0Bettyrose Woody knew that her mother wasn't like other mothers, that her behavior was not normal. As a child, she didn't have a name for what was going on. She just silently suffered through her mother's unpredictable punishments and rages. Years later, Bettyrose would discover the words she spent her childhood looking for: narcissistic personality disorder. Now, NPD is a recognized mental illness in the psychiatric community. That wasn't always the case. There was little support for those traumatized by narcissists. Young Bettyrose never had a way of understanding her mother's actions or how she could behave so inhumanely toward her own children. The ramifications of this childhood abuse would echo throughout her life. Through her memoir, Bettyrose traces the toxic effects of her mother's NPD in her own life. It would take her years to recover from the many ways she suffered under her mother's care. At the same time, Bettyrose demonstrates an astounding level of empathy for the woman who hurt her. She looks back into her mother's own life and discovers the roots of her NPD and what made her the woman she was, in the process finding a path to healing and hope for herself.