The Wounded Woman

Rating:
Summary: I think my time would been better spent doing the laundry.
Review: I found this book to be not only wordy but also unsatisfying. It was written on a level far above the average reader's vocabulary. The most complex subject can be explained to a very small child when sufficiently broken down. However, distraught daughters don't get that luxury in this journal. Instead their serious, heart wrenching troubles get likened to characters in movies, myths, and legends in words and phrases that are not familiar to the average person. The reality was left totally lacking. Then, as if to add insult to injury, there was little, if any, resolution to the breach and resulting vacuum felt in the hearts of many women. I was left feeling very unsatisfied after reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Free @ Last
Review: I tried everything to heal the riff between my father & myself. This book really lent a hand. We are all responsible for our healings but books like this are guideposts along the way. It definitely wetted my appetite for more. This book got me started. It was gentle enough just when I needed it most. There are others out there to sock you in the eye. But most people who have been abused cannot handle being punched another time. Gentle persuasion, & loving kindness are the key to really good healing.

Rating:
Summary: Free @ Last
Review: I tried everything to heal the riff between my father & myself. This book really lent a hand. We are all responsible for our healings but books like this are guideposts along the way. It definitely wetted my appetite for more. This book got me started. It was gentle enough just when I needed it most. There are others out there to sock you in the eye. But most people who have been abused cannot handle being punched another time. Gentle persuasion, & loving kindness are the key to really good healing.

Rating:
Summary: Free @ Last
Review: I tried everything to heal the riff between my father & myself. This book really lent a hand. We are all responsible for our healings but books like this are guideposts along the way. It definitely wetted my appetite for more. This book got me started. It was gentle enough just when I needed it most. There are others out there to sock you in the eye. But most people who have been abused cannot handle being punched another time. Gentle persuasion, & loving kindness are the key to really good healing.

Rating:
Summary: An archetypal look at the father-daughter relationship.
Review: Leonard writes of the wounds of fathers and how they wound daughters. I found this book illuminating for my own understanding of my self and my father. It helped me to develop compassion for my father and it helped me to move out of my own wounding. I recommend this book for any woman searching to understand the source of her angst

Rating:
Summary: An authentic picture of the feminine
Review: The reader from Houston would be advised to start thinking about the teachings of this book while she's doing her laundry. She might then find it deeper and more satisfying than her cursory reading of it implies. If it's true that the best books lead us onto other books, then this one passes the test with great generosity: I have already compiled an expanded reading (and film viewing) list from its pages. But it's more than that - a way for a woman to look at herself and the patterns of her life with a balance of emotion and detachment. It does not give easy and quick-fix solutions to what are, after all, heart-wrenching and ingrained problems, but a way towards transformation, towards breaking the negative patterns. On my first reading this book nearly broke me with its clear insights and wise compassion. How could a woman I don't know, half a world away, know so much about me? But it gave me the motivation to dig deeper and wider, and the eyes to see not only myself, my relationship with my father and with men, my creativity, but also my mother, my sisters, my friends. The use of myth - in fairy-tales, legends, novels and films - lends a strong intellectual framework to the book without sacrificing the emotional content, while the author's clinical experience and anecdotes from her own life places it firmly in the lives of real women. The author has done what many men say women cannot do: widen the perspective to embrace the large picture as well as zoom in on the details. I can't recommend this book enough, to men as well as women. Intelligent, perceptive, and emotionally mature.

Rating:
Summary: Good First Step for Daughters Seeking to Heal
Review: This book approaches healing the father-daughter relationship in an academic manner. It is helpful for those who work with women damaged by dysfunctional relationships with their fathers, but its academic approach may leave abused daughters seeking comfort and solutions disatisfied. Women seeking to heal their souls from the pain inflicted by their relationship with their fathers would find more hope and concrete skills for healing by reading some of the powerful memoirs by women who have survived and transcended difficult childhoods particularly "It Stops with Me" by Charleen Touchette, "The Color Purple" by Alice Waters, and "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You" by Sue William Silverman. Of the three, "It Stops with Me" is the most recent addition to the literature of healing from the father-daughter relationship, and the most hopeful. The Author's courage to leave her culture behind to escape her father and her determination to create a better family life for her children is inspirational. Readers will find that "It Stops with Me" is a catalyst that will give them the strength to tell their own stories and begin their healing.

Rating:
Summary: For the intellect only.
Review: This book was a disappointment to me. I purchased it because I was hoping it would speak to my heart. It was very interesting, however, not at all evocative. This is such a painful area for so many women. It's a shame the author got caught up in analyzing her patients instead of helping us to empathize with their wounds.

Rating:
Summary: Smart, realistic, and honest
Review: What I loved about this book was that unlike so many other books on father-daughter relationships this one did not oversimplify. Too many other books try to blame the father or blame the daughter and to squeeze us all into clear, but inaccurate roles. Linda Schierse Leonard recognizes that we are not always the same, that we are all actors as well as acted upon, and helps make our choices and their consequences clear. Brava!