I Got Tired of Pretending

Book excerpt: This book is about the experiences I had, the lessons I learned, and the tools I used in order to set myself free from the prison constructed for me by my parents when I was a small child. This book is not about blame. It's about finding out who's responsible, although yelling, screaming, and blaming, even though directed at an empty chair, was a very necessary part of my gaining freedom. This book is about doing my family-of-origin work. Which, simply stated, means I went back and found out what really happened to me when I was a child, and how it has affected my life as an adult. Then, once past the initial rage, anger, and sadness over that information, I went back wherever possible to find out what happened to my parents when they were children. This information gave my heart something to work with when I started the process of trying to forgive my parents. This book is also about feelings. My feelings. The feelings that began to surface while I was in the process of finding out why, ever since I can remember, I have felt something was wrong with me. That somehow I was flawed and different from other people. No matter what the situation, no matter how cool I appeared, the truth was that on the inside I knew I wasn't enough. I lived with the nagging fear that someday, somewhere, somehow I would be publicly exposed. A great deal of my energy went into avoiding people and places where exposure was a possibility. This book is about the front line issues of adult children of alcoholics, adult children from dysfunctional families, and co-dependence. They are, for the most part, the same issue. The book tells the story of a desperate, frightened, inadequate man meeting a small, frightened, distrustful boy and the two of them doing together what neither of them could do alone. They ride the great, wild, life-changing horse called truth, down the road to freedom.