THE SINS OF OUR FATHERS

I grew up watching Maureen McCormick ad Marcia on the Brady Bunch. What girl my age didn't want to be Marcia Brady? She was the essence of "coolness". I was looking for something to read at our local library and feel upon her book. I though what the heck and took it home to read. It turns out her life was very far from the life of Marcia Brady.
What struck me the most is how sin is passed down. There is nothing private when we sin. Her shame stemmed back to her mother's parents. It turns out her grandfather contracted syphilis while serving overseas during World War I and he passed it on to his wife. She entered a mental institution with extreme
paresis and died there without being able to recognize Maureen's mother. Her grandfather then committed suicide. The disease was also passed on to Maureen's mother who was emotionally scared for the rest of her life.

Maureen found out about this when she over heard her parents fighting at age 13 and she carried the shame with her most of her life. She lives a very sinful life for many years but eventually meets the Lord and turns her life around.

Just like sin is passed down generation after generation so can blessings be passed down. My mom had a very hard life living with my mentally ill father and so did we! But my mom was so faithful about taking us to church and faithful to my dad. We are far from perfect but her four children all embrace the Catholic faith and it guides each of us. I really believe the gift of our faith was given to us because of my mom's faithfulness. Just as sin is passed down from generation to generation so are God's blessings. Faithfulness
matters!

Here is a review of the book:
 
Marcia Brady, eldest daughter on television's The Brady Bunch, had it all---style, looks, boys, brains, and talent. No wonder her younger sister Jan was jealous! For countless adolescents across America who came of age in the early 1970s, Marcia was the ideal American teenager. Girls wanted to be her. Boys wanted to date her. But what viewers didn't know about the always-sunny, perfect Marcia was that offscreen, her real-life counterpart, Maureen McCormick, the young actress who portrayed her, was living a very different--and not-so-wonderful--life. Now, for the very first time, Maureen tells the shocking and inspirational true story of the beloved teen generations have invited into their living rooms---and the woman she became.
In Here's the Story, Maureen takes us behind the scenes of America's favorite television family, the Bradys. With poignancy and candor, she reveals the lifelong friendships, the hurtful jealousies, the offscreen romance, the loving support her television family provided during a life-or-death moment, and the inconsolable loss of a man who had been a second father. But The Brady Bunch was only the beginning. Haunted by the perfection of her television alter ego, Maureen landed on the dark side, caught up in a fast-paced, drug-fueled, star-studded Hollywood existence that ultimately led to the biggest battle of her life.

Moving from drug dens on Wonderland Avenue to wild parties at the Playboy mansion and exotic escapades on the beaches of Hawaii, this candid, hard-hitting memoir exposes a side of a beloved pop-culture icon the paparazzi missed. Yet it is also a story of remarkable success. After kicking her drug habit, Maureen battled depression, reconnected with her mother, whom she nursed through the end of her life, and then found herself in a pitched battle for her family in which she ultimately triumphed.

There is no question: Maureen McCormick is a survivor. After fifty years, she has finally learned what it means to love the person you are, insight that has brought her peace in a happy marriage and as a mother. Here's the Story is the empowering, engaging, shocking, and emotional tale of Maureen McCormick's courageous struggle over adversity and her lifelong battle to come to terms with the idea of perfection---and herself.