Healing the Hurt, Restoring the Hope: Take I

Cover of Healing the Hurt, Restoring the Hope

I've been reading Healing the Hurt, Restoring the Hope:  How to Guide Children and Teens through Times of Divorce, Death, and Crisis with the RAINBOWS Approach by Suzy Yehl Marta.  I'll probably keep sharing little snippets because it's some good stuff.  I'm finding it saddening and sobering yet also hopeful.  I'm so sad for my daughter in so many ways, and for myself and my husband.  And yet, in my most rational moments, I am convinced that moving in this direction will bring more eventual joy than sorrow.  At two o'clock in the morning when I can't sleep and everything feels so very impossible -- it's a bit more difficult to believe.

The following are direct quotes from the book.


Adults rely on a long string of accumulated life experiences to prepare for new circumstances.  Kids don't have that crutch.  They're facing life events for the first time.  More often than not, they really don't know what to expect.  It's understandable, then, that new situations evoke feelings of fear and nervousness about how they'll cope and if they'll be able to get through the situation successfully.  p.59

A significant loss, such as a divorce or death, sends a child's world spinning out of control.  Everything he has held as normal or stable shifts and changes.  Realizing that he will never recapture what has been lost, the child is filled with sadness.  This usually signals that reality is setting in. p. 69

A child's identity is intrinsically linked to her family.  She thinks of herself as being part of the family unit, linked by an emotional umbilical cord.  After a divorce, she needs two cords, one tying her to her mother . . . and one joining her to her father.  This new identity, or new linkage, can't be forged overnight.  It takes time and nurturing. . . for many children, identity begins with their name.  They may feel confused and abandoned if, after a divorce, their mother reclaims her maiden name.  If she later remarries and assumes her second husband's last name, the children are further removed from her. p. 71

Throughout their lives, children of divorce are forced to make painful choices.  At a wedding or family celebration, they have to decide whom to invite, whom to talk to first, and with whom to sit.. .   [They] don't experience the pain of their parents' divorce or the death of a loved person just one time.  At various stages in life, the feelings of loss may be rekindled or the memory of the event resurrected, triggering a sad attack. {The author says that children experience sadness in waves -- imagine a child weeping over a sibling's death, then playing and laughing with friends, and later in the same day feeling depressed and hopeless -- and she refers to these moments as "sad attacks".}This can happen repeatedly as children mature and move into adulthood.  It can be a recurring trigger for sadness and depression. p. 72-3