Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak

by Leila Miller

though, and it never fits. That’s the legacy of sin—it doesn’t resolve itself and it doesn’t fit. The pain of a broken family is brought back to the surface at every juncture where a family bond is encountered and pondered. It’s the reason why you didn’t know your cousins well (or at all?) or have any meaningful relationships with aunts/uncles, etc. It’s the reason your extended family is outside the bubble and either doesn’t want to have anything to do with the toxic situation your parents created in the divorce, or doesn’t understand how to relate to you. Dysfunction invariably surfaces in each interaction you do have, and the reality of your parents’ divorce is that the fruit it grows is never out of reach—but that fruit nourishes only more dysfunction. Divorce is a life sentence for the child.