This is a book that my partner's therapist sent home for me to read, and it took me ages to get through not because it's a bad book, but because I had a hard time finding times when I wanted to be sad or to sit in the feelings that I knew the book would stir up. It took me a few concerted efforts interspersed with long breaks to get to the final chapter, but I think it was worth it. Most of the first half of the book felt like it would have been more revelatory if I hadn't already read a couple of books about toxic parenting and spent a lot of last year going through steps similar to the ones McBride outlines, but the further I read the more useful/interesting information I uncovered. I will probably seek out more information on codependency.

One thing that frustrates me about books like this is that so many of them are heteronormative. Although McBride clarifies toward the end that she only defaults to "he" when discussing the partners of her patients and women like them because it's easier for her to write that way, and that the information applies to queer women, too, this statement comes pretty late in the book and feels insufficient. It seems obvious to me that gender plays out in relationships between women differently than it does in relationships between women and men, especially in relation to women who have trauma related to their mothers. I need a lesbian version of this book, if it exists.