You're not mocking me, you're mocking them
Published March 4, 2021
Throughout the years, otherwise faithful Catholics (and many Catholic “influencers”) have mocked my book, Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak. I’m used to it, and I get it. Divorce is a sore subject, because even good Catholics do not want to suffer in bad marriages; they want to be sure that they or their loved ones will be able to divorce and move on if things get too miserable.
But when it recently came to my attention that, yet again, some popular Catholics were sneering/ranting about “the book,” I figured it was time to make the following very clear:
I didn’t write the book; I edited it. So, when you mock Primal Loss, you are directly mocking the innocent and profoundly wounded victims of divorce themselves.
Aside from the Introduction and the eight short questions I posed to the contributors, my voice is absent in the book. The voices in the book belong to seventy men and women who are speaking, usually for the first time, about the intense and ongoing pain of their parents’ divorces, which often occurred even decades earlier. They wrote anonymously so as not to hurt the parents they love—and also because many were terrified to have their parents discover how damaged they are. So, those who mock the book are not shooting arrows at me, but rather into the hearts of those who have already suffered enough.
Would we ever roll our eyes and deride a book in which victims of abortion, or rape, or domestic violence told their stories? Would we mock or dismiss a book of stories of children who lost their parent(s) or had families shattered through death? Of course not. Then why do we do it to the children of divorce? Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute has an answer to that in her searing foreword to the book, which you can read here.
But I have to tell you… I don’t believe the critics of Primal Loss have actually read the book. It’s impossible for me to believe that they would scoff and eye-roll if they truly had. Which is why I offer the following challenge to all those critics: Read the book. I don’t mean skim it. I don’t mean pretend to read it or flip through it. I mean read every. single. page. And then let’s talk. (I’m serious; let’s talk about it.)
Because I am convinced that there is no way one can read the words of these seventy souls and not come away emotionally gutted and spiritually disturbed—and with no inclination to mock.
Click for the whole book, free and entire:
Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak
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PS: Since I have (essentially) left Facebook, I am going to try to blog more often. To accomplish that, I’d like to keep the posts short and sweet, as my friend Leila Lawler is doing with her new blog, Happy Despite Them. I also want to include a recommended video or two at the end of each post, not necessarily related to the post itself, but just something I have found edifying.
Today, that would be this video by Taylor Marshall, which systematically eviscerates the arguments for calling God a “she”:
