For church leaders and communities
For church leaders and communities
A faith community can be one of the greatest sources of healing for someone going through divorce — or one of the loneliest places they have ever been. We have experienced both. This is what it felt like from where we were sitting.
We want to begin by saying something we mean completely: we love the Church. We love its doctrine, its ordinances, and the people who serve in it — including the bishops, Relief Society presidents, and leaders who give so much of themselves to the members in their care. We are not writing this post to correct or replace anything. The Church’s handbooks and leadership training contain genuinely good material, and the leaders we have known have almost always been trying their best.
What we want to offer is something different and smaller: a window into what it actually felt like, from where we were sitting, to be going through a divorce in a ward community. Not as a critique — but as an honest account that we hope might be useful to anyone who has ever wondered what a member in that situation actually needs.
When it went right
The experiences that helped us most were not complicated. They did not require special training or unusual gifts. They required showing up, paying attention, and caring without an agenda.
Bruce
When I moved into a new ward, my bishop invited me in for a conversation. I explained a bit about my situation. He didn’t probe — which I appreciated more than I can say. He just asked me a simple question: was I still praying? When he saw my reaction, he smiled and said, “You never quit praying, do you?” He had read me correctly. He affirmed me without needing to know everything. He didn’t judge me, didn’t lecture me, and didn’t try to fix me. He encouraged me and let me know he was there. To be honest, that was all he could do — and it was exactly what I needed.
Val
I had a bishop prior to my divorce who visited with me every month. He didn’t always have answers. But he showed up consistently, he listened without an agenda, and he made it clear that he genuinely cared about me as a person — not just about resolving the situation. That steady, quiet presence was more sustaining than any advice he could have given me.
What these experiences shared: the leaders didn’t probe beyond what was offered. They didn’t try to render a verdict on the marriage. They made us feel seen and valued regardless of what was happening at home. They understood, perhaps intuitively, that their role in that moment was to be a caring spiritual presence — and that was enough. More than enough.
When it was harder
We share the following experiences not to criticize but to describe — because we think there is something genuinely useful in understanding what these situations felt like from the inside. In every case, the leaders involved were trying to help. That matters. And we want to be honest about the effect, even so.
Val
Through the decades of struggle in my marriage, I stuffed my emotions and kept the secrets I knew about — after all, they weren’t noble issues, and I wasn’t sure anyone would understand. Occasionally I would visit with a bishop and everything would spill out. The most common response was that what I was describing couldn’t be right, because my husband had never confessed anything like that to them.
I stopped sharing. I learned that I would not be believed — not because the bishops were unkind, but because they were working from incomplete information and didn’t know it. The person sitting across from them had told a very different story. And I had no way to bridge that gap. The isolation that followed was profound. I wasn’t asking to be fixed. I was asking to be believed.
This is one of the most common experiences we hear from people going through difficult marriages. It is worth naming: marriages that are breaking apart almost always involve complexity that is invisible from the outside. Addictions carefully hidden. Mental illness never diagnosed. Abuse never reported. Years of private suffering that neither spouse has shared publicly. A leader working from an incomplete picture — which is almost always the case — is wise to hold their conclusions loosely.
Bruce
When my former wife and I were separated and in the process of divorcing, our bishop called us in to meet together. I still don’t know whether he felt it was his duty or believed he could say the right thing and bring us back together. What followed was an uncomfortable meeting — a series of platitudes about the importance of marriage and the suggestion that working harder could fix things. He clearly cared, and I appreciate that he tried. But everyone left feeling worse than when we went in.
What I came to understand afterward is that leaders can love people — but they cannot change them. And adding guilt and shame to people who are already carrying so much of both never helps. It only adds weight.
There is also the experience of the community itself — which is often where the most significant pain occurs, not in a leader’s office but in the hallways and the Relief Society rooms.
Val
When I moved to a new ward as a newly divorced woman, I felt immediately on the fringes. The women there had known each other for years — a close, tight-knit group with established friendships. No one was unkind to me. But no one really reached out, either. They were content with their social circle as it was, and I was something new and perhaps a little uncomfortable to accommodate. I sat alone in Relief Society for longer than I want to remember.
This is not a story about bad people. It is a story about what happens when a community is not intentional about inclusion — and how much that costs someone who is already alone in ways they can’t always explain.
What we believe is possible
We share all of this because we believe the Church and its communities can be — and often are — one of the greatest sources of healing available to people going through divorce. We have felt that ourselves. We have also felt the opposite. And the gap between those two experiences is not as wide as it might seem.
It does not require special training or unusual gifts. It does not require having all the answers or knowing the full story. It requires showing up, listening without judging, and loving without conditions. It requires trusting that God can do the things that are beyond our reach — and that our job is simply to make sure the person knows they are not forgotten.
The leaders and community members who did that for us may never know the difference they made. But we have not forgotten them. We never will.
Val & Bruce
We are grateful for every person who has ever sat with someone in the hardest season of their life and tried their best to love them through it. That is no small thing. The Church is full of people like that — quiet, steady, faithful people who show up even when they don’t know what to say. We have been the recipients of that kind of love, and it has shaped who we are. Thank you.
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.
James 1:27The widow and the fatherless in this verse are shorthand for everyone who finds themselves suddenly alone in circumstances they didn’t choose. That includes the person sitting in the back of Relief Society wondering if anyone will speak to them. It includes the man who moved into a new ward with a story he’s not sure how to tell. Visiting them in their affliction — not fixing them, not judging them, just showing up — is, James tells us, what pure religion looks like.
We have seen it lived out. We believe in it completely.
You may never know the difference you made. But they will never forget it.
Has a leader or community made a difference for you?
We’d love to hear about an experience — positive or difficult — that has shaped how you think about the role of faith communities in supporting people through divorce. Comments are moderated with kindness.
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