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#007: 9 Common Struggles of Adult Children of Divorce - Part 3 | LeeAnne Abel

Part 3 of 3. When your parents separate or divorce, it hurts. It brings a lot of pain, problems, and struggles into your life. But what are some of those common struggles? That's the topic of today's show.

We discuss 9 common struggles that children of divorce typically face based on a survey of 350 adult children of divorce and some tactics to deal with them.

LeeAnne Abel.jpg

When your parents separate or divorce, it hurts. It brings a lot of pain, problems, and struggles into your life. But what are some of those common struggles? That's the topic of today's show.

We discuss 9 common struggles that children of divorce typically face based on a survey of 350 adult children of divorce conducted by LeeAnne Abel.

Throughout the conversation, we offer practical advice on how to deal with those struggles. In addition, this episode will help you understand yourself if your parents are separated or divorced. If you love or lead anyone from a broken family, it will also help you understand and love or lead them better.

Part 3 of 3. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

eBook: 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness

“Mom told my siblings and me that Dad would no longer live with us. In fact, they were getting divorced... Immediately, I froze. I went numb. The 11 year old Joey couldn’t handle that news.”
— 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness
 

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Coming Up: Episode #008: The Hardest Part of My Life | Miranda Rodriguez

Thanks for listening! Our next episode features the story of Miranda Rodriguez. She wrote the very moving article Dear Divorce.

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Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

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#006: 9 Common Struggles of Adult Children of Divorce - Part 2 | LeeAnne Abel

Part 2 of 3. When your parents separate or divorce, it hurts. It brings a lot of pain, problems, and struggles into your life. But what are some of those common struggles? That's the topic of today's show.

We discuss 9 common struggles that children of divorce typically face based on a survey of 350 adult children of divorce and some tactics to deal with them.

LeeAnne Abel.jpg

When your parents separate or divorce, it hurts. It brings a lot of pain, problems, and struggles into your life. But what are some of those common struggles? That's the topic of today's show.

We discuss 9 common struggles that children of divorce typically face based on a survey of 350 adult children of divorce conducted by LeeAnne Abel.

Throughout the conversation, we offer practical advice on how to deal with those struggles. In addition, this episode will help you understand yourself if your parents are separated or divorced. If you love or lead anyone from a broken family, it will also help you understand and love or lead them better.

Part 2 of 3. Part 1 is here and Part 3 is here. Enter your email below to be notified.

Join Restored’s private online community

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  3. We’ll email you instructions to join

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Coming Up: Episode #007: 9 Common Struggles of Adult Children of Divorce - Part 3 | LeeAnne Abel

Thanks for listening! Our next episode is part of 3 of the 9 common struggles of adult children of divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

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#005: 9 Common Struggles of Adult Children of Divorce - Part 1 | LeeAnne Abel

Part 1 of 3. When your parents separate or divorce, it hurts. It brings a lot of pain, problems, and struggles into your life. But what are some of those common struggles? That's the topic of today's show.

We discuss 9 common struggles that children of divorce typically face based on a survey of 350 adult children of divorce and some tactics to deal with them.

LeeAnne Abel.jpg

When your parents separate or divorce, it hurts. It brings a lot of pain, problems, and struggles into your life. But what are some of those common struggles? That's the topic of today's show.

We discuss 9 common struggles that children of divorce typically face based on a survey of 350 adult children of divorce conducted by LeeAnne Abel.

Throughout the conversation, we offer practical advice on how to deal with those struggles. In addition, this episode will help you understand yourself if your parents are separated or divorced. If you love or lead anyone from a broken family, it will also help you understand and love or lead them better.

Part 1 of 3. Part 2 is here and part 3 goes live Dec 26. Enter your email below to be notified.

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  3. We’ll email you instructions to join

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Coming Up: Episode #006: 9 Common Struggles of Adult Children of Divorce - Part 2 | LeeAnne Abel

Thanks for listening! Our next episode is part of 2 of the 9 common struggles of adult children of divorce.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

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#004: 7 Tips to Navigate the Holidays for Children of Divorce

The holidays are a challenging time for most children of divorced or separated parents. Most of us feel alone, lost, and uncertain of how to navigate the holidays with our broken families.

If you can relate, we made this episode for you. In it, we give 7 tips on how to navigate the holidays so you can enjoy them and hopefully, avoid all the drama.

The holidays are a challenging time for most children of divorced or separated parents. Most of us feel alone, lost, and uncertain of how to navigate the holidays with our broken families.

Instead of experiencing the joy of the holidays, we often feel overwhelmed, frustrated, embarrassed, and sad.

If you can relate, we made this episode for you. In it, we give 7 tips on how to navigate the holidays so you can enjoy them and hopefully, avoid all the drama.

The advice is from a survey of older children of divorce combined with Joey’s advice on the topic.​

If you love or lead someone with divorced or separated parents, share this episode with them.

Join Restored’s private online community

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Coming Up: Episode #005: 9 Common Struggles of Adult Children of Divorce - Part 1 | LeeAnne Abel

Thanks for listening! Our next episode features speaker, author, and leader LeeAnne Abel. We talk about the 9 common struggles that children of divorce face and some tactics of how to deal with them.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

The holidays can be a challenging time for so many people, for so many reasons. But this is especially true for people whose parents are divorced or separated, particularly if they're teens or young adults. Most of them feel alone. They feel lost, and they feel uncertain of how to navigate the holiday.

Given their family situation and worse of all, they're vividly reminded during the holidays of how broken their families are. I remember one of the first holidays that my parents were separated as a boy. I felt kind of awkward. I felt kind of embarrassed about what was going on with my family. I think most of all, I felt sad.

I was sad because this was one of the first holidays where both of my parents were not there, and so I remember spending most of that holiday, most of that Christmas in one of the bedroom. Playing video games. If the holidays are a struggle for you, this episode is for you. In it, I'm gonna give seven tips, seven practical tips on how to navigate the holidays if your parents are separated or divorced.

And this isn't just my advice. I surveyed older children of divorce and ask them what they would say to you if they could speak to you. And so I'm gonna take their advice. I'm gonna combine it with my own thoughts on. And that's where the seven tips come from. Keep listening.

Welcome to the Restored podcast, helping you cope and heal after your parents' divorce or separation so you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pontarelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode four and I wanna just dive right in. If you're someone who doesn't come from a divorce or Ed family, you may not understand why the holiday.

Can be so challenging for people like us. And so I wanna spend a little bit of time on that. I wanna explain some of the reasons why it can be so challenging, and certainly there are many reasons, but these are just a few. Like I said at the top of the show, it's a clear reminder that your family is broken and your parents are not together.

For most of us, we, we have fond memories of holidays, and when your parents separate a divorce, those kind of holidays just don't happen again. Those memories, sadly, will never be made again. On a practical level, it's just challenging. Logistically, you could have twice as many parties to attend, or if your parents are remarried, maybe even more.

If you're married, of course you have your spouse's family, and if you have children, you may feel even more pressure to bring the kids around to see your relatives and your parents. An obvious reason is the possibility for drama intention. Perhaps there's already drama intention to begin with. I know if it hasn't been long since the divorce was finalized.

Maybe you're in the midst of it all. There can be a lot of tension, not only between your parents, uh, but also between your relatives. Some of your relatives may be speaking bad about one of your parents, uh, and vice versa. Like I said, I remember just feeling sort of awkward about everything that was going down, and I knew some of my relatives didn't think very highly of my other parent, and so there was just a lot of tension and drama at some of those parties.

And one of the last reasons is that it's difficult to make everyone happy and, and I don't think you should, and we'll get into that in a little bit. But it can be challenging because mom may want you over at this time. Dad may want you over at this time. Dad may not wanna see mom, but mom may be okay with seeing Dad or like I've heard in some families, Mom and dad may still do holidays together, which can bring its own type of challenge.

Relatives can be upset that you didn't go to this party or that party, or you didn't stay as long because you were leaving to, to go to the other side of the family. And so, and at the end of the day, it leaves you feeling frustrated. Overwhelmed. Embarrassed, like I said, and I think kind of hopeless and just sad.

Just sad that your family is the way it is, that your family is broken, that your parents are not together. Even if I always say this, even if it was necessary for them to break apart, it's still a tragedy. The first thing I wanna say is if you feel any of those feelings, There's nothing wrong with you.

You're not weird, and you're not alone in feeling that writer and psychiatrist, Victor Frankel said that an abnormal response to an abnormal event is normal. In other words, when your parents separate or divorce, that's an abnormal event. It's not supposed to happen. And so if you feel anxious, if you feel sad, if you feel embarrassed, overwhelmed, frustrated by the divorce, but especially about navigating the holidays, that's.

And I just want you to know that this isn't right. The holidays should be a time for celebration, not drama. And I'm sorry if in your family there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of drama, and you really struggle to even attend these parties and especially struggle to find any joy in these holidays. So faced with all this, what do we do?

How do we navigate the holidays so we can enjoy them and hopefully avoid all the drama? The first tip is to set and enforce boundaries. Now, boundaries you could think of as like property lines. On this side of the line is me and what I like and what I'm willing to do, and on that side of the line is what I don't like and what I'm not willing to do.

It's out of bounds. Again, it's basically saying, I'm willing to do this. I'm not willing to do that. A few examples are telling your parents that I will not talk to you about the other parent. Another example is saying, I will spend the holidays with both of you, and then maybe laying down some rules saying, This is how much time I'll spend here.

This is how much time I'll spend there. And remember, it's okay to say. No, it's okay to say, I don't wanna do that. I'm not willing to do that. I'm not willing to talk about that, whatever it may be. Once you set the boundaries, you have to enforce those boundaries. If someone steps over one of those boundaries, you have to enforce it.

You have to show them that if these boundaries are not followed, there are consequences. And what you're basically saying, In enforcing your boundaries is that I am not a doormat. These are my rules, and if you follow them, we can have a relationship. I'll come to that party and so. If you don't, then you are self-selecting to not have a relationship with me.

Remember, you set the boundary and if they don't follow it, they're the ones making the choice not to have the relationship, not to have you present at the holiday, not to have you present at the party. It's not your fault if they don't follow the boundary that you set. You're not doing it to them. They are doing it to themselves.

Of course, as part of boundaries, there's likely to be some drama, and so just don't engage in that drama. Underneath this advice for boundaries, there's a few other important points, and one of them is it's not your job to please everyone. You're not responsible for pleasing your parents or your family or your relatives.

You have no responsibility to, to make everyone happy, and so on a, on a practical point, don't feel forced to involve strangers. In your life, whether that's, you know, your dad's girlfriend or your mom's boyfriend or someone else, you shouldn't feel forced to involve them in your life. It should be something that's natural and gradual.

Remember that you're not responsible to parent your parents. You are not your parents' crutch. You're not what holds them up. And don't let your parents emotionally rely on you. I know that sounds like tough love, but I mean it, it's really not good for them or for you if mom or dad are emotionally relying on you, they're opening up to you in a way that just is too much.

They shouldn't be coming to their child with all of their emotional baggage and emotional issues if they do. Kindly and firmly redirect them to their support network. And what I mean by support network is their friends, their family, maybe their siblings, or an aunt or an uncle or their mom or their dad.

Your grandparents could be a counselor, a pastor. Someone like that, they need help, but not from you. And so it's actually more loving for you to redirect them to someone who could actually help them and support them than to keep listening to them and allow them to use you as their emotional support.

And so you could say something simply like this, mom or dad, I love you. I care about you. I want what's best for you, but I can't be your emotional support. You need to go to your friends, to your counselor, to your family. To a pastor and lean on them, Not me. I wanna help you, but I have to help you in another way.

And one of the last points when it comes to boundaries is protect yourself from manipulators. And I'm not condemning parents here and saying that your parents are automatically manipulators, but if there's a manipulator in your family, whether it's your parents or someone else, be aware of that. Protect yourself from anyone who might want to use the holiday celebration or the holiday.

Spirit to take advantage of you or to back you in a corner, so to speak. In any way, don't let anyone use fear, a sense of obligation or guilt to manipulate you. So just keep an eye out for this. Recognize the manipulation, and just distance yourself from that person. It may mean confronting them and telling them, No, I'm not allowing you to manipulate me like this.

But it also may just mean getting out of that situation because you know that they just won't listen to what you. The next tip is to communicate ahead of time. There's a few important points here, and one of them is that you have a right to express your feelings. Be honest about your feelings and the needs that you have.

In fact, if you're at that point, I encourage you to talk to your parents, sit them down, talk to each of them, and tell them I love you both. But it can be very hard around the holidays to please you both and to not offend you. So I need you to please understand my decisions, my boundaries, and please understand that the tension in our family makes it difficult to actually enjoy the holidays.

But even if you're not there yet, I encourage you to set expectations early by communicating to both of your parents. You could tell your mom, Mom, I will be coming to your party for this long and then leaving to go to dad's party. The reason to do this is so that there's no surprises when the holiday shows up.

Now I realize if you live at home, This can be especially difficult. You may not have as much power to just leave or tell mom or dad that you're not coming to the party, but even in that case, I encourage you to communicate with mom, with dad, and tell them what you're comfortable with, what you're not comfortable with, and my hope is that they'll hear you out and they'll love and care about you enough to understand where you're coming from and give you that respect and that freedom.

That you need. Tip three, take ownership. You can choose how to respond even in the midst of the worst situations. I know it's difficult, Trust me. I know it's difficult, but this is absolutely true. You can choose how to respond even in midst, all the tension and the drama during the holidays. When I say take ownership, I mean do what you can with what you're given.

When it comes to traditions, some of the old traditions that you're used to may die, sadly, but you can make your own traditions, especially if you have your own family, you can spend. The holiday with someone else, with a friend or a family. If your family right now is toxic for you, and if you spend the holiday with another family, I really encourage you to be intentional about that and to choose a family that really exemplifies it shows what it means to be a true, good family.

And as the years go on, keep in mind that you get to make your own family. You get to choose your own family. And again, if you're married or moving towards marriage, just focus on your. This could be a good time to think about what you want for your future family or your current family compared to what you have right now in your immediate family.

And a practical tip is to just plan things around the holidays that can distract from the drama and the tension. An example of that could be going to a movie or doing some sort of activity, whether it. Bowling or glow in the dark, mini golf, whatever it may be, some maybe activity that takes away the tension and the focus on conversation.

The fourth tip is to be virtuous. Vir, of course, is those good habits that we have and the disposition that we have toward what is good. And so give your parents some grace during the holidays. Just understand that they are navigating the holidays too, as someone whose family is broken as well. So be polite, be kind, be loving.

But remember, I'm not saying to just be nice and be a doormat. Stand up for yourself. Set those boundaries. But of course, be loving. Be virtuous. Tip five. Have a plan to take care of yourself. Think ahead about what could happen during the holidays. Prepare for different conversations. You're gonna have, I know this sounds extreme, but seriously, think about, I'm gonna be talking to this family member.

I'm probably gonna be in this situation and this conversation. Think ahead. Think about what you'll say, what you'll do in that situation, and be prepared to handle the difficult emotions that come along during the holidays. If you're from a broken. In my life, whenever I've been faced with a lot of stress or, or difficult emotions, especially as a teenager, I was always tempted to seek comfort in unhealthy things like pornography.

And I know other people struggle with things like alcohol or drugs or binging on social media, overeating, so many different unhealthy ways of coping. And so think ahead to that. How will I be tempted in the midst of that tension, that trauma, that stress? And then think about ways in which you can respond in a healthy way that may be going on a run or spending time with a friend or a good movie.

It's really helpful throughout the holidays if you can have a friend or maybe a couple friends who you can talk to about everything with your family. Don't keep it inside, get it out of you. Find that support and I'm gonna tell you how at Restored, we have an opportunity for you to join our private safe online community so that you can do just that.

You can find support with people who've been through the things that you're going through, and who in fact are going. The things that you are going through, uh, stay tuned. I'll tell you about that at the end. Another great way to get things out of your head, out of your chest is just to journal about them.

And this doesn't have to be in a paper notebook. It could be on your phone, it could be in a recording app. You can just say it out loud. It doesn't matter. The point is that you get it out of your head. And whatever happens through the holidays, learn from it. Look at it as an opportunity to be better, and whatever comes up inside of you, whatever emotions or memories come up inside of you, work through those.

Don't shove them away, but pay attention to that. Tip number six. Focus on the celebration. It can be so easy when there's so much drama and tension to forget about the reason that you're celebrating that holiday. And so try to remember, try to think of the meaning of the holiday and the United States. Of course, we have Thanksgiving, so think through maybe the history and the meaning of Thanksgiving and think about what you're thankful.

Again, even in the midst of a really bad situation, look for what you are thankful for, cuz there's always something that you can be thankful for. Even if it's as simple as the food or your friends who you can talk to about this, or if you love traveling, whatever might be, find something that you can be thankful for.

If you're Christian, of course you celebrate Christmas, but maybe you're Jewish, so maybe you celebrate Hanukkah, whatever it may be, remember the meaning of the holiday. Don't lose the meaning. In the midst of the drama and try to enjoy it. Enjoy the little things, and keep in mind that you may need to lower your expectations of what the holidays are going to be like.

Especially if your parents' separation or divorce is pretty fresh, you may not feel safe or secure at your family parties. And I'm sorry that's the case, but it is the reality and I just wanna warn you of. On a personal note, there are very few places that I feel safe and secure, and so just be prepared for that.

And don't be afraid to, to take a break. You know, help with clean up, help with setting the table, help with whatever someone may need help with. If you need to step away, go for a little walk step outside. And do things you enjoy. Play a game, play a board game. Play a card game, watch a movie, watch sports, whatever it might be.

Do something that again, takes the focus off of any drum or attention and helps you to enjoy the actual holiday. Tip number seven is to ask God for help. And if you're not religious, I'm not trying to stuff God in your face. For anyone who is religious, rely on God in the midst of these situations. If you're Christian, bring Jesus with you into the family party.

You don't have to do this alone. And if everything is a complete mess in your family, uh, first I'm so sorry that that's happening, but I want you to trust that God is not finished. He does not want this to be happening to you. I'm so convinced of that. I struggle with that for a long time thinking, God, why would you allow this to happen to me and to my family?

And that's a huge topic that we're gonna tackle later, but I just want you to know that God is not a sadistic God. He doesn't enjoy watching us hurt. He hates it too. He doesn't like us to suffer, but he does allow it. And that's something that we're gonna be talking about in the future. We'll talk about free will, and we'll talk about how God can bring good even out of the worst situations, even if it's hard to believe.

And I want to end with a quote from Saint Mother Therea of Calcutta, and it's a beautiful quote, and if you're not familiar with Mother Teresa, I think most people are, but she was a religious sister who served in India and really the worst part of India, and she would just serve the poor was so much love and so much joy, and she didn't just capture the Christian world, she captured the entire world secular.

Religious world, even atheist, just had so much respect for this woman. This woman who had so much love in her heart. So much joy and so much wisdom, which I wanna share with you because I think that it is applicable to the situation that we find ourselves in when it comes to navigating the holidays as children of divorce or ed parents, she said people are often unreasonable, irrational.

And self-centered, forgive them anyway. If you are kind people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere. People may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight, create anyway. If you find sincerity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good. Anyway, give the best you have and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway, in the final analysis, it is between you and God.

It was never between you and them anyway.

I hope these tips have been helpful for you. I just wanna name the seven tips again in case it's helpful. Tip one is to set and enforce boundaries. Tip two is to communicate ahead of time. Tip three is to take ownership. Tip four, be virtuous. Tip five, have a plan to take care of yourself. Tip six, focus on the celebration.

And tip seven, ask God for help. Like I mentioned during the show at Restored, we have a private online community, and the main benefit of the online community is that you can speak freely. In a private setting to people who also come from separated or divorced families. If nothing else, they can just encourage you and listen to you.

But often what I've seen in our community is that people will actually give some wisdom and some guidance on what you're dealing with, and you'll be challenged to grow into a better, stronger person. And even if you're not interested in sharing a lot in our community, You can still benefit from hearing what others are going through so that you know that you are not alone.

Now, if you wanna join our private online community, you can go to restored ministry.com/community. Again, that's restored ministry ministry singular.com. Slash community, again, restored ministry.com/community. When you go on there, you're gonna fill out a form, submit the form, and we'll get back to you, uh, with the next steps and welcome you to our community.

If you'd like to access the show notes for this show, you can go to restored ministry.com/four. That's the number four. Again, restored ministry. Ministry is singular.com/four restored. ministry.com/four. Big thanks to everyone who filled out the survey. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and taking the time to do that.

Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful, please subscribe. And the reason to subscribe is not only to be notified when new episodes go live, but also it helps us get more visibility on the different podcasting apps so that we can help more people. And please share this with someone that you know who could really use this.

During the holidays, and please know that I'm thinking of you. I'm praying for you. I really wish you the best this holiday season. I hope you can navigate that holidays successfully so you can enjoy them hopefully without all the drama. And always remember, you're not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person you were born to.

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#003: How Craving Wholeness Motivated Her to Heal | Beth Sri

Beth’s parents divorced when she was very young. However, she still remembers the cardboard boxes and feeling confused about her dad leaving.

Over the years, she saw her parents’ divorce impact her in various ways. She recalls looking for external approval, feeling lost, and the challenge of constantly navigating between two homes.

Beth Sri.jpg

Beth’s parents divorced when she was very young. However, she still remembers the cardboard boxes and feeling confused about her dad leaving.

Over the years, she saw her parents’ divorce impact her in various ways. She recalls looking for external approval, feeling lost, and the challenge of constantly navigating between two homes. She also shares what she has done to heal and how her life is better now because of it.

By listening to Beth’s story, you’ll find that no matter how broken you feel or messy life becomes, there’s always hope. She also shares some practical tips on how you can heal too.

At the end of the show, we introduce a free online tool for you to use at RestoredMinistry.com/story

If you love or lead someone with divorced or separated parents, this episode will help you to better understand them and how to help them.

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Coming Up: Episode #004: 7 Tips to Navigate the Holidays for Children of Divorce

Thanks for listening! Our next episode features 7 tips on how to navigate the holidays for children of divorce, so they can enjoy them and hopefully avoid all the drama.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

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#002: How 70 Adult Children of Divorce Have Suffered | Leila Miller

When your parents separate or divorce, it hurts and you feel alone. You feel like nobody can understand what you are going through.

At Restored, we know how that feels. But we want you to know this: You’re actually not alone.

Leila Miller.jpg

When your parents separate or divorce, it hurts and you feel alone. You feel like nobody can understand what you are going through.

At Restored, we know how that feels. But we want you to know this: You’re actually not alone.

To prove that, we talk with speaker and author Leila Miller about her book Primal Loss, which features 70 stories from children of divorce. We uncover the shocking ways divorce has affected them, even years later as adults, and some practical advice to deal with it.

If you love or lead someone with divorced or separated parents, Leila offers some practical advice for you too.

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Coming Up: Episode #003: How Craving Wholeness Motivated Her to Heal | Beth Sri

Thanks for listening! Our next episode features mother, wife, and leader Beth Sri. She shares her story as a child of divorce, her process of healing, and the transformation she experienced.

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Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

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#001: How Restored Helps Children of Divorce

Are your parents divorced? Are they separated? Has that brought a lot of pain and problems into your life? Do you feel alone and unsure of how to deal with it all?

If you answered yes, the Restored podcast is for you.

Are your parents divorced? Are they separated? Has that brought a lot of pain and problems into your life? Do you feel alone and unsure of how to deal with it all?

If you answered yes, the Restored podcast is for you. In this intro episode, we'll talk about how your parents' divorce is still affecting you, what you can do about it, and how this podcast exists to help cope, heal, and feel whole again.

Also, if you love or lead someone with divorced or separated parents, the Restored podcast is also for you. We want to help you, help them.

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To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

Coming Up: Episode #002: How 70 Adult Children of Divorce Have Suffered with Leila Miller

Thanks for listening! Our next episode features speaker and author Leila Miller, who wrote the book Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak. [Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through this link, your purchase will support Restored. Thank you!]

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Are your parents divorced? Are they separated? Has that brought a lot of pain and problems into your life? Do you feel alone? Do you feel broken? Do you feel uncertain of how to deal with it all? If you answer yes to any of those questions, this podcast, the Restored podcast, is for you. Now, if that doesn't describe.

I have another question. Do you love or lead someone with divorced parents or separated parents? If so, the Restored podcast is also for you on it. We feature expert interviews and stories that give practical advice on how to cope and heal after the trauma of your parents' divorce or separation so you can feel hold.

Keep listening.

Welcome to the Restored podcast. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. This is episode one. Thank you so much for listening. In this episode, we're gonna touch on a few things. First, we're gonna talk about how your parents' divorce is affecting you. And what you can do about it. Uh, we'll touch on why studies show that people who come from divorced families typically struggle more in romantic relationships than people who come from intact families.

We're gonna talk about restored. What is restored and why does it exist. What you'll find is that it exists for you, and we're gonna also talk about the plan for this podcast. What's touc come down the road and how this can be valuable. To you if you come from a divorce or separated family or you lead or love someone who does, Anyone from a broken family knows that when your parents separate or divorce, it hurts.

It's painful even when it's absolutely necessary and it makes life harder. A lot of unique problems and challenges that children of divorce have to face that other people. And most young people I've found, feel alone, feel broken, and really uncertain of how to deal with it all. In fact, that was Mary's story as a little girl.

Mary watched her parents fight all the time. Their marriage was a mess, and they needed some serious help, but they never got it. Fast forward to when Mary was in high school, Mary's mom came to her and said, I want to divorce your dad. Mary didn't quite know what to say, so she said, I just want the fighting to stop.

Her mom went through with the divorce and what seemed like a solution to really bad situation, just made things worse. It just brought more pain and problems into their lives instead of fixing them. Now up to that point, uh, Mary was a pretty good girl. She didn't drink or party or do anything like that, but that all changed when she went off to college.

She got into the party scene, started drinking heavily. That led to dating the wrong guys. She married one of those guys. He ended up being a drug addict and an alcoholic. They got pregnant and because Mary was terrified that her baby was gonna grow up in that hell, she got an abortion. That obviously brought a lot more pain into her life and eventually she divorced her own husband, repeating the cycle, started by her parents, and once the dust settled, she fell into a deep depression and she still deals with all of this to this day, years later.

What if Mary could have gotten the help that she needed when she was dealing with all that stuff as a teenager? As a young adult, what if I could have helped Mary? What if restored could have helped Mary, given her the support she needed, helped her learn how to cope in healthy ways instead of unhealthy ways, and how to find real healing.

I can't help but think that her life would not have turned into the tragedy that it became. Mary isn't alone. Each year, over 1 million American children suffer the divorce that our parents. That statistics from the The Heritage Foundation, and if you're one of them, if you're like me and you're one of them, you can relate to Mary's story.

Again, I created this podcast, The Restored Podcast for you specifically. Now, divorce is a heavy topic, but it needs to be talked about. And for anyone listening, especially any parents out there, You know, you've gotten divorced. We're not here to condemn you, right? We're not here to condemn anyone or tear our parents down.

We're rather, we're here to focus on how we can help the children who are often forgotten. Like Mary, my parents are divorced too. I'll never forget the day that they separated. I was 11 years old and my mom sat us down, my siblings and me to break the news, and as soon as I. My whole world just shattered.

Without a doubt. It was the most painful day in my entire life. And as a boy, as an 11 year old boy, I didn't know what to do with that news. I didn't know how to deal with it. And so I just hid the closet and cried, and a million thoughts raced through my head, and I worried about my parents. I worried about my siblings, and I worried about myself and what would happen now sitting there in that closet, I felt so.

I felt extremely abandoned, and I felt like I wasn't good enough because if I was, why were mom and dad going separate ways? I became very bitter, very angry, uh, very sad. I isolated myself and just felt very lonely, and in an attempt to numb the pain, I turned to pleasure. Around that time, a friend showed me some pornography, and so I, I got into porn.

Even though it brought some momentary relief when I was looking at it afterward, I just felt so empty. Even at a young age. I knew that I wanted to be happy, and I knew that this was not making me happy. And so I needed to change. Not long after that, I heard a talk by Jason Everett, and in his talk he spoke about pornography and how harmful it is and how it just poisons us and our future romantic relationships, our future marriages.

Around that time too, I, I met some really good friends. The people I was hanging out with weren't good for me, and so got some new friends and I noticed. When I spent time with them, I was just happier and they happened to be, uh, Christians. They, they were Catholic Christians, and so I, I tried to spend more and more time with them, and that helped a lot.

But even though life was getting better for me, I still felt very broken inside. I knew that I wanted authentic love, I wanted freedom. I wanted happiness, but I felt stuck. I felt held back by my own brokenness. And so I realize this principle that I believe is true for all of us, and that is our untreated brokenness is one of the things that holds us back most from becoming the person we deeply desire to be.

I'll say that again. Our untreated brokenness is one of the things that holds us back most from becoming the person we deeply desire to. And so I knew I needed to heal. I looked around for some help. I looked for a book, a speaker, a retreat, something out there, and I found nothing. There was next and nothing out there to help people like me and certainly nothing practical.

There were some studies and some research that had been done on children of divorce, but nothing specifically speaking into the pain and problems that we deal with, and I knew I wasn't alone. I looked at my siblings and I saw how they were struggl. I looked at friends of mine, close friends of mine, and I saw how they were struggling with their parents' divorce or separation, and I heard about other people too and how they were struggling, and so years later I started restored and ever restored.

We create content that gives practical advice to teens and young adults on how to cope and heal. After the trauma their parents divorced their separat. At this recording, the, the type of content that we produce is talks, podcasts, episodes, and our blog articles. In the future, we're gonna do things like videos, books, and, and much more.

We have a lot planned ahead. We also offer online community just to give support and, uh, help everyone to have a safe place to talk about, uh, the pain and the problems that they deal with from their parents', divorce or separation. And we also have a way to find a coach, a counselor, or a spiritual. Uh, to guide you.

My goal with all this is just to give. What I wish I would've had years ago. Now, I, I mentioned that restored is focused on teens and young adults, so anyone from 13 to 30. But of course, anyone can listen to this podcast and if there's something that's useful for that audience and someone else finds it useful, that's awesome.

We love that. Now, I also mentioned that anyone who loves or leads children of divorce or separation, uh, this is for you too, whether you're, you know, a boyfriend, a girl, Family friend, a cousin, an aunt, an uncle, whatever the case might be. Uh, if you're a teacher, a coach, a youth minister, passer a priest, this is also for you as well.

We wanna help you help them. A little bit about me. I'm not a psychologist, I don't have a PhD, but what I do have is 15 years of experience wrestling with this stuff. I've done 10 years. Spiritual direction or coaching. And if you're not familiar with that, it's just basically a, a mentorship where a coach helps you in life, deal with whatever you're dealing with, and especially helps you grow in your spiritual life.

I've done five years of counseling, three years of listening to people like us and researching this topic heavily. Now I'm not pretending to be perfect and trying to tell you guys that you just need to be like me. Not at all. That's not what this podcast is about. I have learned a lot along the way and I wanna share what I've learned if it's helpful, but we just wanna help you guys and if that means you learn something from me, from my experience and what I've learned in the research, I've.

Great. Um, but maybe it's from someone we bring on the show or a story that you hear. We just wanna help you guys in whatever way we can. And I'm still learning. I'm still growing, I'm still dealing with my own brokenness, but the whole goal here is for me to help the people who are a few steps behind me.

And if I can't help them, then I'm gonna get you the help that you need in some other. Let's talk a bit about divorce and how it affects the children. Now, I think most of you guys would agree that divorce is a tragedy. It's a really sad thing. Even in cases where it's extremely necessary, it's traumatic for the children, right?

It wounds us. It overwhelms our ability to to cope and deal with it all. Even with that, there's some people in the world who say that divorce is such a good thing that we need more divorce. In fact, you can Google this. There is such a thing as divorce parties. These are parties to celebrate your divorce.

You get a divorce, you invite your family, your friends, to celebrate your divorce. It's like a reverse wedding. Now, some people say that divorce doesn't hurt the kids, or you know, they're resilient. We hear that a lot, that the kids are resilient or even if they admit. Divorce does hurt us. The kids, they usually say that it's not very significant.

It's a small hurt and it doesn't last very long. The problem with that is that it's just not true, and even though some people who say that are probably have like the best intentions, they just haven't seen the research. Even those of us though, who do admit that divorce is a bad thing, I think we've just become so numb to it because it's so common.

When I give talks, uh, I ask the audience to raise their hands if they come from a divorce or separated family, or, uh, if they have a friend who does. I know someone who does, and every time I've given it, it's been practically a hundred percent every time. I, I'm pretty sure it's been a hundred percent.

It's hard to count when you're up there, but pretty sure it's always been a hundred percent and. This is a tragedy. This is such a big problem in our world, yet hardly anyone's talking about it. I wanna take a second to speak to those of you who do come from a divorce or a separated family. Guys, I'm so sorry for what you've had to go through.

You've had to endure more pain in your short lives than some people have to deal with in their entire lives. Every child deserves. A healthy family and two parents who love each other and stick together. Guys, the divorce was not your fault. The divorce was not your fault. No matter what anyone says, there's nothing that you could have done to prevent it.

And there's nothing that you did that caused it. It was between your parents, not you. And of course we were affected by it, but it nothing you did cause. After giving a talk recently, a girl came up to me and she confided in me that her dad, even though she's in college now, her dad still blames her for the divorce that happened years ago when she was a kid.

It's so sad, and I want you all to know that you are not doomed to repeat your parents' mistakes. You are not doomed to repeat your parents' mistakes You. Your own story. We fear that, don't we? We're afraid that we're gonna get divorced, that you know our life, our marriage might turn out the same way our parents said.

But I'm here to tell you that you don't have to repeat that past, You can write your own story. Now, diving into some of the research, how does Divorce effect the children? So the research shows that children of divorce are more likely to have social. Behavioral problems, difficulty in their relationship with their parents, difficulty in romantic relationships.

They're more likely to get divorced. They have higher frequencies of depression and violence. Higher risk for suicide attempts, reduce physical health, lower levels of success in school, more emotional problems. And typically have lower self-esteem. Now, this wasn't just one study that found this. This is from a meta-analysis study, which is basically a summary study of 67 different studies about children of divorce and the effect the divorce has on them.

And it was published in the Journal of Family Psychology by Dr. Paul Amato from Penn State University. Another researcher who spent so much time with children of divorce was Dr. Judith Wallerstein, and for 25 years plus, she studied children of divorce and she wrote a book called The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce.

And in it she reports her findings from a 25 year long study. She followed around 131 young people from 60 families, and one really important. Note about this study is that she only chose children who never had emotional or developmental problems before the divorce. And she compared them of course, to, uh, children from intact families over the years and after years of researching this, she said our findings challenged the myth that divorce is a transient crisis.

And then as soon as parents reestablish their lives, the children will fully. That doesn't happen. She found in her research that children of divorce were less likely to get married. They were more likely to divorce, less likely to have children. They're more likely to heavily use drugs or alcohol during high school.

They were less likely to finish high school, less likely to go to college, and more likely to drop out. They're far less likely to receive financial support from their parents for college and the men. Interesting. We're far less likely to enter into an intimate relationship. Dr. Judith said parents like to believe that if they are unhappy in their marriage, the children will also be unhappy.

Conversely, if divorce is better for them, it will be better for the children, but things don't work that way. Children frequently do not share their parents unhappiness with a problematic marriage while a divorce brings pain into their lives. That until. Has gone unrecognized. She goes on to say, We are allowing the children to bear the psychological, economic, and moral brunt of divorce.

The really key takeaway from her research is that the effects of divorce actually aren't fully experienced until adulthood years later, and the most obvious way that it becomes apparent. Is in our future romantic relationships. And you might be wondering why is that? We're gonna get into that in future episodes of the podcast.

But a basic, the basic reason why is that we lack a roadmap for love. We don't have a roadmap for love. Our concept of love and marriage is very broken because more than anyone else, our parents teach us about marriage and they teach us about love. And if we didn't see that go. Then we have a really broken idea of what it's supposed to look like, and I think that's a big reason why we're less likely to marry and more likely to get divorce.

I mentioned that we're gonna talk about that in future podcasts. We're also gonna talk about what you can do about it. At this point, I hope you can see that divorce is bad for the children, even in. When it's necessary, it may just be the lesser of two evils. And it's painful, right? It makes our lives harder.

Now, you may be thinking, are there ever any exceptions to this? And you probably caught what I've said a few times, that there's extreme cases where it is necessary. And before I get into those cases, I just wanna say, The goal is always to reunite the couple and bring the family back together if it's possible.

And sometimes it's not possible, right? We're under no illusion here at ReSTOR, but that's always the goal. Now, some of the cases where divorce is necessary is when there's violence, when there's abuse, you know, no one should live in that situation. We are. Encouraging that at all. You know, you there needs to be physical separation in that case, and if it's necessary, divorce extremely high conflict marriages where there's just always so much drama.

Now, side note on that, research shows that less than one third of divorces are actually like that. I always thought it was much more, but less than one third of divorces are actually like that. And more than two thirds, more than 66% of divorces are actually low conflict. So they don't have all that drama.

They don't have, you know, maybe the violence or the abuse. And the last reason I'll mention is for legal reasons. So imagine a mom who is a full-time mom. She, she's at home with the kids and maybe she has three kids, let's say, and dad one day just picks up and leaves with another. At that point, it may be necessary for the mom to pursue a divorce in order for her to get some money for her and the kids and provide for herself and just while she gets on her feet.

Again. Having said all of that, I want you to know that we're not belittling parents or their suffering. I can imagine what it's like to live in. Difficult marriage. I am married, so I know that marriage can be hard, but I can't imagine to live in something that's so intense. That being said, we believe that children, parents, and society deserve better than divorce.

We believe that we need to be supporting them. Supporting these families, supporting these marriages and helping them fix or heal the problems in their marriage and help them thrive, help them have great marriages, instead of leaving them feel like they only have one option and that's to leave their spouse or to get a divorce.

In the majority of cases, there's simply a better way and we need to be doing all that we can, uh, to help couples like that. If your parents are divorced or separat, I know hearing all this can be pretty depressing, so bear with me. There is hope. The first thing I want you to know is that you're not alone.

You're not alone to face all of this. We're here to help you. You are the hero of your story, and we just want to guide you. We just wanna help you along your journey. How are we gonna do that? We actually have a very simple plan. The goal of this podcast is to offer practical advice from expert interviews and stories.

Focus on two area. The first area, how to cope in healthy ways. The second area, how to actually heal the expert. Interviews are gonna be conducted with authors, speakers, researchers, psychologists, counselors, marriage experts, uh, spiritual coaches, life coaches and so on. In these interviews, I'm gonna be asking questions like, how do you begin to.

Right. What's the process look like? How does someone overcome their porn addiction? Right? Drinking habit, overeating, cutting. The list goes on and on. How do I cure the loneliness? I feel, How can I overcome my fear of love? How do I build a really good marriage when I didn't see it at home? How do I build a divorce proof?

And so many more questions like that. The idea with the interviews is for us to do the hard work and give you access to people who you may not have access to In this podcast. For the stories, we're gonna be talking to other children of divorce, especially those who are older, so they can shed light on not only what happened and the pain and the problems that they dealt with, but also.

How they found healing and what their life looks like now, and how they feel so different now because they went through the healing process. You may be wondering, why are we gonna focus on coping and healing? Specifically, coping is all about survival. In simple terms, coping is the thoughts that we have or the actions we take, and in response to the pain and problems in our lives and the stress in our lives.

And what I've seen in my own life and working with and speaking to so many children of divorce is that when your parents separate or divorce, it hurts, right? It's painful. It brings a lot of problems into our lives and to numb the pain and distract ourselves from the problems that we face, we usually.

to unhealthy things, right? We turn to unhealthy ways of coping. Like I mentioned porn in my own story, drinking drugs. The list goes on, and when we do those things and we seek and escape in that way, it always leaves us feeling empty, and it certainly doesn't make the pain or the problems go away. It doesn't solve anything.

And so it's so important that we learn to cope in healthy. If we wanna find the freedom and the happiness that we long for, because life in our family situation is gonna throw a lot more pain and problems at us. We're also gonna get into specific situations and, and how to deal with them situations like, you know, what do you do when your parents turn to you for emotional support in an unhealthy.

Or what do you do when mom or dad starts talking bad about the other one? What do you say in that situation now? How do you set healthy boundaries? What do you do when holidays come around and it's really painful and, and much more. There's so many unique and difficult situations that we wanna help you learn to navigate, uh, and deal with.

Now, shifting gears from coping to healing. Healing is all about growing and thriving. If you, if you Google healing, You'll see that it's the process of becoming healthy and whole. And we all know what this looks like in physical healing, right? You break your arm, you go to the doctor, they examine your arm, you know, they put you in a cast.

Maybe they have to do surgery or do something more extreme, but they give you pain medication and you know, you do physical therapy for a while and then eventually your arm is, is whole. It's, it's healthy. The same thing needs to happen in our emotional and psychological lives too, because we experience very real injuries, very real hurt in those areas of our lives.

But because we can't see them often, we don't do anything about it. You. As I've said a few times now, when our parents separat a divorce, it wounds us. It hurts and left untreated. Those wounds usually bring more pain and problems into our lives, and they, they hold us back in life, right? They give us that feeling of being stuck.

So we can't simply treat the symptoms in our lives, the porn, the drinking, the drugs, whatever else it might be. We have to go underneath and get at the root cause, the root issue. And I, I noticed that in my own life. Like I said, you know, when I got porn out of my life, life was better, but I still felt broken.

And so I was just treating the symptoms and I think so often in a world we do that, right? We just treat symptoms, we don't actually get to the root problem. One of my parents separated. It left me feeling, uh, abandoned and not good enough. And those are very real wounds. A wound of abandonment and really a wound of inadequacy or just not feeling like you are enough.

So many of us. When we experience wounds like that, we stuff them away. Now, if you stuff your wounds away, or you live with them for so long, they'll seem normal. You'll just think that, well, this is the way that life is and this is the way it's always going to be. And I'm here to tell you guys, that's not true.

All right. Your life can be better than it is today. You can actually find healing. You can actually reverse those unhealthy ways of coping. You can find freedom from your wounds, and you can feel whole, and we're gonna prove it to you in this podcast through the stories that we tell. Two obstacles I think we face when it comes to healing is that one, we don't make it a priority.

Like I said, we might. Get comfortable in life. So we don't give any time or attention or effort, uh, to dealing with it. And I hope that through listening to this podcast and these future episodes, you'll realize that healing is actually worth the effort. It's worth your time. It's even worth the pain that you're gonna need to go through to find it.

The second thing I think is we don't know how, We don't know how to heal. Over the years, I asked so many people, How do I heal? And to be honest with you, I didn't get very good answers. Certainly not practical and actionable answers. And so listening to this podcast, our hope is that you'll know how to heal, and we're working hard to make all of this content, all the advice that we're giving.

Very practical, simple, and actionable stuff you can actually start doing in your life. I want to end with this. You may be thinking, what's the point of all this? Why do I even need to heal? Why do I need to find healthy ways of coping? Why can't I just leave what's in the past, in the past and be done with it?

I wanna tell you a beautiful story of Lina Everett's healing. Uh, as a response to those questions, her earliest memories are of her dad hitting her mom, her, her parents got divorced as well. She suffered sexual abuse and high school. She got into drugs, alcohol, sex, and she just felt miserable. Too similar to me.

She heard a talk that changed her life. And she stopped drinking, stopped doing drugs, and stopped sleeping around, and it was difficult for her, but life got better. But even though life got better, she still felt broken, and it wasn't until a few years into marriage. When she became a, a mother that her brokenness started to surface.

She started to feel angry a lot and just was experiencing all these messy emotions. And what she realized is that for so long she had stuffed to weigh so much of her brokenness, and she was seeing it come out now on her children and her marriage on her husband, and so she said, This stops with me because she knew that if she continued down this path, she was gonna pass on her brokenness to her husband and to her kids.

And so she dedicated herself to her healing and she got a counselor. She went to counseling. She got a good spiritual coach. She's Catholic, so she spent a ton of time praying, spent a lot of time in adoration, and this was a three year major healing process. Afterward, she said that she felt so transformed.

She felt so free. She felt so light, she felt more confident, she felt stronger. She felt like a better wife, a better mother. She wasn't ashamed of her past. She didn't feel the need to keep secrets. In short, she just felt so free, so whole, and she just wasn't afraid. Guys, that is what healing is meant to do for you.

That's what I want for all of you to experience the freedom and wholeness like Sina felt, and I, I wanted you to imagine that. Imagine that you feel like Chris Sele very broken, all these messy emotions. A lot of pain and problems in your life, and then imagine going through that healing process and feeling so transformed.

Life isn't perfect, but you are better, and you are stronger, and you're more confident and you're, you're experiencing that freedom that you long for and you feel whole, not broken. And we have to acknowledge too, that at an extreme, our lives could become like Mary's life. They can turn into a sort of tragedy or maybe it's not that extreme and maybe life just continues on, but we lack the meaning that we long for, we lack the freedom that we long for life is kind of dull.

It's not the adventure that we want it to be. And I, I don't say that to scare you, but just to acknowledge the fact that if we don't do anything about our broken. Then that's the path that we're heading down, and I wanna leave you with this. It's a quote I heard the other day that's attributed to CS Lewis.

He said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. We can't reverse what happened to us. We can't change our past. In that sense, we are a victim, but we're not meant to remain victims. We can write our own story and we can choose. What our future will be like.

We can heal, we can grow. We can learn how to deal with the pain and the problems in our lives in a healthy way. Guys, that's what we want for you, and we're gonna help you get there. With this podcast, we're working hard to really make this useful and valuable to you. And if it was useful and it was, I invite you to subscribe just so you'll be notified of, of new episodes that come out, and you can do that just on your preferred podcast app.

Otherwise, you can go to our website, restored ministry.com/podcast. Uh, again, that's restored. Ministry Ministry is just singular restored ministry.com/podcast. When you go on that page, you'll enter your email and your name and we'll notify you when new episodes. Thank you so much for listening. Always remember, you're not alone.

We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person. You deeply desire to be.

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