Customer Reviews

The TurnAround Mom: How an Abuse and Addiction Survivor Stopped the Toxic Cycle for Her Family--and How You Can, Too!

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This great book helped motivate me to change and be the kind of mom I want to be. Ms. Sipp in her honest and open account about her life and her process to change inspired me and now I buy a book for all the women in my life to inspire them. Thanks!

In The Turnaround Mom, Carey Sipp goes back into her past and shares with us how living life with an alcoholic and violent father was. She offers us the tools to end the legacy of toxicity. She shows us how victims of family abuse and domestic violence can overcome their past and serve as role models for their children.

Her book inspires and demonstrates how it is possible to break the cycle of addiction and raise healthy, happy children. I think it was GREAT.....

As a psychotherapist working with postpartum depression ([...]) and a Life Coach working with new mothers ([...]), I found this book to be one of the simplest and most profoundly useful books on parenting I have come accross.

I have shelves and shelves of books on parenting and none of them demonstrate and describe so clearly how easily the cycle of dysfunction and abuse is transmitted across generations; and how this does not need to take place.

It's message is very uplifting and hopeful. No matter how bad things were in your family of origin, you CAN break the cycle of abuse and neglect and create a working, functional family for your children. Carey Sipp demonstrates how it can be done: It takes courage, self-reflection and self-honesty, yes! But she goes further than that, there are practical steps you can and must follow: extreme self-care, recovery from addictions, the dedication to building a support system and then consistently asking for help and feedback from your community and friends, and the willingness to slow down and think things through.

Each chapter focuses on one of these necessary changes and is beautifully organized into four parts:
1. A description of an aspect of the authors own toxic childhood
2. A description of how she almost repeats that aspect with her own children
3. How she manages to turn it around and be a functional mother
4. Practical steps for how the reader can turn it around.

I recommend this book to all moms. There is something here for each and everyone of us.

I saw a small ad for The Turnaround Mom in the back of a magazine. I thought it sounded good and so, I jotted it down on a scrap of paper and threw it in my purse. Weeks later, I found it and 9 out of 10 times, I am just too busy to acually follow through with a fleeting idea or the thought of turning on my computer and finding my credit card to order something on line, was too over whelming to consider but, I think it was her cover that interested me enough to go ahead and make the time to order it. The minute it came, I stopped what I was doing to read a few pages of it, I think it was the format that made it look like my dyslexia wasn't going to discourage me from reading it but, to my surprize, I did not put it down until I had read the entire book! It was the best book I have ever read from one "over booked, under cared for and stress out mom" to another. That is one of the reasons this book has changed my life! Carey Sipp had lived in my shoes and if she could turn her life around, so could I! It wasn't writted by a professional who claimed to be an expert on something she has not experianced first hand. Hearing the same story hundreds of times from an office chair, is not the same thing as living it. Only those of us who have worn the exact same crazy and chaotic shoes, could ever share their story of success. Everything she talked about in her book had happened in my own family growing up and was currently happening to my own children. I was carring on the cycle of abuse and certainly passing it onto my children to be continued for generations, thanks to Carey's book. For months, I read her book over and over again, whenever I got to the last page, I would simply start it all over again. I have moved several times over the past few years and everytime, the last thing I pack and the first thing I unpack is, The Turnaround Mom. It will be next to me, on my bedside table for the rest of my life, to remind me of where I came from and where I will never go again!

In the Turn-Around Mom, author Carey Sipp lays out a practical manifesto for moms looking to break the cycle of dysfunctional parenting and create a sane, loving home for their children. As those who have grown up in an alcoholic or abusive home know, it is often next to impossible to know what "normal" looks like and in spite of intentions to do otherwise , will find themselves perpetuating the patterns of "toxic intensity" onto the next generation. This book provides a model for breaking that destructive cycle. The organization of the book makes it ideal for group work or for use in individual therapy. Each chapter lays out an important aspect of recovery, and is composed of a vignette from the author's childhood, a vignette with her children "where history almost repeats itself," and tips gleaned from the author's own experience about how to practically apply the lesson of that chapter. Readers will be able to identify with the feelings that Carey describes in the vignettes, enabling them to break through defensiveness and denial and making their own shift possible. Family photos are included throughout, which makes the stories more real and relatable and heightening their impact. Carey's transparency and honesty regarding her own struggles with addiction and codependency make her a wise and effective guide. A practical guide and a compelling story, this book offers help and hope to anyone who has struggled to break the cycle of their past and to bequeath a legacy of healing, sanity, and love to their children and to their children for generations to come. I hope to see it used to great effect in counselor's offices, women's groups, and treatment programs everywhere.

THis deals with child abuse in general but mostly about alcoholism. It was a pretty interesting read.

Great book, really helped me see how drinking effects children. Great steps for making a lasting change. I reread it all the time.
Great for anyone with kids.