Breaking the Curse is the seventh book in author Charlotte Johnson's series of motivational text. This book explores the complex relationships and dynamics involved in functional and dysfunctional families. Once again, Dr. Johnson addresses the problems within families by using real life examples. Dr. Johnson deals with revealing family secrets and their impact. Readers of Dr. Johnson s earlier books are familiar with her willingness to tackle difficult subjects in an informative and entertaining manner. Breaking the Curse has an increased level of poetic expression and symbolism when compared with her other books. The balance of family stories, poetry, and family pictures provide the reader with a feeling of connectedness to the family, inspiration and humor. Dr. Johnson uses her family experiences and those experiences of others to illustrate the destructive nature of family secrets. She reveals intimate and scandalous family secrets in order to help others and prevent harm to others. Breaking the Curse will shock and touch the hearts of many generations with its intimate and extremely personal accounts of childhood experiences reminiscent of Alice Walker's, The Color Purple, A Child Called It, and A Bastard Out of North Carolina. Poems such as Scapegoat, Sacrificial Lamb, Secrets Secrets, Green with Envy, It Happened to Me, and Useless Excuses grab the reader and give insight into the feelings of people as they perform in their roles within the family. The poems give voice to the experiences of families. Each chapter begins with a poem to foreshadow the story that is about to be told. This book offers hope to those who have experienced pain, disillusionments, heartaches, suffering, and abandonment. Revealing secrets, dealing with the ramifications of the revelation, and the consequences of actions helps to promote growth and healing. Internal scars and wounds must be treated to prevent past hurts from killing future hope and progress. Dr. Johnson exhorts each of us to look inside of ourselves to ensure that we think not only of the safety and progress of ourselves and our families but develop empathy and courage to fight sin, evil, and injustice to help others. Evil thrives when we repress our past or becomes apathetic and ambivalent to the suffering of others and do not have compassion for others who are in danger. Breaking the Curse encourages good people to educate themselves, be informed, and be willing to fight sin to ensure that Family Curses are broken and that future generations can experience a life that is not bound by past sins that have taken root, grown, and thrived in the roots of their family tree. This book reminds us to show love, compassion, and concern for others who suffer. Each of us will one day need to be comforted. As a society, it has become easier to overlook injustice for the sake of convenience. Breaking the Curse reminds us that it is everyone s duty to be involved, to sacrifice in order to help others and prevent future harm to the innocent. This book is excellent for those who need encouragement, work with families, have suffered from hurt, disappointment, abuse, neglect and betrayal or who work with these populations. As the reader travels through this novel with Dr. Johnson into dark tunnels and even darker closets, hope is ever present as the journey gets closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.
