Melody Beattie was an author best known for her self-help books, including “Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself,” which sold more than seven million copies.
- Died: February 27, 2025 (Who else died on February 27?)
- Details of death: Died in Los Angeles of heart failure at the age of 76.
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Melody Beattie’s legacy
Beattie may be best known for her 1986 book, “Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself” – which Dr. Drew Pinsky called one of the most essential self-help books ever written – but it’s just one of 18 the author wrote over the course of her decades-long career.
Beattie had a difficult childhood and adolescence; she was abused as a child, struggled with addiction in her teens, and was in trouble with the law by her early 20s. She worked to get her life back on course, however, becoming an addiction counselor, assisting others to overcome similar struggles, and opening her eyes to the idea of codependency – relationships in which a person’s self-destructive behavior is enabled by another.
She developed the idea for her first book while working as a freelance reporter for The Stillwater Gazette, which she did alongside her work as a counselor.
“Codependent No More” was an instant hit, spending 129 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and to date selling over seven million copies in all. Other self-help books of hers followed, including “The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency,” “Playing It by Heart: Taking Care of Yourself No Matter What,” and “The Codependent No More Workbook.”
Beattie helped make the idea of codependency more mainstream, exploring how readers could learn to focus on taking care of themselves first and not allowing themselves to be strung along by others.
Notable quote
“The only person you can now or ever change is yourself. The only person that it is your business to control is yourself.” — excerpt from “Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself”
Tributes to Melody Beattie
Full obituary: The New York Times
