{"id":397,"date":"2009-02-21T21:25:37","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T01:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/21\/review-of-playing-it-by-heart-by-melody-beattie\/"},"modified":"2009-04-05T20:29:50","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T00:29:50","slug":"review-of-playing-it-by-heart-by-melody-beattie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=397","title":{"rendered":"Review of Playing It By Heart, by Melody Beattie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image396\" height=\"207\" alt=\"playing_it_by_heart.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/playing_it_by_heart.jpg\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Playing It by Heart<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Taking Care of Yourself No Matter What<\/em><\/p>\n<p>by Melody Beattie<\/p>\n<p>Hazelden, Center City, Minnesota, 1999.\u00a0 262 pages.<\/p>\n<p>Starred Review.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hazelden.org\/\">http:\/\/www.hazelden.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Melody Beattie is the author of the wonderful books <em>Codependent No More,<\/em> <em>Beyond Codependency,<\/em> and <em>The Language of Letting Go.<\/em>\u00a0 In <em>Playing It by Heart, <\/em>she gets even more personal and tells her life story.<\/p>\n<p>Her story is incredible &#8212; especially incredible that she survived it.\u00a0 She has lived through addiction, time in prison, desperate poverty, hospitalization, failed marriages, the death of a son.\u00a0 And throughout the telling of her story, she draws beautiful, life-affirming insights.<\/p>\n<p>I especially love the way she sums things up toward the end of the book:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now there&#8217;s at least two ways I can look at all of this.\u00a0 I can say look at everything I&#8217;ve had to go through.\u00a0 Or I can stand back and say <em>wow.<\/em>\u00a0 Look at everything I got to experience, feel, and see.\u00a0 And as much as I&#8217;ve resisted and struggled each step of the way, maybe that&#8217;s why I am here: to go through all of this and see from my point of view exactly how all these things feel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After reading this book, I find myself praying blessings upon Melody Beattie &#8212; because of how powerfully she has blessed me.\u00a0 If you want a reminder of how powerfully God can redeem desperate situations, I highly recommend this book.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/156838338X\/sonderbooksco-20\" target=\"outside\">Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Find this review on the main site at: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/playing_it_by_heart.html\">www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/playing_it_by_heart.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Playing It by Heart Taking Care of Yourself No Matter What by Melody Beattie Hazelden, Center City, Minnesota, 1999.\u00a0 262 pages. Starred Review. http:\/\/www.hazelden.org\/ Melody Beattie is the author of the wonderful books Codependent No More, Beyond Codependency, and The Language of Letting Go.\u00a0 In Playing It by Heart, she gets even more personal and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,2,4,42,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-nonfiction-review","category-personal-growth","category-starred-review","category-true-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}