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Photograph by George Sakkestad
Tina and Rich Iacovetta, married for nearly four years, are taking the pain they each experienced from past divorces and turning it into a way to help others. The couple hosts a divorce support group at their home on Friday nights, and will lead a 13-week seminar for both adults and children beginning this week at Westgate Church, on the border of Saratoga and San Jose.
Couple helps people deal with pain of divorce
Group sessions offer support for others
By Jennifer McBride
She thought she was losing her mind. Tina was just 27 years old. Her husband had just walked out on her; her marriage of four years was clearly over. Since she had married at such a young age, none of her friends could relate to her. She felt she had no one to turn to.
"I felt very alone. Very defeated. Very used. Like a failure in life. Betrayed, depressed ... there are so many words," Tina says now, looking back. "The stress, the emotions--I felt like I was losing my mind. I couldn't even make simple decisions."
A friend recommended a support group for divorcées. Tina says it took her nine months before she could even consider seeking the help of such a group, but she finally decided to give it a try.
Little did she know the group would change her life, and encourage her to reach out and help others in similar situations. And it would lead to her meeting the love of her life, Rich Iacovetta, whom she married a few years later.
Tina says the group helped her immeasurably.
"It was good to go somewhere where people were going through the same thing, and could give you support and encouragement. You see the light at the end of the tunnel," she says. Tina says one of the biggest factors was seeing others who were farther along in the healing process, and were smiling and feeling happy again. It gave her hope that, in time, she could be smiling again, too.
Rich, originally from New York, married at 21; he divorced 11 years later. For him, the situation was complicated by the presence of a son and daughter.
At the time of his divorce, Rich also felt lost, with no one to give him support.
"All of my family was in New York. So I didn't have a support group here to depend on and lean on," he says. "All of a sudden, I had gone from having this identity of being a married couple, to all of a sudden not fitting in with married people anymore."
One day, Rich got a postcard in the mail advertising a divorce recovery group. He joined, and slowly started returning to normal.
"The group helped me, because when I came, I felt like I was in a safe place and could share my feelings and not be judged. They understood. I would leave feeling refreshed."
At the group, Rich and Tina met. Over a period of about three years, they became friends and grew close.
"We were both into the healing process, and already on our way out of the group when we started dating," Tina says.
Rich and Tina were married in August 2002.
When the couple facilitating the divorce recovery group moved out of state, Rich and Tina saw it as an opportunity to give back the support that had been given to them by starting their own--Divorce Care. It began with weekly meetings out of their home on Friday nights, which they have run successfully for the past year, and grew to bigger seminars at Westgate Church, at the border of Saratoga and San Jose, through the help of the Rev. Jon Talbert, with whom Rich had been working with on care ministry.
Beginning this week, Rich and Tina are leading two simultaneous 13-week seminars--Divorce Care for adults, and Divorce Care for Kids, for children ages 5-12.
"We want kids to know it's OK to express their feelings, and it's not their fault Mom and Dad are getting divorced, or not living together anymore, or not getting along," Tina says.
Rich says the adult group will watch videos on different topics related to divorce, such as dealing with anger or depression, and then break up into small groups for round table discussions. The children's group will also watch videos and do exercises in workbooks and create arts and crafts that help them express how they are feeling. The two groups will focus on the same topics each week.
Rich and Tina both say the support and counseling they found in the divorce recovery group they attended--the modeled for their own group--has contributed to the success of their marriage. Both say many times they have seen friends divorce and jump right away into a new relationship, without first dealing with the pain from the old one. Rich says that's just "masking the pain."
"It's like having a broken foot. You can shoot it up with novocaine, and that may mask the pain and allow you to walk again, but over time walking on it when it's not fully healed just does more damage," he explains. "Our hearts are the same way--they need time to heal, and if they don't, they end up doing more damage to ourselves."
Tina says she believes that is why statistics show second marriages have a higher failure rate than first marriages. "I feel that is because they never dealt with the issues that led to their divorce in the first place. So they eventually fall back into old habits and issues, just with a different person this time," she says.
Today, the Iacovettas are happy and healthy and expecting their first child together. They want to pass on that healing to others.
"No one goes into a marriage expecting to get divorced," Tina says. "We just want to help as many people as we can."
Divorce Care for Adults and Divorce Care for Kids, simultaneous 13-week seminars, will take place at Westgate Church on Tuesdays, 7-8:30 p.m., beginning this week. Admission is free. Interested parties can join at any point during the 13 weeks. For more information on that or the Iacovettas' Friday night support group at their home, contact Rich Iacovetta at 408.898.6341 or lglending@earthlink.net. Visit www.divorcecare.org.
