From Broken Boy to Mended Man: A Positive Plan to Heal Your Childhood Wounds and Break the Cycle is Patrick Morley writing about his own father, and about what he carried out of that house into his marriage and his parenting.
Tyndale Momentum published it in March 2024. It runs 256 pages. Gary Chapman, who wrote The Five Love Languages, is credited on the book alongside Morley. An earlier version of this review left him off entirely.
Who Morley is
He founded Man in the Mirror and wrote the book by that name, which has been a fixture in men’s ministry for decades. He is in his late seventies. That matters here, because this is a man looking back over a whole life at damage he did not deal with until late, not a younger writer theorizing about it.
He is specific about his own father and about his own failures as a husband and a dad. The book has weight because of that. He is not using someone else’s story.
What the book actually asks of you
The structure moves through recognizing that you were wounded, getting past the denial that keeps most men from admitting it, working toward forgiveness of parents, and then making a deliberate plan so your kids get something different.
The forgiveness section is the hardest and the most valuable. Morley does not do cheap reconciliation. He distinguishes forgiving a parent from excusing what they did, and he does not require that the relationship be restored for the forgiveness to be real. Men who have been told to just get over it will find something more honest here.
There are reflection questions through the book, so it works for a group as well as alone.
The honest limits
This is a Christian book about healing, not a clinical one. Morley is clear that some men need a counselor and says so. Take him at his word on that. If what happened to you was abuse rather than absence or coldness, this book is a companion to real treatment, not a replacement for it.
The writing is warm and a little repetitive. Morley circles back to his central point often. Some readers find that reinforcing and some find it slow.
Worth your time?
Yes, and this is the strongest recommendation in this batch. Most men reading this had a father who was absent, angry, or simply never said anything, and most have never once examined what that did. Morley gives you a way in that does not require you to think of yourself as a victim.
Especially yes if you have young kids. The cycle part of the title is the real subject.
An earlier version of this review quoted a reviewer saying the book was a turning point for him. That quote was invented and has been removed.
From Broken Boy to Mended Man on Amazon