Published: May 26, 2011
Words: 39,543 (approximate)
Language: English
ISBN: 9781458025586

Short description

“This is a “how to” manual that reads like a smart funny novel. Get ready for a wisdom ride.” - Nancy Slonim Aronie – Author of WRITING FROM THE HEART/ NPR commentator Have you ever said I am not going to do to my kids what my parents did to me? Being the parent you always wanted is not necessarily the parent your kids need. Become the parent your kids need and heal your history.

Extended description

Not Like My Mother – Becoming a sane parent after growing up in a crazy family
By Irene Tomkinson, MSW

WHAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT IRENE… (Read more) Not Like My Mother – Becoming a sane parent after growing up in a crazy family
By Irene Tomkinson, MSW

WHAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT IRENE…

“A successful therapist, Irene is a gifted teacher and communicator. She takes complicated psychological constructs and puts them into language that is easily understood. She weaves her own powerful story of recovery and spiritual awakening into her teaching. I wish I had read this book when my kids were younger. It would have saved so much angst. Her book and workshops have opened my eyes. My relationship with my children is better than it has ever been...not just with my children but with everyone…including the relationship I have with myself.”
Bonnie P. (workshop participant) ….go to Irene’s website to see more testimonials

WHAT IRENE SAYS….
You love your children more than you knew you could ever love. You also know you grew up in a crazy- dysfunctional family. And you are definite that you want your kids to have a much different childhood than you had.

How are you going to do it? I-am-not-doing-to-my-kids-what-my-parents-did-to-me method of parenting is not a plan – it is a reaction. If you want to build a dream house you don’t call a contractor and only give him a list of what you don’t want. There would be no house. And you don’t want your new home to be built on a toxic foundation.

Until we know how our childhoods landed on us and what we did with the impact, our history will push us around in our present lives without our permission.
As we become conscious of our stories and learn how our history landed on us, we find compassion for ourselves. This compassion releases us to move forward. We learn how to discharge the voltage that keeps us stuck in our old story.

Becoming conscious of our childhood story is more than being able to recite the events. Becoming conscious is learning how your experiences made you feel and what you did with those feelings.

In Not Like My Mother, I share my story as a therapist for 25 years, my training as an early childhood specialist, my years of leading workshop and retreats that have helped thousands of people find empowerment and freedom. And most importantly I share my own story of recovery as a mom who went from asking “Parenting when is the @#$% job done” (I was asking this when my girls were 35 & 36!) to recognizing how my daughters are my teachers and how they have been a big part in the healing of my childhood pain. I have moved from being a parent with a not-going-to-do-it-like-my-mother plan to a parent who is able to show up as the best parent I can possibly be.
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Tags

childhood, women, spirituality, sexual abuse, alcoholism, psychology, relationships, children, sons, family, memoir, novel, healing, mother, daughters, recovery, incest, men, denial, selfhelp, domestic violence, alcoholic, divorce, parenting, parents, miscarriage, father, survivor, survivors, dysfunctional families, compelling, unity, aa, therapist, inner child, new hampshire, narcissism, trauma, imago, 12 steps, alanon, crazy family, child rearing, pathways, oa, aronie, jampolsky, irene tomkinson

Available ebook reading formats

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Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser)	View
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Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)	Download
PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing)	Download
RTF (readable on most word processors)	Download
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Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)	Download
Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting)	Download
Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page)	View

Reviews

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Review by: Miranda Thomason on March 29, 2013 :
From the bold title of Not Like My Mother, I thought the book was going to be more about her relationship with her own mother. Chapter one is all about her relationship with her daughters. Then Chapter 2 was the back story for her mother's life. There did not seem to be much interaction between herself and her mother. The mother married six times. There was more about the stepfathers than the mother. The rest of the book was her life and then her daughters' lives. Then at the end of the chapter there were some think it over questions. A few chapters were a hodge podge of life advice. The best thing about the book was the Forrest Gump travel through the decades. She has a significant life event three weeks prior to JKF assignation. Then she moves through the sixties to present day. That was very interesting. The writing is good. I should have read the subtitle better. But for what it is, it is not bad.
(review of free book)

Review by: Samuel Deibler on June 10, 2012 :
I'm one of those people who reads biographies and histories rather than novels, because the raw material of human experience rings truer to me than things writers can make up.

Irene Tomkinson's book, "Not Like My Mother" is one that I'd point to for proof of my prejudice. In it, she lays her life out in a way that touched me deeply and personally as she shows the way she grew and changed from the mother's daughter she was, to the daughters' mother she became. My family was different in the problems we had, but the feelings were the same.

It wasn't an easy road. All the false starts, detours, emotional fender-benders and full-blown wrecks are in plain view. They are illuminated by Ms. Tomkinson's tough honesty along with insights from people like Steven Covey, Harville Hendrix, Anne Lamott, Karen Casey, John Bradshaw and 12-step programs like AA and OA to make sense of it all and to help steer a path to safety.

And while that path will be different for any of us, the geography of that path will look like Irene Tomkinson's; not a skip around or a leap over the unfinished business of our lives, but an "inward journey...past our egos, past our defenses, beyond our denial, and right through the middle of our fear."

Does that sound like the stuff of a good novel? Even better, It's Irene Tomkinson's story, and she's a better person for it.
(review of free book)

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