{"id":2951,"date":"2020-06-04T17:27:23","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T17:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2020-06-04T17:27:23","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T17:27:23","slug":"love-worlds-hope-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/2020\/06\/love-worlds-hope-virus.html","title":{"rendered":"How Love Can Heal Children in Divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"

If it is possible for a child of divorce to feel lucky – I am that child.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would say I\u00a0even felt privileged.<\/em><\/p>\n

There was absolutely no self-pity.<\/p>\n

And most of the pain simultaneously dried with the tears of a five-year-old girl bidding farewell to her dad.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0I won’t lie. It was heartbreaking. Every child wants their parents to stay together. And there were many days I would sit and hope he would walk back through that door. I was so young it made it all the more confusing. I really didn’t understand why he left or where he went.<\/p>\n

Yet I am fortunate to say this did not define me but rather shaped me.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother made up for his absence.<\/p>\n

She made it very clear I wasn’t only loved, I was her whole world. And rather than focus on the negative of divorce she actually turned it into a positive. God was giving me the life He intended for me. There was nothing to feel sorry about. I was loved, I was special, God had plans for me.<\/p>\n

And I bought it hook, line and sinker.<\/p>\n

So much so, in my twenties, I was shocked when someone said they felt sorry for me because I didn’t grow up with my dad.<\/p>\n

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” I said. “Because it has never once occurred to me to feel sorry for myself.”<\/em><\/p>\n

My mother was a spiritual giant. If she spent time blaming herself for her marriage ending, I never witnessed it. I think she probably had those ‘poor me’ moments. But they were erased by her true belief God was in control.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother was not a saint.<\/p>\n

She absolutely said things about my dad during their difficult times. Relationship endings are not pretty. My mom made plenty of mistakes.<\/p>\n

But what is beautiful about my mother is when the dust settled, she went about correcting them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She taught me to love my father and told me he loved me. Despite the fact, his drinking made him nearly invisible in my life. He would routinely not show up to pick me up and would disappear for years.<\/p>\n

My mom had great self-respect. And she modeled that for us. Once the pain of separation was over, she tended to focus on her blessings. While she may have been a single parent with great financial challenges, she felt like she had everything in the world. Her children.<\/p>\n

My mother focused on love.<\/em><\/p>\n

We had each other and we had God.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which meant we had everything.<\/p>\n

A five-year-old missing her dad is sad. Divorce is terrible. Pain is awful.<\/p>\n

But love is beautiful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Love can heal.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And when you are especially well-loved you can feel lucky. <\/strong><\/p>\n

No matter what challenge God may decide is meant to shape you.<\/p>\n

Though I embrace my own truth, I beat myself up I have now made it my children’s truth.<\/p>\n

One particularly rough day, I tell my friend I am worried about my children.<\/p>\n

“They just need to feel loved,” she says.<\/em><\/p>\n

She reminds me of my mother. The incredible gift I was given. To feel loved, special, and even privileged to be the child of divorce.<\/p>\n

I could have stayed married.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Goodness knows a long drawn out divorce shook my kids and me to the core.\u00a0It changed us in ways we never knew possible. But the change is temporary. This will shape not define us. We are still the people we were albeit submerged beneath a pain I know will heal.<\/p>\n

I could have stayed married.<\/em><\/p>\n

But my mother taught me I couldn’t compromise with love.<\/p>\n

I’m contributing pieces on Family Today and Medium. Follow me below. #WomanResurrected<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Medium @ColleenOrme<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Follow me on Instagram @colleenorme\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook @Colleen Orme National Columnist<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

#WomanResurrected<\/strong><\/p>\n

E-mail: Colleen.Sheehy.Orme@gmail.com<\/p>\n

Photo by\u00a0Pixabay<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0from\u00a0Pexels<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If it is possible for a child of divorce to feel lucky – I am that child. I would say I\u00a0even felt privileged. There was absolutely no self-pity. And most of the pain simultaneously dried with the tears of a five-year-old girl bidding farewell to her dad. \u00a0I won’t lie. It was heartbreaking. 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Born to my native Brooklyn parents, I have a love of all things city and all things country. I found myself in the town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, which prior to The Office, nary a soul could envision less you found yourself on the hills of Interstate 81. I was held up there while I pursued my B.S. in Business. I have two passions: Business marketing and writing. The two are not so terribly different. Why? Cultivating a brand is in essence the story and the connecting of the dots of a corporate entity. I write features for various magazines and newspapers and I am a national divorce columnist (what can I say things didn\u2019t turn out quite the way I thought they would). I am also a former business columnist. For more than fifteen years, I spent my summers on the Jersey Shore in what I call my \u2018out of state\u2019 clothes once again magnetized to the northerners I find so familiar. If I were to brand my writing, I would say I write of LOVE. That is the core from which I begin most stories. I find myself drawn to dig for the moments in the story that are the passion that drive the message. It may be the love of what originally started a business or an authentically motivated personal profile, or simply the love of a subject being investigated which compels me to write. My forever favorite form of writing is the human interest essay or what I call, \u201cAn Interview With Life.\u201d The average day that is explored and somehow once again instills in us a joie de vivre\u2026..a joy of life. These human moments are the Hope Virus that spreads amongst us and can\u2019t help but propel us into better human beings with a larger sense of the world.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/author\/corme"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/575"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7149,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions\/7149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/howgreatthoupart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}