Posts tagged alcoholism
December 16, 2011 · Filed under My Book: BookMark, News, Personal · Tagged abuse, alcoholism, career, healing, inspiration, Jerry Sandusky, Mike McQueary, mother, optimism, pedophilia, Penn State, physical health, positive thinking, rape, relationships, self awareness, stepfather, therapy, trauma
Brutal news week.
I used to draw down a wall between my life and the news. As I anchored the news, reading about others’ pain, I didn’t feel my own. I was inured from the intrusions of decades of sexual abuse. I could focus on WhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow and script the stories, read my own words, tell the story. That’s over. It’s actually been over for a few years until I could finally break down that inviolate partition. I was healed. I thought.
But this was a brutal news week. Read the rest of this entry »
May 29, 2011 · Filed under Personal · Tagged abuse, alcoholism, career, dancing, diabetes, father, fearless, happiness, healing, inspiration, Marisa Russo, mother, pedophilia, rape, therapy
For years, I hid it, never spoke about it. Until finally, it pushed up out of me like a beach ball you press down in the water – it pops out. Has to.
And, one day, the gift of that childhood trauma becomes apparent.
First, the damage and danger twists synapses, neural pathways, belief systems, trust, whom you love and who you run from. What does a four-and-a-half year old girl learn from being raped by her mother’s new husband? Handsome guy, her mother head over heels in love with him, her cutting the little girl’s real father out of every photo, changing the girl’s name, and silencing her when she tries to speak it. Mother, an alcoholic, suicidal, schizophrenic. Real father, gone, after the little girl reaches age six, because the stepfather beat him up and told him to never come back. She never saw her dad again.
Little girl escapes Read the rest of this entry »
June 5, 2010 · Filed under Personal · Tagged abuse, alcoholism, bipolar disorder, codependency, friendship, healing, inspiration, love, pedophilia, rape, relationships, schizophreniz, self awareness, stepfather, The Soloist, therapy, trauma
Hollywood Video’s enormous yellow and black banner drew me in. DVD’s for five and six bucks – yeah, I’ll take a look. I came home with nine – including the first Rocky and Mystic Pizza and What Dreams May Come. Films that resonate with key times in my life. I fanned out the movie boxes for my older son, and asked if he wanted to watch a film with me.
He selected without hesitation The Soloist with Jamie Fox and Robert Downey Jr. A true story about an LA Times reporter who accidentally discovers that one of the 90,000 homeless people on the streets of LA went to Julliard and was now playing the violin on the street. As I watched the movie, my worlds crashed. Read the rest of this entry »
May 31, 2010 · Filed under Author Interviews · Tagged abuse, alcoholism, angels, career, father, fearless, fiction, happiness, healing, humor, inspiration, love, magic, optimism, passion, pedophilia, positive thinking, rape, relationships, self awareness, spirituality, stepfather, storytelling, trauma, writing
Extraordinarily entertaining and provoking. William Peter Blatty. I listened back to the interview, and the second time is richer – much like reading Blatty’s books, The Exorcist and Dimiter. Blatty reinforced my faith and made me laugh. More on that in a moment. But first… Read the rest of this entry »
May 14, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged alcoholism, career, dreams, fearless, happiness, laughter, optimism, passion, self awareness, storytelling, talented, this time together, writing
This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection
By Carol Burnett
Published April 6, 2010 (Hardcover) Harmony
Carol Burnett made parts of my childhood very happy. I mostly remember books, Broadway, and museums, in my NYC early years. I forgot about TV, since it’s not on my mind – the last show I watched was So You think You Can Dance, in the mid-2009′s. But I picked up This Time Together, and from the first page, smiled all the way through. When I wasn’t LOL. She lit up a few parts of my childhood – I remember laughing the first time around.
This Time Together isn’t Read the rest of this entry »
May 7, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, alcoholism, doctor, fiction, friendship, marriage, mother, motherhood, novel, pedophilia, plastic surgery, relationships, self awareness, stepfather, storytelling, trauma, writing
Heart of the Matter
By Emily Giffin
Published May 11, 2010 (Hardcover) St Martin’s Press
The exquisite premise of Heart of the Matter tugs hard. What was the moment when your life changed its trajectory? I know that moment in mine, and I had nothing to do with it.
In Emily Giffin’s gently-written novel, that moment comes when a six-year old fatherless-boy tumbles into the campfire while roasting marshmallows at a friend’s birthday party. One side of his face and his hand suffer second and third degree burns. The boy’s single mother and the wife of the plastic surgeon who tends to little Charlie are tenuously connected – at first. Read the rest of this entry »
April 21, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, addiction, alcoholism, booze, drinking, drinking manifesto, gallo wine, humor, lemon drop, manifesto, scotch, writing
The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto
By Bernard DeVoto, Introduction by Daniel Handler
Published June 1, 2010 (Hardcover) Tin House Books
If The Hour hadn’t been given to me, I never would have cracked it open. Alcohol destroyed my childhood and my marriage. But The Hour cracked me up, kept a smile on my face through its sophisticated 1950′s snobby duration, and Tin House Books’ recent publication of the 1951 manifesto proves it stands the test of time.
Delicious writing forces me to forgive Bernard DeVoto, the original author, and Daniel Handler who scared up an ancient volume in a remote bookstore. Except for one thing – Read the rest of this entry »
March 19, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, alcoholism, empath, intuitive, mother, optimism, pedophilia, psychic, rape, relationships, self awareness, stepfather, trauma
Second Sight: An Intuitive Psychiatrist Tells Her Extraordinary Story and Shows You How to Tap Your Own Inner Wisdom
By Judith Orloff, MD
Published March 2, 2010 (Paperback) Three Rivers Press
Second Sight hits me on many levels. Judith Orloff has revised the excellent book that I first read in 1996, and, new again, it shakes me. That first time I had read Second Sight, my mother had disowned me for the – I don’t know – third, fifth, dozenth – time. Shattered, that next day fourteen years ago, I went to work at the radio station, prepared for the three interviews I’d set up weeks earlier – with Orloff, with Jean Houston, and with Bob Greene, Oprah’s trainer. Spirit. Mind. Body.
They saved my life. Gave me hope. A new perspective. Re-reading Second Sight, I lurch with recognition – Read the rest of this entry »
March 9, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged abuse, alcoholism, baking, cooking, cupcakes, happiness, mother, princess, recipes, stepfather, trauma, young girls
Pink Princess Cupcakes Cookbook
By Barbara Beery
Published March 1, 2010 (Hardcover with concealed spiral binding) Gibbs Smith
I baked tonight. I know. A shock. I wish I could tell you I baked a cute little cupcake out of my beautiful bubblegum-pink Pink Princess Cupcakes Cookbook . But I found the book after I finished baking my cheesecake pie. About a dozen members of Dinner Grrls are coming over tomorrow – my turn to host the monthly pot-luck.
That cheesecake recipe card pre-dates my high school graduation. Read the rest of this entry »
March 5, 2010 · Filed under Book Reviews · Tagged advertising, alcoholism, brain, fearless, happiness, inspiration, law of attraction, manifest, marketing, neuromarketing, neuroscience, religion, self awareness, sex, subliminal advertising
Buy.ology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
By Martin Lindstrom
Published February 2, 2010 (Paperback) Broadway Business
My smiles come all the way through the book, and it’s quite possible that that phenomenon has something to do with monkeys. Not directly, of course. But, it appears the adorably scientific Martin Lindstrom may have taken the lessons from his own research and applied them to his book, Buy.ology. Read the rest of this entry »
