Customer Reviews

The Lessons of Love (Walker Large Print Books)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Melody Beattie writes a very compelling and heartfelt account of a painful journey through heartbreak. "The Lessons of Love" will touch your soul and your heart. Beautifully written.
The author takes us through her grieving process, her fight with wanting to live and her struggle learning to live again after a trajedy that completely knocks her off her feet.
This book contains tested truths on how to live and why we should live with gusto even after trajedy obstructs our view. Melody honestly and compelling shares with us her trials in darkness, her anger, her tears and her heartbreak. She also shares with us her learning, her hopefulness and her vision of magic.
This book is for those who look beneath the surface of life for those intricate nuances that make us all tick. I highly recommend this book to those of you who are searching and who long to discover some of life's mysteries. Though this book is deep, Melody writes in a very easy to read fashion. You will not get bogged down in big words and you will not need to read between the lines. Even though Melody's story is very sad in parts, this book is refreshingly real and clear.

Melody Beattie is, of course, the author of the phenomenal bestseller CODEPENDENT NO MORE. Since the publication of that first book in the 1980s, many of us in the recovery movement have come to see her as something akin to a mother figure. We are therefore interested in her life, the challenges she faces, her insights, her introspections, her epiphanies, her triumphs. Melody's writing style is so warm and embracing that it often feels as though we are reading personal messages from a dear friend.

Personal messages do not usually constitute great literature. This is certainly the case with THE LESSONS OF LOVE. The story, her struggle to come to terms with the tragic death of her son Shane, is beautiful, heartfelt, and inspiring. It appeals to me in large part because I care about Melody Beattie as a person. I want to know how she coped with what must be the most painful situation any human being could find themselves in. I want to see her come through. I feel as though I have a relationship with her work. (When I was only 17, she personally replied to my letter regarding Codependents Anonymous groups. Her work has been important to me ever since.) But I definitely would not recommend THE LESSONS OF LOVE to a friend indifferent to the recovery scene. They would perhaps be put off by Melody's interweaving of her personal story with the pick-me-up tone of recovery prose. ("This book is my golden ring for you," she says to the reader in the introduction.)

So, whether you appreciate THE LESSONS OF LOVE may be gauged by how you feel about the genre that Melody Beattie has helped define. This is the closest I've ever seen her come to conventional storytelling, but it is unmistakable that it belongs in the self-help/recovery/personal empowerment section of the bookstore. If you do not find yourself drawn to that section, then you may not appreciate this book. If, however, you are like me, love this genre, view Melody Beattie as a source of comfort, then THE LESSONS OF LOVE is a highly recommended.

I read the first few pages and didn't stop until I'd finished the whole entire book in one reading! I cried, I laughed, I shared in Melody's story, joys, sorrow, pain, hardships, and felt I took the journey with her and her family.

Melody writes from the heart and it must have been so painful and probably at the same time cleansing to write about her son's tragic accident [I cried so much at that part I couldn't see!]. This book is good for those who've suffered losses and hardships over and over and feel what is the point, what's the meaning of life etc ... as Melody so wonderfully and magically shares her story, she shares how there is a point to our lives, and that there is meaning and there is hope. You have to read the book to find out more! Melody says it just so beautifully.

It's a wonderful book which I will read and re-read again and again. I only wish that Shane's picture had been published in the book. Thank you Melody!

After going through a difficult loss myself (though certainly not comparable to the author's), I found this book so comforting. Melody's writing style makes you feel like she is sitting across from you, telling you her story while, at the same time, intermingling a lesson that you must learn from her experience. Not only could I relate to her feelings she recounts in the book, but I felt much less lonely. This book gave me the greatest gift -- hope. Thank you so much, Melody.

Melody Beattie's book is a profoundly poignant, honest, courageous, heartfelt, and inspiring journey from being shattered at the loss of her precious 12 year old son, to learning how to embrace life again, and how to love and live fully.

It is not an easy journey, and takes time to adjust, and plunge wholeheartedly into the life circumstances you are facing NOW, so that you can re-claim the love in your heart that you can give both to yourself, and others who do need you.

I was deeply touched at how Melody shares generously with depth, and inspiration that anyone who is suffering from loss will gain tremendous benefit from reading this beautiful gift to humanity.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who is in grief, as well as to grief support groups, so you can re-gain your life set by Melody's example. It is a beautiful and genuine one.
Barbara Rose, author of "Stop Being the String Along: A Relationship Guide to Being THE ONE" and 'If God Was Like Man'
Editor of inspire! magazine

This was not what I expected, but I couldn't put it down after Chapter 1. I experienced hope after reading about her pain. I could identify with so much of what she felt, although I was not grieving over anyone's death. This is an excellent book for anyone that is feeling depressed and hopeless. I would love to meet Melody Beattie one day and give her a hug and tell her thanks. This book was very inspirational for me. It offered me hope.

This book has been the most helpful book that I have read since my 15 year old son died of suicide in May 2006. She knows exactly how we who have lost children feel. It gave me hope. She made me feel more "normal". I have read Melody Beattie for years and was deeply touched by this book. I would highly recommend it to all bereaved parents.

Melody Beattie has learned life's lessons the hard way. After growing up without a father and struggling to make her way as a single parent, she suffers the biggest loss of her life just when she thinks she's made it, just when she has worked so hard to learn how to be happy and share her lessons with the rest of us. But God seems to say, not yet, Melody, you have more learning to do. She drops to the depths of pain, deeper than ever, when her son dies, and tries all the old lessons to bring herself back again. Nothing works, until finally -- she hears a voice that gives her strength. And when the light in her life shines again, she's able to share her greatest lessons of love with the rest of us. Thank God, thank Melody, we don't all have to suffer what she has to learn those valuable lessons about why we're here and why there's so much pain in the world.

Melody Beattie has great infornation in this book to help you help yourself

Melody Beattie has done a wonderful job telling the story of her son's tragic death. She takes us through the real emotions and brings us into her reading. The reader is sure to be touched by her story. I cried and felt comforted as I heard one person's ways of dealing with one of the worst losses of her life. It is a book written not from the outside, but from the heart.