The video, uploaded to TikTok, shows a teenage girl reading her poem “One Gift” that describes how she wants her parents back together.
“There may be two Christmas celebrations, two birthday parties, but there's never enough of me,” she reads.
The brief poem, only a minute long, goes on to describe how the girl’s father asks what she wants for her birthday and her mother asks what she wants for Christmas. She tells them she wants “cash" but that isn’t really what she wants.
“And I can't tell them what I actually want. That wouldn't be fair to say that I want both of my parents to be there,” she reads. “But what I really want is something they don't want to hear.”
Christian apologist Alex McFarland, of Truth for a New Generation, says divorce hurts the affected children more than most parents realize.
“Divorce is the trauma that young people carry with them for a minimum of a decade,” he warns. “Now, in reality, the kids will think about it for the rest of their life.”
The current U.S. divorce rate is hovering at 41% for first-time marriages, which reflects a drop from an all-time high near 50% in the 1980s. The number jumps dramatically for second marriages, 60%, and 70% for third marriages.
A related story at Not the Bee includes reactions on X to the teen girl’s sad video. In one X account, Joey Adair recalled that his parents’ divorce “destroyed me” when he was 8 years old.
“As a child I often said, my parents hated each other more than they loved me,” he wrote. “I know that's simplistic, but that's how children see it.”
Katy Faust, a pro-family activist, simply calls the poem “brutal” to watch.
Opie Hurst, a Mississippi-based marriage counselor, tells AFN children are affected by divorce because their family gives them an identity that follows them from the cradle to the grave.
"Whether a toddler or a college student," Hurst advises, "the moment the divorce papers are signed his/her identify and security feels stolen."
Hurst has counseled more than 3,400 marriages over 17 years of counseling.
Asked what issues married couples most often bring to a counseling session, Hurst said the most common problems are self-centered control, a desire for comfort, and the need to feel significant.
“I really plead with moms and dads to get counseling, to do whatever,” McFarland tells AFN. “Lose at anything else but win with your family.”
As of Monday, the TikTok page shows the video has generated 9,450 likes and more than 700 comments.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated with comments from Opie Hurst.
