Conscious Choice: Reading Melody Beattie

April 2000 | Choice Books

Reading Melody Beattie

by Mark Harris

The young woman opened her eyes to find herself lying on the floor, unable to move or even utter a word. The little girl who used to get straight A’s and play the piano at school recitals, who at age four would set up an altar in the family living room and read from the Bible, now lay on the floor, paralyzed. A two-week cocaine binge and no sleep will do that to you.

At the time Melody Lynn Vaillancourt, the woman the world has come to know more familiarly as Melody Beattie, had only one coherent thought left in her ravaged body — So this is what it feels like to be a junkie.

Beattie did survive that moment, and others perhaps equally difficult, as she describes in her newest book, Playing It By Heart. But it hardly seems adequate to describe Beattie as a mere survivor. She’s been everything from straight-A student and New York Times best-selling author to a person so poor she had no phone, no car, and at times not even a roof over her head. She’s robbed drugstores, prostituted herself, been to jail, and for years lived the life of a recluse. She’s also visited the world’s most holy spots and sat on panels with the president of the United States.

Beattie’s gone from being in her words the "poster girl" of codependency to writing the groundbreaking book on the topic, Codependent No More. (It’s interesting to note that she wrote most of the work while on welfare.) In the ten books she has written since, Beattie has evolved into a kind of spiritual journalist, an investigative reporter on the story of her soul’s restless journey.

The Higher Ground

Perhaps one reason Beattie’s books are so popular is that, no matter what difficulty or betrayal or hurt she is confronting, she’s always striving for the perspective of a higher plane, one defined by compassion and understanding. There’s an undertow of objective empathy in her writing that seems to pull the reader along. If Beattie in her life has visited self-pity, she tries hard not to make it her permanent address. Neither does she indulge in the kind of forgiveness that seems more spiritually correct than heartfelt.

It’s a delicate balance for a writer to achieve, confronting life’s betrayals or disappointments without succumbing to it all, bitter and blameful. It seems that Beattie is able to retain her spiritual optimism for two reasons. One is her acknowledged fidelity to twelve-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Codependents Anonymous. The other has something to do with the kind of person she is. A minister at a treatment center once made a telling remark. In all his years of counseling, he claimed, Beattie had to be the "most determined, relentless, persistent person" he had ever met.

That comment was made because at the time Beattie had been unable to think of one good thing to say about herself. In Playing It By Heart, there is a rueful yet unpitying tone to her account of many old and difficult memories. Beattie’s father, for example, said good-bye to her when she was only three, thanks to the bottle to which he could not say good-bye.

Indeed, betrayal became Beattie’s companion early on. For example, she tells a story about the "weird jackass" down the street, who sexually molested her, then forced her to sit at his feet as he "entertained" her with a rendition of "Davy Crockett" on the organ.

At age twelve, while walking to church one day, Beattie stops to look up at the sky. She thinks about all the signs posted at the church, the ones that say "God is love." She realizes that perhaps this "love" is just the grandest of lies in a world that sells children lies by the six-pack. The little girl is coming to a very adult conclusion. She can rely on no one, least of all God. The same year Beattie takes her first drink.

Now in her early fifties, Beattie has overcome a lot. Yet unlike so many self-help writers, she doesn’t set herself up as the relationship expert, addictions specialist, or recovery guru. She is no spiritual general overlooking the troops from the mountaintops of her revealed wisdom. No, Beattie’s right down there in the trenches, a soldier in the human story. Her weapon is the craft with which to tell that story.

Thinking About Yourself

It’s almost impossible to read Beattie’s books and not think about your own life. When I read The Lessons of Love, Beattie’s account of the death of her eleven-year-old son Shane in a skiing accident, I was deeply moved. I cried. But in part I was also crying for myself, reliving feelings about the death of a man named Reed Harris. He was my father.

Perhaps it was no accident that I had made it a project to read Beattie’s many books over these past months. I’d heard of individuals who had lost a parent suddenly, especially when death came early, and then experienced a building emotional crisis as they neared the age of their lost relative. As I write this review, I am nearly as old as my father was when he died, a few days before Christmas in a car accident on a Wisconsin highway. I was twenty-two at the time.

When I think back to those days, I see how consumed I was with the business of declaring independence from my dad, and waging something of a holy war in the process. In my youthful righteousness I saw my father as a leader of the establishment infidels. And I challenged him in so many ways....

He was a businessman, so I used to poke holes in his ideology. He loved sports so I became his "athletic hero" and then acted like I didn’t care. He wanted me to be a lawyer or maybe even a golf pro. I believed lawyers were parasites and golfers a privileged elite in the clothes of the clueless. He was headstrong. So was I.

Mostly, I just wanted him to leave me alone, let me breathe on my own. Or so I thought. But then he did.

Forever.

I never forgave myself for those long-ago battles. The guilt was a quiet and consuming energy drain, as unrelenting as it was difficult to identify. He didn’t deserve to have his life wiped out by a reckless driver. Perhaps he also didn’t deserve a son who so trampled upon his world?

The cruelest irony? With death tearing us apart, the breath of independence I had so desperately desired became instead a suffocating gasp, for forgiveness and for words of love now unspoken. I felt defeated by feelings I could barely comprehend.

Beattie reminds us constantly of the power of such emotions. She also reminds us of the power and potential for healing such emotions. "We don’t want our feelings to control us," she says in Finding Your Way Home. "But they do, until we feel them. And if we’re on our path, emotions will arise — sometimes relentlessly. The feelings can’t be avoided, just postponed."

Reading Beattie has buoyed me on my own path. Mostly, she’s helped me to feel like a human being even as I rummage through this unkempt attic full of old emotions, unresolved grief, and guilt long corroded by time. Especially when I’m nagged by the thought that this is a room I should have cleaned up years ago.

The Christian writer C. S. Lewis once wrote that no one had ever told him how much like fear grief felt. Grief is like a nervous swallow with a gun pointed at your head. Unresolved grief turns everything into a kind of blur. You come to view life through the uncorrected vision of your own broken heart. How could it be otherwise? What you cherish most has become the thing that hurts the most.

Beattie understands this in a way I almost wish she didn’t. Her son died three years after Codependent No More made the bestseller list. Three of the best years of her life gave way to long, devastating fogs of despair. Beattie’s "cold war" with God went white hot. One day she found a friend who had come to visit just staring at her. When he spoke, the words stung. "You’re in trouble, girl.... I’m afraid you’re going to die. And soon."

Slowly, painstakingly, Beattie began to pull herself out of the mire, in the same way she always has — through sheer exertion of will. Letting feelings flow. Letting others help. Forgiving herself. Practicing gratitude. Practicing radical honesty. Not taking a damn thing for granted.

The Places Where We Are Most Broken

Beattie’s stories capture the tension of a person bent on living life at full throttle without veering into obsession. Her works on codependency focus on the challenge of giving and accepting love without losing oneself in the process. Breaking free of codependence, she believes, doesn’t have to mean throwing the cold water of caution on every wildfire of desire. It is just about knowing yourself so fully and comfortably that your passion can truly flow, naturally and happily.

In her travels, Beattie tells us she’s learned that many of the world’s holy spots had once been places where great tragedies occurred. Over time as people came to these places to witness and pray, an interesting thing would happen. People began to let go of the sense of tragedy surrounding the spot, and a more hopeful, positive kind of aura began to emerge.

Likewise, the broken places in our own lives can become holy defining moments. Grief’s raw discomfort can force us wrenchingly toward a newfound inner intimacy. We become through the experience a little more grateful for all that we are and all that we have. At first it just feels like survival. In time, our healing, human spirit begins to sound a call more clarion in voice than perhaps anything we’ve ever known. Mostly, I think moving through grief just makes us care more, for others and ourselves.

The cornerstone of this healing begins with taking to heart a simple truth. Beattie helps us to remember it. "Love is the only thing in this world that cannot be lost because it’s the only thing that’s real.

"And sometimes love hurts."

Now, I find myself staring at a photo of my father from the 1950s. At the time, he was a young man and a new father. His little son is taking his first steps. My father is crouched low, an encouraging presence. How large his shadow looms next to a small boy on a sunny California day of long ago.

In another photo, I see my father standing next to a country road on a spring day. The year is 1936 and he is eight years old. In the photo he holds wildflowers to his chest and he is smiling. There is no façade of father or adult in this photo, only a small boy full of life and dreams.

How I wish I could tell that little boy of the future to come, all the wonderful adventures and successes, the beautiful wife he will love, five children, the true friends. How I wish I could tell him of all the love he will know. How much I eventually came to love him. All the love that lives forever.

But perhaps I already have.

Selected Works by Melody Beattie

Playing It By Heart: Taking Care of Yourself No Matter What (Hazelden, 1999)

Finding Your Way Home: A Soul Survival Kit (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998)

Stop Being Mean to Yourself: A Story About Finding the True Meaning of Self-Love (Hazelden, 1997)

The Lessons of Love: Rediscovering Our Passion for Life When It All Seems Too Hard to Take (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994)

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself (Hazelden, 1987)

Mark Harris is a Chicago-based writer. Visit his Web site, A Writer’s Voice.

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