Healing After Divorce

After our shows on children and divorce, we received thousands of e-mails from adults who still feel the pain of their parents' divorce. When Melissa was 11 years old, her parents divorced. Now 38 years old with a family of her own, Melissa says she never recovered from her parents' split.

Melissa's mother, Rosemarie, still gets emotional when she talks about the divorce. "It stopped me in my tracks, and I'm not even sure I'm over it. The one thing that I always felt is that [my husband] never really apologized to me," she says. "All I ever really wanted to do was be a wife and a mother. When the relationship ended, all of that ended also."

Melissa says her mother changed after the divorce, becoming angry and negative. "All I heard was my mother putting me down saying, 'Why are you going out with that boy?' 'Why are you working in this restaurant like a two-bit waitress?' Or, 'You're not good enough.' I have to fight that negative voice in my head today," Melissa says. "My frustration with her is that she can't own up to those mistakes and get past them. And I can't get past them if she won't admit them."