The Devastating Effects of Divorce: Adam Coleman

I went through a lot when I was a kid. And I want my story to be an example that, yes, certain things happen to you when you're a child, but when you're an adult, you make life happen for you. So it is possible to overcome these circumstances. When Adam Coleman was eight years old, he was institutionalized after contemplating suicide. He shares his struggles, and the struggles of so many in America, of growing up without a father. In his new book, The Children We Left Behind, how Western culture rationalizes family separation and ignores the pain of child neglect. Only 60% of children in America live with married biological parents. Among black children, it's 33%. There are a lot of people who are afraid of marriage, afraid of having children, afraid of being alone with the opposite sex because of their childhood situation. If we demonstrate a household that is healthy, then you have more kids who grow up with a good, positive image of having children, wanting a bigger family, of having marriage as their priority. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Adam Coleman, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me. Adam, as the name of your book suggests, you point out this child abandonment as being the key driver in your mind of some of the worst of the social malaise that we're experiencing in society. Tell me why you think that. I think it's because I've seen it. I've seen it up close. I've seen it with people who are struggling with drug addiction, and I've heard their stories of people who end up in prisons, things of that nature, and there's always this common link between them, whether it's physical abuse, sexual abuse, abandonment. There's something happening within their home when they were children. For me, I'm looking at also my situation. We talk about mental health a lot in America, but every time I see people who are struggling with mental health and you start digging a little bit deeper, you find out they're coming from a dysfunctional household when they were kids, and it created this anxiety, this instability in their mind, and that's much of my story of questioning myself, questioning my mental state, whether I'm of value or not, stemming from being abandoned by my father and watching my mother struggle and sometimes even saying, am I the reason why my mother is struggling? It's not just I saw it around me and just anecdotally talking to people that I know and I'm familiar with, but I'm also looking at my story of what I experienced. Well, it's kind of unbelievable even to think about. You were actually institutionalized when you were eight years old because people thought you were going to kill yourself. That is very hard for me to fathom, but give me a little bit of your background. How did it get to that and what happened there? So for much of my life, I kind of blocked out these memories until my sister brought it up to me, I want to say almost a decade ago, my early 30s. And when she did, all these memories came rushing back to me as far as what happened. But essentially, we had moved from Virginia to upstate New York to live with a family member, and it wasn't working out there. There was yelling between us. It was kind of like a verbally abusive environment specifically towards me between my family member and myself. You know, my mother was trying to go to school, she was working as well. So there's a lot of time that we were home either by ourselves or under the care of family members. That situation went awry. And suddenly one day I came off the bus and my mother's like, we're leaving. From there, we didn't really have any place to go. So we ended up in hotel rooms, we stayed with a woman who offered a room in a trailer. And, you know, it's the three of us, myself, my mom, my sister staying in the trailer. And eventually, after about two, three months, my mother had enough money, we got our own apartment. But by then, the amount of instability that was happening on top of I don't think really anybody in my school knew what was going on. You know, I'm going to school every day, but coming not home, but to a hotel room. So by the time we got into the apartment, you think everything will be fine. But for me, it was just incredibly chaotic. And I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't know how to express myself. My sister, she's four years older than me. So she remembers it a little bit more vividly. But she remembers one specific day, I was underneath the kitchen table. And I was like, in a fetal position, just screaming. And it was like I was having a mental break. And my mother remembers me asking her, well, not asking her telling her that if she loved me, she'd help me die. And from my memory, I don't remember those specific moments of saying that. But I remember how I felt. I remember feeling in distress. I do remember one day getting into a car, heading somewhere that I've never been before in upstate New York, going into some facility. And my mother handed me off to somebody. And I didn't know where I was. You know, no one explained to me what was exactly what was going on. It was, it took me a little bit to realize where I was. And I was in a mental hospital. And subsequently, I was there for three months. And the way I kind of explain it to people is, you know, when you go to jail, you know, how long you're going to be there for, generally speaking, you're sentenced. But when you go to a mental hospital, it's up to them as to when you leave. So you don't know. And as a kid, you know, when you see your mother coming to visit you, you think today might be the day I get to go home. And she has to tell you no. You know, within the book, I revealed that, you know, talking to my sister about this was the first time I heard my mother's perspective. You know, after those visits of coming to see her son, you know, the entire drive home, she's crying, because her little boy is locked away. And I never really thought about my mother's perspective when she went through, especially now as a parent, I understand, you know, the difficulties my mother faced. And how hard that must be to have a little boy locked away like that. You know, you struggled with your, I guess, lack of relationship with your father, who basically was completely absent aside from some semblance of child support or something. Just tell me about that a little bit. Yeah. You know, I was born in Detroit. My father always lived in Detroit. He was married, but he was just married to somebody else. You know, my mother left because she needed support. She wasn't getting much of any support. And Detroit was getting worse crime wise and things of that nature. So that's why we ended up leaving the city. But after we left, especially, I didn't really see him. I would see him once every couple of years, something of that nature. I might get a phone call. But, you know, as a kid, it felt like the phone call wasn't really for me. It was for somebody else. You know, it was just like an obligation. You should talk to your kids kind of thing. I could be wrong, but that's how I felt as a kid. But nevertheless, I didn't really hear from him. And even if I did talk to him, it was always very, how was school? School's fine. Okay. Two minute conversation. My father didn't know anything about me. I didn't know it. And still to this day, I don't really know anything about my father. You know, he would come through living in the northeast in New York and New Jersey. He might come through to go to New York City to get fabric because he was a tailor. But he would stay with us for a few days. But it wasn't really to see us. It was a place to stay. And every time he would come, I remember feeling somewhat excited to see him. But then quickly, like, he wasn't engaging with me. And he would always leave in the middle of the night. And he would tell me, if that was me and my son, I would be like, hey, I'm leaving in the morning. Give me a hug before I go to bed or something like that. I would just wake up and he was gone. So, you know, the last time I saw my father, I was 16. He took me to the mall and bought me some clothes. That was the extent of it. And the last time I talked to him, I was 21. I called him after my son was born. But I didn't talk to him for very long because it didn't seem like he was interested in speaking with me. So I never told him that he has a grandson. And I never closed the door if he attempted to call me. I allowed for it to happen, but he never tried. And he died some years ago. So there was never any sort of establishment or reconciliation. Just a moment comes to my mind where you're describing seeing him happy in photos with other people. Yeah. While I was writing this book, you know, it allowed for me to talk to my mother when she told me that my father died. He had died a few months before my mother found out. She just happened to Google his name. I found the funeral home. I found his pictures. So while writing this, I was like, you know what? I've never Googled my father's name. And I went to the funeral home website and I saw his pictures. And I just saw a bunch of people around him. I had no idea who they were. I don't know if they're family, friends, no idea. But my next thought was, I wonder if any of them know that he has children that he abandoned. And I think that was much of the motivation of writing the one chapter in the book, Socially Comfortable Terrible Parents. How many people do we have in our lives that get to be comfortable around us adults while we actively know that they've abandoned their kids or they're treating their kids terribly? They yell at them, scream at them. They treat them like dirt and they get to hang out with us, go to the movies, come to the family gatherings, and no one ever says anything to them. And so outside of my father, I've seen that, you know, in different families that I've gotten to know. And I'm like, wait, that's a situation. Is that a secret? No, everybody knows. Oh, so everyone knows. And it's shocking how common that is. Adam, just one quick sec. We're going to take a break. And folks, we're going to be right back. And we're back with Adam Coleman, author of The Children We Left Behind. Well, there's two things here. One is that when you describe child abandonment, it's not necessarily where the parents are entirely absent. They can just be absent because of selfishness. I want to touch on that in a moment. Or narcissism. This is kind of a bizarre feature of our current age. Well, let's focus on that. Yeah, the narcissism part, or if you just want to call it selfishness, putting yourself ahead of your children, making detrimental choices that you know are going to negatively impact your kid, but you're going to do it anyways. Now, I'm not saying that these people are evil or anything like that. But we just have a culture of rationalizing things to kind of swallow the outcome that's about to happen, how it's going to affect their kids. So we say, well, mommy and daddy are getting a divorce because we're not in love with each other. But if I'm happy, my kids will be happy. That puts the parent as the primary focus, not the child, right? The child becomes secondary in that type of rationalization. But that's enough for people to split up their family, blow up the world for their child. And it's not to say that I'm anti-divorce or anything like that. But there are parents who are choosing themselves or their kids periodically, and especially for really big monumental choices. And you fit that into the broad concept of abandonment. And I found that very interesting. But this is a broader societal issue. I mean, just look at our birth rate. And basically every free nation in the world, it's below replacement. That is shocking to me. When you really think about it, it just means we don't really value our children enough to have enough to actually replenish the society. That seems kind of crazy and nihilistic almost. I don't know what your thoughts are on this. I think there are a lot of people who are afraid of marriage, afraid of having children, afraid of being alone with the opposite sex because of their childhood situation. Marriage to them is what their parents did. And if you grow up in a happy, healthy household, of course marriage looks fine, right? You have a blueprint. It feels good. It looks good. You learned a lot. But if you grew up in chaos or your parents got divorced when you were 10 and you saw that marriage doesn't last forever and it hurts people and all this pain associated with family, then I understand why people don't want to procreate, don't want to get married. They don't want to do any of that stuff because they don't see it as a guarantee. They don't see it as overall productive. All they do is associate hurt with it. So for me, it's rational to see someone make that choice. And often when I see people who make that choice, it's not just, I decided not to get married. It's, I've decided not to get married because of a whole slew of very personal anecdotes to them. I think that exists throughout the West. Obviously there's economic means, you know, people don't feel like they can afford it. You have to have two incomes these days. There's a lot of things that kind of contribute to it. But I don't think we talk enough about the young people who may be getting into relationships who are afraid. They're operating off of fear because of what they saw. They saw chaos. And if we demonstrate a household that is proper, that is healthy, then you have more kids who grow up with a good positive image of having children, wanting a bigger family, of having marriage as their priority. I've had some thoughts about this. My parents were divorced right around the time I finished high school. And when I was younger, they had a difficult relationship. And I often wondered why it made sense for them to be together. As I look back, right, over the years, I find myself incredibly grateful for the fact that they clearly chose to maintain the relationship for the benefit of the kids, despite it being very difficult. And that's interesting because that's changed over the course of my life as I look back. And it really is a very different way of looking at the world. I don't know how many people would do that anymore, right, based on the social zeitgeist. Not too many people would choose to do that, especially if they tell other people, I'm struggling within my marriage, right? Because the first response is that you got to leave. If you have a good friend, they'll tell you like, well, you know, I'm here for you. You know, here's how you might be able to resolve it. It's usually you're right, they're wrong. And ultimately leading towards, well, nothing's being resolved. I guess you got to go. And it's difficult. Relationships are difficult. Maybe in certain circumstances, you got to leave, right? There are the obvious, you know, some sort of abuse. Very clearly, this is not healthy for the partner or for the children to be around, right? That's far more detrimental. So I don't know if a lot of people consider these things, you know, divorce isn't, you just sign a piece of paper, everyone goes in a merry way. There's an emotional impact that happens for the kids. There's an emotional impact that happens for the person who's being divorced. It's not always amicable. You know, one person might be trying to hold onto it and the other person's trying to let it go. Maybe there is infidelity. There's a lot of emotions that are tied up into it. On top of just the general, a lot of people who get divorced feel like they failed. And that sense of failure stays with them. On top of you trying to raise kids who are now starting to feel rejected. It's very much so far more detrimental than people acknowledge. What do you think is the single most important thing you could do when you know you have a fraught relationship with your child? With accountability and acknowledging that you are hurting your child. That's the pathway towards healing. So it doesn't necessarily mean that you acknowledge it. I am sorry. I know I hurt you. They still may put the wall up and ignore you. But here's the thing. When they do that, it's because they want you to hurt like they're hurting. And they want you to fight to get back to the relationship because all they've seen is that you've given up. And so if they put that wall up and you're like, well, I tried. And you walk away, you validate that you've abandoned them. Right? See, he wasn't serious. He's not even trying. So I do think that reunification is really important, which is why I talk about forgiveness in the book. If you're a child who's been abandoned, speaking of myself, even though my father's not alive, when he was alive, I forgave him. Right? Always left that door open if he did want to call and say, you know what? I was wrong. I was a young man or he wasn't really a young man. But in the past, I made mistakes. I've come to realize these things. And I am sorry. And I just want to get to my son because I don't know who you are. I would have allowed for that to happen. I think a lot of kids were allowed to happen. But the mistake of parents, and I've talked to fathers in this situation, especially who are trying to get back into children's lives. The child has a version of what happened. He has a version of what happened. And so when the child says, well, you did X, Y, and Z, he's like, no, no, no, you don't understand because your mother did. It becomes them missing the point. And it sounds like your only reason you're talking is so you can validate what you did and try to legislate all these different components of the situation that maybe the child wasn't aware of, rather than they just want you to acknowledge that you didn't do the best thing and that they're hurting. That's it. And so sometimes the parents who are trying to get back into kids' lives are debating the issue. Or if it's a father, he's like, you don't understand. Your mother was doing X, Y, and Z. Well, guess what? That child loves that mother. And trying to build a case against someone that they love is going to be a losing battle, especially if you're coming from the weak position of not being in their life. So that stuff becomes the noise when it comes to reunification. Whatever they say that you did, it doesn't matter what you did. That's how they feel. That's what they believe. And maybe one day, they'll be open enough to actually hear your perspective. And then they will make a decision. You know what? Maybe I am misremembering that. But battling them on details is a losing battle. And giving up on them when they do push back will ultimately validate their feelings. What about in situations where a parent really abused the child in terrible ways? Is it reasonable to expect someone to forgive in that sort of situation? Is it necessary? Well, we also have to look at the word forgiveness, or actually the meaning of forgiveness. Because forgiving means for you to release your anger and animosity, right? The forgiveness is for the person who is victimized. It's not for the person who's the perpetrator looking for some sort of clemency or something like that. So ultimately, when I say, I forgive my father, I forgive my father. So I let go my anger, my depression, my feeling of rejection to let all that stuff go. So I don't have anything dragging me back. And I can move forward in my life. And so if you were abused in some particular way, is it beneficial to hold on to anger, that feeling when you were a child that was abused? Is it beneficial to hold on to that? Or is it beneficial to release it? And so the forgiveness is to release that, right? It's not to excuse their behavior. It's not to rationalize their behavior, say it was fine. Now from there, if they want to get into a new relationship with that parent, despite them abusing them, then that's purely up to them. In those situations, I would never say, no, you must take them back or anything like that. These are very difficult, extenuating circumstances. So I would purely leave that up to the person who was victimized. The forgiveness, the core of it, is for the person who was victimized. Whether you choose to let the person who victimized you know this, is completely up to you. But I do think that forgiveness is the starting point if there is going to be some sort of reunification. Abuse or not abuse, forgiveness is at the core of it. Adam, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. A final thought as we finish? I guess my final thought is, I went through a lot when I was a kid. And I want my story to be an example that, yes, certain things happen to you when you're a child. But when you're an adult, you make life happen for you. So it is possible to overcome these circumstances. You are of value if you were abandoned. It does not mean that you offer nothing to this world. And that's why I do think that faith is really important, because we are made in the image of God. But say you don't want to deal with any of that. Whatever you have going on, you can overcome those situations. You don't have to be a victim. You can always be a victor. Well, Adam Coleman, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you all for joining Adam Coleman and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.