius Press, 2023). They are the founders of a Catholic non-profit apostolate of the same name, Life-Giving Wounds. Both are graduates of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. In the book and their apostolate, they draw from their personal experience, theological formation, and academic research, to provide a path to healing that is compassionate, spiritually rich, psychologically sound, and in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

The Meolas recently spoke with Catholic World Report about their new book, the challenges many people face because of divorce, and these wounds can be “life-giving”.

Catholic World Report: How did the book come about?

Daniel and Bethany Meola: Short answer: the Holy Spirit’s providence intertwining life circumstances, experiences, and wisdom and research towards this desired end.

The long answer: it begins with Dan’s experience of his parents’ separation when he was 11 years old in 1996, their eventual divorce in 2011, and him being keenly aware of a deep spiritual need for direction for his own healing and the utter lack of resources in the Church for adult children of divorce, despite there being several books and programs for divorcees. This personal experience interconnected with our academic and research experiences when we attended the John Paul II Institute for studies on marriage and family, where they were doing research about the wounds of adult children of divorce while we both studied there.

This academic experience led to pastoral work and accompaniment, when in 2015 Dan ran a retreat for adult children of divorce. In 2018 we founded Life-Giving Wounds ministry, and incorporated as national non-profit in 2020, to respond to the tremendous need of adult children of divorce or separation (ACODs for short) looking for Catholic faith-grounded responses to the pain and wounds they’d experienced from their family’s breakdown.

Around 2021, we began exploring the possibility of distilling what we’d learned through our time at the JPII Institute, our experience accompanying hundreds of ACODs, and our personal family backgrounds into an accessible book form that an ACOD or their loved ones could pick up and use as an aid for healing and support. We know that men and women from broken homes may be at different places in their healing journey, and we hope the book can be both an introduction for some to the areas in their lives that may need healing, and for others a way to go even deeper into the Lord’s abundant love and mercy.

CWR: Some might object that emotional challenges and psychological problems need psychological solutions, and that faith doesn’t have a part to play. How would you respond to that?

Daniel and Bethany Meola: Mental health professionals and therapists absolutely can play an important role as someone is seeking to heal from the fallout of their family’s breakdown—we always encourage ACODs to consider therapy as a support for their healing and we try to incorporate psychological sciences and knowledge into our book.

But to relegate healing simply to the “professionals” or leave healing at the level of emotions or psychology misses so much. We argue in our book that psychological healing needs to be integrated into spiritual healing, and that the deepest level of healing we all need is spiritual, because every suffering we face is at its core a question addressed to God about his love for us and his will for us. We see this at play clearly in adult children of divorce, who as a group are statistically less likely to be active church-goers or members of a faith community.

Among the many wounds caused by family breakdown is the wound to one’s faith, as a person can wonder “Why, God?” and—especially for those abandoned by their earthly fathers—start to doubt God the Father’s love for them. We see this all the time in our ministry. The big questions about suffering, the meaning of life, who God is, and whether he truly loves me can’t be wholly answered by psychology (which again has an important place), but only in a consistent relationship with the freedom and truth of Christ.

Our dream is for adult children of divorce to find healing at every level that they’ve been wounded, and that often includes their faith, their understanding of God, and—always related—their understanding of their self and identity, too. We dream of a Church where people who are wounded in any way aren’t immediately and only sent to the “professional” healers (therapists, etc.), but are also accompanied in love by trained and faithful witnesses who—while not experts in psychology—can show as peers the “how” from the inside of healing and of persevering joyfully through suffering in friendship with Christ. All of us Christians have a role to play in healing wounded hearts.

CWR: Why is divorce such a problem in our society? How did it get so common?

Daniel and Bethany Meola: Our book doesn’t address this question per se, although it’s of course worthy of attention. There are cultural, moral, and legal layers to this topic, especially the explosion of divorce following the sexual revolution and no-fault divorce laws in the late 1960s and 70s. And research has shown a contagious effect of divorce, that people with divorces in their social circles are also more likely to divorce, so there can (and has been) a real snowball effect to the point of an unprecedented level of relational brokenness and normalization of this brokenness, which proliferates divorce —and choosing to not marry and to settle for even less stable relationships more than ever.

From this normalization, there can be what behavior scientists call a “learned helplessness” that you can see in silent, lukewarm, or destructive responses by Christians and non-Christians alike to the news that a couple is divorcing or thinking about divorce. Many shrug their shoulders and avoid talking about it, or, worse, celebrate the news, when they should be, in the vast majority of cases, fighting for the couple’s marriage and reconciliation by reminding them of the beauty, healing, and joy that can come to them and their children through persevering through the suffering, and honoring their marriage bond.

Taken as a whole, we’ve become selfish and very ‘me-oriented’ to such a point that we’ve lost a very important sacrificial perspective that my marriage is not just for and about me, but for God and the good of my spouse, my children, and the entire world. My marriage is far bigger and greater than my personal happiness and fulfillment, as we can see in how destructive parental divorce can be upon children, their relationships, and even their future children.

This perspective leads to a crucial point that is often missed in discussions on this topic: a major factor driving divorce is that statistically, men and women from broken homes are more likely to divorce themselves, so the brokenness—if not healed—can be passed down to subsequent generations. It can be hard for some to believe that divorce is really that bad, given the vast number of people who have been through it (and whom some are quick to label as “resilient” or “doing fine”). Taken all together, we’re in a position where getting married at all, and staying married, have become countercultural acts and—from a Christian perspective—a tremendous witness, especially to those from broken homes who may never have seen a happy, lasting marriage.

CWR: The Church has always taught the sanctity of the marriage bond, so why is divorce so common even within the Church?

Daniel and Bethany Meola: To start to answer this question, we’d like to propose three reasons.

The first is that the above cultural thinking, behaviors, and trends discussed in the last question have seeped into the Church and the decisions of couples about whether to divorce. We need to proclaim the truth of the indissolubility of marriage, that marriage is meant to last a lifetime, and that what follows from that is that divorce is not what is best for you, your children, or the world.

Second, it’s hard to think of another answer other than sin and—as Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 19—our “hardness of heart”. Marriage isn’t easy! And Catholics aren’t immune from the challenges that any marriage faces, especially in a society that can be quick to look for the easier solutions in difficult situations. (And to be clear, Church teaching does not expect spouses to stay in abusive or dangerous situations; canon law and the Catechism are clear that physical separation and at times civil divorce are licit in such tragic circumstances.) Again, we know anecdotally that struggling spouses are not always offered much help by the Church, or at times are even encouraged to divorce in situations that don’t merit it. We also see many tremendous, beautiful efforts by ministries within the Church to help prepare couples well for marriage and give support to married couples; we need more of that!

And third, we’d contend that we need a lot more support for the adult children of divorce or separation so that the cycle stops in their lives and vocations (one of our goals). The lack of specific resources, pastoral programs, and financial investment for healing the wounds of adult children of divorce or separation, is a stumbling block and sad tragedy because they are most at risk for divorce themselves, but also offer the greatest hope for reversing the trends in our society as we’ve seen countless times in our ministry by ACODs not just faithfully living holy lives, marriages, consecrated life, and priesthood, but also becoming a resource for healing for others. Just as there is a divorce contagion, there is a holiness contagion when healing is found.

CWR: One of the many issues you examine in the book is the “Wound of a Broken Identity” that comes with divorce, and the “Life-giving Identity in Christ”. How can our identity in Christ help those suffering from their parents’ divorce, or anyone going through a major change or trauma that affects their sense of identity?

Daniel and Bethany Meola: Yes, a core topic we write about is how having your parents split up can deeply impact your sense of self and your place in the world—this is called an ontological wound and can be one of the more hidden effects of divorce, although it can show up in areas like low self-esteem, depression, taking on various unhealthy roles in relationships, and more. The core wound is that we’ve lost the love of our parents together, however brief or non-existent for us it may have been, and we, who are always the fruit of this communion and forever connected to both parents, are negatively impacted by this loss. It can be described as being “torn between our parents,” or at times feeling “emotionally homeless” with one or both parents.

In such a scenario, we stress the importance for ACODs (and in some ways, for all of us) to be sure to ground our identities in our origins from God—that we are all willed into existence by Him, loved by Him, and are an image of Him. No matter the vacillations of our earthly families, we can be confident in our identities as children of God, communicated most profoundly through the Sacrament of Baptism, which we can remember every time through a consistent prayer life we must develop in order to heal.

From that steady foundation, ACODs can then do the hard work of seeing in what ways their parents’ split has caused them to doubt their own goodness, or has fractured their identity between the various worlds they’ve had to navigate, and so on. Knowing whose we are and who we are, and attaching to Him in prayer as our stable foundation for life, is a tremendous step forward to finding greater peace and joy in the midst of suffering.

CWR: Are there other resources for adult children of divorce that you would encourage folks to take advantage of?

Daniel and Bethany Meola: We encourage people to participate in our Life-Giving Wounds ministry programs. We currently have nearly twenty in-person chapters across the United States and now Canada, with another 6 or 7 on the way in 2024, that offer retreats, support groups, connection to trusted Catholic counselors and spiritual directors, and much more.

In addition to these in-person chapters, the national ministry also offers online ministry in the form of retreats, support groups, community, a well-curated blog of helpful short essays, mental health resources, print resources, such as journals, Rosary booklets, art, etc., and much more as we are always innovating. For information on all of these programs and offerings, please see www.lifegivingwounds.org. For resources and books outside of our own ministry, we have a full write-up of books, articles, podcasts, videos, and more that we think can be valuable for ACODs on our website.

CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

Daniel and Bethany Meola: We hope that adult children of divorce who read this book feel seen, comforted, encouraged, loved and strengthened by Christ to carry the crosses that they did not ask for but shoulder nonetheless. We hope the stories and advice we share gives an adult child of divorce deeper self-awareness, practical ways to heal the suffering, and renewed motivation to persevere and to believe that their wounds are not life-limiting but can truly, through God’s grace, become resources of profound faith, hope, and love in their lives.

And we hope that everyone else who reads it—Christian leaders, divorced parents, and all those who love an ACOD in their lives—will come away with a greater understanding of the pain divorce causes to children, an openness to receiving the wounds of ACODs in their lives, concrete ways to help them heal and thrive, and a commitment to helping ACODs heal and resist the cultural tendency of downplaying the seriousness and pain of parental divorce.

CWR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Daniel and Bethany Meola: The Life-Giving Wounds book examines seven areas in life you may have been wounded by your parents’ divorce or separation, and seven life-giving remedies to these wounds within the overarching perspective of the Catholic faith’s teaching on redemptive suffering. There is truly a joy of redemptive suffering that Christ wants each adult child of divorce or separation to discover. So please read the book for this joy in your life, no matter when your parents divorced or separated, and please share about it or purchase a copy for someone you know who could benefit from it.

And finally, please know Life-Giving Wounds ministry is much more than our book and we warmly invite all adult children of divorce seeking healing to join us on retreat, for a support group, or any other event. It is our deepest passion to provide opportunities for ACODs to find healing grounded in Christ and His truth about love and marriage. Anyone can find information at our website: www.lifegivingwounds.org. Feel free to reach out to us by email at info@lifegivingwounds.org. Please be assured of our prayers for everyone who reads this article, the book, or is considering picking up a copy and reading the book. May each one of you find the healing you deeply desire in Christ, and may your wounds become life-giving (1 Peter 2:24).