It was a cocktail of chaos, trauma, and love that pored out best selling memoir “Lit.” This is the third memoir written by poet and educator, Mary Karr. You are poetically propelled through her life, stopping and sipping up moment after moment that leads to unavoidable full-blown alcoholism. The first two books are muddled in though out the memoir. Mary’s traumatic childhood is the focus of her first book and it is chased with her attempts to erase it all, as a wild young adult in the second. In the third book, “Lit,” Mary, straight up, focuses on the moments that lead to her addiction and her recovery; with both her drinking and her mother. A mother who was a serial bride, artist, alcoholic; and spent time in a mental institution for attempting to murder Mary and her sister. However hard she tries, Mary, can not “out run” becoming her mother; a role she sinks into once becoming a mother herself (Karr, 2010 p. 33). After years of drinking, several attempts at recovery, an empty marriage, and time in an institution for attempting to take her own life, Mary finds sobriety, and brakes free of the paradigms arranged by her parents. She finds the strength to rewrite her heredity with a twist of peer support and prayer.
Despite a life of therapy and recovery, it is not until Mary “lets go” and accepts God, and pryer, that she finally learns to heal and truly recover. Her childhood was void of any religious affiliation, and structure. Mary’s father was an atheist, and her mother would swash around to different religious fads and organizations. The fist account of Mary praying was when her mother dropped her off to college, and gave her the experience of her first black out. She recalls...
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...ry’s soul. I as well, can not fully swallow why we as a culture celebrate people who recover? I do think it is a great and marvels thing to get your life back, however we idolize them, we make them martyrs in a way. I would much rather read and honor those people who never gave in to temptation, who never got drunk, or high and destroyed lives.
While I enjoyed reading this book, and will probably read more of her writing, this book is a great way to read and understand how paradigm maps can be created and influence, but as well, changed and rewritten. The best part about this story is the understanding of hope. That no matter what life or heredity served you, you have the power to change.
Reference
Covey, S.R. (1989). The 7 habits of highly effective people. New York, NY: Free Press.
Karr, M. (2010). Lit: A memoir. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
Growing up Mary Karr didn't have a “stable” childhood. Her parents Pete and Charlie had many obstacles they faced throughout their life. Pete, who worked at a graveyard at the oil refinery was an alcoholic. He would drink every day, whether it was at home or with the liars club, he always had a drink in his hand. Charlie, who dealt with many illnesses such as an anxiety disorder and being a hypochondriac was not the best role model in Mary and Lecia life. At only 2 years old, Charlie almost died of pneumonia. After surviving that, she wasn't a normal kid, she had many issues.
Reading this book has been interesting and heartbreaking experience. A Year of Magical Thinking, a journey through the grieving process. While dealing with the death of her husband, she is confronted with the sickness of her only child. This book touches me, and it makes me think of what would happen if my loved one died. This paper is a reflection of my thoughts and feelings about this woman’s journey that has been explored by book and video. I will also explore the author’s adjustment process, and how she views her changed self.
For a long while, Mary oscillated between good and bad days. One day in May 1771, Mary wrote "I mourn that I had no more communication with God " On a day in September she cried out, "H...
“Half-hanged mary” by Margaret Atwood is a poem about a woman named Mary whose circumstances causes her to redefine not only herself, but her beliefs. For several hours, Mary struggles to hang on to her life and her will, as she grapples with her faith in God. Atwood’s use of imagery, sound devices, diction and form, transform the poem into an extended metaphor that highlights the standards of religion which correspond closely to the downfall of society during that time period.
That book, composed by Stephen R. Covey, is “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.“
*All in all I would say that this novel is definitely a good read. I found my self at times relating my own thoughts and experiences to that of the characters in the book. This is the very reason I would recommend that you give your class next semester the option of reading either this book or another. From my point of view, I think that most men can not relate to certain situations that occur, which lessens the overall significance of her writing.
Dead at the age of thirty nine years young, Flannery O’Conner lost her fight with lupus, but had won her place as one of America’s great short story writers and essayist. Born in Savannah, Georgia, within the borders of America’s “Bible Belt”, she is raised Catholic, making O’Connor a minority in the midst of the conservative Protestant and Baptist faiths observed in the Southern United States. In the midst of losing her father at the age fifteen, followed by her diagnosis and struggle with the same physical illness that took him, as well as her strong unwavering faith in the Catholic Church are crucial components of O’Connor’s literary style which mold and guide her stories of loss, regret, and redemption. Flannery O’Connor’s writings may be difficult to comprehend at times, but the overall theme of finding grace, sometimes in the midst of violence or tragedy, can be recognized in the body of her works. O’Connor’s stories are written about family dysfunction, internal angst towards life or a loved one, and commonly take place on a farm, plantation or a family home in the American South. Her stories of ethical and moral challenge blur the boundaries between her Catholic faith and values, which also include the values of the other religious faiths surrounding her in her youth, simply writing of the pain and struggles which people from all walks of life commonly share.
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925 into one of the oldest and most prominent Catholic families in Georgia. She was the only child of Edward, a real estate appraiser, and Regina O’Connor. The year after the family moved to Milledgeville in 1940, Flannery’s father contracted and died of lupus. She and her father had always had a close relationship, and 15-year-old Flannery was devastated (Gordon). Catholicism was always a huge aspect of life for the O’Connor family, living across the street from a cathedral and growing up in the Bible Belt (Liukkonen). Flannery attended parochial schools until entering the Georgia State College for Women, where she entered into an accelerated three-year program as a day student (Gordon). She graduated with a Social Sciences degree in 1945 and left Milledgeville for the State University of Iowa where she had been accepted in Paul Engle’s prestigious Writers Workshop. (“Flannery O’Connor”). Flannery devoted herself to what she loved most, writing, though she spent a great deal of her youth drawing pictures for a career as a cartoonist (Liukkonen). It was at this ...
According to Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey, about ninety-three Canadians have consumed alcohol their whole life. Why is this important? The novel As She Grows by Lesley Anne Cowan, written in Toronto, is based around Snow, just fifteen, who grew up without a mother or father. She was raised by her grandmother, a well-meant but mentally unstable alcoholic. Her grandmother is part of those ninety-three Canadians who have consumed alcohol their whole life. All of these people can potentially abuse alcohol, and their children would be affected by bad parenting similar to Snow. In this essay, I will be analyzing Snow’s relationship with her alcoholic grandmother, and consider the effects of bad parenting, through negative effects
Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (2008). Organizational Behavior - 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
"Stephen R. Covey Quotes." Stephen R. Covey Quotes (Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is written in a way that, if it is acted out in everyday life, will improve not only the original reader, but everyone who is to come in contact with that individual. The seven habits are little things to be incorporated into everyday life, and easily can be with a little practice. The first habit is be proactive; simply
Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
We trace her struggles with personal grief, a restricted social life, socio-economic decline, and romantic misfortune, a long history of trauma and repression.”(445)
Covey, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people. New York, NY. Free Press.