Being Broken – Tales and Essays of Survival and Death from Narcissistic Parental Abuse by Geoffrey R. Jonas

Being Broken – Tales and Essays of Survival and Death from Narcissistic Parental Abuse by Geoffrey R. Jonas
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Non-Fiction, Contemporary, Historical
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A young woman dies alone in a hotel room, her fentanyl-poisoned cocaine still on the desk. She had been missing for nearly 2 weeks. Social Services had been trying to find a place for her to live with her 3-year-old son, whom she had left with her parents. Six months later her father fights for his life in intensive care, but succumbs to his illness because of a lifelong use of alcohol and tobacco. A month after his death her mother is assessed by doctors to be unable to care for herself because of her Alzheimer’s and mental health issues brought on by benzodiazepine and alcohol addiction.

The son, brother, stepson is the only one left to pick up the pieces. He begins a journey of the self and finds out the truth of his family. After going over letters, notes, emails, videos, and text messages, he uncovers a disturbing picture of the abuse his sister suffered at the hands of their parents. He also begins to better understand his own struggles with mental health and substance addiction because of the trauma and abuse he also suffered from their parents.

Follow the son as he looks through his family history to discover the generational abuse that trickled down through the years. Learn about how parents who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder emotionally abuse and manipulate their children. See how the abuse and trauma becomes mental illness in the abused, and how they fall into vicious traps of addiction, eating disorders, self-harm, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Witness the transformational change of the son as he works on the recovery of his inner child and tries to become the man he was meant to be.

Every choice has consequences, and some terrible choices echo through families for generations.

I appreciated the author’s thoughts about how medical providers and society in general could improve the way they treat people who are struggling with mental illness, domestic abuse, trauma, and Substance Use Disorder. His ideas were sensible and included plenty of straightforward advice on everything from changing the way one thinks of someone who is struggling with these challenges to ideas for legislation that could make treatment and recovery easier for this population as well. These are not easy problems to fix by any means, but there are things people from every walk of life can do to make the world slightly better for everyone affected by the sorts of things that Mr. Jonas experienced as a child, teen, and young adult.

While I loved this book in general, my all-time favorite scenes were the ones that showed how people who have Narcissistic Personality Disorder can manipulate nearly any conversation or situation to their own benefit, especially in cases when their victims are not already well-versed in how this disorder can destroy relationships. This isn’t always an easy topic to talk about, so I appreciated the care the author took in describing what his childhood was like without demonizing anyone or downplaying the deep trauma this mental illness caused in his life. It was a delicate balance to maintain, but it added extra layers to his story that were necessary in order to understand why everything unfolded the way it did.

One of the most remarkable things about this memoir was how brutally honest Mr. Jonas was about his faults. He shared multiple stories about things he had done that hurt other people or, in a couple of cases, animals without making any excuses for his choices or softening the blow by passing the blame to others. This is a difficult thing for many people to do, especially for someone who had such a traumatic start to life, so I have to commend him for doing all of the hard work that is necessary in order for a person to not only face up to their worst moments in life but also to genuinely apologize for them. He is a talented writer, and I hope to read more of his work in the future.

Being Broken – Tales and Essays of Survival and Death from Narcissistic Parental Abuse was exactly what it needed to be in order to tell this tale.