Forgive Your Parents, Heal Yourself: How Understanding Your Painful Family Legacy Can Transform Your Life

One of the absolute best self-help-ish books I've ever read. Super helpful, smart, interesting, engaging. Would also be helpful for new parents so they can see just how they will affect their child. This book helped lessen my own burden and is a gift to anyone who reads it.

Dr. Grosskopf's book is spell-binding! Beautifully written, poignant, insightful! It delves into family secrets that transmit from generation to generation, damaging lives with their unspoken power. For anyone who's ever suspected that there is an untold story in the family, one that needs to see the light of day if lives are to change for the better, this is a must-read! Secrets, unseen and unspoken, are transmitted as surely as genes. This book explains and reveals what we need to know, to be better relatives and friends and lovers.

Increasingly, those of middle-age (and beyond) are becoming caregivers for aging but long-lived parents. All the more reason to learn the lessons of generational forgiveness and healing so wisely taught in this book. As I continue to research my own family's history, and to write what I know of the family story, this book is helping me to take a more compassionate stance toward my own parents. Dr. Grosskopf skillfully blends anecdotal accounts, biblical narratives, fairy tales and religious proverbs to help the reader ask their own parents, in a way which heals, the question from God to humanity in the biblical book of Genesis: "Where are you?" Of particular use to me is the way the author reinterprets the fifth commandment's "honor thy father and thy mother." While reading through chapter two I was struck by the liberating potential for forgiveness in hearing the command to "honor" parents not as an authoritarian dictate but instead as an invitation to "imagine" parents as the powerful but complex individuals they really are. In chapter four, Dr. Grosskopf underscores the need we all have for "witnesses" to our emotional pain and how restorative it can be for parents when their children meet such a need. For me, the main insight here is that children who would honor their parents (and heal themselves) can best do so in learning how to ask them (or others) "where are you" without implying judgment or rejection. In this way the answers may repair and transform the fabric of life shared by parents and children and all of society.

Babble free, sensible, profound. A soul opening work

Dr. Grosskopf's book is a tremendous stride forward in constructive reflection upon our lives. The language and imagery is powerful, elegant and memorable. He expresses the pivotal elements that can help anyone free themselves of the bondage of their past. Dr. Grosskopf's book is an excellent guide for the professional therapist as well as younger people like myself. I have struggled for years to overcome some behavioral and emotional hurdles. This book gave me the key to unlock my potential as a healer & participant in my family and community. This is a book which will alter your perspective on life for good.