Maternal Instincts
A few years ago, I purchased an audiobook copy of “Codependent No More,” a seminal self-help book written in the 1980s. This book, written by Melody Beattie, introduced the concept of “codependent relationships” to the mainstream and gave the term its first real definition.
“A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect them and who is obsessed with controlling that other person’s behavior,” Beattie wrote.
She had spent years in codependent relationships herself — with her mother, her husbands, and others — and was determined to use her own experience to help other people (women especially) understand the painful dynamics that make up one particularly hellish form of dysfunctional relationships.
I consumed “Codependent No More” slowly, feeling delicate under the intensity of its relevance to my own life. Yet in time — and with multiple listens and eventually re-readings — I became one of the millions of people who found power and change in the words Beattie wrote years before I was born.
It’s a great honor for me that The Cut allowed me to profile Beattie, who died earlier this year. Initially, Beattie’s representatives granted me the privilege of conducting what would be her final interview. She was in hospice at the time, but she was experiencing new perspectives on grief and relationships that she knew she wouldn’t have the opportunity to describe for herself.
Beattie passed before I was able to speak with her, but the people she allowed to be close to her helped me to understand this complicated and eccentric woman who had changed my life and those of many others.
It was important to me to honor the significance of her legacy, and I feel fortunate that the generous and brilliant editors at The Cut allowed me to publish her story with them. The Cut is the outlet I trusted most to help me tell this story. Their thoughtful editing brought out the best in this piece that is important to me and hopefully to many others.
I feel gravely protective of “Codependent No More,” which laid the original blueprint for how many Americans think about relationships today. The word “codependent” is everywhere — and often used incorrectly — and the concepts she articulated in her work are woven throughout many pop psychology and self-help books today.
The day I finished my first draft of this story, I wandered over to my local Barnes & Noble, which at the time had an entire front-of-store endcap dedicated to Mel Robbins’ “The Let Them Theory.”
On her website, Robbins describes the book as “a step-by-step guide on how to stop letting other people's opinions, drama, and judgment impact your life. Two simple words, Let Them, will set you free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you.”
I flipped to the acknowledgments — Beattie’s name and “Codependent No More” were nowhere to be found.
I hope that this story will help readers understand Beattie, the complicated, service-driven woman who dedicated her adult life to helping set people free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around them.
To have written a book that has remained on bookshelves and become a bestseller multiple times is an astounding accomplishment. To have its lessons and concepts become the bedrock of the way our society thinks about relationships is a downright miracle. Beattie channeled her pain into providing a roadmap for people who are ready for change. She is the original champion of self-care. We’re all living in her legacy.