The New Codependency by Melody Beattie

Author:Melody Beattie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

14 . Nurturing

A WAY TO LOVE THAT WORKS

Nurturing wasn’t included in Codependent No More. I didn’t know what nurturing was when I wrote that book. Compartmentalizing fragmented me, and I lived a series of roles.

My roles as a child and teenager were: alcoholic, student, and family member. Until I was twelve and turned my back on Him, I was a child of God. Part of my identity was being sickly. Four times in my life I became deathly ill; twice illness kept me home from school for a year each time. I didn’t have “friend” as a role. Friends weren’t allowed. I didn’t know how to socialize. I was also a musician, studying classical music for thirteen years.

From the age of eighteen to twenty-four, I had one role—junkie. Then I became a recovering person on a spiritual path, legal secretary, and student getting my chemical dependency counselor degree. The roles shifted when I became a counselor. Then I added wife and mother to my roles. I had a child when I was a practicing drug addict, but I gave up custody of him. I didn’t know how to compartmentalize that, so I filed it—and my first divorce—under “guilt.”

The roles continued to shift. I became a reporter. Then I wrote my first book (with Carolyn Owens). It took two years. I made $900, amounting to twenty-one cents an hour. I returned to journalism, vowing never to write another book. When I understood how much codependency affected me and other people, I crossed off “never” and wrote Codependent No More. Gradually I became: author, speaker, single parent, woman, and recovering person. I was no longer a wife. Now, I had two divorces filed under “guilt.”

Compartmentalizing cut off my feelings.

As a child, I didn’t understand emotions, and even if I had, they weren’t allowed. I didn’t have time for them as an adult. Occasionally a feeling came along I couldn’t avoid. “You’re the only woman I know who doesn’t cry when she needs to,” a male friend said. When my marriage ended, I felt sad but didn’t cry. I grieved the loss and end of my marriage while I was still in it, like many women do. When I filed for divorce, my husband’s grief began. I was done feeling sad.

If we don’t feel, have never felt loved, lived according to roles, and weren’t nurtured, how could we know what nurturing is?

During my marriage, I was in so much pain from codependency (but not consciously feeling), I wasn’t present for my children the way I wish I’d been. Losing someone often makes us who we wish we were when the person was alive. I held Shane the first year of his life. I sensed how important each moment was. At ten months, he hit the ground running and didn’t stop until he died. Holding him was as close to nurturing as I came.

I wrote from the heart but didn’t consider myself an expert. When requests for media and speaking engagements arrived, I was in a dilemma.

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