The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference by Irene Watson was a surprise for me. Watson, a psychologist, opens her self and tells the story of her own journey through co-dependency. Sitting Swing is not a handbook, self-help, or how-to, but, as Watson terms it, the story of how she learned she could rewrite the "script" of her past. We don't get jargon and pop-psychology terminology, but walk alongside a soul in pain that had been walled into her own self-made barricade of coping mechanisms.

Watson attended a 28 day workshop at Avalon, a center for Recovery. Not being an addict herself, she wondered why she was there. This was clearly a 12-step program, the sort with which she was very familiar, as a psychologist. She began her stay by applying what she was hearing to her clients, but not seeing how they applied to the problem - her troubled marriage - that she told herself she was there for. Instead, she was brought face to face with her own co-dependency.

As an eternally recovering co-dependent myself, one who has worked the 12 Steps, been to therapy, read, meditated, journaled, searched, wept in self-mourning, and in the joy of opening to blissful surrender, I totally empathized with Ms. Watson through a great deal of her journey. It was both like and totally unlike my own.

My only problem with the book is that it only hints at the fact that the re-writing of one's script does not end with one blissful surrender. It takes continual surrender and continual work. There are, actually, many, many great "Aha!" moments. This could be deceptive to a newbie on their journey.

It is a well-written book, interweaving her journey at Avalon with her journey through her past. It is very compelling reading.

http://irenewatson.com/
Book Trailer