Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak

by Leila Miller

Kids and parents experience divorce differently; even into adulthood, our roles in the family are fundamentally different, and we will always experience family life from a different angle than our parents. A parent might be able to totally start over with a new spouse, experiencing freedom from the first marriage and only minimal contact with the first spouse. For the child, however, their worlds will forever be fundamentally split. Forever. There is no starting over with a clean slate; things are now complicated and fractured. Divorce starts a family onto two different paths that, as the years unfold, grow further and further apart. It's not a one-time event, but rather an ever-changing and ever-widening gap that only the children are really tasked with straddling and reconciling, season after season, change after change. I think these platitudinal statements are short-sighted, too. At the time of the initial split, kids aren't mature enough to fully process the divorce the way the parents are. I would tell them to fully expect their feelings and perceptions, even about the initial split, to change throughout their lives.