See, by divorcing when that child is young, the news and impact are being woven into the life of a malleable child, an entity that can be worked with and influenced to heal. Further, that child at 7 or 9 exists within an existing framework of family, teachers, friends, friend’s parents, cousins perhaps, aunties and uncles, ritualized days with comforting patterns. That same child at 19, off at college or even just living at home while working their first job or going to tech school, now does not have the same batch of friends or normalized patterns, because everyone has scattered; doesn’t have those same intimate relationships with coaches and teachers, built over years; isn’t surrounded by aunts and uncles. Instead, that kid at college or in their first apartment is surrounded by their knucklehead brand new friends they go to the keg with on Friday nights and watch baseball with on Saturdays. They don’t have the same long-standing rituals and the comfort they bring, don’t have the well-established daily relationships, don’t have the immediacy of people they can talk to who truly know them and they can trust, and often feel like they don’t have anyone, especially now that they at times feel like they don’t have mom and dad, or dad and dad, mom/mom, etc. They’re f*cked!

There are few words in the English language more loaded, more despised, more untouchable than ‘hate.’ Yet, for all of the hatred for this emotionally loaded word, I’ve discovered that few things have greater power to unlock healing, relief, peace, lightness, release, and a sense of ‘Aha!’ like hate (when it is channeled properly). In an odd way, while there seems to be a glut of hate in the world, there is a silencing of the actual usage of the word, itself. ‘Hate’ has become more taboo than the normal four-letter swear words, such as the f-word and the like. How odd is that? Yet, it is an extraordinarily powerful healing word, because of the power we give it. Few things relieve soul constipation like use of the strongest language in the counseling setting, which includes words like hate and ‘f*ck you.’