On my night table sits a small figurine of Saint Joseph sleeping. Over time, the figurine has become a symbol of safety for me. Each night before I go to sleep, I glance at it, pray, and let my heart rest. This is not how I used to feel about father figures. My...
The month of March is an important month in the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar. Not only does this month occur during the Lenten season, but over thirty saints are celebrated over the course of the month’s 31 days. What a gift that the Church holds up so many...
The phone rang. I was 23 years old and hadn’t heard from my friend Sara in five years. We grew up together. “What have you been up to?” Sara asked. “Well, I’ve had a life-changing experience and I’ve become a born-again Christian!” I exclaimed, waiting for the usual...
For members of Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA), part of our solution for healing is to become our own loving parents. We do this through 12-step work and by taking a blameless inventory of our caregivers to recognize the wounds that we received from them so that we...
When I first started attending secular 12-step meetings for the loved ones of lust addicts, I noticed that the facilitator of each meeting made sure to read information about the Seventh Tradition, which usually sounded something like this: “Our Seventh Tradition...
“Lord, please don’t let me lose my love for my husband,” I would pray. After years of living with a man with active alcoholism, I felt anything but loving. In fact, I was often in despair, full of fear, grief, and resentment, and on my knees with this prayer on my...
It was an argument over a grocery order. My husband and I were in the early days of my discovering his lust-driven secret life. Because he did not choose to disclose to me all of his deception at once—a concept called “trickle truth”—it seemed that every time I turned...
We still hadn’t even finished writing out the thank you notes for the wedding gifts when the effects of my husband’s lust addiction first hit hard. We had been married for less than three months. It was a rainy Friday night, and I’d made it home from work first. I’d...
I remember being at a Catholic spirituality conference the summer before I got married. The conference included a time of Eucharistic adoration, and so in the silence of that space, I did what any faithful Catholic fiancée would do and opened up to God about my fears....
Growing up as an adult child of a dysfunctional home (ACDH) can leave lasting emotional scars. One of the most challenging aspects of our journey to healing is confronting painful relationships with controlling, manipulative, and abusive family members. That is why...