Filed under: Addiction - Children, Addiction - Parents, Books, Child of Divorce as Parent, Complex PTSD, Exemplary Children of Divorce, Fiction about Divorce, Parenting, Trauma, Uncategorized, Your own divorce, Your own marriage | Tags: Books, Parenting
For some reason I suddenly became aware that there are several memoirs written by Children of Divorce. Just in case you need company during the Holidays…
(I haven’t read any of them yet)
Susan Thomas
In Spite of Everything
Clair Dederer
Poser
Mark Crandall
Eulogy of Childhood Memories
Amanda Stern
Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life
Filed under: Abandonment, Addiction - Parents, Alcoholism, College Drop Out, creativity, Exemplary Children of Divorce, Homelessness, Living with Aunts and Uncles, Living with Grandparents, Long Term Fallout, poverty, Relationship with Father, relationship with Mother
Raymond Chandler is a 20th Century detective novel writer written in a “hard-boiled style.” Some of the titles were The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, and The Long Good-Bye. One might expect that a writer would discuss his childhood a bit but in the book Raymond Chandler Speaking (Gardner and Walker, p.20) he gives two liners to each parent.
His father: “My father was a graduate of Penn, a civil engineer. Divorced when I was seven…Never saw my father again.”
His Mother: “My Mother soon after returned to England to live with her mother and manage the house, and of course I went with her.”
Chandler grew up in Chicago until he was 7 years old. His Father worked for the railroads and was drunk most of the time. Chandler wrote that he was “found drunk if he was found at all.” (Hiney, Tom. Raymond Chandler: A Biography, p. 4).
Chandler’s Mother was born in Ireland and they moved to Ireland to live with family after his Father disappeared for the last time. They had lost their house and were living in a hotel where the boy caught Scarlett Fever. Chandler’s Mother never talked about his Father again.
Chandler said that he had wished his Mother had remarried in London. “I know that my mother had affairs — she wa a very beautiful woman– and the only thing that I felt to be wrong was that she refused to marry again for fear a step-father would not treat me kindly, since my father was such a swine.” (Honey, Tom. Raymond Chandler: A Biography, p. 10)
Chandler had generous relatives and grew up in Britain. He and his Mother returned to the United States. He worked at several professions, getting fired for drinking himself. He didn’t write his first story until 1933 at Age 45. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published when he was 51.
Chandler fell in love with the step-mother of a friend who was 18 years his senior. His Mother forbade the relationship so Chandler didn’t marry Cissy until after her death. When his wife died in 1954 Chandler attempted suicide.
Chandler died in 1959 of pneumonia which was brought on by alcoholism.
Filed under: Addiction - Parents, Alcoholism, Blame, Complex PTSD, Learned Helplessness, Long Term Fallout, Mentally Ill Children of Divorce, Mentally Ill parents, Parents never married, PTSD, The Blame Thing, Trauma
Dealing with parents who are blaming you for everything, probably even dealing with parents who blame each other for everything, can lead to later psychological problems which are now being labelled “Complex PTSD.” A child who regularly experiences this along with alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, mental illness, poverty, neglect, unreliability, blame, suicide, etc. etc. could develop Complex PTSD. Here is an article which discusses Learned Helplessness which is one symptom associated with complex-PTSD. The author does not recognize fallout from divorce. They never do. Get used to it. She connects it to feeling shame. Learned helplessness can result from trying to get your parents to stop arguing, witnessing domestic violence, trying to convince a parent to stop abusing drugs or alcohol, probably even waiting to be picked up from school if the parent is chronically late and the other kids have all left. It seems there are some studies about this for parents who go through divorce, especially the ones who divorce a Narcissist. I guess kids who are left to fend for themselves with a Narcissistic parent. A psychologist will not gloss over the fact that you had a narcissistic parent. A great Huffington Post article explains what this means. The writer Craig Malkin describes 8 problems which children of narcissistic parents face: 1. Chronic self-blame 2. Echoism 3. Insecure attachment 4. Need-panic 5. Fierce independence 6. Parentified child 7. Extreme narcissism 8. PTSD.
Psych researchers are picking through various talked about problems and trying to identify whether struggle s a child of divorce is dealing with is related to the divorce or whether it is related to the actual problem. Don’t have a link, but one study found that certain stress symptoms are related to being a child of an alcoholic rather than a child of divorce. I don’t think the study looked at children who experienced death of a parent or whose parents never married to compare. Maybe they have at the research level.
I’ve discussed the ACE Study before. The Huffington Post wrote a great 4-part article on the ACE Study. If interested try looking there. It’s a huge study of employed, functional people who developed chronic illness later in life. It found a direct link between chronic illness and multiple stressors in the life. There are more stressors than included in the study. All a Doctor has to do is to question the patient about the 9 stressors involved and then patients will have remarkably fewer problems with the illness. Something like a 30 percent reduction of office visits.
Filed under: Abandonment, Addiction - Parents, Aging parents, Blame, Death of a Parent, Inheritance & Wills, Relationship with Father, self-absorbed parents, Shrinks, siblings, step-siblings, Stepfamilies
Hey, as long as psychologists ignore the fallout of coming from a divorced family and lawyers make their money off of the arrangements, this is a situation that will never be addressed. Sigh, people who grew up in Divorce are so used to being rejected and ignored and poor this really doesn’t matter (too much). The lawyers only take on cases where they know they will get paid. Lawyers do pro bono for politically correct situations which will further their career.
Second/third/fourth/90th wives and their children are never, ever gracious enough to set things right. Best to blame those kids for the shit their Father dished out. The will is the parent’s last message to his/her children. This type, so common, do dear, is as bad as it gets.
Comedian/Actor Jerry Lewis died in August at age 91. The news says that he was surrounded by family but doesn’t indicate which family. The news always also make a point out of saying that the one child, a grown daughter, from Lewis’ second marriage will inherit everything, even though she’s “only” adopted. That’s really rude and I’m very sorry she has to read that. The first marriage lasted 36 years and the second marriage lasted 34 years.
So here we go. Kids from divorce are disinherited by their parents. Same old, same old. This time it’s a super successful rich guy who is known for his humanitarian work. That’s an extra twist. Don’t know what Divorce rates are of parents of kids with muscular dystrophy but it might be high. Here’s an article about high divorce rates among parents of children with special needs. Hopefully, being from a “first family” has never disqualified any of Jerry’s kids from receiving some of his charitable contributions.
Lewis died of heart disease which is associated with mental illness like depression which can make an old guy even grumpier so I suppose the kids have a lawsuit in there somewhere, especially since their Father made almost all of his money while he was married to their Mother and not the Step-Mother. You would think.
I’m not making much sense here. This kind of thing makes me so angry. But here it is, over and over and over. And the shrinks stay silent……
Filed under: Addiction - Parents, Astrology stuff, Child of Divorce as Parent, creativity, Custody, Death of a Parent, Exemplary Children of Divorce, multiple households
Yay for today’s USA Weekend Magazine issue (Aug. 10-12-2012)! In an article meant to salute the 35th Anniversary of her Father’s death, the magazine interviewed his only child. Author Alanna Nash asked the Divorce question!
From page 10:
Her childhood after her parents divorced: “In Memphis, my father let me run wild. I’d be up all hours of the night and eat french fries and chocolate cake fro breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then I’d go home to Beverly Hills to a very regimented mother and have a normal schedule. It was very confusing.”
Lisa Marie was born in 1968. Her parents divorced in 1972 so she would have been around 4 years old at the time. Her Father died from his drug addiction in 1977 when he was 42 years old. Lisa Marie would have been 9 years old. It looks like the Nodal Axis and the Asteroids would be a big trigger and influence in her life cycles. Natal North Node is in Aries squaring natal Venus in Capricorn.
Lisa Marie has been married four times and has two children from her first husband and twins from her fourth and current husband. She remains close with her first husband who lives in the guest house of her home and home schools their children.
Filed under: Abandonment, Addiction - Children, Addiction - Parents, Books, Child of Divorce as Parent, creativity, Exemplary Children of Divorce, Homelessness, Homelessness of Parent, Long Term Fallout, Mentally Ill parents, Movies About Growing Up in Divorce, Suicide
A couple of months ago I saw a really incredible but disturbing movie called Being Flynn. It’s based on the real life story of a son who works in a homeless shelter and reconnects with his Father who comes in for help. Robert DeNiro plays the Father and Julianne Moore plays the Mother. Paul Dano plays the son. Don’t know what he looks like in other roles but here he actually looks like someone who comes from divorce. His posture, his attitude. I stated before that I think that people from divorce generally have much different personalities from people who aren’t from divorce but never really thought that I attribute a certain type of physical look.
The original book on which the movie based is written by Nick Flynn and was originally titled Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Sorry, I’m very behind on my reading. Flynn’s Mother committed suicide so his early life was extremely difficult. Did I find his birth date? Probably. The astrology will be pretty interesting, if not beyond understanding.
Interesting website for the movie here. Although this is a great movie I don’t recommend seeing it if you’re going through a difficult phase and especially if you’ve ever had to deal with suicide or homelessness or have known anyone who has.
Oh yeah, although I haven’t finished it, I really like the style of Flynn’s writing.
