I Lost My Sense of Home
4 minute read.
This story was written by Shannon Combs at 24 years old. Her parents divorced when she was 20. She gave permission for her story to be shared.
Her STORY
I was a junior in college. I got a call one night from my mother. Her voice seemed hesitant and I knew something was wrong. She told me that she and my dad were getting divorced because he had been having an affair. My parents were married for 29.5 years. This came out of nowhere for me and my siblings. I had just visited them a month prior during my Christmas break. The affair and divorce led to one disaster after another. My father, who was a sober alcoholic, began drinking again out of shame and guilt over what the affair did to his family. This was the first time I had truly dealt with his alcoholism. At that time of my life, I lived in horrible anxiety and depression, trying to grapple with the divorce of my parents, the affair, and my father's drinking. Unfortunately, my father found himself in jail for a year due to behaviors while under the influence because he could not stop drinking his pain away. This was the breaking point for me. I felt like my life was falling apart. I was hurt, betrayed, angry, and embarrassed. March of 2020 and the onset of COVID sent me back home from college. I felt like I didn't have a home to return to though after everything happening with my family. 2020 was hard for everyone, but for me, it had nothing to do with COVID. It had to do with the consequences of my parent's divorce.
HOW THE DIVORCE MADE her FEEL
I was hurt, betrayed, angry, and embarrassed. It was as if I was living in a nightmare. For 20 years of my life, we were a relatively normal, suburban, Christian family. The divorce divided my family unit into two. I lost my sense of home, literally and figurately. The only thing I had trust in was Christ. He was and is my Rock, but it was still a season of immense struggle.
HOW THE DIVORCE IMPACTED her
My parents got divorced when I was in college. So I was semi-independent, but it still left me feeling like a homeless child. It also made me resort to certain tendencies in my own relationship, particularly my marriage. It left me with a lot of trust issues and an unhealthy and outright wrong understanding of marriage. Thank God for the Church, and a priest who counseled my husband and me with gentleness and love so that we could be equipped going into our marriage at a time when I had just been impacted by my own parents' divorce.
ADVICE FOR SOMEONE WHOSE PARENTS JUST SEPARATED OR DIVORCED
Don't confuse your grief with guilt. A divorce is the death of a family, something you will grieve. I felt a lot of guilt over my parents' divorce - sad for both of my parents and felt a sense of responsibility to save their marriage or to be their primary caretaker. While my father chose to have an affair, I couldn't play the role of my mom's therapist or best friend, or pastor. Nor could I be my father's confessor or AA sponsor. I was their daughter and I was a victim as well. I couldn't be a neutral party for my mom and my father, but I could still love and forgive them.
As a child of divorce, whether you are a kid or an adult, you have to create boundaries to protect yourself and your loved ones. You have to be willing to stand up for your own healing—which you can do without trampling on someone else or making the person who started it all feel even worse.
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