This was an incredibly painful book to read about the author's struggle with is son's addiction. 
How many rock bottoms can one family survive?  The writing is elegant and the author's love for his child permeates every word as he begins his decent into addiction, struggling with recovery and relapse. The book is a heartache from beginning to end, told from the perspective of a parent desperate to help, but powerless over their child's choices, but also over his own drive to provide comfort and protection for an addict caught in the narcissism and criminality of active addiction. Prepare to have your heart broken, over and over, and make sure you have the pace to reflect on everyone you ever loved who has known addiction. 

I also want to point out that this book also alludes to the unpopular and often ignored topic of how bad parenting plans impact the children who have to live them out--a very real reminder for separated parents and the professionals so write those plans for them.

Recommend.
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This memoir was written by one of the co-authors of The Courage To Heal, which is perhaps the book that has impacted me the most in my life. Written in 1994 originally, I read this first in 1988 when it was first released and many of the passages framed how I think about child sex abuse.  That book is quite dated now, though sections of it are as relevant to survivors now as it was then.  The Burning Light of Two Stars is the story of the complex relationship between the author and her mother. That complexity is bound up in their experiences of child sex abuse, the mother's failure to protect her, and the work they did, although primarily the author did, to try to find a way to reconnect as adults, if not exactly to repair the relationship.  I found the read insightful and appreciated that it did not suggest that this approach is always or even often possible and that it did not shy away from the pain that reengaging in the relationship caused.  Highly dysfunctional families so often are portrayed in two-dimensional ways that I think harm survivors of abuse.  This book addressed her choice to remain engaged head on in a unique and powerful way.

Recommend.

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I do love a self-help book that is filled with useful suggestions that are neither judgey, nor self-aggrandizing.  So often, the authors come across as having figured out some magic solution to life and relationships that they are sure could help everyone, but in reality just piss me off.  I was expecting no less from this one, with its too-long-title.  In fact, I figured the book wouldn't offer anything more useful than what it told us in the title.  I, however, was quite surprised that you don't have to identify as a push-over or people pleaser for this book to provide some helpful tips on how to better to determine what boundaries you want, how to convey your feelings, and to live life more in line with how you want.  I read parts of it twice and the whole book made me think about some new strategies and approaches I can use in my life.  I will definitely be recommending this to folks.

​Recommend.

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I couldn't stop reading this book. It drew me in on so many levels.  The characters, the plot, the writing...all captivating in their nuance.  The complexity of trying to live a life consistent with hold values while navigating traumatic grief, discrimination, and parenting without role models for how best to do that.  This book feels especially timely again, amidst the renewed conflict in the Middle East and the slow, subtle erosion of protections for Queer parents here at home.  My kid was reading this as part of a college course and I always particularly love getting to share in a story he is reading. Over the two decades I have been parenting, they have been assigned a lot of crappy, problematic literature, so it was a real treat to read something this good.  

Highly recommend.

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Written by a physician at the center of the work to bring the concept of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) to the forefront of medical care, there was a lot of really interesting material in this book.  I liked many of the parts where she talks about how she talks to patients and other medical providers about ACEs and the importance of understanding their role in long term health outcomes, but I have to say that I did not love her writing style.  I feel bad even saying that, to some extent, since I imagine she is a fabulous physician and it is clear from the subtext in the book that she has done amazing work, not only for individual patients and their families, but also for the community where she works.  Beyond that, her work has impact widespread policy changes and helped normalized ACE screening across settings.  The other issue I had with the book is that I think it is already due for an update, as the work being done on ACEs since 2018, has expanded the knowledge based in such a way that some of what is here feels outdated.  

I am torn about a recommendation, because there is so much in this book I want everyone to know about, but the writing and the age of the book make me hesitant to recommend it.  Additionally, I did not love the author as narrator here, although in fairness, it is rare that I like the author of a book as the narrator.  

Finally, although I do not mean to pile on to make it seem like I liked it less than I did, I found the book in general to be fairly depressing.  I know the idea is to raise awareness about the important of ACES screening, and she did provide examples of specific interventions for individual patients of hers, but the overall tone felt pretty dismal for folks with high ACE scores.  I wish there had been more of an emphasis on systemic approaches to reducing ACE scores in the first place.  I wished for that even though that was clearly outside the range of what could be expected from her given all that she had already been doing.

Ultimately, this is going to be not not recommended.

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I think this book is meant to be a sweet, light read about a couple whose only child dies and who take in the child in their community for a few months while her impoverished and despondent mother births another unwanted child.  However, I was just not impressed with the lack of insight into what it means to care for someone else's child during a time when they cannot.  It is over-romanticized and the entire time, I was certain that the child would be sexually abused by the foster father since there was absolutely no one around who would have been in a position to protect this incredibly vulnerable child.  That this did not happen just made the book even weirder and less in touch with the reality of the lives children in this position actually lead.  The fairytale life the child has during this informal foster care placement was so inconsistent of my experience parenting any child, let alone a vulnerable foster child, that I just could not get into it at all.  On the other hand, some of the writing was quite lovely.

​Do not recommend.

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This was a really interesting read. I was pretty skeptical before I started it and even more so when she disclaims at the beginning that she is going to be talking about the topic in the context of her relationship with God in such as way that she means to convey she is Christian and that the book should be taken in that context. This was pretty off-putting to me, since I recommend books like this to many clients and here in Oregon, this type of an introduction immediately eliminates a huge portion of the potential audience. The fact that she did this was so odd because she does not come back to this theme at all until the very end of the book and she could have entirely eliminated it and the book would have been no worse (and probably better) for it.

The book has a lot of things going for it and I particularly like two things. First, it does not conflate what she calls "relationship trauma" with post-traumatic stress disorder. This is a current pet peeve of mine as I see more and more people with a PTSD diagnosis who have had bad things happen to them, like having their spouse serially cheat on them (which is what this book is about), but who have not experienced intimate partner or sexual violence. To me, these are not the same thing and we take away from the experience of survivors of intimate violence when we equate experiences of violence with other types of hard things that people go through. I really liked how this book was able to situate betrayal as something unique and different than violence, not by minimizing it, but also by not equating it. She has a lot to say about what it is like to experience betrayal and I found much of it to be a new take that many people in these situations will find helpful.

The second thing that I really liked about the book is how she situates healing from betrayal in the context of attachment theory and in the context of the data that we have about attachment theory. Since betrayal is a rupture in attachment, healing has to be done in relationship with people as you examine and find new or different attachments. This part of the book I found particularly insightful and contained ideas and information that I will likely convey to clients and friends experiencing and healing from relationship betrayals.

For folks thinking about relationship ruptures and how to help people move beyond those, I think this book has a lot to offer.

​Recommend.

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There are few things I love more than a story about a complex mother-daughter relationship, given the mother-daughter relationships that I have.  This story of a Cambodian refugee family is just fabulous, made even better by the fact that they immigrate to Corvallis, where I live. The author and I are almost the same age, so it was particularly interesting to hear her tell her story of growing up in the place I now live during a time before I lived here.  She grew up in a small, overwhelmingly white town and I grew up in a large, diverse city,  I loved being able to track my experience against hers and even small stories, like the opening of the first McDonalds' in town and her mother learning to drive in the Wilson school parking lot, felt more meaningful as I knew exactly these places she talked about.  Her stories came alive in this alternative place on the same timeline as my life, as we each navigated different traumas and conflicts in our families.  The richness of this story lies in its complexity, as her mother struggles with her daughter's Queerness, all while opening lying to people about her successes to cover her shame for not being what she wanted her to be.  It is just remarkable insight written remarkably well.  

I don't typically love books read by the author, but this was an exception, as her storytelling voice was clear and just lovely. 

Recommend.

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I really appreciate this relatively new type of memoir written by a woman in a STEM field about the complexity of navigating their lives and careers as they pioneer their way through male-dominated professions.  This one was not a disappointment.  It was like Hidden Figures (which I loved) meets The Overstory (which I did not love).  There was a lot of detail about forests, tree, and fungi.  It will come to no surprise to many to hear that found this part boring, saved only by the analogies to things I am actually interested in that made parts of these sections interesting enough.  I am certain that the people who like that stuff will like this part of the story.  What I did find compelling was the politics of her work and her struggle to balance family life and work.  I am also drawn in by memoirs written by people who are obviously passionate about their field of expertise.  For me, this story also resonated for me as she moved between Corvallis, Oregon, and Vancouver, BC, -- two places that I have called home.  It reminded me how, living in a university town, how many interesting people move through here that we never even know are here while they are here.  

​Recommend.  

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This is the autobiography of Hayley Mills, who was one of the early childhood stars contracted with Disney.  She played Pollyanna and was the star of the original Parent Trap.  It is an interesting enough life, with lots of travel before travel was accessible to many people, and talked about the people and techniques behind movie making in that era.  It was also a snapshot of how child actors were treated, including the court case about her trust account that resulted in all of the money she made a child being taken for taxes and the lawyer fees to unsuccessfully try to fight the tax, which was due to mismanagement of the assets and could easily have been avoided if her parents had decent advice.  This meant that instead of being set for life as a result of the work she did as a child, she had to continue to worry about money as an adult.  At 20, she became involved with and then married her 53 year old director in what appeared to be a pretty problematic relationship that she still seemed defensive about and lacked insight into.  I think for folks more interested in the stories about famous Hollywood types from this era might enjoy it more.  It found it pretty sad and depressing, though.


Not recommended.