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The Glass Girl

by Kathleen Glasgow (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: 2025, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in September 2025

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Blue said: " Trigger warnings for The Glass Girl include: alcohol addiction, swearing, drinking, drugs, sexual abuse and self harm.
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“I believe if you can walk into the darkness,” Fran says quietly, “then you have the strength to walk back out.” This felt powerfu Trigger warnings for The Glass Girl include: alcohol addiction, swearing, drinking, drugs, sexual abuse and self harm.
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“I believe if you can walk into the darkness,” Fran says quietly, “then you have the strength to walk back out.” This felt powerful to me. It comes from a character who runs the rehab clinic Bella went to, but from someone who was also in the patients position at one time too. Because yes, it takes a certain type of strength to begin to destroy your body, with whatever weapon or poison you choose. But it's that same strength that helps you heal too. Because recovery is a really hard process, whatever addiction it is you're recovering from.
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"Things aren’t linear in recovery. No straight lines. One day things are working out; the next day, a little fissure, a crack, and we go right back to where we started from." This quote felt important for me to talk about. People often use the phrase 'relapse is a part of recovery' or words to that effect. I don't think that's quite right. For some people relapses happen in the process of trying to recover or get clean. I'm not saying it can't or won't happen. But staying that it's 'a part' of recovery almost feels like it gives people the excuse to do it when recovery gets too difficult or painful. But this quote is correct. Recovery doesn't work in straight lines. No one's experience of recovery is the same, but no recovery will be linear either.
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An idea I've come across many times is that unless you admit there is a problem, you can't begin to get better. And I think we see that to be true quite clearly for Bella. She spends a lot of time adamant that she doesn't have a problem. And even when she's admitted to rehab, when people ask why she's there she deflects and it takes a long time for her to admit that she is an alcoholic, even at 15.
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One aspect that bothered me about this book is the way experiences were compared by some of the patients. The ones who'd been through recovery programmes before almost making light of Bella's addiction, and her feelings around being in rehab. Just because it was her first time doesn't make her addiction less serious. Just because she's only addicted to alcohol doesn't mean she doesn't need to be there or be trying to recover. An addiction is an addiction. And experiences can't be compared like that, it doesn't really do anyone any good. ...more "

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