Home Will Never Be the Same Again: A Guide for Adult Children of Gray Divorce Hardcover – June 22, 2020

The authors have given us a valuable starting place for understanding the intergenerational dynamics of families in high-stress circumstances, where the very definition of family is challenged and ultimately changed.I read Home Will Never Be the Same Again with a variety of perspectives. I read from the perspective of a divorce attorney who has always been more interested in what my clients could learn about themselves from their failed marriage than I was in how money, possessions, and children got divided. I read it as a husband and father going through a divorce after 40 years of marriage with children in their 40’s and 50’s.I read it, remembering the effect of the divorce from my first wife on these same children when they were still in elementary school.I read it from the perspective of a father who had witnessed and tried to coach the divorces of these same children and actively mourned the effects on their young children.Lastly, although I didn’t know it when I was reading the book, I saw the book from the perspective of witnessing the break-up of the relationship of one of my children and the effects on her sons in their 20’s. I became an unwilling participant in a case study of the effects described in this important and insightful book. The impact on me of the book’s initial case study was profound. It is beautifully and sensitively written. I read while blotting away tears. I was fascinated as Carol explained the science that validates the benefits of her therapy dog Molly. After introducing the reader to the neglected plight and issues facing adult children and their parents in the upending circumstances of the parents’ divorce, the authors effectively mix example case narratives with a careful and thorough review of the available research. They provide an analysis of the available tools and how they can be applied to help manage the adjustment and change of family definitions, relationships, and operations -- from the seemingly trivial to the clearly profound. The acknowledgment that adult children of divorce suffer the effects of divorce in important ways is relatively new. If you aren’t prepared, it is easy to pass off the issues as unimportant, or as in the classic, “I survived it, they will too,” or the less sensitive, “They need to grow up. Get over it. Deal with it.”I discussed the book with family and friends while reading it. I heard the same painful descriptions from adult children who had experienced their parents’ divorce. Then my daughter’s partner of 14 years suddenly left -- within a month of the last child moving out. I couldn’t help but keen at their pain and distress. I am witnessing the circumstance revealed and counseled in the book. The book’s greatest gift is in making the feelings of loss and upheaval, fear, anger, confusion, and turmoil experienced by adult children when their parents’ divorce, a common, understandable, and acceptable response to the trauma -- a survivable trauma for which there are services and resources to help. The contents are valuable beyond the circumstances addressed in the book; the counsel is sound, the advice valuable, the wisdom, broad in its application.But for the countless numbers of adults experiencing their parents’ divorce, who have endured these feelings and fears secretly thinking they were different, this book is a recognition of their normalcy. For parents going through gray divorce who have adult children, this book calls attention to the additional dimensions of a gray divorce. It offers encouragement to openness and honesty in dealing with them. Good advice for us all. As a practicing divorce professional, I found the book’s final three chapters’ practical guidance especially useful and informative. I purchased copies of this valuable resource for my children, my ex-wife, and my colleagues. I am grateful to the authors for their careful, thoughtful research and engaging writing.

The “Gray Divorce” (people over 50 divorcing) has become so common that it has been given its own name as a subset of divorce. Unfortunately, there is one group of people who are affected by the gray divorce that has not gotten attention. The Adult Children of Divorce have long been the silent sufferers when their parents divorce. There are many books and resources available for divorcing couples with young children, but we have never had a book that addresses the affect divorce has on Adult Children whose parents are divorcing. Friends and relations often say to Adult Children of divorce, “Well, thank goodness your parents waited until you were grown.” As if to say, well, once you are grown, your parents’ divorce doesn’t affect you. How insensitive and misguided such a statement is. As a society we need to understand that Adult Children ARE affected by their parents’ divorce, and we need to realize our society believing that is does not affect them is that those Adult Children of Divorce are alone in the grief and pain of the loss of their family of origin, without support or understanding. They deserve better—they deserve more, and Carol Hughes and Bruce Fredenberg are their advocates for that in this book. I can tell you, from personal experience, even an adult is adversely affected by his parents’ divorce. I was about 6 years old when my grandparents divorce. I can remember my father, who, as their only child, had to bear the full burden of being the counselor and go-between for his middle-aged parents as they navigated the uncharted waters of divorce. He was angry and impatient with both of them. And because it was the mid 1960’s, I think he was embarrassed because divorce was still something good people “just didn’t do.” He was so busy tending to them that he never allowed himself to grieve the loss of his family, but I know he felt that. I am quite sure that experience is what ultimately brought me around to being a family lawyer and doing Collaborative Divorce work. Those of us who work as professionals in the Collaborative Divorce community have always known that the splatter from a divorce doesn’t just hit the parties themselves or their minor children…the fall-out from divorce not only affects the couple and their young children but also their friends and extended family, and ESPECIALLY their Adult Children. Thanks to Carol Hughes and Bruce Fredenberg for finally bringing us the book so many of us who work in this field have yearned for. I believe this will become the seminal work on this subject, long over-due. For professionals in the field, we will now have a resource that will help divorcing couples realize the effect their divorce is having on their adult children and hopefully be better equipped to help their adult children through the process rather than using them as their counselors and mediators. Children, whatever age, do not need to be brought into the details of their parents’ divorce. Divorcing parents should understand that bringing their adult children into too much of the situation will have long-term, adverse effects on them, just like it would on their younger children. Especially when adult children are forced into the parenting role for their divorcing parents, it can put stress on those children that will put their personal and professional relationships at risk. With “Home Will Never Be the Same Again” we have a book to offer to Adult Children of Divorce to help them understand that all the feelings they have are normal, that they are entitled to feel them and that they should not hesitate to seek out whatever support they need, such as their own counseling, to help them manage this trauma. After all, that’s what this is, a divorce is a trauma not unlike a death—it is the loss of a relationship. For most people, the family unit in which they grew up was their foundation, their emotional infrastructure, and it stays an important element in people’s lives, even after they are adults and have their own families. To lose the family unit your parents provided causes adults to question everything, and they need their own support for processing this trauma. This book will also be a great resource for divorcing parents to understand what affect their divorce has on their adult children, so hopefully, those gray divorce parents will continue to be the parent and seek support from their own counselors and mediators rather than laying their troubles on their adult children. With the wisdom from this book, divorcing parents can give their children, even their adult children, the gift of allowing them to just be their children. I recommend that every parent who is going through a Gray Divorce purchase this book, read it themselves, then share it with their Adult Children. The conversations this may promote could change all their futures for the better.