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Marketing copy simplifies. Mine suggests my book is a juicy tell-all about obsessive love and heroin. That is true but it& #39;s also about codependency, care work, "true love," motherhood, and feminism. A thread>>>
Growing up, I understood devotion to be the hallmark of true love. I gorged myself on songs, movies, and books that validated the idea that the love of a man was the highest thing to strive for.
Pop culture and my family& #39;s stories also taught me that (as Nazareth sang) love hurts
If you grow up hearing these love-as-pain-and-sacrifice stories and thinking that caring for others is the cornerstone of femininity, and then come into contact with addiction? Well, you& #39;re pretty fucked
I became codependent—the name given to the "disease of relationships" we develop when living alongside addiction
Codependency (a word many no longer use) has a long, interesting history that I trace back to the temperance movement in the book
The struggle to get away from alcoholic men is tangled up with the struggle for suffrage and a broader bid for freedom and self-determination among women. That dream was only available to white women for a long time
The founding of Al Anon and the mainstreaming of self-help brought & #39;codependency& #39; greater visibility in the 80s and 90s but it has never been taken very seriously
My book aims to take this "other side" of addiction seriously. We say it& #39;s a "family disease" but we usually only hear the rollicking and gruesome stories of addicts themselves, not those left picking up the pieces
This book tells my story and also asks: what is a relationship for? How can we sustain love without losing ourselves? Are boundaries compatible with romantic passion? How does motherhood change the terms of love?
Before coronavirus, I hoped my book might spark a larger conversation about codependency. Now that seems unrealistic, but I hope those who need this book will find it. I feel for people currently trapped in homes where the fire of addiction is raging.
I worked hard on this and I& #39;m proud of it. It& #39;s out from @CrownPublishing a week from today and you can order it here https://bookshop.org/books/good-morning-destroyer-of-men-s-souls-a-memoir-of-women-addiction-and-love/9780525576679">https://bookshop.org/books/goo...
