And I Don't Want To Live This Life...
As I previously mentioned, I was reading And I Don't Want To Live This Life which I have now finished. Even if you're not familiar with the "Sid and Nancy" story, this is still a very interesting, deeply moving book. I find that society nowadays puts too many titles/excuses on children and their behaviour (A.D.D., A.D.H.D., "problems with authority", etc), whether they're actually founded reasons or not. This book, however, takes us back 50 years ago where it was entirely the opposite problem. Parents would have legitimately mentally ill children, but doctors would blame the parents (not loving the kids enough, being too lenient, etc) and would basically refuse to help them...until it was too late. That is the case with Deborah Spungen's story that she relates in this story about her life with her daughter, Nancy, and all the problems and heartache Nancy's actions brought to her family. At the time of publication, Deborah's intentions were to reach out to other parents who were dealing with children as problematic as Nancy and hoped to give them the assistance that she and her husband were not given by reassuring those parents that they were not alone.
Equally mind-boggling was reading how the media was very insulting towards Nancy after she was killed. She, the murder victim, was being ridiculed openly in the media. What an awful ordeal for her family to go through when they were grieving (and, I'm sure, feeling a slight, ashamed amount of relief that she was dead and no longer a burden on the family). Deborah lead a support group, Parents of Murdered Children, as she didn't have that support immediately after Nancy's death.
If you like non-fiction, give it a read. I highly recommend it and don't believe you'll be disappointed.
Equally mind-boggling was reading how the media was very insulting towards Nancy after she was killed. She, the murder victim, was being ridiculed openly in the media. What an awful ordeal for her family to go through when they were grieving (and, I'm sure, feeling a slight, ashamed amount of relief that she was dead and no longer a burden on the family). Deborah lead a support group, Parents of Murdered Children, as she didn't have that support immediately after Nancy's death.
If you like non-fiction, give it a read. I highly recommend it and don't believe you'll be disappointed.