Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding

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Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding

by Jessie Sholl (Goodreads Author)

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 · rating details · 978 ratings · 223 reviews

To be the child of a compulsive hoarder is to live in a permanent state of unease. Because if my mother is one of those crazy junk-house people, then what does that make me?When her divorced mother was diagnosed with cancer, New York City writer Jessie Sholl returned to her hometown of Minneapolis to help her prepare for her upcoming surgery and get her affairs in order. W...more

Paperback, 308 pages

Published December 28th 2010 by Gallery

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Jul 13, 2011 m rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is well written, at times even a page turner. However, it's a bit of a bait and switch. I picked it up thinking I was going to read "a daughter coming clean about her mother's compulsive hoarding" not "the memoir of a woman who grew up with a hoarder." There's a difference. When the book deals with the hoarding mother and the author's relationship with her, it's very interesting. Sholl should have kept to this ground. Instead, she takes long detours to tell stories of her own pedestria...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Jennifer (Crazy-for-Books.com) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc, memoir-non-fiction, received-for-review, received-in-2010, virtual-book-tour, read-in-2011

From my blog:

In this candid memoir, Jessie Sholl explores the psychological disorder of compulsive hoarding. Intricately weaving the story of her life as the child of a hoarder, Sholl reveals the depth of pain and destruction that this disease can bring to a family.

As the story opens, Jessie's mother calls to tell her that she has cancer and must sign over her house to Jessie. Horrified that her mother has cancer, but even more terrified that she might be responsible for her mother's hoarded ho...more From my blog:

In this candid memoir, Jessie Sholl explores the psychological disorder of compulsive hoarding. Intricately weaving the story of her life as the child of a hoarder, Sholl reveals the depth of pain and destruction that this disease can bring to a family.

As the story opens, Jessie's mother calls to tell her that she has cancer and must sign over her house to Jessie. Horrified that her mother has cancer, but even more terrified that she might be responsible for her mother's hoarded house, Jessie boards a plan from NYC to her hometown in Minnesota to help her mother get her affairs in order before her surgery and to help her mom clean her house. Through the mass of broken appliances, duplicate items purchased from the local Savers store, garbage, unopened mail, and books, Sholl attempts to reason with her mother and come to some kind of understanding as to why she is a hoarder. Although there is one specific event that intensified the situation, Sholl clearly explores situations throughout her childhood where this disorder manifested itself in other ways - disordered thinking, compulsive shopping, indecisiveness, and times of abuse directed at Sholl.

The clean-up is only a very small portion of the book. Returning to NYC after the surgery, Jessie discovers small bites on her ankles, then welts and other bite marks over the rest of her body. Then her husband, David, starts itching, too. Going from doctor to doctor and trying medication after medication, Jessie's mother finally tells her what she thinks it is - and it's pretty horrifying. Another after-effect of the hoarded house that will cause severe psychological and physical stress to Sholl, her husband, her father, and her stepmother, who were all in contact with the house in some way. Fed up, Jessie makes a vow - she is never going inside her mother's house again.

But can she keep that promise to herself? Can she control her compulsion to not want to clean her mother's house, which may be just as strong as her mother's compulsion to hoard?

I think this book was a very therapeutic endeavor for the author and helped her to understand her mother's disease more in depth. Sholl is a talented writer who offers an honest portrayal into an otherwise "dirty secret". Shows like Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive are providing some light into the disorder, but I feel they are only scratching the surface and focusing more on the cleanup rather than on the psychological aspect of the disorder - the WHY it's happening is what I am interested in. I have to wonder how many of these homes go right back to being hoarded after the cameras are turned off. In this memoir, Sholl is able to weave research studies and psychological input regarding hoarding into her story which helps to define the disorder to readers who may not otherwise understand why someone would hoard. It would be very easy to tell a hoarder just "clean it up" or "get rid of it", but it is important to understand that the mind-set of someone who hoards is very different and s/he is unable to toss something without feeling like they are throwing out a piece of themselves. That's just my personal opinion.

This is a wonderfully written book that is very easy to read and and provides much-needed insight into what is a publicly ostracizing disorder. I can understand the author's hesitation in wanting to disclose her personal connection to hoarding, but I applaud her for having the courage to do so. We need more books like this so we can understand this disease more fully. I highly recommend this book.

Jennifer
http://www.crazy-for-books.com (less)

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May 05, 2012 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, nonfiction, sociology

As someone with parents who are nudging the line between thrifty and hoarder, this memoir caught my attention. Sholl begins her memoir with her mother’s announcement that she has cancer, and wants to sign over her house to her daughter. Sholl is stunned, not only by the news of her mother’s illness, but also at the thought of having to take care of the house, which she has avoided since her last cleaning purge a few years prior. Upon her visit to her mother, Sholl is horrified at the state of th...more As someone with parents who are nudging the line between thrifty and hoarder, this memoir caught my attention. Sholl begins her memoir with her mother’s announcement that she has cancer, and wants to sign over her house to her daughter. Sholl is stunned, not only by the news of her mother’s illness, but also at the thought of having to take care of the house, which she has avoided since her last cleaning purge a few years prior. Upon her visit to her mother, Sholl is horrified at the state of the house, writing a page long description of the clutter and the danger to both the inhabitant and the structural integrity. As she writes, she explains some of the research that has been done regarding hoarding and hoarders, and details some of the ways that her mother’s eccentric behavior affected her as a child, including the rocky relationship between her parents and instillation of the fear of snakes at a young age. She describes the relatively normal relationship she had with her father and step-mother, a realtor who helped provide a tidy home and rules for Jessie and her brother, contrasting it with the chaos that soon overwhelmed her mother’s household. And as Sholl goes through her teen and young adult years, her mother’s condition continues to shadow her, even through Jessie’s graduating, meeting her husband, and establishing her own household. An infestation of mites which Sholl, her father, and husband contract after helping her mother at home after her chemo treatments serve as a physical representation of how this behavior affects the entire family.

This book, while personally interesting, may not have a particularly widespread appeal. The memoir does address the common thread of adult children struggling to find and understand a healthy boundary with their parents; this addresses the switched roles of a child attempting to care for a parent. However, though Sholl is a good writer and does an excellent job of chronicling the emotions and confusion she feels when interacting with her mother, it will be of most interest to those who find themselves in a similar situation. (less)

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Jan 06, 2012 Michele rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. ***First of all, for those who know me and my language issues with books, let me say that this book doesn't meet my criteria. I read it at the recommendation of a family member who warned me in advance, but encouraged me to read it because of the subject.***

With that out of the way, I'll just say that if you have anyone in your life who is a hoarder or shows signs of becoming one, you should read this book. If nothing else, you will find that there is someone else out there who is dealing with t...more

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Aug 24, 2011 Alyce (At Home With Books) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dirty Secret is Jessie Sholl’s memoir about how her mother’s hoarding has affected her life and their relationship. Jessie’s story alternates between her memories of shame as a young girl – wanting to keep the other kids at school from finding out where she lived – and her struggles as an adult trying to cope with the ripple-effect of her mom’s problems in her own life.

I’ve often wondered about the causes of hoarding because my late great-aunt was a hoarder whom I met only once in my childhood....more Dirty Secret is Jessie Sholl’s memoir about how her mother’s hoarding has affected her life and their relationship. Jessie’s story alternates between her memories of shame as a young girl – wanting to keep the other kids at school from finding out where she lived – and her struggles as an adult trying to cope with the ripple-effect of her mom’s problems in her own life.

I’ve often wondered about the causes of hoarding because my late great-aunt was a hoarder whom I met only once in my childhood. Reading Jessie Sholl’s account of how her mom mistreated her as a child, and then how unbalanced her mom became as her hoarding intensified, was enlightening in many ways, and gave me an idea of some of the struggles my own relatives must have dealt with when caring for my great-aunt. Even though I know that my great-aunt had some mental health issues, for some reason I had never really thought of hoarding as a mental health disorder.

Jessie explains how the mind of a hoarder works and her explanations helped me to think of hoarders with more compassion. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t frustrated with her mom as I read about the way that her mom taunted her – reinforcing Jessie’s fear of snakes. On the other hand, the more Jessie explained about how the mind of a hoarder works, the easier it was to understand the reasons behind at least some of what her mother did, at least when it came to stockpiling things.

At the beginning of the story Jessie returns to her mother’s house because her mom has cancer. Jessie tries to help her mom clean and is faces not only the difficulty of trying to get her mom to allow her to throw things away (with dozens of the same items piled up around her), but also the condemnation of the neighbors who seem to think that it’s her fault her mother lives that way.

While cleaning, Jessie acquires an infectious skin condition that won’t go away. I have to admit that there were times when I just couldn’t put the book down because I had to know if she and her husband (who caught the condition from her) were every going to be able to figure out what it was or find a treatment that would work. Even though I’m sure was an embarrassing and frustrating situation it was fascinating (and sometimes even humorous) to read about.

The best part of the book for me was reading about how Jessie begins to research hoarding and come to a better understanding of exactly what she and her mom are up against. As they say – knowing is half the battle.

I recommend this memoir to anyone who is interested in what it is like to live with a hoarder. I think Jessie’s story is valuable in that it allows you to see the hoarder as a real person and not just a stereotype.(less)

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Aug 05, 2011 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars

I meant to put this on my currently reading list, only to realize that within a couple of days I 'm almost done with the book and most likely will finish it tonight.

It's a true story about a daughter's relationship with her mother and her mother's hoarding tendencies. And how as a young teen to her adulthood she try to deal with this issue with her mother. She really get into that how it was solved that issue, but how she tried to deal with her mother, and other family issues.

Coming from a dysf...more

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Jun 25, 2011 Ciara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobio-memoir, read-in-2011

i guess this is the first memoir ever written by the child of a hoarder. i didn't know that going on. i am just kind of interested in reading about hoarding & i like memoirs.

i really liked this book. i was reading through some of the more negative reviews on goodreads, & the consensus among the people who disliked it seemed to be, "jessie sholl came across as totally unlikeable. she treated her mom like crap."

my mom is not a hoarder like jessie's mom (my mom is basically homeless, so she...more i guess this is the first memoir ever written by the child of a hoarder. i didn't know that going on. i am just kind of interested in reading about hoarding & i like memoirs.

i really liked this book. i was reading through some of the more negative reviews on goodreads, & the consensus among the people who disliked it seemed to be, "jessie sholl came across as totally unlikeable. she treated her mom like crap."

my mom is not a hoarder like jessie's mom (my mom is basically homeless, so she has nowhere to hoard), but she is an addict & she is mentally ill. i have not really had a relationship with her in over fifteen years. i have gone for years at a time without speaking to her. she makes no effort to speak to me or have a relationship with me, so it's not all about how i'm a jerk. it's about how it's really difficult to deal with a parent who is an addict (jessie makes a lot of salient points in the book, comparing hoarding to alcoholism, particularly in its impact on children) & mentally ill.

the conclusion jessie reaches toward the end of the book, after seeing her mom through a bout of colon cancer, helping her father through a heart attack & a quadruple bypass, & contracting scabies from her mother's house, is that you can't change other people. you can only change yourself. kind of a "no duh" conclusion as far as i'm concerned, but then again--i'm the child of mentally ill addicts. the fact that i could not change my parents was something i definitely found out the hard way, but it's pretty ingrained in my life at this point, & i really felt for jessie, that she is nearly ten years older than me & still struggling to learn that lesson. i appreciated the fact that she was open about sometimes snapping at her mother, yelling at her, criticizing her, or "treating her badly". i was amazed that she had the emotional strength to have even a crappy, stressful relationship with her mom, even one that just involves going out to dinner with her a few times a year, because i do not have the strength to do that with my own mother. it's exhausting & traumatizing in a way that you can only really understand if your mom is really fucked up.

i guess one big difference between jessie & i, though, is that jessie struggles with a lot of guilt & shame about her mother's hoarding, her mental illnesses, & their relationship with each other. i just wanted to reach through the book & help jessie get a grip on that shit. anyone who thinks i'm a bad person because i don't talk to my mom...well, that's not someone i care to have in my life anyway, because they obviously don't understand me or where i am coming from.

the book does meander a little bit. it was difficult reading about jessi's teenage rebellion years (she convinced her father to let her move into her own place with an older friend when she was only 16), just because it's always difficult reading about whiny teenagers. jessie speculates that she inadvertently adopted her dog from an animal hoarder, & goes into a shit ton of detail about what caused her suspicions, without ever really successfully conveying the scene to the reader. she subletted her apartment to someone without warning her that she & her husband had scabies & maybe the apartment was infected (granted, they did everything within their power to disinfect the apartment, & there was no indication that the subletter got scabies, but still!). she displayed a constant need to caretake everyone in her life, to the point that she was arguably more a nuisance than a help.

but it was still a pretty compelling, well-researched book. it even includes a bibliography in the back for people who want to learn more about hoarding! i am always a big fan of a memoir with a bibliography.(less)

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Robin Have you watched the show Hoarders? Your review is interesting because it reminds me of one of the things that I hate about that show- it perpetuates...more
Jun 25, 2011 06:36pm

Ciara i've never seen any of the shows about hoarding & i've only seen one episode of "intervention". so i can't speak to how much pressure there is in...more
Jun 25, 2011 06:43pm

Robin Yes, and the more you try to help someone who won't help him or herself, the more you feel like a failure. So why bother?
Jun 25, 2011 09:58pm

Jun 07, 2011 Muttix rated it 2 of 5 stars

I mistakenly thought that this book was going to be about a hoarding mom and what the child did about it. Instead, the author whined and complained throughout the book, jumping around to events throughout her life, some of which I had no clue as to how they connected to the premise of the book. I didn't want to read a memoir about the author, frankly I had no idea who she was prior to reading this. I wasn't interested in her vacations or music collections, or even her marriage.

I found the author...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Erica added it

This book blew me away. Ostensibly, it's a memoir of Jessie Sholl's childhood and adulthood (more adulthood) with her mother, who is a hoarder. But beyond being like the best episode of Hoarders ever, it's about what life is like for anyone who ever had to be the parent to their parent due to mental illness or addiction. Though the only hoarder I've ever had in my life was my ex-boyfriend (who could easily get this bad someday), nearly every word of this book hit me hard. Here is one of the man...more

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Mar 13, 2011 Girls Gone Reading rated it 3 of 5 stars

Dirty Secret does what no other book has done. It tells us what it is like to be the child of a compulsive hoarder. It explains, in detail, what long term problems arise when a parent puts things above you. Dirty Secrets brings you inside the mind of all the victims of this terrible disease.

Vivid and descriptive, Jessie Sholl made hoarding come home for me. From her description of scabies to the filth that covered her mother’s kitchen, I was mesmerized by the first hand account of this disease....more

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Mar 12, 2011 Ellen Keim rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm glad I read this book. Not only did it give me insight into the hoarding phenomenon (or should I say syndrome?), but it also taught me a lot about codependency. Because that's what the book is really about: the author's struggle to disassociate herself from her mother's mental illness. Not that she isn't caring about what her mother goes through, but she has had to learn to stop "owning" her mother's problems. That's an important lesson to learn.

The book is well-written and easy to read exc...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Joanna rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, this-book-has-a-lesbian-in-it, books-read-2011

After reading this book, I do not feel like I have any greater understanding of hoarding behavior than I did going in. I do, however, feel like I have a much greater knowledge about scabies infections much less patience with whiny self-indulgent justification memoirs. Yeech.

Most of this book is about family drama, much (but not all) of which is caused by the hoarding behavior of the author's mother. But then there are diversions - the chapter that goes into ridiculous detail about the author's s...more After reading this book, I do not feel like I have any greater understanding of hoarding behavior than I did going in. I do, however, feel like I have a much greater knowledge about scabies infections much less patience with whiny self-indulgent justification memoirs. Yeech.

Most of this book is about family drama, much (but not all) of which is caused by the hoarding behavior of the author's mother. But then there are diversions - the chapter that goes into ridiculous detail about the author's struggle with Repetitive Stress Injury, the chapter that goes into a depth of detail about the author's struggle with depression, the chapter about whether or not they got their fancy dog from an animal hoarder, and the chapter about the author's trip to Europe (bankrolled by her Bad!Hoarding!Mother) where she met her husband. It's like being confronted with a hoard of story - choices about what to include and what to discard seem arbitrary, or unmade altogether. In a similar way, when she describes her mother's house, whole paragraphs become nothing more than laundry lists of items her mother is saving.

"The hallway is packed with stacks of even more ignored mail--her phone gets shut off on a semiregular basis because she can't find the bills--two ironing boards, a mound of ratty looking sweaters, winter boots and coats and snow pants heaped directly underneath an empty metal coatrack, at least one box of marshmallow Peeps, milk colored storage bins that I know without checking are empty, an oversized plastic pail containing ironic jugs of Lysol and Pine-Sol, and dozens of unopened white plastic Savers bags with the receipts still stapled to the top."

It gets to the point where it almost stops being a description and becomes a slightly obsessive catalog, which does not make for interesting reading.

But the main reason that I didn't like this memoir was because I had no sympathy for the narrator. The book, to me, did not read as the story of a good person caught up in bad circumstances. It read as a recounting of the self-involved drama created by the author in relation to the worsening health of her parents and her mother's mental illness.

When her father, just recovering from a heart attack and major surgery, is having a middle-of-the-night health crisis, the author responds by fainting (twice), shouting at the 9-1-1 operator, and demanding to speak with her supervisor. I get that not everyone is at their best in moments of crisis, but that seemed part and parcel of her general behavior. It is hard to feel warmly towards a woman who gets irate and defensive over a potential sublet tenant (who will be required to mail in six months worth of rent up front in advance) mentioning that her agent thought the apartment was 'kind of dirty' while blithely failing to let said tenant know of the months long scabies infection that she and her husband have been dealing with since returning from her mother's house. She calls her mother's neighbor (who shovels the walk, and expresses concern for her mom) as "The Mean Lesbian" because that is how her mentally ill mother refers to her. That's not funny. That's just mean spirited.

I wish this book had been a deeper or more insightful work about hoarding, but at the end of the day it's not much more than another contribution to the Grown Women Who Still Blame Their Mothers For Everything genre. This one just happens to have a hoarded house as a backdrop. (less)

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Jan 03, 2011 C.J. Omololu rated it 5 of 5 stars

In DIRTY SECRETS, Jessie Sholl has written the rest of my character's story. This memoir about an adult daughter dealing with her mother's hoarding and the irrational and frustrating legacy it brings to loved ones could have been written by Lucy if she'd grown up and been able to maturely face the consequences. Through her dealings with her mother as she tries to manage the hoard, Scholl has written a book that gives much-needed insight into how one person's hoarding affects everyone around them...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Shari Larsen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a true story. Jessie Sholl is a writer living in New York, when she gets a call from her mother, who tells her she has just been diagnosed with cancer. Jessie returns to her hometown of Minneapolis to help her mother prepare for her surgery, and to get her affairs in order. That is a difficult task for any adult to face, but Jessie has the additional burden of a secret she has tried to keep hidden all her life: her mother is a compulsive hoarder.

I had an aunt who was a hoarder, only back...more

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Oct 16, 2011 Terri rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like reading memoirs and I like learning about how other people live so this was the perfect book for me. Jessie Sholl is a descriptive storyteller. She weaves an interesting and emotional story that describes her childhood through adult years and the relationship she has with her parents, as well as giving some back story on her mother's early years.

Her mother became a true hoarder after Jessie had left home, but showed traces of what was to come while Jessie was growing up. Trying to help h...more

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Jul 18, 2011 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow. I really, really, really, enjoyed this book. Far more than I expected to, actually. Initially, I picked this up thinking it was just another individual trying to cash in on the new hoarders trend. Instead, I found a compelling and thoughtful reflection on life with a mother who is a hoarder.

Jessie Sholl is funny, smart, and an excellent writer. At times, I felt some of the writing was tangential to the story at hand (the excessive pages spent describing the pains of Repetitive Strain Injury...more

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Jun 25, 2011 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

I was really excited to read this book, because while I enjoy the show Hoarders, fitting a whole lifetime of hoarding and its affect on a family can't really be done in an hour. The parts of the book where Sholl talks about her mother, their relationship, and the condition her mom's house and mind are by far the best parts. Not so much author's various health struggles and her need to call her Mom and Dad "my mom" and "my dad" all the time. Her anger at Mean Lesbian Neighbor and the unfortunate...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Meghan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, mental-illness

Above all, this book will make you paranoid about scabies, and no longer will you thoughtlessly grab a communal blanket, pillow or mat at your yoga class. A lucid, readable memoir of growing up with a mentally ill parent, this is less about the process of cleaning up a hoarder's house and more focused on hoarding as a mental illness, and what it's like when your mom is mentally ill, abusive, and delusional.

There are a few dark places, even though the author seems mostly happy in her adult life....more

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Sep 30, 2011 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, guilty-pleasure, hoarder

Okay, I confess. I have a morbid fascination with hoarding, as this is the third book on the subject I've read. (the other two: Homer & Langley and Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers and My Uncle Arthur, New York's Greatest Hoarders) And I've taken to lifting weights while watching episodes of "Hoarders" streaming on Netflix.

I'm looking for an answer to one question--how does something like that happen? And possibly, a second, more sinister question--could it happ...more Okay, I confess. I have a morbid fascination with hoarding, as this is the third book on the subject I've read. (the other two: Homer & Langley and Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers and My Uncle Arthur, New York's Greatest Hoarders) And I've taken to lifting weights while watching episodes of "Hoarders" streaming on Netflix.

I'm looking for an answer to one question--how does something like that happen? And possibly, a second, more sinister question--could it happen to me?

In this memoir, Jessie Sholl makes a stab at providing answers. Her mother Helen's house is overrun with piles of moth eaten sweaters, thrift store purchases still in the bags, and boxes of junk she is sure she'll have a use for some day. Sholl has spent her life pleading, cajoling and begging her mother to just clean up the mess. Attempts to clean it up herself are always failures. Her mother just brings in more stuff.

Sholl cites a great deal of research done on hoarders and she is well aware that her mother has a mental illness. Part of Helen's problem lies in perception. Everything has to be where she can see it, like phone numbers and address that she tapes to the walls. And items that most people would see as all the same, like toothbrushes, Helen sees as separate and distinct--blue ones, sparkly ones, striped ones, each one unique and valuable.

Helen is addicted to the thrill of the purchase. She tells her daughter that every time she buys an item at the Savers Store, she believes it will change her life. It will make things better, even though it will just be tossed on an the pile and forgotten as soon as she gets home.

Sholl describes the shame of growing up in the local "Junk House," as the daughter of the crazy lady in the ratty sweater. Although she went to live with her father and stepmother when she was seven years old, she always felt the stigma of her mother's hoarding, as well as an obligation to take care of her mother, since her mother could not care for herself.

This was another book I latched on to, not wanting to put it down. There are spots where Sholl digresses, relating events from her own life that have little or nothing to do with her mother's hoarding. But in all, it's an honest telling of how a daughter comes to terms with her mother's mental illness.
(less)

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Sep 09, 2011 Hester rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: for-realzies, read-in-2011, it-stinks, could-not-finish

Hoarding is the new Bi-Polar. The reasons why people hoard and what they hoard make for some compelling and very sad television. The episodes I see of TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive fill me with all sorts of emotions. I find myself routing for the hoarder to get better, I cry over the traumas that triggered their hoarding and I want to vomit at some of the disgusting messes they live with. Dirty Secret by Jessie Sholl makes me feel none of these things.

Sholl doesn't give us a memoir about growing...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Jody rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013, hoarding, family-ties, memoir, page-turner, mental-illness

I may be one of the few who hadn't watched the reality show about hoarding. My great aunt was a hoarder and I was one of the few allowed in her home. I think I felt fearful of seeing that again. When I saw this memoir, though, I had to read it.
Jessie's mom, Helen, is a hoarder who began this behavior shortly after her husband died. It seems that hoarding is often triggered by a stressful event. Jessie guarded what she thought of as a shameful secret and somehow reflective of her as well. Thro...more

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Jan 10, 2011 NerdGirlBlogger rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can’t tell you how happy I am she has written this very honest book about compulsive hoarding, and what it has done to her. Jessie Sholl isn’t playing the victim here, she is simply telling the story of her life, her mother’s illness, and how it affects her entire family, to this very day. Rather than being exploitive, Dirty Secret is a refreshing tale of healing, of understanding, and of survival. If you know no one who hoards, you will still be fascinated by this book. It’s definitely an emo...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Laurel-Rain rated it 5 of 5 stars

When we're children, we sometimes feel as though others have a better life than we do. Especially if our family is different in some way. Maybe the difference is that one or both parents are alcoholic. Or perhaps the difference lies in some type of abuse going on in our lives. Maybe our family is poor.

Whatever we're dealing with, we are schooled in the homes where we grow up to keep the secret.

Jessie Sholl's secret was her mother's hoarding behavior, and in this insightful memoir, "Dirty Secret:...more When we're children, we sometimes feel as though others have a better life than we do. Especially if our family is different in some way. Maybe the difference is that one or both parents are alcoholic. Or perhaps the difference lies in some type of abuse going on in our lives. Maybe our family is poor.

Whatever we're dealing with, we are schooled in the homes where we grow up to keep the secret.

Jessie Sholl's secret was her mother's hoarding behavior, and in this insightful memoir, "Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding," she shares not only the behavior, but many of the emotions, the history, and the ways in which her mother's disorder affected her life. And then she described how she finally broke free. Much in the way the children of alcoholics do: by accepting that she could not change her mother's behavior. Once she did that, she could step back and not take responsibility for it.

But before that could happen, she had to go through a process and some very painful, ugly realities on the road to freedom.

Like a conversation, Sholl describes her life, her feelings, and how she gradually changed...as if she is telling it to friends or to a support group. Something she discovered at a point on her journey: an online group for the children of hoarders.

She also begins to develop a great deal of insight into what her mother's world view looks like. In a get-together toward the end of this journey toward recovery, she, her mother, and her husband are having lunch.

"While they talk, I find myself imagining that I've shrunk myself down, so tiny that I'm microscopic. As this microscopic being I'm able to enter my mother's mind. Once I'm in, I try to look around. It's dark, too dark to see. But I can feel what's in there. And there's so much. It's filled with isolation and disregard and abuse. It's filled with uncertainty and self-doubt. It's filled with laughter, too. It's filled with friendless winters. It's filled with salty breezes and ten happy years with a man who truly loved her. It's filled with chaos and emptiness when that man was gone...."

In this excerpt, we come to understand the etiology of this disorder for one woman and her family. A captivating five-star read that I will never forget. (less)

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Jun 21, 2011 Dave Moore rated it 4 of 5 stars

A very compelling read...actually more gripping than a lot of fiction I've read. A few of the key elements that make it difficult to put this book down are:
*A very interesting juxtaposition between Ms Sholl's sometimes traumatic childhood, the squalor her mother lives in, and the author's world traveling.
*Equally gripping is the total amount of dysfunction contained this narrative. One finds they are constantly shifting opinions of both mother & daughter.
*Even though this is not a work of...more

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Oct 21, 2011 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: medical, memoir

Obviously, this story is a fascinating one. Sholl spends a large portion of the book writing about battling with scabies which they all get from her mother. It got to be a bit much, and was giving me the heebie jeebies. With all the skin problems Alana has had, she probably shouldn't read this right now. LOL

The very last page almost makes me want to give the book five stars.

"For so many years I was tormented by the idea of my mother's hoarding - her secret, which became my secret - becoming know...more

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May 04, 2011 Jill Kemerer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

Excellent! I polished this off in two reading sessions--it was just that compelling. I'm usually not a fan of memoir authors skipping around their memories and flipping from the past to present, but Jessie Sholl handled it easily, and I didn't mind at all. Her love for her mother came through even with her fear, exasperation and anger toward her. I loved this book.

I appreciated that Ms. Sholl kept on track--the focus was on her complicated relationship with her mother and how her mother's hoardi...more

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Jan 25, 2011 Pirate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I bet this was a hard book to write, and I'm really glad Ms. Sholl did it. She tells a moving, compassionate tale of how disease impacts the entire family. I don't think I've read anything that does such a good job of describing first-hand the combination of frustration and sympathy one feels while dancing around someone trapped under mental illness (or tons of clutter).

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Oct 14, 2012 Teacup rated it 2 of 5 stars

I think I would have felt a better connection with this book if the author had let us experience a greater depth of her emotion.

The journey of the book led me to think it was written before she had fully come to acceptance of her situation. The unnecessary detail of expensive foods, clothes and accessories seemed to be subconsciously used to cover the shame and fear of rejection the author is still experiencing over this.

It would be unbelievably hard to chose to share such a well hidden secret...more

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May 10, 2011 The Sunday Book Review added it

I have always been a fan of shows like Hoarders. At first it was a “OMG” moment, and later grew to a “on no” moment. But even after years of watching the show it didn’t feel complete. Great, so they cleaned two rooms of the house, but what about the PERSON?

Dirty Secret covers this by placing the spotlight on one family as it tries to deal with this. The mother has cancer and the daughter tries her best to clean out the house before chemo recovery begins. You would think it would be easy! Here we...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Catherine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sholl’s mother is a hoarder. Her home is chock full of stuff: plastic bags brought home from the store and never opened, numerous pairs of the same shoes never worn, three broken coffeepots in the kitchen, The book does address obsessive hoarding and the possible causes and commonalities of people who are hoarders, which I felt was very educational, and brought about true feelings of compassion for her mother and others with the same problem.

What I really loved about the book was the way Sholl w...more

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About Jessie Sholl

Jessie Sholl is the author of Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding. She's also the coeditor of the nonfiction anthology Travelers’ Tales Prague and the Czech Republic. Her essays and stories have appeared in national newspapers and journals, and she holds an MFA from The New School University, where she currently teaches creative writing.

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Travelers' Tales Prague and the Czech Republic: True Stories

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“There's no demonstrable link between hoarding and early material deprivation. But there is a link between hoarding and EMOTIONAL deprivation. Many hoarders report being physically or sexually abused as children. My mother was deprived of love, affection, often even the acknowledgment of her existence, to say nothing of the beatings she endured. Her cold and chaotic childhood home was the perfect breeding ground for the mental illness that would end up affecting us all.” — 1 person liked it

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