Four Habits of Healing for Adult Children of Divorce
Dan’s parents separated when he was 11 and, after protracted legal proceedings, finally divorced when he was 26. (In a sad irony, this was also the year we got married.) Numerically, Dan is far from alone as a “child of divorce”: more than a million children each year see their parents split up, and one-quarter of all young adults are now-grown children of divorce.
But like so many children of divorce, Dan felt alone. He felt overwhelmed having to navigate the chaos and confusion caused by his parents splitting up, and he wasn’t sure where to turn for help. His parents’ separation and later divorce became a defining experience of his childhood and adulthood, marking a clear “before” and “after” his family was reconfigured.
In 2018, we founded a peer-based outreach to help adult children of divorce — like Dan — find deeper healing for the wounds caused by their family’s breakdown. Both from Dan’s own experience and from walking alongside hundreds of adult children of divorce, we’ve seen some consistent “habits of healing” that can help people move forward from this difficult experience into greater peace and joy.