Melody Beattie, author of the bestseller of Self -Facilitate, dies at the age of 76

Melody Beattiewhose experiences as drugs, a chemical dependence advisor and alcoholic wife informed the best -selling book about the interdependence, which led countless people to lose toxic relationships, who died on February 27 in the Los Felis district in Los Angeles. She was 76 years elderly.

Her daughter, Nichole Beattie, said that the cause was heart failure. She was hospitalized from November 30 to December 12, and then evacuated from home to Malibu because of the fire and moved to her daughter’s house, where she died.

By popularizing the concept of interdependence, Mrs. Beattie (pronounced bee) became a literary star in the world of self -help from “Codeppeant Nor: how to stop controlling others and start to take care of herself” (1986), which sold over seven million copies around the world.

“You can call her the mother of a self-help species,” said Nicole Dewey, publishing director of Spiegel & Grau, who sold over 400,000 copies of the book since the publication in 2022.

Prysh Travis, author of “The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement with anonymous alcoholics to Oprah Winfrey” (2009), said in an interview that “Codeppeant No More” was successful because

She added: “In the early eighties, other books and brochures were published. Melody presented the same arguments, but her voice appeared very clearly. It was not clinical – and had a set of ideas that can be used to many, if not all problems they had – and went to the market at the right time. “

In “Codependent No Mattie, she cited various definitions of an interdependent. She also introduced one of her.

“A interdependent person”, she wrote – “He is a person who has allowed them to influence another person and is obsessed with controlling the behavior of that person.”

The other person wrote, he can be a family member, lover, customer or best friend. But he focuses on interdependence “lies in ourselves, in the way we allow us to behave other people and on the way of influence on them” – through actions covering them, obsessively helping them and nurturing them.

Recalling her complex marriage with her second husband, David Beattie, who was also an advisor to abuse substance, Mrs. Beattie described the incident when he was in Las Vegas. He called him in his hotel room, and he sounded like he was drinking. She begged him not to break her promise that he would not get drunk during this journey. He put down on her.

In desperation, she repeatedly called the hotel on the night, even when she was preparing for a party for 80 people at their home in Minneapolis the next day.

“I thought I could just to talk I can make him stop drinking, “she told the star Tribune Minneapolis in 1988. But at 23:00 she stopped calling.

“Something happened in me and I let him go,” she said. “I thought,” If you want to drink, drink. … “I gave him his life and started to go back.”

She said that this was the first step in detachment from their mutual interdependence. They finally divorced.

Detachment, she wrote: “It is not a chilly, hostile withdrawal” or “Pollyannish, uneducated bliss”; Rather, he publishes “a person or a problem in love.”

When should the release take? She asked. Her list was long. It started: “When we can’t stop thinking, talking about someone or something; When our emotions evolve and cook; When we feel that we have to do something with someone because we can’t bear it another minute. … “

Melody Lynn Vaillancourt was born on May 26, 1948 in Ramsey, Minn., And grew up mainly in St. Paul. Her father, Jean, a fireman, was an alcoholic who left his family when the melody was 2 years elderly. Her mother, Izetta (Lee) Vaillancourt, was the owner of a divorce nursing home, but, as Mrs. Beattie said, she defeated her four siblings. (She ran away, she said because she had a heart disease.)

The melody was sexually molested by a stranger when she was 5 years elderly; He began to drink whiskey at the age of 12; And I started using amphetamines, barbiturates, LSD and marijuana at high school. At the age of 20 she shot heroin. She also robbed pharmacies with her partner and spent eight months in drug treatment in a state hospital after arrest.

After effective treatment, she maintained secretary work before she was employed as an advisor for chemical dependence in Minneapolis, assigned to treat men’s wives. Her patients were uniformly bad and focused so much on her husband’s feelings that she could hardly express them.

“Eight years later I understood these interdependent, crazy interdependent – we did not call them that, we called them significant others – because I became one” through her marriage with Mr. Beattie, said The Star Tribune. “I could only think and talk about an alcoholic, what he did or did not do.” She said “filled with anger and anger because she wouldn’t stop drinking.”

Treating women, living for social welfare and writing articles independent of the local newspaper, The Stillwater Gazette, interviewed sub -composition experts, hoping to write a book on this topic.

She received an advance payment of USD 500 from the Publishing Department of the Hazelden Foundation Foundation Abuse Recovery Center, currently called the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. The book was published in 1986 and spent 129 weeks on Up-to-date York Times tips and bestseller list.

Mrs. Beattie wrote several other books, including “The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency” (1990), which sold over three million copies.

Writing in Newsweek in 2009, Dr. Drew Pinsky, a specialist in addiction medicine and media personality, called “Codeppeant No More” one of the four best self -help books of all time. Mrs. Beattie changed him strongly to publish a up-to-date edition published in 2022.

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Beattie survived two grandchildren; Sister, Michelle Vaillancourt; And son, John Thurik, from her first marriage with Steven Thurik, who ended in divorce. John was raised by his father and mother’s grandmother.

Her marriages for Scott Mengshol and Dallas Taylor, who played drums from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Teenage, also ended in divorce.

Her son Shane Beattie died in a ski accident in 1991, when he was 12 years elderly, plunging her into sadness. She wrote “Lessons of Love: Re-discovering our passion for life, when everything seems too complex to accept” (1995)-a personal book, not a self-help guide-to describe your journey from a broken spirit to recovery.

Her first step was to write two letters, one of which said:

“God, I’m still crazy, not ecstatic. But with this letter I commit myself unconditionally to live, be here and being living as long as I am here, regardless of whether it is another 10 days or another 30 years. Regardless of another man and their presence in my life and regardless of events that may happen. This commitment is between me, life and you. “