A Grief Out of Season: When Your Parents Divorce in Your Adult Years

This book came to me shortly after my parents began their divorce when I was 26. Although I had not lived at home since I was 19 and their marriage had never been a happy one, it was earth-shattering, nontheless. The heart-break of it took me by surprise. This book was very helpful in assuring me that my feelings were normal and I was not coming unhinged as I feared. It took about 5 years to get to a place where I'd really worked through the issues the divorce created and/or unearthed, but this book gave me the freedom to take that time, rather than expecting myself to "just get over it". I recommend this book to everyone I meet who is in the midst of this issue, whether an adult child or the divorcing parent of an adult child.

I only acquired this book in the later stages of my parents' divorce -- which began in 2000 but lasted for hard 3 years of back-and-forth --- but it made a tremendous difference in how I thought about and understood it, as well as my own more extreme reactions to the news and subsequent events. It helped me to quit minimizing and intellectualizing and to begin to sort through some of the difficult emotions and crises of meaning involved, or trying to attribute them to other things to realize that they were 'normal.' What a huge load it began to take off of my shoulders.

This book was the positive turning point in my grief that nothing else was. I have not found anything else published on this subject. I beg you to read this if your parents are divorcing or have divorced when you were an adult. To know you are not alone-is tremendous. I'll never forget a friend's mother saying to me when I was twenty-two and had recently heard the world-shattering news of my parents divorce of their (happy) thirty-two year marriage, "At least you're grown up. My kids were still children when my husband and I divorced. It was so painful for them." At that time, the divorce became the single event of my life. It catapulted me into a clinical depression that I could not climb out of for three years, until I sought help. I'm glad I had the courage to do that, or I would not be here today. I'm still not "over" my parents' divorce, which was now 4 years ago. But, the pain does lessen year by year. I still cannot talk about it in casual conversation. This is due to an overwhelming sense of shame and guilt about the divorce and embarrassment that it affected me in such a profound way. I do not feel room for these feelings in our culture so I keep them inside. This is why this book is so important to me. To know that other adult children of divorce feel as I do is a very big deal.

As someone whose parents divorced when I was 24, I can say that this book was the best thing that happened to me during that time. Contrary to what those who have never been there believe, adults whose parents are divorcing feel as much pain and grief as young childrenm, and this book lets them know that others have been there and felt the same. It offers insight on many different situations that may occur in later-life divorce, gives practical suggestions, and explores the feelings that children of such divorces share. It is written in real language, not psychology-speak, giving it a humanistic feel. This is the only book published on the subject of adults whose parents divorce in later life, and is a must-read for those adults.