In her memoir I Love You and I’m Leaving You Anyway, Tracy McMillan tells readers about her experiences growing up with addicted parents in dysfunctional situations. Yes, she is definitely part of the Adult Children of Alcoholics Club! This memoir was particularly interesting to me because Tracy grew up with an incarcerated parent. Me too! Parental incarceration is a whole other possible bonus level of bullshit in the ACoA game and it isn’t always discussed in detail. It was nice to read about someone else’s experience and find similarities with my own! Although I hate that there are so many of us Adult Children of Alcoholics who have suffered greatly, I find solace and determination to keep going when we share our stories with one another. It is why I’m here doing what I do! You and I are stronger together, friend. And we can help each other feel, deal, and ultimately heal.❤️
Now back to Tracy…
Tracy’s father was a drug dealer and a pimp and her mother was a prostitute with “bipolar-y/alcoholic problems” – Tracy’s words, not mine. Because her father was her primary caregiver but he spent a great deal of his life in prison, Tracy spent a lot of time in foster care and with an emotionally unhinged and easily triggered adoptive mother. The power of parents’ choices, huh?
As you read, the novel jumps back and forth between Tracy’s childhood in the 1960s and 1970s and her life as an adult woman. You get to see the realities of Tracy’s relationships with her father and mother, all of her original programming and wounding, and how those broken bonds had such a deep and weighty impact on her adult romantic relationships with men. There were moments where I felt the book’s time jumps were a bit hard to follow or strangely written. However, in the end, it was very interesting to see Tracy’s many life experiences, which spanned decades, intertwined all together. As a reader, I felt like I was truly able to witness as Tracy remembered aspects of her past and connected them to her present adult life. Plus, Tracy’s writing style is so witty and real that it feels almost like she’s a good girlfriend relaying these stories to you while you sit together on the couch. You feel equally shocked and amazed by what the brave, strong woman next to you is sharing.
I found this book and Tracy’s story to be really fascinating and not because of all of the “shocking” aspects of her parents and her backstory. As you and I both know, a lot of these things aren’t as shocking or uncommon as people make them out to be. Her dad was a pimp? Gasp! Her mother was an alcoholic? How unbelievable! She visited a parent in prison as a little girl? No way! ? What I found to be so amazing is that it’s not necessarily amazing at all. There are so many people here in the world – and maybe you’re one of them – with situations and stories that are just like Tracy’s experience in one way or another. Yes, maybe the fact that she jumped so far from being an abandoned, potty-mouthed foster child in the state of Minnesota to a successful TV writer living in California is impressive but, then again, your story is impressive too. No matter where you are or what you’re doing right now, you are still here and still growing. If great things aren’t happening in your life at the moment, there is still time for them to happen no matter your childhood circumstances! There are many stories of Adult Children of Alcoholics living lives that you would have never imagined for them by looking at their backgrounds. We are a strong people, us ACoAs! We are amazing people and can do amazing things.
My favorite aspect of this book was how hearing Tracy’s story brought up and validated a lot of my own experiences. It made me remember the all-encompassing surge of loss and pain when a visit with your incarcerated parent is ending; how you want to hold it all back inside of you so the place doesn’t overflow with your grief and you don’t make your parent cry – such a tall order for a not-so-tall kid. It stunned me when I read about Tracy’s theory “that every drug has its own explanation based on what the drug does” where she said that heroin is for people in pain and nicotine is for people with rage and cocaine is for the fearful. My parents were definitely pained, angry, fearful people then…
And I knew exactly what Tracy was saying as she described becoming a mother and the flood of anxiety that quickly followed; how she was afraid to leave her baby because she thought he might think she was abandoning him but how really it was just her trauma of being abandoned coming to the surface to be healed. Oh, those words hit me hard in the gut because that is exactly what I did when my first daughter was born. Remind me to tell you the story of how I had a breakdown because my baby couldn’t walk with me in my graduation ceremony…?
If you are at all interested in reading about the way our childhood programming and experiences affect our adult romantic relationships, then this book could be for you. If you are struggling in a romantic relationship and want to possibly gain some insight without having to read yet another self-help book, then this book could be for you. And if you just want to hear an interesting story from a down-to-earth and clever woman’s personal perspective, then go ahead and pick up this book. But, if you do, please let me know what you think! We can be book club buddies.
Tracy McMillan, thank you for sharing your experience, strength, and hope with the rest of the world.
And on a very random note:
Tracy talked about getting KFC on visiting day at the prison when she was a little girl. Is she serious?! All I remember are vending machines and the smushed Taco Bell that my aunts would smuggle into my mom! What a bummer for little me. I really loved those mashed potatoes…
Will you be picking up this book? Did you experience parental incarceration as a kiddo as well? Let me know in the comments! And, as always, thanks for being here, friend! ❤️