The Trauma of Divorce

Many would not link the word ‘trauma’ with ‘divorce’. However, divorce is extremely traumatizing for all involved. I relate divorce to death. Someone you truly love has now been permanently omitted from your life. Someone that you always expected would be there. I mean, no one gets married with the premeditated idea of getting divorced. People get married because they truly believe they will be with that person ‘till death does them part.’
If you are anything like me, you are more concerned with the PTSD symptoms your children may be experiencing than yourself.
Some symptoms of PTSD are overly-exaggerated fears (screaming if some one steps up from behind, etc.), anxiety, depression, despair, re-occurring anger, self-blame and guilt, compulsive or aggressive behaviors, sleep disorders, concentration difficulty, nightmares, emotional numbing, avoidance of people, places or activities that remind them of the event and a feeling of detachment.
Just reading the symptoms is enough to trigger the disorder, it’s pretty overwhelming, but not hopeless.
The best things you can do to repair or prevent the damage are A. Talk to your child and acknowledge their feelings. B. Let them know you understand and even feel the same way sometimes (if you do.) C. Perhaps, ask them what you can do to help? D. Find someone, a counselor, friend, or family member to talk to, ie., vent. (Hey, or a group like ours!) Validation is a powerful tool. If you validate your child and others validate you, you will be amazed at how much better you feel!

Single Parent Statistics

Our mission is to better the lives of Single Parents and their children through a myriad of resources and a network of helpful friends who can always relate!
Single Parent Family statistics are alarming!
These odds can be beat! Knowing is half the battle, doing is the other half.

· One study, which followed 100 children of divorce through 25 years, found that, while the divorced parents may have felt liberated, many of their children suffered emotionally.

· Although 20% of all dependent children live in lone-parent families, 70% of young offenders identified by Youth Offending Teams come from lone-parent families.

· American studies have shown that boys from one-parent homes were twice as likely as those from two-birth-parent families to be incarcerated by the time they reached their early 30s.


*At age 15, boys from lone-parent households were twice as likely as those from intact two-birthparent households to have taken any drugs (22.4% compared with 10.8%). Girls from lone-parent homes were 25% more likely to have taken drugs by the age of 15 (8.2% compared with 6.5%) and 70% more likely to have taken drugs by age 18 (33.3% compared with 19.6%). After controlling for poverty, teenagers from lone-parent homes were still 50% more likely to take drugs