Q:Will you look at my manuscript? A: I will review and critique manuscripts only for people who have attended my writing workshop (or listened to the workshop tapes) and have first attempted to apply what they learned from my teaching to their manuscript themselves, before they submit to me. My teaching includes what I have to say about editing and marketing your work. Much of what I will tell you if you submit your manuscript to me will be the same ideas I teach in my workshop. If you attend the workshop, you will learn all this – and more – for yourself. If after attending the workshop or listening to the tapes then going back to your manuscript and applying this knowledge to it, you still want me to look at your work, I will – for $90.00 an hour. (See the Muse section of this website for details.) However, I will only give direction, critiques, and comments. I don’t do line or structural edits -- or rewrites -- on other people’s work. As to helping you publish your manuscript, I’m not a publisher. I will tell you how I believe you should go about attempting to market your work and whether I believe you have your work in submission-ready form.

Q: I’m not sure which one of your books is right for me. I don’t think that I’m codependent, but I’d like something to help me stay on track each day. A: Many people not in recovery – people who don’t label themselves as codependent or chemically dependent and don’t need to – enjoy reading my meditation books. Language of Letting Go, More Language of Letting Go, Journey to the Heart, and particularly 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact have a wide readership that extends beyond the recovery community. Although some of my earliest books were aimed directly at people with codependency issues, many of my later books weren’t.

Q: My child died three years ago and I’m still in pain. Is this normal? When will it stop? A: Aren’t you over that yet is perhaps the most inappropriate, insensitive question anyone can ask us -- or we can ask ourselves -- when we’re grieving the loss of someone we love deeply, particularly a child. The first year after my son died I was in overwhelming pain. I also experienced a lot of numbness. The second and third years after his death felt worse. By then the numbness had worn off and I comprehended the reality of living without my son for the rest of my life. At year three I still experienced a tremendous amount of pain interspersed with efforts to go on with my life. Year five was another mile marker. While I still felt a lot of grief, I found myself moving forward. At eight years, I discovered -- to my surprise – that I was actually enjoying life again. This was my pace. Grief isn’t an abnormal condition. It’s how nature heals our hearts. Give yourself as much time as you need. I still miss my son. I’ll never be happy he died. But I am happy again.

Q: How can I tell if I’m codependent? A: Codependency can be tricky to identify – in ourselves. It’s much easier to notice when someone else is codependent than when we are. Usually the person who is codependent feels painfully entangled with someone else’s problems. We may feel responsible for, controlled by, angry at and guilty about another person’s issues – all at the same time. Often we feel guilty about being who we are and feeling what we feel. Sometimes these feelings are clear and obvious; sometimes the whole relationship is mired in the quicksand of denial. We just want the other person to do or be something other than what he or she is and our interactions with him or her are desperate, impossible, and manipulative stabs at achieving that. We believe that we’d be happy if the other person would just change. Codependency can manifest in many ways. At the heart of it is our confusion about what it means to take care of ourselves, a genuine fear about whether or not we can do that, and unfamiliarity with the concepts called surrender, letting go, and detachment. This is where the trick often comes into play. Usually the codependent person is super-responsible, taking care of everyone around him or her. Often we look so competent compared to the people we’re involved with that all we can see is their issues, not ours. And nobody may have ever taught us that we can love someone deeply and still let go. In Codependent No More, I include a simple, comprehensive checklist (as well as many personal stories) to assist people in identifying codependency issues in themselves. The ultimate paradox that many of us have discovered is that when we start working on and taking care of ourselves, the situation – and sometimes the other person – does change.

Q: Can a person be chemically dependant and codependent? A: Yes, I am. Most people who are chemically dependent are also codependent. (But not all codependents are chemically dependent.) “An estimated 80 million people are chemically dependent or are in a relationship with someone who is. They are probably codependent,” I wrote in Codependent No More. This number was taken from Dennis Wholey’s The Courage to Change (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984). Sometimes codependency issues are so prevalent that they hinder people from dealing with their chemical dependency and need to be addressed first, before they can get straight or sober. In other cases, codependency becomes a secondary issue and presents itself as a primary problem five to seven years into recovery. Many professionals and recovering people have now come to label this the second surrender. [Purchase The Courage to Change on amazon.com]

Q: Do you have to be married to an alcoholic to be codependent? A: No. You don’t even have to know an alcoholic or drug addict to have codependency issues. Our codependency issues can be triggered by someone else’s gambling, sex, obsessive/compulsive, eating, psychological or emotional disorders. It can be triggered by any problem another person is experiencing. Sometimes the other person involved doesn’t even have a problem – we do. In Choices, I tell the story of a woman who did a downward spiral into codependency issues when her husband insisted that they move to a small town in the middle of nowhere so he could take the job of his dreams. The woman hated their new life. But she felt so guilty about how she felt, she didn’t tell her husband (or herself) who she really was. At the heart of the problem was her codependency. After a friend helped her identify the underlying problem of codependency, the woman began to take care of herself and she ultimately dealt with the problem in a way that worked for her, her husband and their marriage. They are still happily married. Although she was furious when her friend suggested that she was codependent, she’s now grateful that the incident transpired the way it did.

Q: Are you available for speaking engagements? A:Occasionally (once a year or once every other year) I accept a speaking engagement if it’s a request that speaks to me (a benefit, speaking to prisoners, etc.). I speak at my Tell Me a Story Writer’s Workshops across the United States (see the Muse section and What’s New on this site for more details.) Sometimes I agree to do limited book tours for a publisher and as part of the tour, speak at bookstores or at a speaking engagement the bookstore or the publisher arranges. Other than that (because my personal and professional schedule doesn’t allow it) the answer is no, I’m not available for speaking engagements.