Melody Beattie - Melody Beattie 4 Title Bundle

CODEPENDENT NO MORE

How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

Melody Beattie

Preface to the 1992 Edition

Back in the early eighties, when I first envisioned writing a book about codependencywhen I was desperately struggling to sort through my own painI vowed that if I ever figured out what happened to me and what I needed to do to get better, Id write a book about it. That book, I decided, would be warm, gentle, nonjudgmental, nontechnical.

It would be kind. Because thats what I neededinformation and kindness. I needed help with my healing process from my codependency issues.

About five years later, I sat down to write that book. Just separated from my husband of ten years, I went on welfare for four months, to help me support myself and my two children, Nichole and Shane, while I wrote Codependent No More.

When I wondered how I, a nonexpert, could write a book like that, I took comfort by telling myself that it was okay to say what I thought because only a few people would read it anyway. I also spent a great deal of time on the introduction, striving not only to introduce the book, but to introduce the concept of codependency the wordto a world that, for the most part, had not heard about it.

Now, another five years later, Ive been asked to write an anniversary preface to a book that has sold over two million copies.

What do I put in it? I asked my editor and friend, Rebecca Post, from Hazelden.

Tell about the changes that have happenedto women, to people in our country, to you, since you wrote that book, she suggested.

Hmmm, I pondered. What changes have happened besides the Persian Gulf War, the breakdown of communism in the Soviet Union, and the Hill-Thomas Hearings?

I turn on the television. The movie of the week, I cant remember the name, is a story about a teenager struggling to deal with her alcoholism and the impact of being raped. Her mother, a nurse, has worked valiantly to break free from a dysfunctional and abusive relationship with her husband, the girls father. Throughout the movie, mother and daughter talk directly about not rescuing each other because of the diminishing effects of such behavior. The movie ends with the daughter playing a guitar and singing a song shes written about not being a victim anymore.

I walk into a church, one I havent attended for a long time. The sermon is somewhat unusual this cold, Sunday winter morning. The minister is speaking from his heart, telling the congregation that he is done leading a church thats based on shame, fear, guilt, and dishonesty. He wants instead, he says, to be part of a church thats based on equality, honesty, intimacy, acceptance, and the healing power of Gods love. He wants to be part of a church where he can have his own issues and problems, and where people are functioning in healthy, honest relationships with each other and God.

My daughter comes home from her first week at a new school. Guess what, Mom? she says. Were reading a meditation each day in homeroom class from your book, The Language of Letting Go. And at my friends school, theyre talking about codependency issues in health class.

Codependent No More, with a picture of handcuffs broken apart on the front cover, makes the best-seller list in France.

Catdependent No More, parodying the title of my book, makes the 1991 Christmas book list here in Minnesota.

Some things have changed. Ive written four more books, traveled the world, divorced (but not remarried), and paid back the welfare department for the financial help they gave me.

I feel more passionately about the importance of healing from our abuse issues. I feel more passionately. Ive become more spontaneous, embraced my femininity, and learned new lessons along the wayabout boundaries, flexibility, and owning my power. And about love. Im learning to respect men. My relationships have deepened. Some have changed.

The most significant change in my life has been the loss of my son, Shane. As you may have heard or read, in February of 1991, three days after his twelfth birthday, my beloved Shaneso much a part of my life and workwas killed suddenly in a ski accident on the slopes at Afton Alps.

Im learning about death and life.

Ive grown and changed. Ive watched my friends grow and change. Many of you have written to me about your growth and change.