BLOG

Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#010: 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness

Did you know that children of divorce are actually more prone to experience loneliness?

If you or someone you know struggles with loneliness, this episode is for you.

Did you know that children of divorce are actually more prone to experience loneliness?

If you or someone you know struggles with loneliness, this episode is for you. You'll hear 5 common sense tips that you can start today to overcome loneliness.

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
 

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

Coming Up: Episode #011: I Thought My Parents’ Divorce Didn’t Affect Me | Jennifer Cox

Thanks for listening! Our next episode features the story of Jennifer Cox.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Do you feel alone? Do you struggle with loneliness? If you do, ironically, you're not alone. People like us, people whose parents are separated or divorced, are actually more likely to feel lonely according to the research. And guys, I really feel for people who struggle with loneliness because I've been there, it's horrible.

Loneliness is truly one of the worst things you can experience, But there's hope. Today we're gonna give you five practical tips that you could use. You can start them today to cure loneliness. Keep listening.

Welcome to the Restored podcast, helping you. Heal and grow after your parents' divorce or separation so you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 10, and before we get into the five tips, I wanna open up to you guys about my own struggle with loneliness.

It really started on the most painful day of my life, which was the day that my parents separated, and I'll never forget it. It was a warm spring day. I was 11 years old, and my mom sat me and my siblings down to break the news to us. She told me and my siblings that my dad would no longer be living with us.

In fact, they were getting a divorce. Immediately. Soon as I heard that news, I froze. I went. The 11 year old me couldn't handle that news. And up to that point, my dad was my hero. I looked up to him so much and I felt very safe in his presence. In fact, I wanted to be just like him as a young boy. I treasured the days that he would take me to work with him.

He was in construction, so we'd get up early, we'd get donuts and we'd go to the job site, and I love that. And like so many boys who, who look up to their dads, I loved covering my face and shaving cream and, uh, shaving it off with a comb just to be like my dad. And in short, I, I felt close to him. So when I found out he was leaving, when he was moving out, it shattered my world.

Like I said, the 11 year old me just didn't have the ability to cope with that news. And immediately I felt abandon. I felt unwanted and I felt like I wasn't good enough. And so all I could do was cry. And so I hid in the closet and I just cried. And as I sat there, a million thoughts raced through my head.

I worried about my parents and what would happen to them. I worried about my siblings and I worried about my myself. What would happen now? And even talking about it to this day, a sadness still shoots through my heart because it really was a traumatic and such a tragic day for my family. Following that day, I became very bitter, very angry.

Sad and fiercely independent. I didn't wanna rely on anyone, and I did all sorts of unhealthy things to cope with the pain that I was experiencing. Around that time. A friend of mine introduced me to pornography and so that became my drug of choice. And even at a young age, I knew that I wanted to be happy.

And the pornography, even though it felt good in the moment, brought some relief. It offered an escape, some comfort, a. I just felt so empty, and so all of that really made me feel extremely lone. Eventually I found some really good friends and that helped a ton, but I still struggle with loneliness. In high school, it got worse.

I was athletic. I played sports. People seemed to like me, but I still struggle with loneliness. I would isolate myself and I don't totally know why, but part of the reason I did that I think, is because I felt, unlike everyone else, why did I feel unlike everyone else, because of my broken. Because of the bad choices I had made due to the pain that I experienced when my parents broke up, because I felt broken, and it seemed like nobody else was not in the way that I was, so nobody would understand me.

I guess I, I felt out of place like I didn't belong and so I just felt lonely and even though I had good friends, I was afraid to open up to them. I was afraid to tell them because, well, What would they think? So I silently swore not to be vulnerable. I never wanted to allow anyone the power to hurt me the way that my parents' breakup did.

And since my friends couldn't help, I looked around for some support, but I didn't find anything. Surprisingly, support for people like me, people whose parents are separated or divorced. Didn't exist, as I learned over the years, actually wasn't alone and feeling lonely. Loneliness is such a common struggle for so many people, but especially for children of divorce or separation.

And there are some really practical ways to fix it. But before we get into that, I wanna say a couple really important things. So, Listen up here. If you're a teenager or a young adult and your parents are separated or divorced, or maybe in the process of doing that, you're in the right place. In fact, I created a ReSTOR for you.

And if you're someone who loves or leads young people like that whose parents are separated or divorced, You're in the right place as well. We wanna help you guys. Help them. Now, if anyone listening is looking for an academic report by PhD psychologists, you're actually in the wrong place. I'm sorry to break the news to you.

I have nothing against academics. I have a master's degree myself, and I have a lot of friends who have PhDs. But I've learned in life we often complicate things that are actually pretty simple. And so the advice you're about to hear is simple because I believe that the simpler the advice, the more likely we are to actually implement it into our lives.

And so what you're about to hear really is just some common sense, practical advice on overcoming loneliness. It's based on my experience of wrestling with loneliness after my parents separated 15 years ago. It's based on the experience of others pulling lessons from their stories, and we have some research and expert advice.

That's referenced in this show where it's needed. So I'm not against that at all. But like I said, you don't need a master's degree to, to do this stuff or to listen to this podcast. We wanna really keep it simple. Now, all that being said, if your struggle with loneliness guys is extreme or paralyzing, even, go see a counselor and you could find a counselor if you go to our website at ReSTOR.

ministry.com/coaching. Again, that's restored ministry.com/coaching Ministry is a singular. Once you go to that website, the second step is just filling out a simple form. It'll take one to two minutes, and then from there we'll connect with you to show you options for counselors that you can connect with, counselors that we trust, that we approve.

Now, the reason I'm saying all this is because there are cases. Where loneliness is tied to some other serious psychological problem that really requires professional help. The advice that we're giving in this episode is no substitute for. Whether it's for those of us who struggle with loneliness, that is not due to a chemical I balance or a deeper psychological issue, because I believe that most loneliness is actually situational or even self-inflicted as opposed to loneliness caused by some serious or deep psychological issue.

So if you're in a really dark place with loneliness, Go see a counselor. And I know it's scary. It takes courage to do that. But take that first step. Go to the website, connect with the counselor, and one final thing before we dive into the content, the tips that we're about to give you. Are very practical and you can start them today, like I said at the top of the show, but do not do them all.

It'll overwhelm you, especially if these things are are new and you're trying them for the first time or you're not doing them in your life. In that case, really none of them will last, at least not for the long term instead, What I recommend is find one of them, find one of these tips that will help you the most, and then focus hard on implementing that into your life.

You're gonna see a lot more results by having a really narrow focus than trying to do everything at once. All right, let's dive in. The loneliness. It's a huge topic. It's a common struggle in our world. Yeah. Like I mentioned at the top of the show, and you saw my story, Children of. Are more prone to it.

And before we get into that, we really should ask the question, Well, what is loneliness? And as you can guess, loneliness is not just being alone. That's solitude. And solitude is healthy. We all need that. Everyone needs a alone time. But loneliness really is a lack of intimacy or belonging, right? You could be in a crowded room full of people and still feel lonely.

Broadly speaking, researchers define loneliness as the gap between the kind of relationships you desire. And the kind that you have. And another way to say it is the quality of your relationships doesn't live up to the hope you have for them. And there's two types of loneliness. There's social isolation and emotional isolation.

And the distinction's pretty, pretty simple. Social isolation is when you keep to yourself, you isolate yourself and you don't interact with other people. It's really a lack of relationships. Or maybe you have relationships, but you're not really spending time with your. And an example of this, of course, is someone who just locks themself up in their apartment, in their room or their dorm most of the time.

Emotional isolation is different. It's when you have those friendships and you see them frequently, but you don't feel close to those people, you don't feel understood. An example of this is a woman who has a husband and friends, but she feels like her relationships are lacking, that closeness, that intimacy, that she longs.

As children of divorce, there's a lot of reasons why we feel alone, but like you heard in my story, I think underneath it all, we feel like we don't belong. Even in our own families. Sometimes we feel broken. We feel unlike anyone else. We feel like nobody gets us. We're slow to trust and we tend to be very independent, so we don't wanna rely on anyone else.

We tend to be loaners, even though statistically we're not alone. Because as you've probably heard me say before, each year over 1 million American children suffer the divorce that their parents, but we still feel alone. Psychological research confirms that we are more likely to struggle with things like anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, and sadness.

Another study found that young people with divorced parents are more susceptible to loneliness than young people with non divorce parents. And I know guys hearing that can be really discouraging, but do not give up hope. There are some solutions. Some things you can do to fix loneliness, and that's what we're gonna dive in right now.

So how do you overcome loneliness? Well, the first thing is, of course there's no magic pill. There's no perfect solution. I wish there was. I wish I could tell you guys that wish I had that to offer, but there's not, unfortunately. But we do wanna offer five tips for these tips are human tips, and one of them as a spiritual tip.

The first tip is find meaning. In your life, find meaning in your life. Have you heard of Victor Frankel? Victor Frankel was an Austrian psychiatrist who was locked up in a concentration camp in World War ii, and during his imprisonment, he observed why some of the people in the concentration camp survived the Nazis starvation and torture and why others did not.

And in short, what he learned was that the people who had a. Reason to live were the people who survived. In other words, those who found meaning a reason to live that was much bigger than themselves, were able to endure even the hell of a concentration camp. And so the fact that these people could survive such misery says something.

And on the flip side, those who lost meaning were more likely to give up and even take their own lives or or die. So Victor Frankel wrote a book about all this, and the book is called Man's Search for Meaning, just a phenomen. Book and we'll, we'll put that in the show notes for you guys. But what he concluded again was that more than anything in the world, more than power, pleasure, money, fame, we long for meaning in our lives.

We want a deep reason to live that's bigger than ourselves, and we long for that, so much that we're willing to give up, pleasure or comfort, and even in dirt pain. If the reason is good enough, there's a million examples of this, but you can think of a mother who's carrying a baby maybe through really difficult and painful pregnancy, or giving birth through really painful labor or a soldier putting himself through some really rigorous training, some painful training work, maybe even torture without giving up, you know, secrets for his country because he loves his country so much, and the point is comfort, power, pleasure, Those things can only last so long, but meaning can last.

So how do you find meaning in your life? Uh, that's obviously a huge question, but one way to do that is to find your mission in life. Find the purpose for which you exist. That's easy, right? No, of course not. But really what I've learned is the search is half the battle. And so while you're on that journey of funding your meaning in life, and that goes beyond just your job.

Or what you wanna do with your life, but really why are you on this planet? What are you here for? What's the purpose of your life? You really owe it to yourself to think about those questions. And those are big, deep questions, but reflect on those questions. Think about that, and really figure out why you're here.

And in the meantime, while you're doing that, while you're discovering that. Get outside of yourself. Serve people who are struggling more than you are. Serve people who are lonelier than you are. Do that by helping out a food kitchen for homeless people or maybe reaching on to a friend of yours who is going through a rough time.

And the practical ideas for this tip is to simply grab a pen and paper, or you can just grab your phone and make three short lists. These don't need to be perfect perfectionist. I'm watching you, and they don't need to be big or complete. You can always go back and edit them later. So don't stress out about this, but make three different lists.

On the first list, ask yourself the question, What am I passionate about? When you do these things, time flies by and you feel energized just by doing that. Simple examples of this are exercising, cooking things you really. Are passionate about. For the next list, ask yourself the question, what skills do I have?

This is stuff that you're good at and you've able to learn these skills. Or maybe you're just naturally talented in these areas. Examples of this are playing music or sports or, or something else much simpler. And one thing about this, I've often been surprised to see how people think. They're not skilled at anything.

But then when you start talking to them and they start sharing about their experiences and different training they've had, Things that they can do, They actually know more about something or they're able to do something that most other people can't or maybe not in the exact way that they can do it.

And so that's what I'm talking about here. This doesn't mean that you're world class edit. Doesn't mean that you're gonna win a gold medal for whatever you're doing, but it's something that you're skilled at. And for the third list, the last list, ask yourself the question, what needs. In the world resonate with me.

And these, these are real needs that hit your hard and move, right? These are outside of yourself. They're not just things you're passionate about. You may be passionate about them, but these are real needs that people are experiencing in the world, and you just wanna help. Maybe these things make you angry or make you sad, and you really wish that things were different.

Examples of these are, of course, women in unplanned pregnancies. Maybe you just wanna help them or abuse victims. It looks different for different people. And one little tip, if you wanna apply this exercise for a job, if you wanna find a job that you'd love for that third list, instead of asking the question, you know, what needs in the world resonate with me?

You can just ask yourself the question, What can I do that's gonna make me some money? What can I do that will provide for myself, for my. And so the point of this exercise, of course, is not to help you get a job, but you can adapt it a little bit to find that. And really the intersection of your passions, your skills, and then the needs in the world could give you a clue.

I'm not gonna say it's final, but it could give you a clue about your purpose in life. And so this exercise has really helped me, so I hope it helps you guys too. Again, the three questions are, what am I passionate about? What skills do I have? And then what needs in the world resonate with me? So that's the first tip.

Find meaning in your life. Tip number two, build your relationships. And this, this goes back to my own story. Building authentic relationships has really helped me. Being known, being loved is really one of our most basic human needs. But instead of focusing on finding people to just love you, focus on loving others.

Make friendships a priority and not just focus on finding great friends, but focus on being a great friend. Build those quality friendships, not just a lot of surface friendships. I'm, my personality tends to just have closer, deeper, close friendships. But I know some personalities like having a lot of friends and there's nothing wrong with that, but make sure there's at least a few people who you could go deep with.

And I know this is a sensitive topic, but if it's healthy, And if it's safe for you, make relationships with your family a priority, especially your parents. This is something I'm still working on and, and the reason I mention this is because the research shows that the quality of your relationship with your parents impacts.

Your level of loneliness. In other words, a good relationship with one or both of your parents can actually decrease the loneliness that you feel and it actually strengthens your self esteem. Now, again, guys, only if that's healthy and safe for you and take your time as well, especially if you feel far from your parent.

It just needs to be gradual. And of course, you need good boundaries if there's been situations where boundaries have been broken. All right? Now back to your friends. When you're with them guys, put down your. Really challenge yourself to face the demands of friendships so that you can experience the joys too.

And remember, friends are actually good for you. Probably don't think of this when you're setting up a time to hang out with your friends or heading over to see 'em. But science actually says that greater social connection is associated with a 50% reduced risk of early death. So if you wanna extend your life, Hang out with your friends and if you're single, what I would say to you is work on building genuine friendships before starting any dating relationship.

And there's no reason to be perfect. I, I'm not saying that you have to be flawless before you enter into a dating relationship, cuz you probably never would, but just make sure you're healthy and whole before you. On that path of dating, seek healing for your brokenness and try to overcome the weaknesses you have, especially those serious weaknesses.

That's really the best gift that you can give to your future spouse, and it's gonna make your relationships so much better. And one last thing about friendships that really helped me. It became comfortable really gradually. To reflect on and share my story with my friends. And without becoming unhealthy, my friendships actually became healing.

I opened up to the right people, especially my guy friends. I found that it was really helpful and began to feel understood. I felt like I belonged, and so I really hope you guys can get to that point where, You can open up to one, two, or three of your friends just about the things that you've experienced in your life, and you can even tell them, you know, again, without this becoming unhealthy or a codependent relationship, or just relying on each other in unhealthy ways, you can tell them that you're feeling lonely.

The practical ideas for this tip are really simple. Just write down three people who you wanna be closer friends. And again, this is non-romantic, just three people who you wanna be closer friends with. And to take that a step further, schedule a time. Each week or every other week or once a month, however often, to hang out with those close friends.

Put it on your calendar, right? Set a reminder, turn an alert on so you don't forget, and just do that. Make that a habit. I do this with some of my friends who are spread out all over the country. We have one night a month that we just. Take to FaceTime or Skype each other and it's really good. We did that on like the, I think it's the second Monday of the month.

And it's super, super helpful to just have like that same time every month. And we often end up moving it to another night. But the point is we're actually doing it because it's on the calendar and we have reminders set up to, to tell us. And of course we're being intentional about it. Putting on your calendar is not automatically gonna make you do it, but you'll be more likely to do it.

And another friend of mine, uh, we hang out like every three weeks. We. Said, and I realized that some of you guys are like, Ugh, I don't wanna put things on my calendar. I'm not like that. I'm not that structured. And that's fine, but have some sort of regular routine way that you hang out with your friends if that's not happening.

And using your calendar doesn't make you like a need freak. So that's okay. So the second tip again, is build your relationships. The third tip to cure loneliness is change your negative thinking. Patterns not long ago. I've read an article in Psychology Today that explained, uh, a meta-analysis study about loneliness.

And if you're not familiar with meta-analysis studies, they're basically studies that summarize other studies that have been conducted instead of. Conducting their own study. And what they did in the study is they looked at various methods of treating loneliness, and they just asked the question, What is the most effective method at decreasing loneliness?

There were four methods that they considered. The first method was improve social skills. The second method was enhanced social support. The third was increase. Opportunities for social interaction. And then the fourth method is change negative thinking patterns. And I'll explain each of them a little bit.

So, improve social skills. So this is basic. This is learning how to have a conversation, how to hold eye contact, how to ask questions, how to pick up on social cues, things like that. The second enhanced social support. So this means people who will support you, who will be there for you if you're struggling or you're facing a problem in your life.

The next method was increase opportunities for social interactions. So basically, you know, if you're not going out and seeing people, just do that. Attend events, play games, join a league, whatever. So the last method was change, negative thinking patterns. And just to explain this one a little bit, the research found, it's kind of surprising, but the research found that over time, chronic loneliness, Makes us increasingly sensitive to.

And on the lookout for rejection and hostility in ambiguous social situations, lonely people immediately think the worst. Another way to say that is lonely people pay more attention to the negative in social situations than the positive. For example, if a lonely person is out with a friend, uh, who's maybe acting kind of distant, they're not really talking, they're not making eye contact, that seem kind of distracted, that lonely person may immediately think that they must have done something wrong.

That or something's wrong with them, and that causes the lonely person to withdraw, to isolate themselves further, which makes them more lonely. And so you could just see it's just this vicious cycle of loneliness. Now, which of those methods do you think was the most effective at reading this? I thought, well, it's probably one of the first three.

Right, because improving your social skills, that's definitely has to help. You know, getting more social support, people who can support you in difficult times, that's definitely gonna help too. And of course, interacting with more people is definitely gonna help when it comes to loneliness. But I was actually wrong.

I, I thought that, but I was actually wrong. What the study found was the most effective method was changing negative thinking patterns. The article went on to say, treatment methods aimed at changing. Thinking patterns were on average four times more likely than other methods in reducing loneliness four times.

In fact, the other three approaches weren't particularly effective at all. Pretty amazing. So what's the takeaway? Your thinking matters that much. And you may have heard this old proverb that's often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. So a thought reenact. So an act reap a habit. So a habit reap a character.

So a character, Repa Destiny. In other words, that really all starts with our thoughts, what we think matters, and in a way, our life is really a result. Of our thoughts. And so when you fall into negative thinking, immediately challenge your negative thoughts. Engage 'em with a logical part of your mind.

Don't just let your emotions rule. You can ask the question, is that actually true or is there maybe another way to look at it? And going back to the example of going out with a friend who's acting kind of distant, the what the lonely person should do is ask the question, is it possible? That maybe they had a difficult day, that maybe their boyfriend or their girlfriend broke up with them, or maybe their family's going through a rough time.

You know, asking that question is completely reasonable, cuz that might be the case. It might not be you, it might be something else. And so just consider other ways of looking at it if you immediately go to attack yourself or think that, Oh my gosh, I'm horrible and this takes being really intentional.

But it does work as the research shows. And don't be afraid too, to ask people if there's something you did that was. Don't constantly ask this question. You know, think through the other possible reasons why they might be feeling that way. But you can ask them, Hey, was there something I did that rubbed you the wrong way?

Or was there something I did that bothered you? And so the practical ideas here, kind of like I was just going through. And so the practical ideas for this tip, every night while you're brushing your teeth, just take two minutes, one minute to reflect on the things that you were thankful. And I know this might sound funny, or this might sound like a silly tip, but Harvard Research on Happiness actually shows that people who did this really simple exercise of reflecting on three things that they're thankful for, reported higher levels of happiness.

And so my wife and I, we do this every night. We just say three things that we're thankful for, and it could be really simple. I'm really thankful for the ice cream that I just say. I'm really thankful for the show that we watch. I'm thankful for the friends that we have. Whatever it is, it doesn't need to be complex.

Keep it simple. And if you're not seeing any progress after you try this for a bit, go ahead and seek out a counselor. Go, go find a counselor. There's really no shame in doing that. It's really helped me and they're, again, they're professionally trained to deal with this stuff, and so go to them. They have a bunch of tools and techniques that they can help beyond what I just offer that can help you change your negative thinking patterns so you don't feel so alone.

So the third tip, change your negative thinking. Patterns. Tip number four is a really simple and quick tip, guys. Find a community that understands you. And what I mean by this, friendships are fantastic, but you also need a tribe of people that are like you, that understand you and that know you what you've been through, and they know your experience.

And I love my friends. They're awesome, but they can't always relate to me when it comes to the struggles that I. As a child of divorce. And so being around people who get that at least from time to time is really healthy, important, and even healing. And so there's really nothing complicated here. Like I mentioned before, at the core of loneliness is a feeling that we don't belong.

And so finding a place where we do belong is incredibly healing. So find a tribe. Some practical ideas here for this. Tip, you can join a club, a league, a group on campus, and again, seek out counseling if you need it, especially group counseling. That could be really helpful. For this tip store, we have a free online community.

You can join our online community by going to restored ministry.com. Again, ministry is singular restored ministry.com/. Community on there. You'll fill out a quick form, again, one to two minutes, and then we'll get back to you through email and get you edited into the group and some of the benefits to that.

You're just, again, surrounded by people who understand you. They know what you've been through, they've probably been through it themselves. You can speak freely about the stuff that you're dealing with, again, to a group of people who actually get it, and you'll be challenged to grow into a better and stronger person and learn how to deal with the pain and the problems that you face in your life.

And so we'd love to have you in our online community. Again, that's restored ministry.com. Slash community. So that fourth tip again is find a community that understands you. And then our last tip. And like I mentioned, the four tips that we just went through we're more human tips. But this last tip is a spiritual tip.

And so the tip is build your relationship with God. And guys, listen up if you don't believe in God. If you have a rocky relationship with God or no relationship at all, you may be hesitant to keep listening, but I really encourage you to keep listening wherever you're at. It's okay to be there. And in those cases where you're really struggling in your relationship with God or you maybe don't even believe that God exists, I challenge you just to take an objective look.

An honest look at whatever it is that's holding you back from that. What I've often found is as children of divorce, typically the reasons we have for rejecting God or rebelling against God is usually more emotional than intellectual. And so for example, if you doubt God's existence, then take a serious look at the arguments for and against it.

You really owe it to yourself to seek those answers. Cuz this is a. Deal. Again, I'm not trying to shove God down your guys' throats, but this is a big deal and we all deserve to really ask these questions and to consider these things. If you're like me, the barriers to your relationship with God, like I said, aren't intellectual, rather they're emotional, and I've struggled, guys.

I've really struggled and still do at times to answer the question, why does God allow? So much evil and suffering in our world if he's a good God. And like I've said before, we're gonna do like a separate episode or maybe even a series of episodes talking about this topic, so there's no sound bite that I can offer to you to answer this question of.

Evil and suffering in our world. But if you wanna learn more about it, I'm gonna link to two videos in the show notes. One of them's by Chris Stephanic, who really awesome, awesome guy. I know him personally. He's just the man. And in this video he asked the question, Why does God let us suffer? And so again, that's in the show notes.

Which I'll give you at the end. The second video is from a Catholic priest, Father Mike Schmitz. He's awesome, awesome priest. The title of his video is, Why does God Let Bad Things Happen? Really, Really Well Done Video, and he just dives into this problem of why does God let us suffer if he's. So good. And just to touch on this topic briefly, you know, how have I dealt with this problem of pain and suffering in my life?

There's so much to say here, but just to keep it brief, I've dealt with it through prayer and through reflecting on the suffering and death of Jesus, and I've realized that. As I was suffering through my family's breakup, as I was going through all that pain, God wasn't simply observing at all from the distance that that's kind of how I felt to be honest with you.

I was like, God, where the heck are you? Where are you? And where were you looking back now? Where were you God, in those moments when I needed you the most? Where were you? And what I've learned over the years, and I'm very convinced of this, is that he was right there with me. In the messiness, in the brokenness, his heart was breaking with mine.

He was saying, I hate this too. I don't want it to be this way. Now, of course, you may be thinking, Well, why does God allow that? And the simple answer again, which needs much more explanation, which is why I mentioned those two videos, is that God values human freedom. That much. And then the second part of that, of course, is that he can bring good out of evil.

And there's a ton of examples of this, which again we'll get into in a later episode, but that still doesn't answer this question perfectly, Especially when you see a baby with cancer or some natural disaster that just kills a ton of people and wounds and mames others. But that priest that I mentioned, Father Mike Schmitz, what he says is that sometimes God's only response to our pain is his presence.

And it takes time to chew on that. I totally get it. But that's helped me so much. God's like a true friend who doesn't just like take away our problems, but he endures them with us. And again, guys, our relationship with God I realize is not an easy topic for so many people. I just know that he knows you.

Better than you know yourself. He's always present and he loves you passionately, and in the end, only he can ultimately satisfy that ache in your heart. For intimacy only, he can truly be the ultimate cure for loneliness. Even if those human things help a ton, only God can ultimately fulfill us. Now, the practical ideas here.

Spend time with God, just sit in silence with him for 10 minutes every day. Start just with one day. If you don't do this at all, that's okay. You can schedule it right. The two important things to do this are you need a time and you need a place somewhere in your house, in your apartment, on your campus, somewhere where you can just sit with God and talk with him, and speaker and writer, Matthew Kelly suggests that we just ask the questions.

God, who am I? Who are you? What am I here for? And what matters most and what matters least. So just ask those four questions in another tactic for talking with God, as Matthew Kelly likes to call it in the classroom of silence. Tell him about your life, right? You don't need to go to him with like a perfect speech prepared.

Just talk about what matters to you. He wants to hear it. And if you're struggling with something in life, tell him about it. Right? If you're having a hard time making a decision, ask him what he thinks and don't expect him to communicate to you like we do, right? Talking to each other audibly in my life, he's spoken to me more through my desires, through my thoughts, through my past experiences, and reflecting on them, and mostly through other people.

And one thing that's really helped me really untangle. My distorted image of God, especially due to my parents' separation and divorce, was finding a spiritual director. So this is like a coach that can help you navigate your relationship with God, that can help you answer questions that you have about God and maybe questions that you're struggling with, and to live out God's plan for your life, which is always a plan that helps you flourish, helps you thrive in life, even if there's suffering involved.

And you could find a spiritual director by going to restored. Dot com slash coaching. That's the same link as the counselors. We have two separate networks of counselors that we trust and spiritual directors that we trust and recommend. And uh, just like with the counseling, if there's not someone in your local area, you can meet with them, uh, on FaceTime, on Skype, or maybe even just over the phone and start to talk things through.

It can be super, super helpful. And in my life, that's been really healing overall, but especially when it comes to building my relationship with God in battling loneliness. And so again, the last. Build your relationship with God. I wanna quickly name them off again, the first tip, find meaning in your life.

The second tip, build your relationships. And then the third tip, change your negative thinking patterns. Number four is find a community. That understands you, and number five is build your relationship with God. A bonus tip for you guys, you've probably heard the saying, mind over matter, but there's actually another saying that goes body over mind and basically it's so easy to feel lonely when we're stuck inside our heads.

Right? Like we talked about those negative thinking patterns. And so one cure is to just exercise, like move your bodies, get your blood pumping, and without getting into all the signs behind it, cause there's a lot of research on this out there, exercising is gonna make you feel better. And so do whatever you can, do, whatever is safe for you to do.

Go on a run, ride a bike, swim, walk, lift weights, play a sport, do whatever exercise you. To do. And if you don't like exercising, then just go on a walk or do something that's a little bit more active than what you're used to. And this tip has helped me a ton, really exercises nature's medicine because it pumps your bodies with really good feeling endorphins.

And the last thing I wanna say here, guys, is. Loneliness is usually a symptom of a greater problem. And so I don't just wanna focus on treating the symptom of loneliness, but really getting down to the root problem. An example of this would be if you have a toothache, you should find relief from that pain, right?

You might need to take medicine or put ice on it, whatever, but it would be really foolish to simply stop there. Just just focus on making your tooth feel better and nothing more. You really should go to the dentist. Allow him to look at the tooth and discover why it is. Your tooth hurts so that he can fix the underlying problem so you can fix the underlying problem.

It's the same thing with loneliness, and so I invite you to think about this, to reflect on it, to journal on it, and really uncover that root cause. It may really help you realize that you need to fix another problem in your life first. And by fixing that problem, you may realize that you feel less alone.

And doing that alone can be scary, right? You might need a guide to face those problems. And so get a counselor or a spiritual director, or both. And like I said, many of the tips that we gave you guys do actually focus on the root cause, which is essentially, like I said, feeling like we don't belong because our family has broken and our parents aren't together.

But still, there may be other problems underneath it all that deserve attention to. And so here's the challenge for you guys. Pick one of these tips to implement today or tomorrow. Write it down on a post-it note. Put it on your desk, your bed, your laptop. You know, ask a friend to check in with you frequently and hold you accountable to, to doing that thing.

Or you can email us. You can email me. What practical idea you're starting and I can help keep you accountable. So you can email me@joeyrestoredministry.com. Again, that's joey restored ministry.com, and totally open to feedback too. On this episode. What, what was helpful, what wasn't helpful? I wanna learn so that we can create content that's better for you guys.

But if you wanna share what you're gonna do to help decrease the loneliness in your life, then go ahead and email me again. That's Joey ReSTOR. ministry.com and whatever you choose the advice in this episode, it's only gonna make your life better if you put it into action, thinking about it as fine and good, but it's only gonna make your life better if you put it into action.

So get after it. The resources and the citations to the different studies that I mentioned are in the show notes, uh, restored. ministry.com/ten, and if you want, you can actually get an ebook with this content on that link, and that's for free. Again, that's restored ministry.com/ten, the number 10. Thank you so much for listening if this episode has been useful for you guys.

Go ahead and subscribe and share this episode with someone you know who could use it. And always remember, you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person. You were born to be.

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#009: A Retreat for Adult Children of Divorce | Dr. Daniel Meola, PhD

How did you find out that your parents were divorcing? Today’s guest, Dr. Daniel Meola, actually found out before his mom. Then, he called her to break the news.

Dr. Daniel Meola.jpg

How did you find out that your parents were divorcing? Today’s guest, Dr. Daniel Meola, actually found out before his mom. Then as an 11 year old boy, he called her to break the news.

You’ll hear about the impact the divorce has had on him over the years and what he’s doing to help other adult children of divorce to heal.

To get more info and sign up for a Recovering Origins retreat, go here.

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

Coming Up: Episode #010: 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness

Thanks for listening! Our next episode features 5 practical tips on how to cure loneliness.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

It's probably no surprise to you that resources for children of divorce of separation are practically nonexistent. In fact, I started restore to change that and to build those resources, but we're not fighting this battle alone. You know, our goal is to become the first resource that anyone thinks of or recommends in the United States or even the world, eventually the world, to help teenagers and young adults from divorced or separated families, or really anyone who, who loves or leads them.

But I never planned to do it alone. I wanted Restore to offer a lot of help directly. But also indirectly by connecting those who need the help with those who offered the help. And so today we're introducing you to a Catholic resource for adult children of divorce. It's a retreat to help you in your healing process.

You'll hear the story of the man who started these retreats, who is also a child of divorce. You'll hear how he sadly found out about his parents' separation and later divorce, before his mom even knew. And, and you'll hear the story that he tells about that, but you'll also see how he's taken that pain and he's transformed it to help others.

Keep listening.

Welcome to the Restored podcast, helping you cope. Heal and grow 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 nine and quick disclaimer. This episode is especially geared towards Catholic Christians. Dr.

Daniel Mela, who is our guest, is a devout Catholic, and his ministry is specifically focused on the Catholic church. And of course he wants to help everyone, but he specifically focused on Catholics in the Catholic church. But naturally, anyone with an open mind can listen to this show. A little bit about our guests.

Dr. Daniel Mela is an adult child of divorce here into his PhD in Theology of Marriage and Family from the Pontifical, John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington. It's a long name. Uh, while studying at the institute, he helped create recovering origins, a unique retreat to heal adult children of divorce.

He's been leading those retreats since 2015. In 2018, he founded the Life Giving Wounds Traveling Retreat team to spread the recovering Origins retreat and other, uh, ministry. To adult children divorce around the country. Dan, uh, Dr. Daniel has over 15 years of experience running retreats and giving presentations to various groups.

He, he currently works at the John Paul ii St. John Paul ii National Shrine in Washington DC where he facilitates, uh, evangelization in catechesis events for people of, of all ages. Now, Dr. Daniel and I have become friends from afar. Uh, so you hear me call him Dan, I, I just did a little bit ago. Yeah. Very grateful for him and everything he's doing like restored, he's really one of the few people out there who are trying to help adult children of divorce.

And listen to the end. Make sure you listen to the end, because we actually have a discount for you if you wanna attend one of the retreats that Dr. Daniel runs. So here's our conversation. Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Hey, great to be with you, Joey. Love what you're doing at your ministry.

Thanks so much. You as well. I wanna, I wanna talk about your ministry, but let's actually start with your story. If you would take us to the day your parents separated. How old were you? What happened? How did you react? Yeah, so I was 11 years old in sixth grade, and I actually found the letter, my father left for my mother, um, saying his intention to separate, uh, and I was, you know, shocked, Saturn bewildered.

And of course I called my mother, you know, about it right away. And so I had the very sad and fortunate position of actually telling her about the news and, you know, she was at work, couldn't comfort me and, you know, just told me to quickly put it down and that we talked later. Um, but of course, like I sent me in a whirlwind, I had a lot fear and dread and confusion.

And yeah, I mean, it's a day I'll never forget. And it was a day that was very, very difficult in my life. And after that, you know, my mom sat me down and talked about a little bit what was going on. It was still a shock to me. There had been some high conflict leading up to this decision, but it still was a shock.

It still felt like the rug was being pulled underneath of me and you know, I wasn't expecting it. And they said that they were separating, they weren't divorcing right away. They were gonna try to work on the relationship. And you know, that gave me a little bit of hope that maybe they get back together.

But unfortunately they never did. And it set off a pattern of 15 years of separation actually. So I'm very sensitive and attentive to those who are sort of in limbo. Um, and their parents haven't completely divorced, but the separation's dragging on of a big heart for them. and eventually they did divorce 15 years later.

So it's a lot of years of limbo, although it seemed pretty evident it was gonna be a divorce, um, after a few years when they stopped talking to one another. So that's a little bit about what happened. And, um, yeah, I mean, it was defining event in my life. It, it changed so much, uh, in my childhood heart.

Yeah. I, I mean, I can't imagine, I'm so sorry for what happened and I can't imagine finding out from a letter and then forming your mom about it, like that must have been traumatic. Oh yeah. I mean, it always is, right? Like, I've never talked to adult child divorce, separation. That moment wasn't traumatic, and you sort of, mm-hmm replayed in your mind a lot about how you handled it.

There be a lot of false guilt and shame about how you handled it. And, you know, that's part of my story too. Like, should I have even called my mom? Should I have told about, you know, told her about it and. It was weird. I felt like complicit in the, the separation itself, because I told her it was like, it was so bizarre, uh, to be the bear of that news.

Uh, rather than receiving it, I just, I felt so dirty and ashamed and I don't know, somehow like I was doing it to my mom and then to hear my mom's first reaction before she could process anything, that was, that was brutal. That was very brutal. I mean, I remember crying myself to sleep and actually many nights afterwards, you know, I had definitely had a difficulty in sleeping after that.

Yeah. Cause my home was split up. Yeah. Yeah. No. And 15 years of separation. I'm glad you mentioned that. That's one thing that I don't think we talk about enough, but at ReSTOR we're, we specifically wanna talk about the fact that there's people who come from divorced families and there's people who come from separated families and they're different.

And, and so I'm, I'm glad that you're paying attention to that and you obviously have experienced that. You have a lot of, uh, authority to speak on that. Thanks. Yeah. I mean they're very similar and a lot of families go in and out of them, um, as well. Cause definitely when the separation happened, a lot of it was basically like living in a divorced home, except for like the first year or two they were trying to work on things with counseling and that.

But you know, going between two homes, feeling like your home was separated, you lost a family meal, there were no family vacations. Dad and mom were arguing often through you as a proxy. So it was, you know, very much like, um, you know, when I became an adult child divorce. So, you know, I'm very sensitive to those who families, uh, are going through separation.

And it is unique too, because you are a little bit in limbo. There's, you like to think there's a little bit more hope . Mm-hmm. . Cause it's not so definitive. But every situation's different. Like I said, after two or three years, once they stopped talking to each other, I knew it was, you know, I knew it was bad, uh, it was over, but you always held out hope.

And then. Uh, the crazy thing is the year that they divorced is the year I got married, . So that was its own difficulty because, you know, as you know, it's hard for us to enter into a relationship, let alone marriage, you know, hoping it's gonna last because you've all, you've known all your life with the most important relationship that forms you developmentally is brokenness.

So, you know, you question everything related to love and to have that happen, sort of the year I got married was just man, oh man, talk about struggles with trust. And I had done a lot of healing by that point. You know, I was 26 at that point. I done a lot, a lot of healing with God and, and others, but, uh, it still was, still was really hard and it just was such a sign of contradiction to everything I wanted to do in my own marriage.

So it was, um, interesting times to say the least. You bring up a great point. I can't imagine, you know, going through all of that along with getting married and the fear and the anxiety and all that, that came along with it. But you bring up a great point that when we go into different chapters of life or certain events happen, it can bring a lot of that brokenness right back to the surface.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Without a doubt. I mean, I often say that divorce is a lifelong grief that rears its head at every holiday milestone, you know, every pickup and drop off at the different home. Like, you know, just this last holiday, you know, I'm going between two homes in my hometown remembering that. So yeah.

Rears its head at all these major milestones and you've gotta confront that and heal again from that. And, um, mm-hmm. , I, I think that's important thing to, to recognize that. It's a lifelong grief, and that's okay though. That doesn't have to be depressing because you learn how to deal with it better and better so it doesn't wreck you like it maybe once did early on.

Or if you're on heeled or you sort of push the wound aside, you can still draw joy and hope and faith and love from those moments. You just have to be intentional about it, which, you know, one of the big differences now in my life is how I handle those moments. So, and not that it's any better than other trauma.

Trauma is always tragic and bad, but you're right, it continues on, it's drawn out. Like you said, you had mentioned that it was such a pivotal point in your life. It really a defining moment when your parents separated and I'm sure everything that led up to it and everything that followed too was a part of that.

But how did you see, um, Breakup of your parents affect you in the years that followed? Oh, man. , like, it affected so much of my life. Like, I don't think there was a time when I wasn't thinking about it. I mean, certainly there were, you're unconscious about it, but like, I feel like I dabbled in like every unhealthy coping method, possible.

Sure. Except for drugs. And, you know, I never touched drugs for, for whatever reason. I just knew that they were dangerous. But I feel like, yeah, I feel like I dabbled in every unhealthy coping mechanism, uh, like unhealthy amounts of anger. Certainly. Um, it's interesting, I dabbled in them. I, I didn't like stay in patterns of, you know, like struggles with like, promiscuity or drugs, like some people.

Yeah. It's interesting. I just sort of dabbled just like, okay, what what's this gonna give me? What's that gonna give me? And, um, you know, ob obviously like all those unhealth, the coping mechanisms, and it, it goes beyond just like, Promiscuity and like anger are those, those two are tend to be like at the forefront or sadness, but I mean it like manifests itself in other ways in my life, like a certain workaholism, like trying to earn the love of my parents, you know, by being successful in school, by being a role follower, I was mostly a role follower actually.

Um, even though I dabbled in, you know, what a lot of people would call risky behaviors at. But, um, you know, being a people pleaser, I definitely struggled with that, uh, to cope, you know, instead of sharing my true self, just, you know, saying what other people wanted to say just in the hopes that they would stay around me, right?

Cuz I wanted whatever stability I could get. Certainly staying in relationships too long, I mean, it just, it runs the gamut. Uh, also, you know, what's interesting is in the media aftermath, and I think this is a grace, you know, I'm a Christian, I'm a Catholic, and a big part of my story is the faith and the media aftermath.

Uh, luckily one of the gifts that my mom gave me afterwards is strong, strong Catholic faith that turned to. Initially I did that initially. It's interesting, right after the separation I started praying a ton, like actually like three or four rosaries cuz I was Catholic, you know, praying to Jesus through Mary.

It was, you know, built into my consciousness and um, that's just really interesting that would like, help me get the sleep at night. And I did that for two years and then I think I became disillusioned because, you know, I was treating it like a little bit like magic. Like I was hoping if I just did this enough, if I just prayed enough.

God would bring my parents back together. You know, not really realizing that, you know, God respects their freedom so much that people can choose against, uh, what is good, you know? And, um, so I prayed a ton. Like I'm talking like, I became sort of obsessed with it, like 3, 4, 5 rosaries a day for two years and nothing happened and I sort of became disillusioned.

And, uh, I went far away from God for a while and for the first three years of, of, um, high school and, you know, part of my story to my shame, I think my low point was just feeling a certain anger and hatred towards God, which I didn't really reveal to anybody outwardly, cuz I know it break my mom's heart and just being far from him.

And so that was all the unhealthy stuff. Now, what really saved my life, I think, and was a big turning point, was rediscovering that faith, uh, deeper level. About junior year in high school, uh, going on a retreat, I went on a retreat that really changed my life and brought me back to, to Christ and an authentic understanding of Christ and the way he, he respects our freedom, but the all the different ways that he's there in my life, even if my parents never get back together.

Helped me to rediscover that and just rediscover that. You know, I was really pushing away the one thing that could heal me, uh, which was, God, you know, I, I really believe that the deepest cause of suffering and the aftermath of our parents' divorce, separation is the absence of God. But, you know, he never fully left me, which was great.

Even when I was pushing him away as one priest told me, at least I had my hand on his chest. . I always liked that image, even when we're pushing away, like we have our hands on his chest and his, his heart is beating for love for us. But I mean, there's so much to that goes into my healing. Like it's, it's not just one retreat like that just started my healing back and, and helped me to know that I am actually loved.

Okay. And my parents to the best of ability afterwards did try to love me. It wasn't like some cases where one of the parents just completely abandoned or both of them checked out. They were trying to love, but I still had a loss. And, uh, I still need to recover that deeper love of God. That was, that was crucial to my healing.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk more about that. So obviously your relationship with God was just so instrumental, so key, really the source of, of so much of your healing. And um, of course, you know, there's human level healing that I'm sure you went through, uh, learning, you know, different coping mechanisms.

But let's focus on the relationship with God. Cuz I think this is important and some people listening, you know, you, you may not believe in God, and that's okay if that's where you're at. But I just challenge you to hear Dan out, hear his story and how much this has affected him. And, uh, hopefully it'll bring you some help and maybe even, uh, challenge you to question why, you know, maybe you've gone away from God.

And, and so Dan, in talking about this, I'm just curious how is, how did your perception of God change over the years? Cause it sounds like in the beginning you saw God as someone of a divine butler like, Hey God, bring me this, bring me this, get my parents back together. And then, you know, Then I'll be good.

How did that change over the years? Yeah. , Uh, yeah, My image of God, and, and this is something too one, I like explain to listeners, especially those who are far from the faith, that so often we push God away. And this was so true in my life because we project certain image on God, like of our parents' relationship.

And when that relationship is messed up, we can project those same qualities on God. Um, and what I mean by that is, you know, initially, yeah, initially I approached God sort of as, um, what's interesting you said Butler, but just something like, okay, I'll believe in you if you do this. You know, like I made a deal, like, I'll believe in you if you do this.

And, and also thinking like I could somehow manipulate God's will by like praying enough. Like I was, you know, like I said, I was praying a ton, um, which was, which was interesting. I don't even know where it came from. I mean, some of it could be my mom's faith, but it was just interesting to me. And I, I said it's also a grace cuz even though it was a flawed view of God, I think there was something there of like, Mary comforting me, like I said, like she did help me get to sleep.

And again, when I say Mary, I know Protestants, or like, well, why are you focused on Mary? Well, every time I say that, I know very much. It's like Mary leading me to Christ and Christ doing, you know, intercessory work through her. But, um mm-hmm. , but I mean like, helped me to sleep. It's just interesting so it wasn't like all bad.

But yeah, I, I treated God as a, um, you know, like a deal. Then when the deal fell apart, you know, I became disillusioned very far from God. Again, very secret about this. It was, it was, a lot of it was interior, but, you know, I just stopped praying. I went to mass appease my mom. But, you know, I, I found it boring and all these things and, um, I think the biggest thing that changed was instead of seeing God as a, you know, like.

A secular review of Santa dispensing gifts if you do X enough. I really saw God as somebody who suffered with us. I think that was the big thing that changed during the retreat. Um, I mean this is a whole nother podcast about this, but to see that his answered and love for me was to suffer with me, really changed a key thing that a priest helped me to see.

I couldn't articulate it as well as this. Now, when I was in high school, I couldn't articulate it. But that, um, you know, God didn't come to take away all the suffering in our life, but to fill all that suffering with his presence, that was the answer. And I've been looking for God just to take this suffering away.

I thought that's what God does. And sometimes he does that, you know, sometimes he answers. But the far deeper miracle, because we're all gonna die one day, the fall far deeper miracle is to recognize his presence in the suffering and to allow him to. With his joy, his love, his hope, and that was the change of image of a God who suffers personally with us.

And I as somebody outside of me and just giving me good gifts and just taking away suffering again. I thought that's all he did right? So to see that there's something much deeper going on. And you know, part of my story being Catholic too is rediscovering Catholicism and the amazing gift of the Eucharist, uh, which we believe there.

Christ suffers with us in a unique way. His presence suffers with us a unique way. Uh, his, his passion, his death across, but also the resurrection and then simultaneous with that. Renewed sense of a God who suffers with us and a God is, you know, really, really with us, not just far. Also, you know, a God who loves us, A God who brings us joy.

And I was also drawn to the joy of, um, the people on the retreat team. They had a joy that I was lacking. And so just rediscovering that joy in God that, I mean, there's so much that can be said about. But it's just something you have to dive in and start to experience yourself as you start to live a Christian life.

Cuz I've been brought so many joys I wouldn't have been if I wasn't living a Christian life. And uh, yeah, just discovering that God has God of joy and receiving that joy by following him. Yeah. And, and to stop projecting to like my views of, you know, my parents onto God, um, or run away from God. And the other side of it is run away from God because of the hypocrisy of my parents' religion that was there too.

You know, I don't wanna get too much into it, but there was a certain hypocrisy, like what I found was interesting, I'll just state this and may Doche on a divorce and separation shared this with me too is one of the things that disillusioned me about faith that I was just so angry about for so long in high school was, how was it two people who went to mass every Sunday could divorce?

I mean if mass was so important. Why or how could it, how could they do, how could they go to mass on Sunday and be separating on Tuesday? Right. Yeah. I just, I just, I knew these things were incompatible and I was so angry about that. And initially that was a question, but then it became full blown anger, you know, and I just, that, that destroyed me.

But what I had to learn was like, that was hypocrisy. They weren't allowing that to fully enter into their life. Now, I mean, I think there's some genuine faith that was there. I don't mean to some of my parents short. My parents are wonderful, loving people who there is something of the faith they took serious, but there was some hypocrisy there.

And I had to realize that they weren't really living out the mass on all the other days of the week. And that's the challenge for all of us, right? We're all sinners. So I'm also aware that when discussing sins of others that, you know, needs to begin with my own life, recognize and send my own. But we have to live that out.

We can't just leave God for Sundays. Right. And I had to realize that, um, that's sort of what was going on. And uh, but for a time I was really angry because of that. And I would just say to the listeners who feel far away from God, is it because you associate God was some hypocrisy parent? Rather than guide it in who he is and himself and those who actually follow him.

And to look to the models of people that actually follow him, uh, sort of over God. Cause I think we can run away from God for those two reasons, but there's many more. But that, that was the case in my life. Yeah. Those are all excellent points. And like you said, it's a huge topic that deserves its own show or series of shows.

And guys will be bringing you shows on this topic, especially a topic of, you know, if God is all powerful, how does, why does he allow us to suffer? So we're gonna talk about that more in future episodes. But one of the things, uh, that you said, my, my takeaway from that and like you just challenged everyone listening, is maybe the.

Person that you think God is isn't the one who he actually is. And so kind of challenging that idea and that, that's what I challenge everyone listening to do as well, just like Dan, uh, just said, is think, think through that, reflect on that. And uh, you may be surprised what you find. Yeah. And guys is one of surprises too.

Like I feel like he's constantly surprising me with who he is. So to not box him into any one concept, but to really encounter him or give him a chance to encounter you. Yeah, that's beautiful. Dr. Uh, Peter Creep from Boston College. He's a fluer at Boston College. For anyone who, who doesn't know who he is, he writes a lot of books and just phenomenal man, really, really intelligent.

Uh, he talks about how, uh, like God, You know, in a way, in an using an analogy like a good friend who Dan, like you said, he sits with us in the midst of our suffering. He doesn't just try to, you know, get us out of it. And Dr. Creeped, I think he uses the example of your car breaking down. You know, like on a country road in the middle winter, a friend will call a tow truck for you, but a really true, authentic friend is gonna be there with you sitting in the car waiting for the tow truck to come.

And he, uh, he uses that analogy to kinda show, um, yeah, God's just not that divine butler. The Santa, like he said, who's just gonna give us everything we want in every moment. But he is really gonna be with us through that all. And, uh, I I think that's beautiful. And if you, if you look for that, uh, I do think you'll find it.

I have in. Yeah. Amen. I would not be the man I am today and have the healing I have today without God, like, full stop. That's beautiful. Going back to different coping mechanisms that you use, you mentioned some of the unhealthy things that you had done, uh, to cope. How about some healthy coping mechanisms?

What did you kind of figure out over the year on a spiritual level, but also on a human level? Uh, what did you do to help you cope in healthy ways? Yeah. Um, I think for me, again, it began with the spiritual, then like went into the human level, . Um, sure. That was just my path. I know there's different paths, you know, but again, it was first, okay, so first getting the relationship with God, right?

And giving him a priority in my life. So turning to him when I'm in my lowest in prayer, that was huge. But, uh, o obviously too, like having good Holy Catholic friends at the retreat gave to me, turning to them because there's a, there's a big world of difference talking about a problem with somebody who.

Just while one doesn't care, just wants to complain about it versus somebody who wants to be there with you, uh, grieve the pain, but also strengthen you in the faith through it. I mean, there's a big world of difference there. And those two types of friendships, cuz again, I had some, some conversation with friends prior to being a good Christian community about it, but it was just complaining.

It was toxic. It was a real toxic discussion about our wounds. Um, it was just complaining, complaining, complaining, and, and you sort of just get stuck in the wound. Whereas the conversation changed with my friends who were, uh, Christians and Catholics. Like there was, there was hope, there was something that could be done about the situation.

Yeah. All the suffering wouldn't go away, but it was much more constructive. Um, and all the different like, suggestions that they gave, you know, gave me or we sort of worked out and discovered on our own. So, you know, definitely find that in person. Uh, Catholic Christian community made a big difference. I mean, and then from that, I think they challenged me in how to like rethink and live love obviously.

Again, I believe the Catholic church gives a beautiful vision of love that was key to, to have a blueprint for love. I was always searching for a blueprint for love cause I didn't have that for my parents. So the Catholic faith sort of gave that to me, but then it was worked out in those holy friendships, uh, cuz one thing to have that blueprint, but another thing to actually try to, uh, live that, which, you know, again, friends did.

So, you know, it was a little bit of the, the human side of things like changing my approach to dating. Changing my approach to chasity, changing my approach to, uh, marriage changing my approach of what I'm looking for and a person to marry all changed. So those are all human things that changed. Yeah, I mean, there's so much here.

I . I mean, you talk about good coping. Yeah. Again, so much of my story, spiritual, I mean too for like, for me coping was like also the sacraments. And each sacrament has a story that helped me to heal, whether it be the Eucharist or marriage. I mean, my marriage was very healing both on a human spiritual level, but that happened many years later.

But I mean also, you know, on a human level, coping, like I went to a spiritual director. I know you're big on that in your ministry. I went to a counselor that helps. I did avail myself of all these tools, uh, to help heal. But the three biggest things I would say were, you know, my Catholic faith, then person, community with good.

Mm-hmm. good, you know, Christian friends and the sacraments. Those would be the three things that have helped me heal most. That makes so much sense. There was, there was, there was a bunch of things that, again, I believe that God led me to on a human and spiritual level through it. And it was gradual. It was gradual.

Like the retreat started it, the counseling and therapy came during college. Um, the good friends was throughout it all was high school, end of high school, college, after college, still to this day. Right. In my married life. And speaking about it, I mean, that's another thing like, oh, on the human level, You know, I, It was frustrating on one level.

You could talk about, in certain terms with people about complaining about your parents, but another level, there just was such a silence around this issue, especially experienced that in my family. Yeah. And this big Italian family who just don't talk about these deep problems. I think some of it's cultural, but some of it's cultural to America that, you know what I call now putting fancy words to it, was there was a wound of silence and a lot of sectors in my life.

So, you know, And some of it was self-imposed. I didn't want anybody to see that I was broken. Right. But some of it was imposed by others that you just don't talk about this. And um, you know, so on a human level, I need to break the silence, but again, in a healthy way where I didn't get stuck in the past but could confront the past in, in a healthy way.

Yeah, that's a great point that you make about the silence. Cuz I think that's so common in so many of our lives. We just don't talk about these things. And so yeah, I really applaud you for having, uh, the courage to change that. And, uh, I, I think like, like you said, it, it's so helpful, it's so healing to just bring this stuff out into the light.

As opposed to just struggling interiorly and, and like, you know, so many children, no divorce do that. We just carry this, all this baggage around with us for years without saying anything often to, to people. And then, uh, you know, in different ways it comes out. Right, Right. And uh, that's part of the reason we feel so alone.

Hmm. Because it's such a deep part of our life and our story. So even though, you know, there's a million do loan divorce every year and countless others who come from separate homes, we feel so alone in our problems cuz we never really talk about mm-hmm , or at least not a constructive way. Again, there's a lot of social media dumps, but that's not a constructive, meaningful.

Discussion of, of the problems. Yeah. Then there is a difference, and I'm glad you're putting that out, shifting to kind of how your life is different now. Uh, though we're, we're always a work in progress. I acknowledge that. A, after going through the healing process, the steps that you've taken, how is your life different now after you've healed and grown?

Yeah, I mean, so many different things. Like, first of all, I don't fear suffering the same way I did early in life. Um, I embrace it when it comes related to this and I take it to the Lord and I try to draw greater faith, hope and love out of it. Uh, faith. I try to allow it to deepen my relationship with God.

And you know who I think God is, hope, you know, I, I respond to it like, Okay, things are gonna be okay. We're gonna find something to do with this that involves greater love. And that's the other thing too. Like I look for the way that these struggles are teaching me to love. I look for the mission that, you know, God might be giving me in these wounds.

And I try to love more deeply. So for me, healing is not, um, the absence of pain, but rather how I respond to that pain. And I respond completely different. I don't get stuck in it. I don't dwell in it as much as I did before. There's not that despair. There's not that frustration. There's not that anger. And also in terms of love, you know, for relationships, you know, I feel very confident in who I am now.

You know? And I feel confident in my love. Uh, you know, there's still areas. My marriage had gone on nine years of marriage here with my awesome beloved wife, Bethany. But feeling very confident in our love, confident in our marriage, and just so many joys and graces from our marriage, you know, And being able to receive that, of also matured in love, receiving love.

I think that's a big thing. One of the side problems of not talking about the effects of our parents' divorce separation on us is in the silence that surrounds us, is what it teaches kids and adults to do is like, okay, you gotta figure it out on your own in a very deep, central way. You've gotta do everything on your own.

Uh, the problem with that is when it comes to love, you can't do it on your own. That's called narcissism. . If you just love on yourself, rather you gotta receive love. And so, like, initially that was very hard for me was to receive love actually. It was easier for me to give but not receive. And actually the greatest gift I can do for my wife is receive her love, cuz that brings her delight.

So I've really matured in that giving and receiving of love. And it's because I, I now have a firm stand, a place to stand upon for love, which is Christ. Um, because I've received love from Christ. So all of those, and I could go on, there are many, many other ways that. I've experienced healing and how my life is different now, but those would be the core of it.

I, I love that you've found so much meaning in the midst of your suffering and you've taken that suffering and you've started a ministry and you've been doing this for years, and we're gonna talk about that in a second. Um, but I really think that's so beautiful because what I've seen so many people who are doing really good work in the world, oftentimes it comes from a really dark place, a place of suffering that they've chosen to transform into something really good and beautiful.

And so I, I see that you've done that. So, um, thank you for, for doing that. It's such a great example, a beautiful example for, for all of us especially, uh, who, who are suffering due to, you know, a broken. Uh, as you know, usually the biggest effect that the divorce has on, on us is our future relationships that impacts our future relationships in negative ways.

And so you touched on, uh, your marriage. You talked a little bit about how it affected, you know, your dating life, but would you draw that out a little bit more? How, how have you seen the effect of your parents' divorce affect your dating relationships and now your own marriage? Oh yeah. I mean, uh, you, you mentioned I do ministry.

This is like a huge topic we talk a lot about. Uh, cuz I also do a lot of ministry with young adults who are dating and getting married. But, but yeah, but going back to my own life, I won't talk in general about the struggles I see. But I mean, going back to my own life, man, , uh, there's so many mistakes I made in love and dating and I just wanna tell all our viewers out there who are struggling with dating.

And I think it's related to parents' divorce, separation, that God can write straight with crooked lines. I am a living example that I've made a lot of mistakes in dating, e everything from, you know, cynicism. I think that was my first response was, you know, the forgo dating actually, um, exclusive dating because, you know, I'm like, love's not gonna last

Like, this is, this is a joke. Get, get out of this relationship. What I can, but I don't know about exclusive dating, you know, to, uh, romanticism. You know, I, I definitely then held up relationships as like, my God, like this is the answer to all my suffering folks. Um, which also disillusioned me and led back to Cism.

So I think cynicism and romanticism sort of are related to one another. Uh, even though I'll talk in a minute about marriage being healing, it, it, uh, I can't solve all our problems alone, again, apart from God. But I had to learn that the hard way cuz I did hold up relationships on a pedestal. Like, if I just find the right spouse, all my problems are gonna be taken care of, right?

Yeah. Um, so I fell into that and then what happened was I was in a few bad relationships and because I was a people pleaser and because I was a romantic, what happened was I'd ignore all the bad warning signs that this relationship is not good because I was grasping to like any good thing because I just so desperately want stability.

I so desperately want whatever little affirmation. You know, I just clung to a relationship that I shouldn't have for a long time that, that needed to, I needed to let go. But again, as a people pleaser, I'm like, ah, I don't wanna do that, and I need whatever stability I could get, again, because the loss, stability in my parents' relationship.

So I just clung to some bad relationships. So I made that mistake, which is directly related to the aftermath of my parents' divorce, wanting stability, wanting affirmation, and a, a romanticism of love as being the answer to all my problems. Um, human love that is, and again, it's a huge part of our healing.

But if that is what you put all your eggs in the basket for healing, you're gonna be let down. Because even in great relationships, no person, no human person can fill every need that we have in our heart. Again, I gotta keep coming back to it cuz it's been true in my life. There's a part of our hearts that only God can provide for.

And I found that through making mistakes and dating and what ended up happening was the most fulfilling relationship was when I brought God to the four of it. So that was, you know, one thing I needed to do. But even then, I did have relationships where, you know, God was at the four of it, but I really wasn't living it.

So the other thing is like , you know, not just bring God to the four of it, but actually make a commitment to living it every day in the relationship. I had to learn that too. Cause I made that mistake, right? Oh, if I just dated a Catholic or Christian, I'll be okay. Right? Um, yeah. , you know, , um, no, you gotta be committed to these, You, you gotta look for women who are committed to your ideals or, or you know, in my case, with women listeners, to men who are committed to living it, not just, um, Not just name only, right?

So you need to see people who are living it day in and day out by their virtue. So I had to learn that. I had to learn that that's what I needed to look for. And the other thing is like, is this person somebody who reciprocates love? Cuz as a people pleaser, which again, I was in the aftermath of my parents' divorce because I just so badly wanted affirmation that I would just give into what other people wanted as a people pleaser.

You know, love really wasn't reciprocated, you know, like it, it was just me trying to please the other, but not receiving love from another. Even if they wanted give it. But even if they didn give it, I didn't believe in that love because it was a mask. I thought they were loving. So I was really bad at receiving love.

And couple of that, I was in a bunch of relationships where it was the love wasn't reciprocated, you know, like they were just taking from me. and I just so desperately wanted to work out that, you know, I let them get away with murder, so to speak. Um, not murder, but mm-hmm. , you know what I mean? Like, just take, take taking, um, that was the bad cycle we got in.

So really learning that the most beautiful and fulfilling relationship is one that's reciprocal and one where I allowed the other person and I allowed the other to enter in my heart to receive. And that was what was really different with Beth and my wife was, it was very reciprocal and I actually really practiced receiving, um, that was sort of like my last leg of like healing.

I needed dating, I got rid of the cynicism and romanticism maybe after high school. But that, um, looking for somebody who reciprocated that came much, much later. And that flowed from a view of marriage that the church gave me, which was the total self gift we're called to totally give ourselves, which also means receiving the other.

So anyways, I know that's a lot. There's so much on this topic, but that's a real quick. Nutshell about my dating and, and love. Yeah, no, I'd love to have you back another time to dive more into that and some of the current issues that you're seeing, uh, from, you know, your ministry that young adults are dealing with.

Ju just a few points I think you've made that were really, really great, The cynicism and the romanticism. I've often seen that, I've seen children of divorce and I've been one of them either run towards marriage as like the solution to their problems, like you really Well said. Um, or just run away from it because love doesn't last.

And it's such an interesting dynamic to me, and we'll have to talk about that more later. But one really, really important thing that, uh, I wanna talk about a little bit is if you have that mindset that your spouse is gonna fix and heal you, one of the really dangers to that is that when they don't, when you get married and they don't, you may start to think that you married the wrong person, that this isn't right, that you should leave them.

And that's just so, so tragic. So, uh, Yeah, talk about that a little bit if you would. I know, again, it's a big topic, but it's, it's really dangerous, isn't it? No. Let's, let's jump into this cuz this is important. Yeah, no, it's absolutely very important. Um, like you said, like if you put up your, your wife or husband on a pedestal and they let you down, not only will you start thinking like, Oh, maybe I married the wrong person.

But again, you can fall into cism, you can fall into that disillusionment like, Oh, you know, like, I'm just so bad at love. You know, or, or like, love is just not possible, et cetera, rather than seeing a few things. Well, one, it's a normal part of any relationship, to have problems, to have conflict. It's just how do you respond to that?

Do you allow that to grow? That's one just to have a real view or, you know, again, one of the healing things that the Catholic church gave me was a non-romantic view marriage that, you know, marriage like all the sacraments modeled after the cross. There's moments of sorrow, but there's moments of joy that's, that's in the vows.

You know, I promise to love you in good times and bad. You're like, we know that, right? That like in the vows going into that, there's gonna be good times, there's gonna be bad, but I'm gonna love you through it all. Uh, but yet we forget. Right? But, but luckily, you know, I was blessed to get that, that view from the church, that that non-romantic view that yes, is profound joy, but there's gonna be profound sorrow that you have to work through.

So that's one. But going back to the dangers, but also, I, I wanna be nuanced here. The best way to like approach sacrament marriage is to know it is very healing. But when we say that it's not because it's all our spouse all alone. Mm-hmm. , it's healing in so far as it's our spouse, but also our spouse leading us to God.

Because again, there are things that only God can fulfill. Bethany, my wife, there's only things that God can fulfill me. And we're healing and we're fulfilling the other, only insofar as we are also leading them to God. Otherwise, you know, we're treating ourselves like an idol. So it's like, yes, it's healing, but it's healing only insofar as you, you both recognize there's something greater than you at stake in, in this relationship that you need to lead the other person to.

So, and this gets really practical really quickly, but it's like when we have an argument, right? If I approach the relationship as, Okay, this is the person who's gonna fulfill my every need, I'm gonna be devastated by that argument. But on the flip side, if I see like, okay, she's gonna meet my needs more than any other person, but not every single one, there's something that only God can do.

And um, and you know, we need friends, et cetera. Then I approached that argument, not devastated, that we disagree. Like, Oh, okay, you know, it's fine that she doesn't meet every single one of my needs, but let's work through this and we're gonna be okay. Cuz our love is deeper than just, um, our human wills alone.

So it gets really practical and expectations when you approach the healing and fulfillment in marriage is understood as you participating with God. So it's, it's not just your wife, but their participation in God that fulfills and it's, it's God, it's God primarily. So it just releases this huge burden, I think when you, um, go with that mindset versus, again, the danger, like you said, if, if this is the person who's supposed to take care of all my problems, then they don't, then yeah.

I mean, why am I in this marriage? You know? Yeah. Start thinking of all these issues. So, yeah. So we have to have a nuance, right? So the nuance is yes, marriage, parenting is very healing, but it's not everything. Like there has to be a more to our healing. It has to be God. And by the way, when I say God, uh, that's also every other gift he wants to give us too, like friends, family.

So I do believe a spouse is called to meet our needs more than any other person in the world. That is part of the calling, but it's not every need with healing. And, and that's important. And actually the primary person is God, but God working through my spouse to meet my needs, um, I think that's important to recognize.

That's what I mean when I say healing through the marriage, um, because I do. That it's one of the primary ways that God can heal us. Can you know some people, maybe they're never blessed with a marriage and God can still heal you. Like, I mean, God is the primary healer, right? But for a lot of us, and I'm sure you've experienced this too, Joey, that like in a faithful, loving, fruitful marriage, that is extremely healing.

It's just we have to understand that's a gift from God and not mistake it just for our wife, right? The, or just our husband, because we're gonna let him. So we have to have that nuance. Right? Absolutely. And I'm glad, I'm glad you went into that. And like I said, we're gonna have you back, Let's do another show on just love and marriage and all the issues that come along with that.

But you, you hit on so many good points, and I really believe that, uh, one of the, maybe underneath every divorce is this kind of unconscious expectation that our spouse is gonna make us perfectly happy. I, I know there's other reasons and so I'm not, I'm not saying that's the only one, but I think underneath so many divorces, and I would argue the majority, if not all, is that belief.

And then, you know, we get disappointed and we start to do other things that aren't healthy. And it just leads to the breakdown of the marriage. And like I said, there's more to it than just that. But I, I really believe that that's at the root of so many. Yeah, I mean, I, I do think that in a secular society that, you know, has so many idols that human love and relationships are held up as like, The end all, be all answer to our problems.

So I think you're onto something, uh, yeah. To reflect further on. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And we will, we'll talk about this more in the future. Uh, Dan, tell me a little bit about your ministry. So your ministry is called Life Giving Wounds, which great name. Talk a little bit about why did you start it, um, and what do you do to help, uh, adult children of divorce?

Yeah, thanks. So, life giving wounds, um, ministry, which it's a paradox, right? Cuz we don't usually think of our wounds as life giving . And that's intentional because what our ministry hopes to do is that, to draw life from those wounds, from that very thing you might wanna run away from might be your salvation, right?

Why did I start this ministry? Well, really God called me to it more or less dragged me and do it because, uh, I mean I didn't go looking for this. Uh, what was interesting, what I did go looking for is in aftermath, my parents, uh, divorce or separation, then later divorce. I always had that question like, What makes love, love, and last and last in a happy way, right?

Cause you know, I knew love wasn't just staying together, but staying together and happiness, joy, it was always that question. It, it, it sent me on this lifelong search and I'm still have a lot of answers, but I'm still discovering new aspects of the mystery of love. But, um, it led one thing after another, led me to what was called the John PTO Institute for Studies of Marriage and Family.

So fascinating marriage and family. First, I started off, I got a psych degree at Catholic University of America. So I looked at marriage and family from the psychological viewpoint and I'm like, There's, there's gotta be something more. So then I went on to get a theology degree at the John p Altoon Institute for Studies of Marriage and Family.

And, uh, but it was this question of marriage and family, just my own personal search. What, what makes love, love? And it was there just looking at love from every angle, but especially with the light of faith that just drew me to understand marriage in a deeper way and to try to live it in my life. But, so I wanted to strengthen marriage and family.

I had that deep calling, which came again through the wound. I had this clear mission through the wound to strengthen marriage and family, but also live a strong marriage and family. Still to this day, the greatest accomplishment I wanna be remembered for is not life giving wounds, but having an awesome marriage.

And that's still this day. That's, that's my number one goal. Beautiful. And um, so I wanted to do that. And then just, it happened to be, so I wasn't really looking to do specific ministry for adult divorce, so that was part of my story. So I was always attentive to the needs of d divorce and helping em in various ministries like men's ministry, young adult ministry.

But when I was at the institute, Well, I got asked to get a PhD, which I thought was crazy. Uh, because I come from blue collar family, nobody's got a PhD in my me family. So I was like, Really? You want me to like pursue this? Okay, God, I'll, I'll give it a try. Right. Um, but you know, you can probably even tell just talking, I have a very blue collar, you know, background.

I've never lost that route. So I'm like, Wow, you want me to try to get a PhD? So I went to get a PhD and as I was there the institute was reflecting on the need for pastoral ministry for adult children, divorce and separation. And I just happened to be there, had this background getting PhD, got asked to be a part of this.

Um, trying to develop pastoral ministry for Donald Trump divorce cuz there's nothing in the church at the pastoral level in diocese and parishes. And they wanted to do something about it. I'm like, heck yeah, I wanna do that too. But I wasn't looking for it. It just kind of came to me when I was at the institute, got involved in it.

Next thing I know, I'm running the first retreat. In 2015, and then things just sort of took off from there. I mean, again, I wasn't looking for it, but I knew the needs of adult children divorce and then God put this in my path at the right time, and it was just so clear that this, this was a calling, this was a need.

And then started doing these retreats. Then I, I gave a talk at a National Association of Catholic Family Life ministers who said, you know, other diocese need this too. And then I founded life giving wounds to spread these retreats, but also support groups. We also do consultations for leaders to help them be more attuned in how they can accompany, um, adults and divorce separation in their ministries.

Uh, we try to offer some online resources, although, you know, you're doing more so I try to point 'em to you and other people. I have a curated list of resources on our website, life giving wounds.org and, um, it came outta my wound to want to help others because there was nothing at the pastoral level.

But it was also God finding me at the right time in the right place. So I'm, I'm very aware of the providence of it, and I'm also just aware of the humility needed because not only was this a joint project from the beginning with a lot of people from the institute, but also I see my role as creating pastoral ministry and diocese and parishes to create teams, teams of people who are on fire for Christ, who want to help heal these souls that are really suffering and neglected and are underserved.

And I just wanna do something about it. So, Yeah, it's just, it's just amazing. It's still amazing to me that I'm here doing this podcast with you, and this ministry has grown. I, I still, I marvel, I marvel at God's work, so, Yeah. No, I love it. And, uh, one question. If, you know, years down the road, you look back and you look at your ministry, uh, what would make it a big success?

Like what, what's, what I'm getting at here is what's the ultimate goal? Like what, what do you, what's the end goal of everything that you're doing? And, and you touched on that a little bit, but I wanna draw it out. Well, obviously the end goal is to, Well, okay, so I called life giving wounds because of, I love this verse and scripture by his wounds, you are healed from first letter of Peter.

I mean, it's to allow Christ wounds to heal others who have the same, He, you know, same cross. And so for that matter, it's already a success. And I feel like I'm playing with house money, um, now. But, uh, it, you know, it would be for me that the church. is more attuned to the suffering and gets better at accompanying and healing children from these situations.

Cause I don't think we're doing a great job. So it's, it's really the end goal is not even to have a standalone ministry, although I want that, but you know, everybody from youth ministers to marriage prep, to social justice types, to everybody to be more attuned and to help these folks. We all have a part to play cuz you know, I believe the deepest level of healing is sharing one's faith.

And by doing that is healing. We all have a part to play and, and helping to heal. We just have to be more attuned to those who suffer in this way and to break that silence so we talked about earlier, Um, and to say, you know what? That's not okay. I'm sorry that you suffered like that. How can I help you and just listen?

But I think on a more practical level, what I would love. But it's totally up to God. And you know, he surprises me and who knows what he wants. I would love personally every diocese, as many parishes, as many campus ministries as possible to have dedicated pastoral ministry to adult and divorce and separation.

Cuz I do think they need to have that specific time of healing with those who share similar wounds. There's something that's really important about that. There's something important about the in person community and I've noticed in the diocese that have embraced our ministries, it starts changing the local culture.

When you have an in person pastoral ministry, although other ministries around you pro-life, uh, marriage prep, they start changing. They start referring you, they start interacting with you and learning about the issues, learning about the pain and how they can help. So I want a church that can heal better.

That's basically it. I want a church that can heal souls with the wounds of Christ better. And whatever form that takes, so be it, you know? And, um, I just want to contribute to that. And I, you know, the, to me the success is not having my name out there, not damn to me, the success is every healed soul, every person that is touched because of some indirect thing that I did, or one of the teams did, or one of the people did.

You know, It's, it's, um, it can't be quantified, but it, that's sort of, those are my end goals, you know? And also supporting people like you. I mean, we're all working on it together. It, it's, it's, um, it's just to create a church that's better at healing, healing soul. That's the thing. I mean, the thing that breaks my heart the most, I think in doing all this ministry and in my own life, was a church that has said and done nothing for people.

So many people, especially young adults, who come to me and said, you know, nobody from my church reached out to. Hmm. That breaks my heart. That breaks my heart, and nobody reached out to them during their deepest level of pain or after. And we wonder why so many people leave, especially in young adulthood.

That breaks my heart. I want to change that. I want a church that's better at healing because that's the healing that Christ expects of us. That's the healing he talks about by his wounds. He wants to heal all Donald and divorce separation, but we have to say yes to that. We need more people to say yes to that.

and have less people who get into young hood and beyond and said, You know what? Nobody from my church even reached out to me about this. Hmm. That is what I'm about. That's what I'm trying to do. That's why I'm trying to noble other people and other ministries that are willing to have that same vision.

Hmm. Wow. So good. And you clearly have a heart for this. And one of the things, uh, I think is, is just so beautiful is how Yeah. It's just, this is a just cause and you're, you just want to, you know, fight this battle in whatever way possible. And we're, we're rooting for you and I appreciate the, you know, the support and return and.

Yeah, Catholic leaders out there. Anyone who works on a diocesan level, uh, in, in parishes. Uh, think about how you can implement this in your diocese and you can contact Dan. We'll give you info on that in the show notes and then at the end here. But, um, but yeah, there, there's such a potential here. There's such a need.

Uh, and, and it's very clear it's anyone who's not aware of it. If you just look into this for like five seconds, you'll realize how much of a need there is here. And so, Dan, you guys are doing great things and just really happy to support you guys. And for you, one of the ways that you, uh, help children of divorce when really practical ways you offer retreats, like you mentioned.

And so just wanna talk about those really briefly. What happens on those retreats? Start with that and, and I have another question. Well, it's a time of personal reflection. You get a time to journal, you get a time to talk in small groups about this pain. But, uh, you know, it, it is a Catholic retreat.

Anybody's welcome. Um, anybody's welcome. Christian, you're far away, but I do wanna let you know it is Catholic. So we do some Catholic practices, but I'm happy to walk you through what those are, why we do that. And just quietly can pray during those times, even if you don't understand it there. So there's, there's also the sacraments, of course.

There's the sacrament eu. , there is, um, times of prayer. Uh, we, you know, we introduce them to some Catholic devotions as well, which again, I'm happy to explain for those who don't know, like the Divine Mercy Chapel. Well, so the heart of the retreat is to try to spiritually heal. We're, we're not, We focus a little bit on the psychological side of things, some dynamics, but it's primarily to increase your faith, hope and love.

So it's to, you know, help you spiritually heal to encounter Christ. And so we go through our father prayer actually. And how does our father prayer relate to different wounds we might have in the aftermath that our parents divorce, like the wound of identity, our wound, a relationship with God I wound to love and how we approach intimate relationships.

And we also address the topic of forgiveness, anger. Anxiety and also what's the meaning of Christian suffering and then, and perhaps most importantly, the joy, the joy that we can experience in our life. So, um, those are some of the topics that, some of the dynamic of the retreat. You can find more information about the retreated life giving wounds.org, but overall, it's a place to honor your ones and you can make the retreat multiple times.

I often tell people when they make the. If all you do this weekend is just begin to grieve, that's great. That's, that's, that's a great first step. That's all that some people do, you know, their first time. It just opens up a place in person to, to grieve. Yeah. I was curious, um, what are some of the benefits that people have, uh, walked away with from after attending the, the retreat?

Yeah. Well, thanks for asking. I think instead of me saying, I'd like to just share with you some of the testimonies that I received from people. Like, here's, here's what some past participants have said. One man said this retreat was such a beautiful experience. Uh, the retreat team is so humble and caring.

Obviously parts of the retreat were painful, but everything pointed to understanding that pain and healing with God's grace. So again, it's to give insight to better understand the wounds that people have and to un uncover the hidden wound. To name them. Um, another person talks about the community. She says, quote.

While the retreat was very difficult because of the topic and memories, it was also very healing to see the community see that there are other people out there who have been similarly wounded. And it's not just me. It was incredibly beautiful. You know, other people have said that it's deep in their faith with God.

Obviously that's what that person was getting at the community. The insight, I love what this other person said. Uh, just to share another one, I came to the retreat thinking I might get one or two things from it, but I'm leaving with a whole new perspective on how to live my life. And with a bigger heart for my family.

Mm-hmm. . And that's another thing to have bigger heart for your family. I, I've had retreats who finally, it, it enables 'em to get over the hump to say yes to engagement and marriage from this. But I think the point is that there's something that this retreat has to offer everybody, no matter what level of healing you have.

And it's to set you on a journey. I mean, one, there no illusions that, you know, one retreat weekend's gonna change your life, uh, completely. Right? Uh, but we do hope it sends you on a, uh, it's like a spark for a deeper journey of healing. And it, it can be truly life changing. I myself was a recipient of a life changing retreat that changed the trajectory of my life in high school.

And I've seen this happen to other people. And I hope it happens for you too. But no matter what, uh, there's just so many graces. We're humbled to hear from participants often, many years later too. Um, from it. So there, there's a whole lot of things, but if I have to boil 'em down, what we consistently hear is insight community and deep in faith.

That's beautiful. And I, as you were talking, I was thinking one of the most practical benefits, I would say is that they just have the time and a place and the support to process a lot of the pain and the problems in their life and kind of dive into, like you said, the grieving process and things like that.

Because so often I think, uh, it's so easy to just go through life on autopilot and life is just so busy. Uh, it's easy not to make healing a priority. And so by doing one of these weekend retreats, cuz they're, they're what, three days long, is that right? Yeah, typically three days. We do have a two day adapted version cause some diocese have asked us for shorter, so.

It can be adopted. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just, that's such a benefit in and of itself. It's like, yeah, can you do some of this on your own? Possibly. Um, but you may not make the time for it, or you may not have the support, or you may not, uh, you know, have the content to, to go through. And so it's, yeah, I can recommend these more.

I haven't been on them, uh, yet myself, but I, a lot of people I trust, uh, have, and they say really good things about it. So guys, definitely encourage you to go. Um, Dan is life giving wounds is where they can learn, uh, more about it. Life giving wounds.org, not.com. Dot org. Uh, is that the best place for 'em to sign up and learn more about it?

Yeah. Life Giving wounds.org has our calendar with all the different retreats, and I'm really excited to announce that next year we're gonna be all over America, all four corners. Uh, we're gonna be on the west coast, the east coast, down south, and Midwest. Um, you can find out about that. You can also, we just launched a Facebook page, uh, Life Giving Wounds, uh, Facebook page.

You can also see all the different retreats on there. And as we set up local chapters, we're gonna publish when they start running retreats as well. Right now we're in four diocese. Next year we're gonna be in nine diocese, and each diocese is gonna continue doing a retreat in a support group after the fact.

So we'll keep posting and there's gonna be more and more opportunities for people to go. Uh, but yeah, best places, life giving wounds.org or a Facebook page. You can also like and follow us will put all the announcements up as soon as we get them on the Facebook page. And you can also email me at dan life giving wounds.org.

Uh, as a final word, what, what would you say to someone who, uh, feels very broken and stuck in life, uh, teenager or young adult, especially because of their parents' divorce? What words of encouragement would you give to them? Healing is real. But healing can only happen with God. Don't run away from God, but run toward him.

You won't be disappointed. You'll be surprised. He wants to fill your wounds. He wants to fill those wounds with love, faith, hope, and Christ. So please, brothers and sisters out there, even if you're pushing God away, give him a second chance. Run toward him, please. You won't regret it, I promise you. Dan, thank you so much for, for being here, for everything you're doing with your ministry and just, uh, everything you've done to yeah, become the man that you are.

It's inspiring. So thank you so much. Thank you, Joe. You rock. You got a great ministry, folks. Keep listening and restored and keep following Joey. He's got a lot of gifts himself and I'm inspired by you and I admire you as well, Joey. So thank you for having. Lots of good takeaways. I'll just mention one. I especially love this line that Dr.

Daniel said. He said, For me, healing is not the absence of pain, but rather how I respond to that pain and I respond completely different. Now, I don't get stuck in it. Love that. If you wanna attend one of Dr. Daniel's retreats, uh, here's how you do that. Go to life giving wounds.org. not.com. Dot org slash recovering.

Dash origins. Again, that's life giving wounds.org/recovering-origins. And on that page you can read about the retreat, get a little bit more info about it, and then at the bottom you'll see a button that says Attend a retreat. Once you click that, You'll see a list of the retreats offered, uh, their locations, dates, and so on.

And you can, uh, on that page, you can click to, to register. And I mentioned a discount code at the beginning. Uh, Dr. Daniel is generously offering a $20 discount for anyone who, who mentions the Restored podcast when they're signing up for the, uh, 20, 20 February or April retreats that are, uh, hosted in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Little bonus for you guys there, so hope you take advantage of that. The resources mentioned are in the show notes@restoredministry.com slash nine. That's the number nine restored ministry.com/nine. Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful, go ahead and subscribe and share this podcast with someone you know who could use it.

Always remember, you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

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

What’s been the hardest part of your life? For Miranda, it has been navigating her parents’ divorce.

Miranda Rodriguez.jpg

What’s been the hardest part of your life? For Miranda, it has been navigating her parents’ divorce.

If you read her article “Dear Divorce” you already know how clearly and beautifully she articulates the pain and the struggles she’s faced. But this episode isn’t just about the pain and struggles.

We talk about her #1 method of healing, the awareness she’s developed about herself, and the fact that nobody can heal alone. We all need help.

Share your story using our online tool:

  1. Go here

  2. Write your story as guided by the form

  3. Submit and we’ll turn it into a blog article (anonymous unless specified otherwise)

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

Coming Up: Episode #009: A Retreat for Adult Children of Divorce | Dr. Daniel Meola

Thanks for listening! Our next episode features a retreat for adult children of divorce and the story of the man who started it.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#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
 

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

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.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#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

  1. Go here

  2. Fill out and submit the form (1-2 minutes)

  3. We’ll email you instructions to join

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

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!

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#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.

Join Restored’s private online community

  1. Go here

  2. Fill out and submit the form (1-2 minutes)

  3. We’ll email you instructions to join

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

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!

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#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

  1. Go here

  2. Fill out and submit the form

  3. We’ll email you instructions to join

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

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.

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#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.

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

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!

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#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.

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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

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.

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Read More
Podcast Restored Podcast Restored

#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.

Links & Resources

Enjoy the show?

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.

Read More