Generation Ex is Five Years Old

My book, Generation Ex: Adult Children of Divorce and the Healing of Our Pain, released five years ago today. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed already, but when I think of all that has happened in that time, I'm amazed it's been that long!

I wrote Generation Ex as a single career woman, living in Grand Rapids, Michigan in a townhouse with my dog. At the time, I wondered if I'd ever marry and if I did, if I would ever achieve the marriage of my dreams.

I'm writing this blog post as a married, stay-at-home mom, living in Canton, Ohio in a house with my husband, my son, and my dog. The man I married amazes me every day and I have no doubt that I have the marriage of my dreams.

Five years ago, when my book released, I was just a few short months removed from sustaining the head injury that killed my ability to write (among many other things). Most of that year is lost in the fog of forgetfulness. I spent more time in rehab than I did promoting my book, and so it wasn't a huge surprise that GE went out of print a year later, and that I was unable to fulfill my contract for a follow-up with another publisher. Fortunately, one of the interviews I did do was with Family Life. And conversations there led to another contract, a reprint of the book without the updates and revisions I had hoped for, but was physically unable to do.

It's been a good arrangement, and I think Family Life will keep my book in print for a long time. My book was never intended to be an instant best-seller, and other than occasional spikes on the Amazon rankings, I doubt it ever will be. What it has been, however, is a quiet word-of-mouth, pass-it-around life changer. And really, how can I complain about that? I've been humbled to receive emails almost every week from readers who tell me that the book has helped them find healing and restoration in their relationships. I know of about ten books that have quoted Generation Ex. I know of pastors who refer to it when they teach on divorce and remarriage. I know of a couple of marriages that have been saved in part because of it. I know of sorority groups that have gone through the book together. I know of counselors who recommend the book to both parent and adult child. I'm humbled and proud to have written a book that is making a lasting difference in people's lives.

I still struggle with the loss of my ability to write. I still have the excel spreadsheet I had posted in my office in my townhome. I had one hundred book ideas, including eight series that I still believe would be marketable and successful today, and more so than GE because of their broader audience. Just reviewing the titles now stirrs my heart again with that old writing muse, and I'm encouraged by the occasional flashes of my "old head," but alas, my broken brain doesn't remember how to get started. There is a children's series on my list, and I hopethat maybe I can start there someday. I have a book I want to write for Daniel, about being a Dutch-American. Maybe I can start there. What I would give to be able to start again...

How About the Heart

Okay, I admit it. I watch The Bachelor. In fact, I've even dragged my husband into it. For the past few weeks, we talked about how much we liked this season because the women (especially the ones at the end) were likable and gracious. And of course, whenever there's someone from my old stomping grounds of Grand Rapids, we like to cheer the hometown girl. 

Coincidentally, this season's finale lined up with the marriage series at our church. A certain phrase has come up in most places that got me thinking. 

Follow Your Heart

This is one of the worst pieces of romantic advice out there. At least, for any one who wants a lasting relationship. Following your heart, as convincingly portrayed by our Bachelor Jason, can often be used as a "get out of jail free" card to give up on a relationship when it becomes difficult, challenging, boring, fill-in-the-blank. The Bible warns us to guard your heart because it influences everything you do (Proverbs 4:23). Not to be preachy, but that's just good advice.

I'm a new parent, so my husband and I often have conversations about our parenting goals and style. One nugget of wisdom that guides my interactions with my son is this: "Whatever you choose to do, ask yourself if you want to keep doing it for the next five years?" The idea is this, my son is watching, and whatever I do, he will do, so I need to make sure that what I'm teaching him is what I want to teach him. 

It's the same with our hearts. If we follow our heart, we're going to be led astray. Instead, we need to lead  our heart. We are human beings, not animals. We have impulses, true, but we also have choice and conscience. 

Back to the parenting thing. How do I teach my son to be nice to others when he doesn't feel like it? Do I tell him to follow his heart? If I do, then his heart is going to tell him to do what he wants, even if it means hurting others. Instead, we teach our children to do the right thing, we applaud them when they do and we discipline them when they don't. That's how they learn to do right, and that's how we learn to lead our heart.

Every Other Weekend

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Divorce Movies in the Works

Buzz Sugar reports: 

A.C.O.D. (Adult Children of Divorce)

This is the title of a comedy that Miramax just picked up from Daily Show head writer Ben Karlin (more success for Daily Show peeps!) and Six Degrees co-creator Stu Zicherman's. The story follows a man who "discovers he was unknowingly part of a study on divorced children. He's enlisted in a follow-up years later that wreaks new havoc on his family."

Using humor with a painful topic.
As The Hollywood Reporter points out, "Divorce is a traumatic experience for millions of families, and Miramax hopes to heal their pain through the gift of very twisted laughter." The screenwriters themselves joked about their script, "We're very glad to get the validation from Miramax, especially since we've been working on the script longer than any of our parents were married."

More and more stories like this?
Four Christmases brings to light the unique chaos that is the holiday season for some adult children of divorce, in a funny, lighthearted way. And in the recently released Rachel Getting Married, the adult children at the heart of the film (Rachel and Kym) confront some of the painful effects of their parents' marriage (a strained and distant relationship with their mother, a father who tries to fix everything all the time) as they work through other issues. The divorce rate has increased tremendously over the years, and it makes sense that we might see more movies addressing this experience as more and more children of divorce become adults.

Article

It's been quite a while since I've posted. There's been quite a few complications with this pregnancy that have taken up my time and attention lately. For personal updates, check our our family blog.

In the meantime, here's a pretty thorough  overview of life as a child of divorce from a writer Down Under.

KTIS interview

Morning sickness has hit full steam in the de Jong household so I've been laying low lately. However, on Monday, May 12, I was a guest on Kim Ketola's "Along the Way" program on KTIS.
Click here to listen to the program. If you listen carefully, you can hear me trying not to be sick on the air!

A new project

They say that writing a book is like giving birth. So, since I wrote a book, we decided it's time to work on a new project. Baby DJ is expected to arrive December 16!

CODs on TV: Psych

Thank to the wonder that is Google Alerts, I came across this insightful post today. She does a great job outlining some of the common challenges of being an adult child of divorce, especially when our parents are dating.

Bad News for Baby Boomers

Children of divorce face deaths of multiple parents
Responsibility for aged stepparent undefined

By Elizabeth Marquardt
The Washington Post
February 02. 2008 12:15AM

I had dinner with a friend whose mother had recently remarried, to a man who had never had children. Though happy for her mother, my friend was also bothered: If her mother were to die before the new husband, she wondered, would she herself be expected to care for this man she barely knew?

She isn't alone in her uncertainty. Because of profound changes in how Americans organize and sustain - and often break up - our families, our nation will soon confront a never-before-seen shift in how we die and whom we'll have around us when we do. And the likelihood is that we will be dying much more alone.

Reduced birth rates, widespread divorce, single-parent childbearing, remarriage and what we might call "re-divorce" are poised to usher in an era of uncertain obligation and complicated grief for the many adults confronting the aging and dying of their divorced parents, stepparents and ex-stepparents. And compared with the generations before them, these dying parents and parent figures will be far less likely to find comfort and help in the nearby presence of grown daughters and sons.

A news story last September reported the results of a study revealing that divorce predicts a significantly lower level of involvement among adult children in caring for their aging parents. The study's lead author, developmental psychologist Adam Davey of Temple University, contended that it wasn't the divorce itself that led to this estrangement but rather "what happens afterwards, such as geographical separation."

But in a study of grown children of divorce that I conducted with sociology professor Norval Glenn at the University of Texas at Austin, we found that the divorce itself has a lot to do with how parents and children get along. The adult children in our study were far less likely to report that they had gone to either or both parents for comfort when they were younger. When they grew up, they were more likely to have strained relationships with their fathers and mothers. Most of the 18- to 35-year-olds in our study still had relatively young parents, but some had already confronted the illness and death of one or the other of their divorced parents. They struggled especially with whether and how to care for estranged fathers who were ill and often living alone, men who had done little for them but who now badly needed help from, well, someone.

It's hard when a divorced parent you weren't close to dies. But it's even harder when the sole parent you were extremely close to passes away. In the course of the study, I met two young adults whose mothers, who had raised them alone after divorcing, had recently died. They were consumed with anger - at God, at their fathers, at fate. They were full of questions: Why did my "good parent" have to die while my "bad parent" lives on? Am I an orphan now, even though my father is still alive?

It became clear to me that in a divorced family, the parent who has recently died may have symbolically "died" a long time ago for the surviving parent, while for their child, both parents have been very much alive. When parents are married, there is the possibility of shared grief. A father loses a wife at the same time that a grown child loses a mother. Shared grief offers comfort and can draw remaining members of the family into a new kind of closeness. By contrast, adults from divorced families grieve the death of a parent alone. Even if the surviving parent is kind and loving, that grief cannot be shared in the way it could be if he or she had still been married to the deceased.

When a divorced parent dies while the child is young, the pain of divorce-plus-death is compounded further. After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a significant number of children of divorced or single parents lost the person who was essentially their only parent, while others lost a parent they had already lost once to divorce. A New York Times article reported the story of Hector Tirado, a New York firefighter with five children ages 6 to 11. Tirado had separated from his wife three years earlier, so for his children, their uncle said, his death was like "losing their father twice."

The situation with stepparents is even more complex. In his study, Temple University's Davey found that aging stepparents were only half as likely as biological parents to receive care from grown children. "Society does not yet have a clear set of expectations for stepchildren's responsibility," he observed.

Some stepchildren and stepparents become deeply attached, some are virtually strangers, many fall somewhere in between. Even when they are close, the deep ambiguity of the relationship can make losing a stepparent to death or divorce a profoundly lonely experience for the child.

A friend told me about a colleague who recently nursed her beloved stepmother, a woman she had grown up with, during a long illness. Even as she mourned her stepmother's death, the woman was hurt by the lack of support she had received from many friends and co-workers, who'd wondered why she would go out of her way to provide such care to someone who was "only" a stepmother.

Her story was all too familiar to me. When I was 13, my beloved stepfather took his own life. From the time I was 3 until they separated when I was 9, he had been my in-the-home father. My immense grief was made all the more lonely and isolating because almost no one around me recognized that I'd lost anyone of importance.

As the generation that ushered in widespread divorce ages, an epidemic of such lonely grief may well sweep in behind it. Much of the literature on death and dying assumes an intact family experience.

Some scholars are beginning to investigate aging and dying in families already visited by divorce. But most scholars and the public still give scant attention to the loss of other parent figures or to the deeply complicating, long-lasting effects of family fragmentation.

Nearly 40 percent of today's adults have experienced their parents' divorce. Increasing numbers of younger adults were born to parents who never married each other at all. I am certain, because I'm one of those living it, that the painful contours of the new American way of death will be discovered and defined by my own generation for years to come.

Elizabeth Marquardt, a vice president of the Institute for American Values, a nonprofit pro-family organization, is author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children
of Divorce.

Two Babies

For the last several months, Niels and I have had two things on our mind: getting pregnant and celebrating Christmas with Dutch Dad and Mom. Two babies. Our baby and the Christ child.

Niels and I know that good things come to those who wait. In fact, Niels' wedding band is engraved with the words, "worth the wait." Almost five months into our marriage, I am certain that Niels was worth every minute of the 35 years, six months, and 14 days I waited to marry him.

Because of our age, we talked about our desire to start our family sooner rather than later. We were thrilled to discover we were pregnant in early October, just 11 weeks after we were married. Our joy was short lived, when we miscarried at 5 1/2 weeks. Niels has been such rock to me in our grief, allowing me my sad days and helping me remember all our blessings. One thing he said that has really helped my mindset is the reminder that God has blessed us with so much this year--travel, finding each other, the financial means to pay for a wedding and two homes all year. He had to save something for next year.

As November turned to December, Niels reminded me of this again. We thought if we were pregnant in December, we would tell his parents by putting notes in their stockings. When my period came, I was disappointed for the missed opportunity. They live 6,000 miles away and we won't see them until next Christmas. This would be their only time to see me pregnant with their first grandchild, even if I wasn't showing yet. I was feeling tired and sick all week and felt bad for not being where I wanted to be with all the holiday planning. I wanted everything to be perfect for our first Christmas together.

Friday morning when I woke up, I was bleeding. We called my OB and they said to go to the ER. It was a busy day, so we ended up being there from 11:30 to almost 9. They were a little worried about my blood pressure, which was 104/45. They took some blood and came back to tell us we were pregnant. We were shocked, excited and nervous. We're 5 1/2 weeks, exactly where we were when we miscarried on October 15.

They discharged me with a diagnosis of either a threatened miscarriage or early ectopic pregnancy. I had orders of bedrest for two days when they would check my HCG levels again. For two days my mind raced with the hope of a Christmas baby after all, and fear that I would miscarry again. In the meantime, our radio played a constant stream of songs about another Christmas baby.

Sunday morning we headed to hospital for my blood test. We waited at the lab for the results. We prayed for a big number. The level should be doubling daily at this point in a healthy pregnancy. But, much to our dismay, the number went down and we were told the baby was not viable. We're devastated, again, but we are together, and because it is not ectopic, I am safe.

Niels parents had their own troubles. Weather and customs delays caused them to miss the last leg of their flight, so instead of arriving on the 23rd, they arrived on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, their luggage has yet to arrive. But they are here and they are safe.

Last night we went to the Christmas Eve service. I was doing pretty well. The pain was tolerable for the moment, and I was able to focus on the service. But when we started singing songs about The Baby, I began to weep for our baby. Niels' mom leaned over, her own cheeks wet with tears, hugged me and said, "I'm so sorry." And after such loss, there really are no other words to say.

Losing two babies this year has changed my perspective of the Christmas story. I identify with Mary more than ever. And I understand the greatness of the Gift. I want so much to hold my babies. I want so much to nurture them in my womb. I want so much to hear their cries as they enter this world. I believe that all life is sacred, and so I celebrate the very short lives they lived.
God didn't give us the son we wanted for Christmas, but He gave us His Son. I wouldn't willingly give up my babies, but God gave up His Son, for the greater good, and the gift of That Baby is life that never ends.

Sleep in heavenly peace, little ones.