He died on February 27th in Los Ferris district of Los Angeles, a drug addict, chemical dependence counselor and alcoholic wife, a bestselling book on codependentness that led countless people to toxic relationships. She was 76 years old.
Her daughter, Nicole Beatty, said the cause was heart failure. She was hospitalized from November 30th to December 12th before evacuating from her Malibu home due to a wildfire and relocating to her daughter's house.
By popularizing the concept of codependent, Beatty (pronounced Beatty) became a literary star in the world of self-help with “in a code-dependent way, how to stop control of others and stop star compassion for yourself” (1986).
“You can call her a mother in the self-help genre,” said Nicole Dewey, publishing director at Spiegel & Grau.
Trish Travis, author of “The Language of the Mind: The Cultural History of the Cultural History of the Restoration Movement from Alcoholism to Oprah Winfrey” (2009), said in an interview that “code dependency is no longer” and that Beatty's commonsense approach and “rich charm.”
She added: Melody had the same argument, but her voice met very clearly. It wasn't clinical – and she had a set of ideas, which are applicable to many, if not all.
In “Codopendent No More,” Beattie cited various definitions of codependents. She introduced herself to one.
“Codependents” are “someone who is obsessed with how others' behaviors influence them and controlling others' behavior,” she wrote.
Others she wrote may be family, lovers, clients, or best friends. However, the focus of codependentness is “on ourselves in the way that other people's actions influence us and we try to influence them” – by actions that involve controlling them, and obsessively helping and caring for them.
Recalling her difficult marriage to her second husband, David Beatty, a substance abuse counselor, Beatty described the incident she had in Las Vegas. She called him in his hotel room and he sounded like he was drinking. She begged him not to break his promise to her that he would not be drunk on this trip. He hung up her.
Desperately, she repeatedly called the hotel for the night, even though she was preparing to hold a party for 80 people at her Minneapolis house the next day.
“I thought if I could talk to him, I could stop drinking,” she told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1988. However, at 11pm she stopped calling.
“Something happened within me and I let him go,” she said. “I thought, “If you want to drink, drink it. … “I've brought his life back to him and I've started to regain myself.”
She said it was the first step to separate herself from their mutual codependent nature. They eventually divorced.
The separation wrote “not a cold, hostile retreat” or “Poliannish, ignorant bliss.” Rather, it is liberating the “person or problem of love.”
When should the release occur? she asked. Her list was long. It started: “When we can't stop thinking, talking, worrying about someone or something. When our emotions are stirring and boiling; because when we feel like we have to do something about someone, we can't hold it for another minute.”
Melody Lynn Vaillancourt was born on May 26, 1948 in Ramsey, Minnesota, and grew up mainly in St. Paul. Her father, Jean, was a firefighter and an alcoholic who left her family when Melody was two years old. (She said she had a heart condition, so she escaped the punishment herself.)
Melody was sexually abused by a stranger when she was five years old. I started drinking whiskey at 12 o'clock. I started using amphetamines, barbiturates, LSD and marijuana in high school. By the time she was 20, she was shooting heroin. She also took the drugstore along with her partner and spent eight months in drug treatment at a state hospital after being arrested.
After successful treatment, she worked as a secretary before being hired as a chemical dependency counselor in Minneapolis and was assigned to treat the wife of a man who was undergoing treatment. Her patient was evenly angry and focused on her husband's emotions, which made her feel that it was nearly impossible for her to express herself.
“Eight years later, I understood those co-dependents, those crazy co-dependents. We didn't call them, we called them important others – because I became one.” “What I could think of and speak was an alcoholic that he had or hadn't done.” She said, “He's full of anger and rage because he doesn't stop drinking.”
While treating women, living in welfare and writing freelance articles for the local paper, Stillwater Gazette, she hopes to interview codependency experts and write books on the subject.
She received a $500 advance payment from the publishing department of the Hazelden Foundation's Drug Abuse Recovery Center. The book was published in 1986 and spent 129 weeks on the New York Times advice and how-to bestseller list.
Beatty continued to write several other books, including “Leeting Of Letting: Meditation on Daily Codependency” (1990).
Dr. Drew Pinsky, an addiction medicine expert and media personality who wrote for Newsweek in 2009, named one of the four best self-help books of all time “Codopendent No More.” Beatty has significantly revised it for the new edition released in 2022.
In addition to her daughter, Beatty was survived by two grandchildren. sister, Michel Weiliancourt. His son, John Turik, ranging from her first marriage to Stephen Torik, who ended in divorce. John was raised by his father and maternal grandmother.
They also divorced Scott Menschol, who played drums with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Dallas Taylor.
Her son, Shane Beatty, died in a ski accident in 1991 at the age of 12, and plunged her into grief. She writes, “Lessons of Love: Everything is too difficult to find and rediscover our passion for life” (1995) – not a personal book, self-help guide, to explain the journey from a broken spirit to recovery.”
Her first step was to write two letters.
“God, I'm still angry and not satisfied at all. But with this letter I commit unconditionally to life, and as long as I'm here, whether it's another 10 or 30 years, to live as long as I'm here. Regardless of the presence of other humans and their lives in my life, and regardless of events. This commitment is between me, my life, and you.”
