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The Force of Divorce (Part 3)

If we as adults experience this horrific effect of the force of divorce, how much more do our children ache and groan from an unreachable wound? A wound that will fester and spread an infection, if at some point they never get healing. Even though I was blessed with my period of beforeness, the force of divorce crashed down on my little life, sending the foundation of everything I held as stable and true into a violent whirlwind.

And I was one of the “lucky” ones, by the our society’s perspective. I was never physically abused by my father; never had to sleep under the bed at night for fear of what the night would bring. I was swept away in the middle of the night by my mother and a priest who rushed us to the airport. Somehow my dad caught up with us and I remember he had one of my arms and my mom had the other both of them pulling me in opposite directions. How about that for a visual of a broken family? My mother won the tug of war and I boarded an airplane with her to her home state, Louisiana. I can’t imagine the shame she felt. Leaving home as a beautiful bride with a wonderful future, returning home embarrassed, disgraced and alone. The future, not so bright, in fact, downright scary as she embraced her only valuable possession, me. I was four. I wouldn’t see my father again until I was twelve. What is divorce? A child’s uncontrollable fairy tale tragedy . “Ashes, ashes, they all fall down.”

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