Health
Melody Beattie, Author of a Self-Help Best Seller, Dies at 76
Melody Beattie, whose experiences as a drug addict, a chemical dependency counselor and the wife of an alcoholic informed a best-selling book about codependence that has guided countless people to shed toxic relationships, died on Feb. 27 in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 76.
Her daughter, Nichole Beattie, said the cause was heart failure. She had been hospitalized from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, then evacuated from her home in Malibu because of a wildfire and moved into her daughter’s home, where she died.
By popularizing the concept of codependence, Ms. Beattie (pronounced BEE-tee) became a literary star in the self-help world with “Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself” (1986), which has sold more than seven million copies worldwide.
“You could call her the mother of the self-help genre,” said Nicole Dewey, the publishing director of Spiegel & Grau, which has sold more than 400,000 copies of the book since taking over publication in 2022.
Trysh Travis, the author of “The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement From Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey” (2009), said in an interview that “Codependent No More” has succeeded because of Ms. Beattie’s common-sense approach and “vernacular charm.”
She added: “There had been other books and pamphlets published in the recovery space in the early 1980s. Melody made the same arguments, but her voice came across very clearly. It wasn’t clinical — and she had a set of ideas that could be applied to many if not all the problems one was having — and it hit the market at the right time.”
In “Codependent No More,” Ms. Beattie cited various definitions of a codependent person. She also introduced one of her own.
“A codependent person,” she wrote, “is one who has let another person’s behavior affect them and who is obsessed with controlling that other person’s behavior.”
The other person, she wrote, might be a family member, a lover, a client or a best friend. But the focus of codependency “lies in ourselves, in the ways we let other people’s behaviors affect us and in the ways we try to affect them” — by actions that include controlling them, obsessively helping them and caretaking.
Recalling her difficult marriage to her second husband, David Beattie, who was also a substance abuse counselor, Ms. Beattie described an incident when he was in Las Vegas. She telephoned him in his hotel room, and he sounded as if he had been drinking. She implored him not to break his promise to her that he would not get drunk on this trip. He hung up on her.
In desperation, she called the hotel repeatedly into the night, even as she was preparing to host a party for 80 people at their house in Minneapolis the next day.
“I thought if I can just talk to him, I can make him stop drinking,” she told The Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1988. But at 11 p.m., she stopped calling.
“Something happened inside of me, and I let go of him,” she said. “I thought, ‘If you want to drink, drink. …’ I gave his life back to him, and I started taking my own back.”
She said that was the first step in detaching herself from their mutual codependence. They eventually divorced.
Detachment, she wrote, “is not a cold, hostile withdrawal” or a “Pollyannish, ignorant bliss”; rather, it is releasing “a person or problem in love.”
When should the release happen? she asked. Her list was long. It started: “When we can’t stop thinking, talking about, or worrying about someone or something; when our emotions are churning and boiling; when we feel like we have to do something about someone because we can’t stand it another minute. …”
Melody Lynn Vaillancourt was born on May 26, 1948, in Ramsey, Minn., and grew up mainly in St. Paul. Her father, Jean, a firefighter, was an alcoholic who left the family when Melody was 2. Her mother, Izetta (Lee) Vaillancourt, owned a nursing home after her divorce, but, Ms. Beattie said, beat her four siblings. (She escaped the punishment herself, she said, because she had a heart condition.)
Melody was sexually molested by a stranger when she was 5; began drinking whiskey at 12; and started using amphetamines, barbiturates, LSD and marijuana in high school. By 20, she was shooting heroin. She also robbed pharmacies with a partner and, after being arrested, spent eight months in drug treatment in a state hospital.
After being successfully treated, she held secretarial jobs before being hired as a chemical dependency counselor in Minneapolis, assigned to treat the wives of men in treatment. Her patients were uniformly angry and focused so much on their husbands’ feelings that she found it nearly impossible to get them to express their own.
“Eight years later, I understood those codependents, those crazy codependents — we didn’t call them that, we called them significant others — because I had become one” through her marriage to Mr. Beattie, she told The Star Tribune. “All I could think and talk about was the alcoholic, what he was or wasn’t doing.” She was, she said, “filled with anger and anger because he wouldn’t stop drinking.”
While treating the women, living on welfare and writing freelance articles for a local paper, The Stillwater Gazette, she interviewed experts on codependence, hoping to write a book on the subject.
She received a $500 advance from the publishing division of the Hazelden Foundation substance abuse recovery center, now called the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. The book was published in 1986 and spent 129 weeks on The New York Times’s advice and how-to best-seller list.
Ms. Beattie went on to write several other books, including “The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency” (1990), which has sold more than three million copies.
Writing in Newsweek in 2009, Dr. Drew Pinsky, the addiction medicine specialist and media personality, named “Codependent No More” one of the four best self-help books of all time. Ms. Beattie heavily revised it for a new edition that was published in 2022.
In addition to her daughter, Ms. Beattie is survived by two grandsons; a sister, Michelle Vaillancourt; and a son, John Thurik, from her first marriage, to Steven Thurik, which ended in divorce. John was raised by his father and maternal grandmother.
Her marriages to Scott Mengshol and Dallas Taylor, who played drums with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, also ended in divorce.
Her son Shane Beattie died in a skiing accident in 1991 when he was 12, plunging her into grief. She wrote “The Lessons of Love: Rediscovering Our Passion for Life When It All Seems Too Hard to Take” (1995) — a personal book, not a self-help guide — to describe her journey from a broken spirit to recovery.
Her first step was to write two letters, one of which said:
“God, I’m still mad, not pleased at all. But with this letter, I commit unconditionally to life, to being here and being alive as long as I’m here, whether that’s another 10 days or another 30 years. Regardless of any other human being and their presence in my life, and regardless of events that may come to pass. This commitment is between me, life, and you.”
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A terminally ill man who chose to provide for his kids over spending money on a wedding has finally tied the knot with his fiancé – 20 years after he first proposed to her.
Dean Pennell, 63, met his partner Kay Beaman, 62, through their children 24 years ago in Basildon, Essex.
The couple held off on wedding plans in order to provide for their 10 children.
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But after being told he had just weeks to live, Pennell — who has terminal cancer — finally married Beaman on June 18 at Colchester Hospital in Essex, England, news agency SWNS reported.
The new wife said, “I am absolutely elated. We have waited a long time, and it’s so special to be able to celebrate our marriage here, with our families.”
Dean Pennell, who has terminal cancer, married longtime love Kay Beaman at Colchester Hospital on June 18, 2026. The couple is pictured here. (SWNS)
She added to SWNS, “Dean proposed when we first got together — but with 10 children between us, money would not allow.”
She added, “We were planning to get married this year, but with the situation as it was, we decided to bring the wedding forward.”
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The couple were joined by their family and friends, including their 10 children and some of their 18 grandchildren.
The event was organized in less than a week by a variety of hospital staff members, SWNS noted.
Beaman, front left, and Pennell, front right, at Colchester Hospital, along with Langham Ward manager Lucy Everett, matron Emma Davis and patient flow coordinator Donna Knox. Family and friends are shown in the background. (SWNS)
Said Beaman, “It was very hard for Dean. He had been so excited in the lead-up to the wedding, and I would get a phone call from him at the hospital every morning telling me how many days there were to go until the wedding.”
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She said that “when the day came, he was adamant, as difficult as it was, that he was going to stand up for as much as the ceremony as possible — and we had a lovely day.”
After being told he had just weeks to live, Pennell, who has terminal cancer, finally married his fiancé on June 18. (SWNS)
She noted her new husband “was exhausted afterward. Dean is now back at home, and we are living life to suit us.”
A former electroplater, Pennell added, “It was absolutely brilliant. The staff worked really hard to organize the wedding.”
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Ward manager Lucy Everett said, “It has been a pleasure to be able to help Dean and Kay. It’s rare that we get to celebrate a wedding at Colchester Hospital — it’s a first for me,” as SWNS reported.
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The East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust also presented the couple with a clock — displaying the exact time the happy couple said “I do” on their big day.
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This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
A 30-year-old man has been asking people he doesn’t know to sit with him in pubs across the country ever since December of last year, as part of what he calls his “Empty Chairs” campaign.
Dean Perryman came up with the idea after his best friend, Rob Clancy, tragically died by suicide at age 29 just a month earlier.
Wanting to make sure nobody else ever felt alone — even perfect strangers — Perryman started heading out to restaurants and pubs wearing a bright orange hoodie to make his presence obvious to anyone choosing to chat with him.
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Just a few weeks ago, he held his program’s 1,000th meet-up in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, featuring about 12 attendees — and said he’s proud of how far it has come.
“It has been such an incredible experience. I am loving every second of it still,” the resident of Stratford in East London told news agency SWNS.
Dean Perryman, second from right, has been inviting strangers to sit with him in pubs to help let people know they aren’t alone in life. (Dean Perryman/SWNS)
“When I started, it came from such a place of sadness — and to see how this simple idea has been able to help so many people has been really nice,” he said. “I have been able to meet and connect with so many new people and learn about them. It gives people an opportunity to speak openly if they need it.”
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Perryman works for team-building game company Chicken Rush. He used social media, he said, to create interest in the “Empty Chair” idea, he said.
The events started in London and Essex before the founder began recruiting volunteers to host them across the U.K. — and the rest of the world as well.
Events have since been planned in Manchester, Bedford, Cambridge, Skegness, Gloucester, Leeds, York, Wrexham, and more.
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It has also branched out to other countries, including Colombia, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.
He said lots of people actually return to the events, especially in smaller rural towns, as people create and build friendships that last long afterward.
Perryman, in orange sweatshirt, back row, has been inviting strangers to sit with him in pubs to encourage connection. “There really isn’t a barrier to entry,” he said. “Whoever needs the space is welcome to come.” (Dean Perryman/SWNS)
Perryman, who has attended 61 himself, said his favorite part of the events is seeing men open up about their troubles, as he feels they need a safe space to do so.
“Some people come because they really want someone to listen to what they have to say,” he said. “Others come because they have the capacity to be there for someone else. Everyone shares their own story, but it stays at the table.”
“No matter who you are, there is a place for you.”
He said the groups have “talked about the difficulty of living in a big city and feeling isolated, but nothing is off the table — we’ve spoken about everything and anything. To give people a place that they can go when they need to talk is incredible.”
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Perryman said he has about 200 more events already lined up — and said he has no plans to stop scheduling them, SWNS reported.
He said there is no pattern in terms of who shows up. Usually, it’s a diverse group of people.
Perryman, right, has been asking people he doesn’t know to sit with him in pubs as part of his “Empty Chairs” suicide prevention campaign. (Dean Perryman/SWNS)
“Every Empty Chairs event you go to, you are going to meet people of different walks of life,” he said. “It is so powerful to show that, no matter who you are, there is a place for you. We have everyone — men, women, young, old. There really isn’t a barrier to entry for this. Whoever needs the space is welcome to come.”
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He also said, “A lot of people come because they’re feeling lonely in a new area, or they want to make new friends.”
He said he hopes that his Empty Chairs campaign can be a lasting legacy for his best friend, Rob — someone he believes needed a similar space.
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“He was the kindest, sweetest guy you could ever hope to meet,” said Perryman. “Like a lot of men, he wasn’t the biggest sharer. He was very much the life and soul of anywhere you went, but he wasn’t someone who would be the first to open up about it if he was feeling some type of way.”
“To now be in a position where Empty Chairs looks like it could be a legacy for Rob is amazing,” Perryman added.
Dr Jessica Gray reveals why Americans are living longer
Family medicine physician Dr. Jessica Gray explains that new data shows Americans are living longer, reversing a COVID-era trend. She highlights factors like declining drug overdoses, especially fentanyl, and improved cancer survival rates due to immunotherapy advancements and decreased tobacco use. Gray notes 2025 preliminary data looks even better for U.S. life expectancy.
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A 78-year-old Oklahoma woman who was diagnosed with polio as a child and was the last American to rely on an iron lung to live has died.
Martha Lillard found out she had the once-feared disease when she was 5 years old, which left her paralyzed from the neck down, and required her to use the machine to help her breathe while she slept.
Lillard contracted COVID-19 twice during the pandemic, which left her in the machine nearly 24 hours a day.
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“They told her she wasn’t supposed to live past 20 years old,” her younger sister, Cindy McVey, told The Associated Press on Friday. “She had the enthusiasm and the drive to continue living and make the best of her life.”
Despite having polio, Lillard was able to go to school two hours a day as a child, and she had tutors the rest of the time. She also used an intercom phone system that allowed her to interact with her teachers and classmates from home.
Martha Lillard rests in her iron lung in Shawnee, Oklahoma. (Cindy McVey/AP Photo, File)
Lillard was even able to take road trips as a child because of a custom trailer that could accommodate the iron lung and her father making sure their hotels had wide enough doors for the machine.
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An iron lung is a negative-pressure ventilator that would help a patient with paralyzed lung muscles breathe.
A row of iron lungs is seen inside in a Los Angeles hospital in 1950. (Bettmann Archive)
The disease once caused thousands of cases of paralysis in children during outbreaks each year in the first part of the 20th century before a vaccine became available in 1955.
By 1979, polio was considered eliminated in the U.S.
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Later, Lillard was able to regain the use of her left arm and legs through therapy and was even able to drive for a time.
She lived independently for many years, even getting married earlier this year to a man from Egypt she corresponded with for two decades after he was able to obtain a visa.
A nurse prepares children for a polio vaccine shot as part of a citywide vaccine test on elementary school students. (Bettmann Archive)
“They were really soul mates,” McVey said. “He’s extremely brokenhearted.”
Lillard, who wrote poetry and volunteered with the Humane Society, according to her sister, had just 25% lung capacity before she was diagnosed with COVID.
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She died of chronic pulmonary failure and post-polio syndrome, according to her death certificate.
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Her sister added that it was related to the effects of long-haul COVID.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
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