Why am I passionate about this?
I am an adult child of an alcoholic father and an abusive and dysfunctional stepmother who ran away from home at sixteen and fell into the wrong crowd in my search for love and family. Yet after years of hard personal work, I have overcome and triumphed over these obstacles to become stable, happy, and successful, in a good marriage, raising a great son in a loving, stable home. I’ve gone on to help and inspire others to do the same, including writing the book Redeemed, A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood.
Penny's book list on people breaking from their pasts to claim their lives back
Why did Penny love this book?
In this book, I saw my dysfunctional family mirrored back at me, but his writing was so good it made me laugh at the absurdity of it at the same time.
As a child, I also looked for the ‘why,” as in “Why am I being treated like this,” but with this book, I finally saw that there was no why. It just is…and that made me feel less to blame and more like a victim of circumstance…of other people’s problems.
Although that was still a lot to handle emotionally, it opened a door for me to stop blaming myself, get professional help, and see my troubled childhood as the product of my parent's mistakes. And that was huge.
8 authors picked Running with Scissors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
The #1 New York Times Bestseller
An Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year
Now a Major Motion Picture
This is the true story of a boy who wanted to grow up with the Brady Bunch, but ended up living with the Addams Family. Augusten Burroughs's mother gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa Claus and a certifiable lunatic into the bargain. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients and a sinister man living in the garden shed completed the tableau. The perfect squalor of their dilapidated Victorian house, there were no…