Posts

Dancing With Daddy: A Childhood Lost and a Life Regained by Betsy Petersen

Image
  Dancing With Daddy: A Childhood Lost and a Life Regained by   Betsy Petersen Timmy Cham 's review Sep 19, 2020   ·    edit really liked it "The past is never dead. It's not even past." --William Faulkner How much of our present behavior is just an aftershock of a traumatic earthquake which occurred in childhood? Betsy Petersen's memoir of recovery from incest provides an admirably detailed and poignant portrait: I did not know what I was doing. I only knew I was angry with  [my children]  and they didn't deserve it. Until I had gotten back the missing parts of my past, I couldn't make the connections between my anger at my children in the present and the numb compliance of my childhood. (page 93) Through a memoir which reads like a novel, Petersen recounts her struggles to reclaim the memories of what was done to her --and how her childhood trauma later impacted her attitudes and feelings about sexuality (49-51), motherhood (81-96), money (109-1...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Support Do ACOAs Need? A Syllabus for Group Therapy

Image
I recently read this book, Together We Heal (by Szifra Birke and Kathy Mayer), and found it to be an intriguing, helpful look at Group Therapy for ACOAs. I offer the book's Table of Contents for anyone who wishes to follow up...
Post a Comment
Read more

Design for Growth: Twelve Steps for Adult Children by Veronica Ray

Image
Design for Growth: Twelve Steps for Adult Children by   Veronica Ray Timmy Cham 's review Jul 22, 2020   ·    edit really liked it How can the 12 Steps benefit adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs)? Veronica Ray offers this book to show "how various people have learned to identify their adult child problems and how the 12 Steps have helped them to a better life" (page 3). Each chapter contains a brief discussion of the Step, followed by a case study or two about a person's specific application of the Step to their own lives. In this review, I'll focus on Ray's discussion of the first three steps. Step 1: Admitted we were powerless...that our lives had become unmanageable Ray rightly observes that most people get caught up on pronouncing themselves  powerless , so she explains, specifically,  what kind of "power"  Step One says we're surrendering. After all, there's nothing wrong with saying we have the power to cho...
Post a Comment
Read more

Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz

Image
Adult Children of Alcoholics by   Janet Geringer Woititz Timmy Cham 's review Jul 11, 2020   ·    edit really liked it We've long known that children of alcoholics are impacted by their upbringing in an alcoholic home. After all, Alateen was established in 1957. But the idea that such effects persisted into adulthood was rarely attended to before the 1980, before the founding of  ACoA in 1978  and the publication of Claudia Black's bestseller  It Will Never Happen to Me!  in 1987. Woititz's doctoral thesis (1976) and this book (1983) are early explorations of the issues confronting Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoAs). Woititz's book is clearly written and well-organized. It falls into three parts: 1) How does a parent's alcoholism impact children? In the introduction and Part One, Woititz discusses three main effects of children's exposure to an alcoholic household: First, such a child is robbed of his or her ch...
Post a Comment
Read more