ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to all my lovely clients who, over the last three decades, honored me with their brave vulnerability and authenticity. Their stories verified to me that there is an epidemic of poor parenting, and their inspiring work proved to me that the effects of it could be largely overcome.

I am also grateful to the readers of my first book and to my website respondents whose generous feedback greatly alleviated my performance anxiety about writing another book and putting my words out there for public viewing. Their overwhelmingly positive support ameliorates the fear that my words will be used as weapons against me as they so often were in childhood.

I am grateful to my good friend Bill O’Brien who gave me invaluable editorial assistance.

I am grateful to all those writers listed in the Bibliography, and those unlisted, whose ideas have fertilized my mind and helped me to write this book.

I am grateful to my friends in recovery with whom I have shared the process of mutual commiseration. We have aided each other greatly in our journeys of recovery.