In 2006, Jessie Sholl’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. But before Sholl could deal with the illness, she had to first confront a sickness of a different sort: her mother’s compulsive hoarding, which rendered everything—her home, her car, and her life—completely unmanageable. In her memoir “Dirty Secret,” Sholl documents a disease that affects millions of Americans and recounts a life spent parenting a mother who, despite her best intentions, was unable to provide stability—and who slipped from mere disorganization into something far more dangerous. Read more at newyorker.com…
Q&A: Jessie Sholl on Hoarding
Published by Sally
I’m the deputy managing editor at strategy + business, a freelance editor at Belt, and the former web manager at The New Yorker. My writing and editing also has appeared in The New York Times, The Independent, the Observer, the Rumpus, the Cleveland Clinic Press, and Northern Ohio Live. Additionally, I was a founding team member of Maven, a healthcare app for women. I live in Brooklyn with my husband, the musician and writer Mike Errico, and our daughter. Follow me @sally_errico. View more posts