My Mama&39s Waltz [Paperback]

She was my best friend when sober and I was her worst enemy when she was drunk.
With stunning honesty,My Mama's Waltzbrings to light the painful legacy of daughters of alcoholic mothers -- in the first book to focus solely on this fractured relationship. Eleanor Agnew and Sharon Robideaux share their own personal accounts along with the memories and experiences of hundreds of women, from all ages and backgrounds, in an intimate and powerful narrative journey. Their recollections, courageous and unforgettable, resoundingly confirm that women who deal with the remnants of a childhood cut short by an alcoholic mother are not alone. Powerful, often wrenching, but ultimately hopeful and inspiring,My Mama's Waltzoffers the support and reassurance adult daughters seek to reconcile the past and heal the heart.Eleanor Agnew(left) is an associate professor of English at Georgia Southern University. She has been an editor and columnist for regional news magazines, and has presented her published academic works at national conferences. She lives in Savannah, Georgia.Chapter One: Introduction

My father never knew. I don't think he believed me when I told him about my years of torment.

-- Beverly Hendrix, fifty-three, salesperson, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

On the face of it, we are quite different, hardly twins separated at birth. Ellie is slender, blond, the oldest child of a well-educated, middle-class psychiatrist and his wife, who was almost as well educated and who met him in medical school. Ellie is married, the mother of three sons, and is a college professor, a transplanted New Englander who has come to love the South. Sharon is a natural-born southerner from Louisiana, the overweight, brunette oldest daughter of an uneducated manual laborer and his waitress wife. Sharon is also married, the mother of two sons, and now lives in Missouri, where she has almost completed her doctoral degree in English.