This is a beautifully written memoir. I read it in one sitting because I couldn't put it down once I started.

My baseline comparison for any memoir of crazy family life is "Running with Scissors." As far as I'm concerned, any see-how-crazy-my-family-is type of novel is judged relative to that Augusten Burroughs classic.

Unfortunately, there are few family memoirs that can live up to that standard. Helen Naylor's debut novel, however, is one of the few.

In the early part of this book, I thought that the author was being overly critical of her mother - perhaps even translating her mother's behaviors in a way that played into the author's own victimization paradigm. What I realized, however, is something much more complex and impressive.

Helen's mother is an extreme narcissist who also suffers from Munchausen's Syndrome. Munchausen's, for those that don't know, is a psychological disorder in which the person pretends to be ill in order to have other people take care of them. It is the most extreme level of narcissism and a disorder that truly f***s with the emotions of those closest to them.

Being the child of a parent who displays this behavior makes for a hugely messed up life. Your parent is supposed to be the one that cares for you, supports you, raises you, comforts you. So when the parent is a narcissist with Munchausen, the parent feigns illness for attention, forcing the child to become the caretaker, simply to feed the parents ego. I'm telling you, it's f***ed up. The parent completely manipulates the child's emotions solely to feed their own narcissistic hunger. It is child abuse.

Helen's mother was insane, in my non-clinical opinion. As Helen grew into her teen years, she began to see the oddity of her mother's behavior; questioning whether her mother's sicknesses were real or fake. Understandably, there is guilt in thinking your parent is lying. It's a tough tightrope to walk, trying to determine whether the person who is supposed to be the most unconditional supporter of yours, is a complete sham.

Helen does a masterful job of weaving that fine line in her story telling. As I said, in the beginning of the book I thought she was being overly critical of her mother's behavior. But, alas, Helen did a stellar job in slowly exposing both her mother's behavior as well as her own struggle with understanding and accepting the behavior. She is honest about her doubts in believing her mother's lies. She is honest about her struggle in realizing that she, herself, is the victim - not her mother.

Helen's mother pretended to have Parkinson's and dystonia. My step-father died from complications of severe Parkinson's and one of my closest friends has a severe case of dystonia. So part of this book I take very personally - people I know and love suffer from these horrendous diseases. I am angered that another person would pretend to have the ailments simply to gain attention and feed their ego.

I'm thoroughly disgusted with Helen's mother and am in awe of how, under such horrendous upbringing, Helen can emerge as a creative, self-aware and seemingly balanced person.

This book is not just for people who know others with narcissism or munchausens, but it's for any fan of very well written, highly compelling memoirs. It will have you reflecting on the experiences in your own upbringing - whether they're feelings of gratitude or anger, this book brings them out.

I look forward to reading more from Helen Naylor.

#NetGalley #MyMotherMunchausensandMe

This is a memoir that was fascinating and interesting to read and to understand more about the mental illness of Munchausen. Munchausen is a disorder imposed on oneself where the person fakes or creates physical trauma, illness or disease. Often it is to get attention and sympathy.

Helen, the daughter who wrote this shares her life experience living with a mother that had munchausen. Upon her mother’s death she came across her journals encapsulating her life that helped Helen better understand what was actually happening.

It’s a tragic and sad story! Yet, it shows how Helen does not get sucked into her moms control and manipulation. She rises above and is a wonderful mother to her own children as she tries to come to terms with herself what her relationship should look like with a narcissist and manipulative mother.

Mental illness in general is interesting to learn about and read to understand and grow.

Thanks to NetGalley and Thread Books for the advance e-reader copy.

I found this book very interesting, though I don't often read memoirs. This is the story of Helen and her mother Elinor and their very complex relationship. Helen believed for years that her mother was suffering with ME but she subsequently discovered that Elinor was actually suffering with Munchausen's. After Elinor died Helen read her diaries and found terrible accounts of the neglect that she, Helen, had suffered as a child. This is a harrowing account and I think Helen deserves a lot of praise for having the courage to write it. Thanks to NetGalley for a preview copy.
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I found this book very interesting and exhausting to read. Helen's life was anything but easy. I had a hard time putting the book down it was very well written as Helen held nothing back. I don't agree with other reviewers that she comes off as self pitying at all. This is a person who has been manipulated since birth and was an only child, she hardly stood a chance. I am happy she was finally able to free herself and believe it was due to her own inner strength and her husband and children. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publisher for an e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

A well-written portrayal of a catalogue of lies.

Helen Naylor's mother faked illnesses for 30 years. Debilitating illnesses. And relied heavily on her daughter to look after her. When there wasn't really anything wrong.

Mum had ME. Had she ever had ME? Then just 'prolonged it'? Or, did she fake the whole thing? Both Helen's parents had been made redundant, so you can see how she could latch onto ME, make more of it, to be on the sick, so she didn't have to work again.

The control her mother had over her life was responsible for many happenings. But the book is not all focusing on the bad. There are happy memories of a family holiday of a lifetime in America when she was 16, after her GCSE'S. Nostalgia, childhood memories-I remember Tammy Girl shop-it was attached to Etam in our town. We used to buy from both. I hadn't thought about those in years.

As well as ME, her mother later has another disease. Exaggerating her condition, she had been told it wasn't the full-blown disease, and probably wouldn't ever develop into it either. It's as if she wanted something wrong with her; as if she wanted to be ill, and something serious to be wrong. The attention-seeking behaviour continues, as do the exaggerations and lies.

I've heard a few cases of Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy-where another is harmed, or killed, whilst the 'carer' seems like they are doing their best to look after them. This is the first time I've read of Munchausen's. Why would a person choose to live like this themselves? Why would they live all these lies, waste their life pretending to be unable, when they are quite able to be eg. going out for a walk, and enjoying their grandchildren. Perplexing how seeking attention can become their main goal in life.

Most of us- well, all of us, I'd think, would dread getting a diagnosis of a disease, a life-changing disease. We absolutely wouldn't want it. We would be praying that the test results would prove us all clear. But imagine someone who doesn't have that; making it up. Feigning symptoms and effects. Taking medication they don't need. Wanting to be ill. It's unbelievable isn't it?

A very interesting medical memoir.

The author's mother tormented the whole family with imaginary beliefs in pains, injuries, sicknesses that never were. The author goes to great pains (?) to tell us all about it. Very well written yet very difficult to read. One wants an escape.

This was an interesting memoir about Helen growing up with her narcissistic mother who has munchausen’s. It was particularly interesting to see the contrast of how Helen remembers incidents vs how Elinor (the mum) has recorded them in her diary. Helen shows great strength and dignity in recalling the complicated relationship she had with her mother, and her journey to discovering the truths, lies, and everything in between.

This book was incredibly interesting. It sounds strange to say I enjoyed it, but I did, not in a narcissistic way, but in that I couldn’t put it down, and wanted to hear Helen’s story. I really felt for her, and wanted to give her a hug. It was brilliantly written.

Thank you Netgalley for this audiobook edition of My Mother, Munchausen's and Me by Helen Naylor.

This is a true account by the author, depicting life with her narcissistic mother who suffers from Munchausen.

I've read and learned a lot about Munchausen by proxy, which is it's own kind of hell, but I don't think I've read much about JUST Munchausen, and the devastating effects it still has on the afflicted, and those around them.

I'll be honest, when I first started reading the book, I was asking myself whether this was actually a story worth telling. Her mom seemed a bit prone to dramatics, and a touch of hypochondria, but I wasn't seeing any severe symptoms of Munchausen's. But once Helen becomes an adult and begins having children of her own is when her mom really starts ramping up.

I found this story fascinating, how Munchausen's and narcissism went so hand in hand. I also appreciated addressing what her mother put her through as abuse. We usually think of abuse as violent and/or neglectful. But in this case, her mother made her daughter dismiss her own needs in order to take care of her. It definitely opened the door to some very interesting discussions.

Very well written, full of honesty and raw emotion, I got a lot out of this book.

I requested this book because, admittedly, I'm a biographies/true stories freak and I have to say I wasn't disappointed.
I found the story of Helen and Elinor's relationship disturbing yet emotional and the way the whole situation was treated by health care and institutions made me very angry.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Helen is 7 years old and finds her self caring for 2 disabled parents. Her childhood is lonely as her dad retreats to the pub and her mum ‘rests’ all the time due to her M.E. Helen’s mother, Elinor’s behaviour is erratic and recovers from her bad spells rather quickly. Over the years the illness increase and become more severe.
An awe inspiring true life tale about a daughters turbulent relationship with a mother with Munchausen’s syndrome. Truly compelling, but tragically sad at the same time. You can picture everything Helen describes and can’t help feel she has been let down all her,life by her mother then the medical professionals - some helped but others, failed to unravel the complexity of the situation.
A very interesting read, very emotional.

Wow, this was an intense read. My Mother, Munchausen's and Me is Helen’s story as she looks back on her life and the impact her mothers illnesses had on both her childhood and adult life. At first those illnesses are physical – ME and later, Parkinson’s Disease – but as cracks in her mother’s story start to appear, it seems that Helen’s mother is suffering from something that has lasting consequences to their relationship. It is clear that Elinor stuffers from both narcissism and Munchausen and this diagnosis – although devastating to Helen who was one of her mother’s victims – I think makes Elinor less of the evil woman sometimes portrayed in Helen’s memoir, and more of a victim herself of a broken system that failed her. I also don’t think Helen can place all the blame at her mother’s door either, as Elinor was surrounded by people in her life who enabled her behaviour and allowed for it to continue until it became an addition that she was locked in to.

Sometimes My Mother, Munchausen's and Me read like a novel, sometimes a memoir and sometimes a critical reflection on the gaps in adult social care services in the NHS. Together it made for a compelling read though, especially the last few chapters. Helen’s reflections on her own behaviours and how she too took steps to control the narrative of her story and surrounded herself with people who shared her truth was incredibly brave and showed her to be a woman not afraid to look at herself in the mirror to understand how her past continues to impact her present.

Fans of stories about family / relationships / real life / Munchausen’s will enjoy My Mother, Munchausen's and Me which is a brave and open reflection of a woman’s lived experience. Something that readers should keep in mind. This is Helen’s story and when reading it, you will get an interesting insight into the lasting impact to the children of narcissistic parents. I wish Helen all the best and hope her future is filled with love and happiness.

A stark and incredibly honest and open reflection on life with a mother with munchausens. The story is entirely heart wrenching and shocking and I felt a real empathy to the author and the endless situations she found herself in, which to her at the time felt normal, especially the recollections of her early childhood. As a mother myself and with the author comparing and contrasting the experience with her own maternal feeling and behaviours this makes the story even more horrific and unfathomable as to how Elinor could treat other human beings like this and pull the wool over the eyes of close family, friends and health professionals for so many years. In short I suppose this totally tested my faith in human nature and deeply saddened me but also gave hope for the resilience shown by Helen and her strength in putting the details down in a book, which hopefully might also help others.

Helen had a difficult relationship with her Mum. Her Mum had ME and her Dad had heart problems, a lot for a young child to deal with. Helen had to be quiet as a child when she played as her Mum was always ill in bed.

When Helen married and then became pregnant, her Mum was diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s Disease. From then on, Helen’s relationship with her Mum deteriorated.

This is a true story but I found this book hard to get into. The short excerpts from her Mum’s diaries didn’t really give much information and I found the book quite slow. It became a bit more interesting towards the end.

My thanks to Thread Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book, it was a hard read in places but told in great detail that is sometimes felt like a novel and not a memoir, I couldn't put it down, Helen truly is an inspiration and I thank her for telling her story so well, I wish her and her family nothing but love for their future

With appreciation to Thread Books and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this engrossing memoir from Helen Naylor. Reviewing a memoir is complex and requires recognition that this is a life story, a lived experience, and is an act of bravery in the willingness to examine a challenging and misunderstood childhood and mother, I respect Ms. Naylor's ability to step back and return to memories, relationships, and events that were and still are harmful. My Mother, Munchausen's, and Me is Helen's story of uncovering an enduring, but hidden, pattern in her life: her mother Elinor's lies about her physical health and accidents, Elinor's own harmful and impactful words and messages about Helen's own body, and Helen's journey to process how to understand herself, her past, her identity within a new framework of awareness of her mother's Munchausen's. How do you love and care for yourself, become a mother who is different from the one who raised you, and yet remain a daughter connected to a mother, even a sick and abusive one? I appreciate how challenging it must be to uncover information in adulthood that somehow both explains one's childhood and related emotions and yet makes it harder to love and care for a parent.

I found this memoir to be highly compelling and reflective, filled with writing that invited me in to her journey to understand her childhood, to hold it out to examine and reflect on, and to perhaps see this writing as a movement towards acceptance if not forgiveness. A note for future readers: often with a theme such as Munchausen's we expect a plot and narrative that provides insight into the how and why of a disorder and yet... that is not the purpose, nor goal, of this memoir as it is simply beyond most of us to be able to understand complex and poorly studied diagnoses and their related symptoms and behaviors (please keep this in mind when reading, the goal is to read about a life, to gain empathy, to listen but not to always leave with a understanding of a disorder).

I highly recommend this for fans of memoirs about family/identity and resilience, women/family book discussion groups, and non fiction fans. This review will posted at dont-stop-reading.com and on instagram this month prior to publication.

We don't expect parents to neglect or abuse their children and it is even more shocking when carried out by the mother.
HELEN details her childhood as she remembers it and through the recordings of her mothers diaries.
It is a shocking and heart breaking story of manipulation and abuse that she has managed to break the circle and has a loving family of her own.
It is a sad state that she was not listened to as an adult by the medical profession.
I applaud her courage for telling her life story so far and having the courage to record the circumstances in a book.
Wishing her and her family, love, happiness and a great future together.

I found this memoir very interesting. I was horrified by some of the things Elinor did and said. I would have loved to have read more of an insight into Elinors condition itself as it isn’t something you often hear about.

this book was absolutely incredible. i could not put this one down! it had me as invested as i was when watching the tv show series ‘the act’ about the gypsy rose case. You expect mother’s to be nurturing and kind, i found this one so so interesting to read about. i’d highly recommend it!