Stop Being Mean to Yourself Read online

  Dedication

  For my readers

  Thank you for staying with me while I’ve grown in my craft and in my life. As the Virginia Slims commercial says, “We’ve come a long way, baby.”

  For Nelle, who passed during the writing of this book

  Nelle, you were a fortress of courage. You fought and won many a hard battle. Thanks for letting me travel for you while your illness confined you to your bed. Thanks for your time in my life.

  Epigraph

  My heart has become astir with a goodly matter. I am saying: “My works are concerning a king.” May my tongue be the stylus of a skilled copyist. You are indeed more handsome than the sons of men. Charm has been poured out upon your lips. That is why God has blessed you to time indefinite. Gird your sword upon your thigh, O mighty one, with your dignity and your splendor. And in your splendor go on to success; ride in the cause of truth and humility and righteousness, and your right hand will instruct you in fear-inspiring things.

  Psalm 45:1–4,

  NEW WORLD TRANSLATION

  OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  A Note to the Reader

  1. The Interrogation

  2. The Crescent Moon and Star

  3. Gunfire

  4. Conversations with a Warrior

  5. Blackout

  6. Shisha

  7. The Sandlot

  8. Locked in the Box

  9. Finding the Key

  10. Pyramid Power

  11. The Pounding Continues

  12. Graduation

  Credits and Sources

  About the Author

  Also by Melody Beattie

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  This has been the most challenging book I’ve written in my nine-book career. I could not have done it alone. Thank God, I didn’t have to—which is what I’m about to do.

  I give special thanks to God, the Supreme Authority in our universe, whom I have also come to know, through the writing of this book, as Allah.

  Nichole and Will, thank you both so much. Nichole, your vibrant personality and wit brought this book to life and continue to make my heart smile. Will, I am so pleased that you’re becoming a part of our family. I have loved you from the first time you sat in my living room glowing with your gentle spirit and loving ways. Welcome aboard. Thank you both for staying with me through the trip and this book. You are the loves of my life. I am so proud of and pleased with both of you. A mother couldn’t ask for more.

  Dr. Steve Sherwin, thank you for your patience and skills and your undeviating belief in this book and me. Many of the concepts that appear in this book came from, and through, you. Thanks for everything.

  Wendylee, there are not enough words to acknowledge what a trooper and copilot you’ve been throughout this amazingly intense, grueling, and magnificent process that began when I first (in retrospect naively) conceived the idea for this book. Thank you for your unwavering support and presence while I wandered through the Middle East. Thank you for the quality of your intuitive counsel. Thanks for the laughs. Thanks for being you and being there. I am a lucky woman to have you in my life. Who was it that said, “Everyone should have a Wendylee”? They were right. We should all be so lucky. Thanks for being my assistant, my friend, an editor, a consultant, and a spiritual and emotional touchstone.

  Jhoni, thanks for being a loyal and good friend. Your well-timed telephone calls and creative inspiration guided me through some tough spots in this book. Thanks for being there for me. Thanks for bringing the spirit of L.A. into my life and this book. Thanks for your well-timed personal advice: “Melody, stop that. It’s not being nice to them, it’s being mean to yourself.” You’re brilliant, and you have a beautiful soul.

  Toni, true friends are so rare in this world. Thanks for bringing friendship, color, and an appreciation for beauty into my life. It was you who called me New Year’s Day and said, “I’ve made a resolution. I’m not going to be mean to myself anymore.” Thanks for giving me the title for this book. Thanks for introducing me to Jerry, in Pasadena. Thanks for giving me a role model of what a superior woman of fine character really is.

  John Steven, from the beginning we have not had a traditional mother—son relationship, but you have always been in my heart. You’ve fought your way through many obstacles, and you’ve won. I am so proud of you, and so pleased with your beautiful family—your wife, Jeannette, and my grandson, Brandon. The three of you have done an admirable job.

  I must express my deep gratitude and appreciation for the people in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt who opened their hearts and homes to me. Essam, you have a sweet, gentle spirit. Your devout love for Allah and your belief in the existence of the special powers continue to impress me. Thank you for all you’ve shown me about life. I send a special thank-you to the women of Egypt for opening your hearts to a foreigner. Fateh and Nazil, you are the heroes of Algiers. You made my time in your country memorable. “Thank you” doesn’t seem adequate.

  Finally, Shane Anthony, thank you so much. I wanted to leave you a great legacy. Instead, you left me one. One of the many gifts you gave me was your tremendous spirit of adventure. It was that spirit that gave me the courage to take the trip to the Middle East, to ride by the terrorist hills with little fear, and to ride that donkey down the streets of the village of Giza. Remember that night on the island, when you grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s go.” “Where?” I said. “For an adventure,” you replied. That was six years ago. Well, you’re still taking my hand and saying, “Let’s go.” I can’t think of a better guardian angel any mom could ever have.

  A Note to the Reader

  I based this book in part on a trip I took through the Middle East in early 1996. It is about an initiation, a gateway I went through. It is about a gateway many of us are passing through as we approach and enter the millennium.

  It could be labeled another self-help book, but it isn’t a book of labels. We don’t need any more. We’ve got too many of them. They’re too convenient. They let us talk without thinking. They let us give advice without compassion. They make criticism and judgment too easy in a world where criticism and judgment come easily enough. It’s not a book about pointing a finger at anyone and saying, “You’re doing it wrong.”

  This is a book about learning to be kinder. It’s about learning to be kinder to the world and people around us, as much as possible. Most importantly, it is a book about learning the art of being kinder to ourselves. It’s a book about learning to love ourselves at the deepest levels, at levels perhaps deeper than anyone has trained or encouraged us to love ourselves before. It’s about examining the different ways we torture, punish, abuse, and torment ourselves—and in the process of uncovering that, perhaps discovering some of the ways we torment those we love. Stop Being Mean to Yourself is a book about learning the art of living and loving, and the art of learning to live joyfully in a world where many of us wonder if that’s possible.

  I wrote it for people struggling and tired of it, people who have tried everything they know to heal themselves and their lives and who still wonder, in the wee hours of the night, if they should talk to their doctor about going on Prozac. It’s for people already on antidepressants. It’s for people who wonder if they can trust what they’ve learned, where they’ve been, or where they’re going; people who have read all the books about the wonders of the upcoming millennium and still find themselves dealing with the reality of today; people who consistently quote the first paragraph from M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled where he says “life is di
fficult” because that’s what they remember most. It’s for people tired of jargon; people tired of working so hard on themselves only to find themselves staying essentially the same except for minor changes in circumstance and occasional revelations they would have had anyway; people who no longer believe the grass is greener on the other side, but even that thought doesn’t console them because the idea that many people are miserable is perhaps even more frightening than the idea that they’ve been singled out. It’s for people who have studied past lives, been to psychics, attended all the workshops, regularly visited their therapists, and still don’t get what it’s all about; people who know how to deal with their feelings and wonder if that overwhelming process will ever end; people who have given control of their lives, or a part of it, to others only to find themselves repeatedly disappointed when they discovered the people they turned to knew less than they did. It’s for people who have glimpses that something revolutionary, spiritual, and transformational is going on, but aren’t quite sure what that is.

  I wrote this book for young people, middle-aged people, baby boomers, and older people.

  I wrote this book for myself.

  In 1986 I wrote a book entitled Codependent No More. In some ways, Stop Being Mean to Yourself is a follow-up or completion book to that one, kind of a Codependent No More Some More. It’s a spiritual warrior’s guide, a handbook for the millennium as we watch and wonder about events to come.

  Come with me now to the land of Scheherazade, the fabled storyteller of the Arabian Nights. Let the messages you find in the pages that follow call to you on whatever level they will. I hope—no, I know, Insha’a Allah—you will be stirred, summoned to an adventure in your life the way I was by the mysterious, loving, enrapturing power of a crescent moon and star illuminating the sky one quiet Christmas night.

  Melody

  chapter 1

  The Interrogation

  Hurry,” I told the taxi driver as we wound our way through the village of Giza.

  He turned around to look at me. “Hurry?” he said, imitating the word with an Arabic accent. Obviously he didn’t understand.

  “Yes, hurry. Fast,” I said, making a quick, sweeping gesture with my hand.

  “Oh.” He nodded in recognition. “Quickly!”

  “Yes, quickly.”

  It had been a strange experience, spending the last three weeks in countries where few people spoke English and my best French was a “Bon soir, Pierre” that sounded as if I was parroting a cheap learn-to-speak-French tape. I turned around for a final look at the pyramids. Lit for the night shows, they glowed mystically on the desert skyline. I sank down into the seat and closed my eyes. Now, my driver was dutifully hurrying. I couldn’t look. Cairo is a city with sixteen million people crammed into an area that would house a quarter of a million people in the United States. Riding in a car there is comparable to driving the 405 freeway in Los Angeles with no marked lanes and no highway patrol officers with quotas.

  Many events and situations no longer surprise us, but we still don’t become used to them. That’s how I felt about the driving in the Middle East. It no longer surprised me, but I wasn’t used to it. I felt relieved when we pulled into the parking lot at the Cairo Airport. I was a step closer to home. Just as I had felt convinced I was to come on this trip, despite the State Department’s travel advisory warning against it, I was now equally convinced it was time to leave. I had felt almost panicky as I checked out of my hotel, then hailed a cab to the village of Giza to say good-bye to Essam before heading for the airport.

  I had planned to stay here for several more weeks. I could tell Essam felt disappointed that I was leaving so soon. But he had respected my decision to leave, voicing no objections and asking only a few questions. Upon my arrival in Cairo, he had taught me the meaning of the Arabic phrase “Insha’a Allah.”

  He explained it to me one evening when I told his sister and aunt good-bye and they said they felt saddened to see me leave.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I will be back soon. I promise.”

  “Don’t say that,” Essam corrected me. “Never say ‘I will do this.’ Instead say, ‘I will do this Insha’a Allah.’”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “If God wills it,” he said.

  My time in the Middle East had been a dream vacation—well, more like a codependent’s dream vacation. But the same vortex that had propelled me here had taken me each place I needed to go to research this book. By now, researching the book had come to mean researching a part of me and my life that needed to heal. There were times it felt more like an initiation than research.

  It’s a strange thing when we’re in the middle of a vortex. Outside a vortex, we watch and judge. Sometimes we don’t even see or feel it. But the closer we get, the more we’re drawn into it. Its power begins pulling on us as we get closer and closer. Then we’re sucked into the middle of the experience with a chaotic rush of emotions until at the very center we find pure, absolute peace—although if we’re conscious, we know we’re in a vortex. We know we’re in the midst of something, learning something. Then, suddenly, it’s time to leave. The energy weakens. We begin to get thrust out—pushed out—but it’s still necessary to pass through the whirling centrifugal force. Sometimes it spits us out; sometimes we extricate ourselves. But it’s always a centrifugal, almost magnetic, push and pull. It’s vortex energy. It’s the way the forces of the universe work lately—Dorothy showed us this a long time ago in The Wizard of Oz.

  Vortexes don’t just destroy, the way tornadoes sometimes do. Vortexes don’t just suck us down under, like eddies in the sea. They heal, energize, teach, empower, cleanse, enlighten, and transpose. They lift us up and set us down in a new place. They bring new energy in. They discharge the old. We’re never the same again after a vortex experience.

  That’s the way this trip had been. Each place the vortex had set me down—from the museums in Paris, to the casbah in Rabat, to the terrorist-infested hills of Algiers—had held a lesson, an important one. Each experience I’d been through had brought me closer to the missing piece I was searching for: stumbling, my thigh-high stockings bunched around my ankles, through the crowded Cairo souk at two in the morning; riding a donkey through the village of Giza; galloping on horseback across the desert to meditate inside a pyramid.

  And just as elephants tummy-rumble, calling to each other about the mysteries of life, the people I met and learned from had called to me—Fateh and Nazil in Algiers, the women “locked in the box” in Cairo, and my new friend, Essam.

  But now the vortex was spitting me out. It was time to go.

  As we made our way to the airport, a quiet thought haunted me. It’s not over yet. I ignored it. I wanted out; I wanted to go home.

  I reached the entrance to the airport. At the Cairo terminal, the first security check is at the door. I put my luggage on the conveyor belt and walked into the building. Three young men scurried to pull my suitcases off the belt. I thanked them. Each young man then stood with his hand out, waiting for a gratuity. I shoved a few Egyptian pounds in each palm, loaded my luggage on a cart, and started pushing the cart across the terminal. A fourth man rushed up to me.

  “Me too,” he said, grabbing money out of my pocket.

  “Stop that. You’re disgusting,” I screamed under my breath, the way we scream when we’re out in public and we don’t want anyone to know we’re screaming. “You didn’t even touch my luggage. Now get away.”

  I relaxed when I reached the next security check a few moments later. I had originally planned to fly to Greece, then fly home from there. Because of my sudden change in plans, I had rerouted through Tel Aviv. My flight to Tel Aviv didn’t leave for half an hour; the line ahead moved quickly. I relaxed. I was on my way.

  Suddenly a man and a young woman with long dark hair and piercing eyes, probably in her late twenties, appeared by my side. They both wore uniforms.

  “Come with us, please,” the dark-hair
ed woman said.

  They led me to a table in an area of the room removed from the hubbub of the terminal. They placed my suitcases on the table. The man stepped back. The woman did all the talking.

  It began slowly, then built in intensity. “Why are you flying to Tel Aviv? Did you know the plane had been delayed? Why did you change your plans?”

  The woman looked similar to someone you might see working as a receptionist or walking around a college campus. But she didn’t act that way. She looked right through me into some space behind me that only she could see. Each question led to the next. Her vacant look and lack of emotions—either in her questions or to my responses—felt like a passive disguise for trained savagery.

  To each of my responses, she replied simply, “I see.” She did with words what most people can only do with knives or guns. She’s good, I thought. Real good. I could have learned a few things from her about ferreting out the truth from people, especially those years I’d been married to an alcoholic. The man didn’t speak to me, but occasionally she would turn to him and they’d discuss something in a language I couldn’t understand. Once, I tried to turn the conversation around.

  “It feels good to talk to someone so fluent in English,” I said. “You speak the language well. Have you lived in America?” She replied quickly, without emotion or explanation, that she had spent time in Canada, then she resumed her questioning.

  “It says on your tickets that you purchased them shortly before your departure from the United States. Why would you decide to take a trip of this magnitude on such short notice?” the woman asked. “Why would you travel alone to all the places you did? What were you doing in these countries?”

  I didn’t completely understand the maelstrom that had whirled me across this subterranean land. I didn’t understand what was happening to me right now. But I began to unravel the mystery for her as best I could.