Spoiled Children of Divorce


“A Separation”

The 2012 Oscar for Best Foreign Film was given to a movie made in Iran.  It’s called “A Separation.”  It’s also a movie about Divorce, but the Hollywood film scene thinks it’s a movie about a couple struggling to make a better life for themselves in a different country. 

Anyway, this isn’t another immigration story with a happy ending. Unless you want to move to Iran because artists and intellectuals there are capable of expressing deep thoughts.  The IMDb database describes it as:

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision – to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer’s disease.

If that’s what the U.S. viewer thinks this is the story he’s going to see he’s in for a rude awakening, especially if he’s a divorced parent.  Or, at least I think he might get an awakening.   Divorced parents are pretty stubborn people.  Hollywood certainly didn’t get it.  If it had it certainly wouldn’t have given an award to it.

So, during the first scene you see the couple explaining their divorce to a judge.  They both give their arguments.  Things get tense, the judge has to tell them to shut up a couple of times and then they file for the divorce which the wife wants and the husband doesn’t want.  They have a 12-year old daughter who wants to stay at home with the father and grandfather. 

The Mother goes to live with her parents and the Father is faced with having to hire someone to stay with his Father all day long.  He hires someone who is not comfortable with the job.  Things get worse and worse and the caretaker ends up leaving the grandfather in the house alone tied to the bed.  This leads to the Father coming home and getting really angry and shoving her out the door.   Pregnant, she falls and suffers a miscarriage.  The Father is taken into court for murdering the unborn child and the dirty laundry and guilt/innocence of everyone involved gets aired.

Where things get interesting from a Child of Divorce’s point of view is seeing the divorce through the 12-year old daughter’s eyes, of course.  Through all the emotional traumas both the parents’ flaws come to the forefront.  One can see that they are both good people and loving parents. One can also begin to see why they don’t get along.  One can also see that they can’t discuss the other’s flaws with each other.  And while they can’t talk to each other they can easily tell the daughter what they are thinking and feeling.  She then relays the message because, as a 12 year old she is trying to figure the whole situation out herself.  The flaws sort of seem like trivial differences.  The daughter can see the games that men and women play with each other long before she learns about this from her own relationships as is natural. 

The daughter’s presence was strongly felt throughout, but I realized that her point of view was never shown until somebody asked her a question and the camera stayed on her face and she just stared off blankly not saying anything.  There it was.  The amazing silence!

After that I was emotionally involved with her.  Divorce is an extremely emotional experience about relationship failure, but during divorce people don’t think about feelings or relationships, they talk and they talk and they think it will all be okay once the papers are signed.  They are intent only on the action of splitting, even if it means splitting the kid in half.   The way the movie handles the silences and the communications is unbelievably brilliant.   The last scene brings an extreme emotional shock which brings this idea of Silence and the impossible feelings that exist within Divorced families. 

 What was even more shocking was to be watching the movie in a theater in California with mostly older couples.  California being the Divorce capital of the world, I can only assume there were some couples were working on second and third marriages in that room.  Either way, the air in the room was thick when I walked out, and, nobody was talking.  I hadn’t felt that in a long time because my parents have been dead a long time.  It would always lead to my step-mother making a weird sucking sound in her throat and to my Mother havin to go out and get drunk.  My Father would act as if the family were normal.  It involved guilt and denial and blame.  I always knew that life would be easier if I just avoided talking at those points.



Parents as Sex Traders

When your parents divorce, often your relationship with both of them changes.  Whereas, previously, you may have been closest to your Father, you may become closer to your Mother after the divorce.  Then there are the stories of the child who becomes so difficult and unmanageable under care of one parent, he/she has to change households and has to go live with the other parent.  And then there’s the story which I just saw last night on TV…

Saw a very frightening show last night on Sex Trafficking.  The United States has grown one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Sex Trafficking capital of the World.  Sorry I can’t remember the name of the show, was wanting to link to it.  I think it was on MSNBC.  Am certain I will repeat some inaccurate details here in trying to describe the situation.

A young girl in the Bay Area was repeatedly raped by her Father from the age of 3 onwards.  At the Age of 8 years old her Father began to pimp her in order to make enough money for the family to buy a house.  The parents divorced when she was a teen and at that time the Mother, needing money, began to pimp the girl.

So, there you go, horror stories beyond anything most of us can imagine.  Her parents are immigrants who follow beliefs that daughters can be treated this way.  I grew up with what I think are pretty conservative values for women’s place in the world.  I’ve discussed my own situation, no sexual abuse, so I’m not saying that this happens only in Asian families.  This is a problem for female children overall in dysfunctional families.

The whole time growing up, this girl maintained a straight A average in school and played on her Soccer team.  She was very close to a teacher, I believe her old Soccer coach.  This young woman then managed to get in to UC Berkeley where she began therapy in order to try to make sense out of her life.  I believe she said that she is now around 25 years old and has stopped talking with her parents since she was around 20 years old.  Her strength is incredible.  She is speaking out in order to help others who might be in this same situation.

The parents were interviewed on the show and didn’t admit to anything.



Bad Children of Divorce – Anders Behring Breivik

On July 22 Norway was attacked by one of its own citizens, a 32-year old man named Anders Behring Breivik. Sad to say, that Anders Behring Breivik is a Child of Divorce.

Breivik’s parents divorced when he was 1 year old (source: Wikipedia). According to my Astrological Study this means that Breivik would have been influenced by and perhaps stuck in the energy of his first Solar Return. In his case this is particularly so because the other two planetary returns that occur around this time, Mercury and Venus, happened early in Breivik’s life, before his first Birthday. The Sun represents the Ego, Creativity, Children, Drama, Wanting to be in the limelight and in a leadership role. There is a 33 year cycle related to Solar Return charts in which the Sun returns to the native’s original house in his birth chart. I don’t have a birth time for Breivik so can’t say which house that would be but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the 12th House because this guy is going to start out his new Solar Return cycle in jail.

I wrote about a similar set-up of planetary cycles in celebrity charts of actors Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith. I talked about how, among the many differences between these two people, it is remarkable that they both became famous actors. Sun is related to wanting to be in the limelight. When Mercury and Venus both complete their first returns before the solar Return a child is blessed with early understandings of what both of those planets represent. I’ve talked about this a lot in the earlier posts. In short form, Mercury possibly represents communications and brain development of fine motor skills. Venus represents attachments to objects and people and development of memory and self worth through those attachments. The difference between how Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith handled their fame is, I subjecture, that Monroe suffered through her parents’ divorce during those years. Griffith also had a very difficult childhood and literally slept in a chest of drawers with relatives, but his parents stayed together and eventually provided him with a stable childhood. So, one can perhaps wonder if a child going through such fast transits in the first year is perhaps not more aware than other babies of what is going on. Mercury is directly related to the the nervous system and anxiety and Venus is related, as I said, to feeling loveable and feeling that one can love others.

Breivik has about 6 half or step siblings (check). I don’t have information about his biological parents’ remarriages/relationships but that will perhaps come out in time.

It appears that Breivik’s relationships with both parents are exceptional. He lived with his Mother up until a few months ago. Perhaps that’s not abnormal in Norway but in the U.S. it’s weird.

Breivik’s Father has had nothing to do with him since he moved to France in 1995 when Breivik was 16 years old. One can perhaps assume that the relationship with Breivik’s Mother became extremely dependent because his relationship with his Father involved the extreme rejection which is common among Children of Divorce. In Astrology, the 10th House, Saturn and Capricorn rule the Father and how one handles authoritarian figures. When an individual does not receive Paternal Attention, whether from a parent or someone else, one can possibly take out one’s anger on the Government which holds the parallel role in society that the traditional Fatherly role holds within the family.

Breivik is an Aquarius Sun and Aquarius is the sign most known for rebellion against these traditional roles. Aquarius has a natural sense of society as a whole and often doesn’t have easy access to expression of simple feelings of the earlier signs. Often, but not always of course, they are the kids who pass through the divorce without seeming to have any needs. I’ve discussed how I think that Aquarius is the sign probably most connected with Divorce. And Children of Divorce might be ruled by the sign of Virgo as Virgo is practical and service oriented and opposite Pisces, the ruler of Orphans, the sign which most kids of divorce get lumped in with (erroneously).

Without a birth time we can’t place the position of Breivik’s natal Moon (either in Leo or Virgo), but the noontime chart shows a conjunction with natal Saturn Retrograde in Virgo. Moon shows the family influence and the Mother so this is an important element. Either way, Breivik would have been born just after a Full Moon. If he has a Leo Sun this emphasizes his need to be in the spotlight and to lead in some way. If the Moon is in Virgo and in conjunction with Saturn Rx in Virgo, this combination with the Aquarius Sun shows emotional coldness. It also shows that the traditional parental roles were mixed up and not clearly viewed as separate influences. Unfortunately, I’ve sort of stopped work on my research of charts of famous Children of divorce because of computer hacking and theft of a lot of my papers and depression which came after all that happened. I do remember that the one signature which stood out for planetary placements in the charts that I looked at was the absence of Saturn in Virgo children from Divorce who become famous. All the other planetary placements by sign were represented in the 135 or so charts that I looked at except Saturn in Virgo. The insecurities of this placement seemed to really stand out as a signature for lack of self esteem. This would be especially difficult in a child who is stuck in a Sun aspect which needs to stand out in some way in order to shine. This is especially important to look at right now as Saturn just passed through that sign and many young children have it in their charts.

Progressed Moon generally has its first return at Age 27-28 and transiting Saturn has its first return at around Age 28-29.

The Progressed Lunar Return can be best used as a time of internal reflection in which one focuses on one’s emotional needs as a basis for going forth in life as an adult. One can feel like a loser or feel picked on in this phase, especially if life so far has been full of setbacks and unsafe relationships. The Moon relates to the Mother and the home life. After the individual goes through this internal phase, he then completes a cyclic phase which expresses to the external social world through the Saturn Return.

Breivik’s Father, an economist of some sort, says that he wishes his son had committed suicide because of what he had done. Thanks Dad. (I guess he’s describing the bottom line here on an investment he rejected long ago.)

It would be great if the Father had instead said “I wish that I had been a decent Father for my son so that this wouldn’t have happened,” but, of course, we’re all dreaming when we wish for comments like those to come out of the mouths of narcissistic parents. How many kids’ hearts could at least find peace if only their parents would admit that they had not provided the proper childhood? Maybe just one, well-timed, sincere assessment, clearly stated “I’m sorry and I want to try harder in the future.” Instead, the Father here, in my view, has affirmed that he is a total a-hole and will remain so until the day he dies.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Meanwhile, in an interview with Swedish tabloid Expressen, the suspect’s father said he was ashamed and disgusted by his son’s acts and wished he had committed suicide.

“I don’t feel like his father,” said former diplomat Jens David Breivik from his secluded home in southern France. “How could he just stand there and kill so many innocent people and just seem to think that what he did was OK? He should have taken his own life too. That’s what he should have done.”

Breivik said he first learned the news of his son’s attacks from media websites. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was totally paralyzing and I couldn’t really understand it.”

“I will have to live with this shame for the rest of my life. People will always link me with him,” he said.

Jens David Breivik said he had severed all contact with his son in 1995 when the latter was 16.

It’s very clear to me what the problem with Dad is here, but I know that many parents and people from intact families will remain flummoxed for years to come. The Father’s attitude couldn’t be more of a negative Saturnian comment, at any rate. Judgement, Blame, Coldness, Harsh Lessons, Conditional Love, Intolerance, Guilt. At least the Father is now eternally released from having to mention his first born son in his will and I suspect that’s all that counts to this guy.

Apparently, son Anders Breivik sees himself as having defended the country. His motive was to kill the Prime Minister of Norway and the youths who are learning to follow his liberal doctrines which include embracing immigration of Muslims into Norwegian society.

I believe that Norway was having a National Holiday on July 22, so the Prime Minister was working from home instead of coming into the office. So he survived the bombing of his offices and the surrounding areas. Breivik then attacked a political youth camp for kids who belong to the Prime Minister’s party. I’m too American to think that kids could learn to be liberal politicians at a youth camp, I’m just more into Arts and Crafts and the word “camp” brings up negative imagery especially when related to Politics and Religion. But I certainly don’t want to be seen as taking sides with Breivik. And, I also think that Summer Camp is a great way for kids from Divorce to get away from their parents.

I’ve discussed in previous posts how the men who started the “Minutemen” group on the Southwest Borders of the United States grew up in divorce and that I figured that this is somehow an expression of wanting to fix what was broken in childhood. It would make sense if Children of Divorce are much more likely to want to defend their country than kids from stable, intact homes. It is extremely difficult to listen to the chronic complaining and neediness of the immigrants when one’s own life if pretty difficult, especially with the new immigrants who are not particularly talented or special or in need of help.

Hope to look at the early planetary cycles in Breivik’s chart at the time of his parents’ divorce to see if it somehow plays out in his later life. Venus was moving very fast during his first year. Rejection would hurt a Venusian more than anyone except maybe a Lunar type. And a baby is pretty much nothing but a bunch of lunar types until the end of his first year when he completes the Solar, Mercurial and Venusian cycles. It is interesting that Brevick’s Father rejected him when he was 16 years old as that is a Sun-Venus cycle in some people’s charts. It is also half the age that Anders is now. Venus rules the signs of Taurus and Libra. In the sign of Taurus is rules Money, Voice, and Self Worth. In Libra it rules Marriage, one on one partnerships, Open Enemies, and need for Balance and Harmony.

Sun-Mercury-Mars in Aquarius squaring Uranus in Scorpio and trining Pluto in Libra and sextiling Neptune in Sagittarius
Neptune in Sagittarius squaring Virgo/Pisces NN’s
Venus in Capricorn trining Saturn in Virgo, maybe Moon in Virgo
Jupiter unaspected 1 Leo (to major planets), Lead Planet in Locomotive Chart Shape
Grand Earth Trine: Venus in Capricorn trine Saturn/MOon? in Virgo trine Chiron (Dick Cheney is Aquarius with Grand Earth Trine)



Whose Borders Are the Minutemen Defending?

Ew, this is looking bad.  This is a difficult little post to write up. It looks like the Minutemen community has been assembled by Children of Divorce.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Because, of course, we don’t have statistics.  Makes sense.  As adults we try to fix what we didn’t have as a child.  And Children of Divorce don’t have borders.

Shawna Ford is a former Minuteman member who has just been sentenced to Death Row in Arizona for the murders of a Father and his Daughter in their home in Texas.  Forde’s bio states that she was booted from the original Minutemen group for being mentally unstable and formed her own group.

Is Shawna Ford from Divorce?  Well, yeah, hate to say it.  Ford had one bad childhood.  It’s described in the Daily Beast.

Ford was the 7th of 9 children who were from 5 different Fathers.  I guess that it’s sort of difficult to know whether you are officially from Divorce, in that case.  The school shrink would have tested Ford for ADHD before he/she would have counseled her on how to cope with that type of background.  Ford’s Mother abandonned her to a relative when Ford was 10 months old.  (Astro stuff:  natal Venus 30 Libra, she would have already have had her first Venus Return, n.Venus c. South Node in Libra, that explains the loveability issues along with narcissistic personality disorder, Mother gave her away because M’s b-f- didn’t like her).  (The newspapers are announcing that she is officially a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, you have to read on to find out why).

There were Foster Homes and then at Age 5 Ford was placed in a permanent home.  Or, at least, I think that’s what happened.  Ford has been in trouble in pretty much all places where trouble can exist.  Guess it’s a bit difficult to see the illegal aliens hogging up all the social services when you yourself could use some help.

So I looked up the original founders of the Minutemen.  The media writes them up as being completely insane.  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-24-minuteman-goals_x.htm?csp=34.

Chris Simcox, a former kindergarten school teacher is a Child of Divorce.  It’s always amazing how the media never discusses divorce from a children’s point of view except when wanting to turn the public against the person who is being written about.  Like this article from USAToday. If the media were to persecute every immigrant who leads the exact same life that Simcox has led, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.  But, they don’t.  Anyway, Simcox is from Divorce.  He has been married 3 times himself and apparently is going through a journalism followed 3d divorce in which he threatens to kill everyone around him.  He has one child with his 2d wife, but has lost custody.  Guy has a bad dependency on guns, that’s for sure.  I wonder if his parents divorced when he was going through his Mars Return.

Simcox formed the Minutemen with James Gilchrist on Oct. 1, 2004.  They became a big hit really fast and it seems to have gone to their heads.  This is probably one statistical study that some Latina psych major will bite her teeth into:  What percentage of the Minutemen are Children of Divorce? Sorry, it just seems that Latinas do the Psych major thing a little too much, guess it reminds them of Lifetime TV.

If your parents didn’t make you feel secure, probably you will have complexes about how the Government doesn’t do anything about your security either.  Either way, Children of Divorce are probably more likely to act like vigilantes.  I mean, if you grow up in a blended home, you’re pretty much used to this type of tension already, aren’t you?  You are on your own.  You know you are replaceable.  You can’t complain the way the immigrants do.  You can’t even mention the big D in your Wikipedia entry, for Christ’s sake.

Other founder of the Minutemen, is James Gilchrist.  This guy is hopelessly conservative.  Wikipedia doesn’t mention what happened to Gilchrist’s Mother.  He’s still protecting her no doubt.  His greatest quote online, though, says it all.  “I have struck the mother lode of patriotism.”

Wikipedia says that Gilchrist lived in Kansas and Texas with his Father and older twin brothers.  And Gilchrist moved out at Age 17 to get away from his Father and Step-Mother.

Yo, doggy, it does look like the U.S. Borders are being protected by vigilante Children of Divorce.  Since I do agree with the basic idea that something needed to be done to control the huge influx of immigrants, I can’t say that the original intent was bad.  I’m very much against the guns.  So I’m adding to both Bad and Exemplary Children of Divorce categories.



Exemplary Children of Divorce – Raymond Chandler

One of the great old time masters of detective mystery writing, Raymond Chandler, was a Child of D.  Chandler’s Mother was an Irish Immigrant.  His Father was a civil engineer who was alcoholic.  The family moved around quite a bit because the father worked for the railroad.  Dad was absent a great deal of the time and eventually abandoned the family.  Chandler was raised by his Mother.  His uncle supported the pair financially.

I’m not sure when the divorce actually occurred.  Chandler’s Mother took him to Europe for awhile when he was around 11 or 12. Supposedly they took a boat in June, 1900.  Chandler was going through his Jupiter Return at that time.

Since I’ve found multiple examples of kids who go through their parents’ split during or around the time of their Jupiter Return who tend to become successful in Jupiterian Professions like Law, Publishing, Higher Education, Religion, etc. I’m pretty excited to find this prominence in Chandler’s chart.  I’m finding a lot of published writers whose parents split apart during this Return phase at any rate.

Success doesn’t guarantee happiness, of course.  Chandler suffered his own struggle with alcoholism just like his Father.  His Jupiter was in Scorpio (murder, crime, the dark side, detective work) opposing Neptune (escapism, addiction).  The Wikipedia biography on Chandler is really interesting.  He married a woman who was 18 years his senior (Venus c. Saturn-Sun-NN) and it seems that when she died he became despondent and tried to commit suicide.  It sounds like he suffered from serious depression his whole life.



Exemplary Children of Divorce – Junot Diaz

Junot Diaz is an MIT professor and Pulitizer Prize Winner and Child of D. I’ve passed by his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao often in the library and in bookstores, but I didn’t know until I heard an NPR show this morning (Nov. 27 or 28, 2008? sorry I’m publishing this a few weeks behind) that Junot Diaz writes variations on memoir about his childhood which includes long separations from his Father.  Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic.  His Father went to America early in his life and so was absent for much of Diaz’s childhood.  Later on the family joined the Father in New Jersey but his Father left them at that point.  This happened in 1979 when Diaz would have been around 11 years old.  In the NPR Interview Diaz says that he writes from the point of view of growing up as a poor immigrant but he also describes life with an erratic Father presence.  I haven’t read his writings but it sounds like he does touch a bit on the subject of separation.  Mostly he seems to speak from the point of view of immigration — there’s a bigger audience for this, a complaint that America is proud of rather than interested in sweeping under the rug, ah hem…

Divorce among Immigrants is certainly an interesting topic.  Although I have no personal experience in this area, I’ve heard a couple of times that Immigrant families will stick together out of necessity because of moving to a strange place.  If that tends to be true a separation connected with a move to a foreign land would make for an extra complicated childhood.

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