33-minute read time.
Today’s post is the transcript of a lovely interview I had with TN, a fellow adult child of a hoarder. Some words have been redacted to ensure her privacy.
Thu, Nov 21, 2024 11:12AM • 51:45
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
hoarding behavior, emotional impact, social life, hoarding definition, early observations, flood damage, mental health, Facebook support, family dynamics, assisted living, health issues, childhood home, hoarding causes, coping strategies, family relationships
SPEAKERS
TN, Lillian Peck
00:00
Lillian Peck 00:00
So just tell me a little bit about you, your name, your pronouns, where you’re from and where you grew up.
TN 00:32
My name is TN. You may use my initials, TN, in your article. I am [REDACTED] years old. I live in [REDACTED], and I was born and raised in the [REDACTED] area.
Lillian Peck 00:45
You didn’t tell me much about which parent, or if it was both of your parents?
TN 00:47
This is about my mother.
Lillian Peck 00:47
Mother, gotcha, and I should tell you that with my previous interview, things got a little emotional. So if you need to take a break or step out virtually for a second, that’s fine with me. So, what did your mother tend to hoard? What sort of things caught her eye?
TN 01:20
The majority that took up the most room was newspapers, junk mail, catalogs, magazines, things like that. Newspapers became three feet high in her home. She also ordered clothing, shoes, purses, things like that.
Lillian Peck 01:46
My questions are a little out of order, so bear with me. How was your social life as a child and growing up?
TN 01:55
I would say my social life was fairly normal. I didn’t like to have friends over because she was very intrusive in my business.
Lillian Peck 02:11
Did her hoarding cause issues with having friends over? Or was it just her intrusiveness?
TN 02:19
No, she started hoarding after I left the house.
Lillian Peck 02:22
Gotcha. How do you define hoarding?
TN 02:28
An unwillingness to get rid of items that are no longer useful and that interfere with your life and affect your living conditions.
Lillian Peck 02:39
And how early do you remember noticing that her home was starting to become different from others?
TN 02:45
Let me think about that for a second. I noticed, probably would have to guess, in 2001. The house flooded for the second time. We noticed the house only had a foot of water in at that time, but we noticed that she put a lot of garbage into storage, as far as newspapers, phone books, old wrapping paper, pantyhose and bras and things like that were just ancient, but two storage units filled with items that probably all could have gone in the trash. Then, the goal was to move all of that back into the house when remediation was complete, and it was not. Yes, in 2001, they did not muck their garage, and we did not know that. We did not discover that they did not muck the flooded garage until my dad died in 2008. That was hard. It looked like it had been through a muddy washing machine. There were dead animals in the contents and insects, and just a layer of dirty silt all over everything after the water had drained out of the garage. That was Tropical Storm Allison.
Lillian Peck 05:02
When you first started noticing the issues, did you try to find information on hoarding, mental health, or any resources in the area? If so, how did that search go for you?
TN 05:17
I’m an RN, so I did some scholarly research on hoarding. I think I know how I first became aware of that actual term for mental illness, but I did look around, and at that time, let’s call it 2008, there were no local resources for any of that. You could hire junk removers, I guess, but she would have been completely unwilling. She was unwilling to allow other people to help her because she was ashamed, which played a big factor in 2017.
Lillian Peck 06:03
When did you first join the Facebook community group that we’re in together?
TN 06:09
I think that was after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Actually, that group was a little dormant. I think I found it and maybe submitted an application to join earlier, but then somebody revitalized it after 2017. I found it amazing. Amazing support, knowing that there are so many people out there who have the same struggles, and just the lack of judgment of that group is amazing.
Lillian Peck 06:10
I agree. What emotions or labels did you initially associate with your parent’s behavior?
TN 06:56
Anger and resentment and frustration.
Lillian Peck 06:59
Did you communicate this with your mom?
TN 07:06
The frustration absolutely, at the beginning and then later on, I probably did verbalize [more]. I never had any sympathy for her.
Lillian Peck 07:22
Is your mother still around today?
TN 07:24
Yes, she’s [REDACTED] years old, and she’s on hospice for advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
Lillian Peck 07:33
How do you approach your emotions now? How would you say they’ve changed?
TN 07:45
She is now in assisted living. I moved her to assisted living in June of 2023 because of her Alzheimer’s disease. Because of Alzheimer’s disease in the controlled environment, she doesn’t have access to her main hoarding things, such as newspapers, junk mail, and things like that. She still will try to hoard used paper towels, salt, pepper, things, everything old people hoard in a facility. Depending on what she says and does, I still become very triggered, frustrated, and angry, and I now take a blood pressure pill before I go see her every single time. It has affected my health.
Lillian Peck 08:39
Do you have any theories about what caused your mom to start hoarding?
TN 08:46
I do. The food and housing insecurity as a child. I think the death of her father, the death of her mother, and then the multiple disasters. Her home first flooded from Tropical Storm Claudia in 1979. She first lost belongings that were precious to her in 1979, and then she lost more in 2001. Also, she had FOMO. I questioned her, you know, “Why are we keeping these newspapers? Why do you need to have these things?” And she says, “I need to read every word, or I feel like I’m missing out.” I thought that was very kind of an OCD thing, almost, but the unwillingness to discard things is definitely the hoarder. This compulsion to know and have everything, I also think, is a component of mental hoarding, the hoarding of knowledge with her and memories, not just objects.
Lillian Peck 10:19
What strategies did you use to cope when trying to help her with her space?
TN 10:27
Well, we did several cleanouts and stopped because it wasn’t good for us. In reference to natural disasters, the last natural disaster that really affected the entire family was Hurricane Harvey in 2017. We had not been in her home since 2013, and the destruction from that storm and the inability to muck out the house or have strangers help in 2017 was completely overwhelming. Literally, the flood water in her house was over five feet, and it did not drain for five days. The flood water contained raw human sewage, agricultural and petrochemical runoff and just every type of stuff. When you have a 2600 square foot house that had pretty much the entire house up to four feet high with something, clothing, papers, things like that, that doesn’t drain, the mold was unbelievable. It burned our lungs. We tried to clear the house for a day and a half, and the weight of wet newspaper that is completely contaminated made it extremely difficult to clean out the house. In fact, US Marines tried to help clean the house, but they didn’t make it an hour. These were US Marines. I had to hire a contractor to clean it out. He had a hard time keeping workers, and it cost $30,000.
Lillian Peck 12:43
So you’d say that your mother’s condition has caused you health problems, monetary problems, mental health problems?
TN 12:56
Yes, in fact, I developed arthritis in my right thumb so severely, from all of these cleanouts and all of this work, carrying, cleaning, dumping, heaving things. I had to have my thumb reconstructed in 2019, so it caused permanent disability.
Lillian Peck 13:20
Does your mother know this or take responsibility for it?
TN 13:25
No, she does not acknowledge any of it. She’s in complete denial, and she blames me. I forced her to sell the house after Hurricane Harvey because she was 82 years old, and she would have died during Hurricane Harvey, except that I, for some reason, knew that I needed to get her out the night before the storm. The bores of her house were blown off by a flash flood at 2 am the next morning. So besides the fact that she has poor decision-making and executive dysfunction, the fact that I would have to assist her in rebuilding this house, basically from the slab and the studs up, and she can’t make a decision, I did not have the time or the energy or the goodwill to assist her in that, and I forced her to sell it. She’s never forgiven [me].
Lillian Peck 14:38
You mentioned that it was a group effort to do the cleanouts. Who participated in these?
TN 14:46
My husband and my son and I regret asking my son to do so. It’s a big regret of my life. I never should have exposed him to that.
Lillian Peck 14:59
Is your son older?
TN 15:00
He’s now [REDACTED]. In 2017, he was [REDACTED… young teenage age].
Lillian Peck 15:12
Do you mind if I have the first names of your family members, including your mom?
TN 15:18
My mom’s name is B, my husband’s name is T, and my son’s name is J, if you would use their first initial.
Lillian Peck 15:32
Yes, I can do that. Yeah, absolutely. So, this house that you described your mother owned, was this your childhood home, or was this a home that she bought later in your life?
TN 15:47
It was my childhood home.
Lillian Peck 15:50
What emotions did you feel when you watched your childhood home and spaces start going into disarray?
TN 15:57
By the time of Hurricane Harvey, I hated that house. When she started hoarding it, I felt a lot of disappointment that my son did not enjoy the house the way I did. I did not expect to get emotional.
Lillian Peck 16:15
It’s okay.
TN 16:17
I felt a lot of loss because we couldn’t have the family holidays I had experienced in that house with my son. But by the time the house flooded, I had already been wishing for a disaster, something just to wipe it off the face of the Earth. It was just a fallen chain.
Lillian Peck 16:46
Do you want to take a second?
TN 16:49
No, I’m okay. I will tell you that we sold it to investors. I got a really good price. I actually created a bidding war because people were buying up homes in the area of the storm, and the investor who rehabbed it and sold it allowed my son and I to tour the house afterwards, and it was incredibly cathartic. All of the bad energy was gone.
Lillian Peck 17:13
That’s amazing.
TN 17:15
Yes, and I really hope that the people that live in it from now on are happy, but I really hope that they’re safe because that house is on a curtain and [REDACTED] gets flooded. Every flood in [REDACTED] is worse, right?
Lillian Peck 17:31
Hopefully, while doing renovations, they added some improvements.
TN 17:36
No, they did not. That house was a black dot on the FEMA map, meaning it should have been torn down, and they did not raise it, and houses taller have been built around that house now. So it will probably flood worse the next time. They lied in 2001. So there’s this rule: to rebuild the house, the house can’t have more than 50% value of damage, and my parents hired an engineer to lie in 2001 to rebuild the house. They should have been forced into a sale in 2001. That’s my mother. That was totally my mother. My dad just didn’t fire him.
Lillian Peck 18:38
During your early years before she started hoarding, did your mother show signs of this personality type?
TN 18:48
Yes. What’s interesting is that she was incredibly OCD. The house had to be magazine picture-perfect. It had to be spotless. She was a huge germaphobe and terrified of insects, which, in [REDACTED], are endemic. When my son was little, and he would spend the night, she would wipe his feet with Clorox wipes. She was completely blind to the insect and rodent infestation in her home as the hoarding grew worse, and she wanted to save items contaminated with sewage water. The logic was disconnected. She just could not understand that when rodents walk, they pee and that anything with rodent feces is going to have rodent pee. She could not understand that things like that were unsafe and needed to be destroyed. So she was rigid and OCD, just in a different way.
Lillian Peck 20:12
Do you still attempt to respect your mother’s wishes at this point, or have they gone out the window?
TN 20:21
That’s done. I’m in charge. In fact, she has this thing where she uses paper towels and hangs them to dry. I have to go to her assisted living weekly and dispose of things, and I tell her straight to her face, “We’re not hoarding.” That is cathartic.
Lillian Peck 20:48
How was her reaction to that?
TN 20:51
Very quiet. On Monday, I’m calling hospice because she needs more anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic meds. When I visited yesterday, the OCD behaviors were really in full force. She has chased staff down the hall because they wanted to throw her garbage away. So even at [REDACTED] years old, barely mobile, severely, severely demented, that is one part of her personality that remains, which is really sad.
Lillian Peck 21:35
You mentioned that she takes medications. Has she taken these medications before she arrived at the assisted living facility?
TN 21:44
No. She always thought that any type of medication for mental health, like depression or any mental health conditions in general, was a sign of a weak character and not a brain disease. So she refused all types of medications, and now she has to be on them, or she would require a higher level of care. I would have to move her to the locked ward.
Lillian Peck 22:22
Circling back to your house, your childhood room – when things started getting bad, did she encroach upon that space?
TN 22:32
Oh, yes. We have a photo of me after Hurricane Harvey. We have a photo of me standing on the debris in my childhood room, touching the ceiling. It was completely full, and that room was probably five feet high. Now, before the hoarding, if I had no control over my childhood room. She decorated it the way she wanted it. I was not allowed to hang any of my own posters or things like that, like most teenage rooms. Like I said it was magazine photo perfect. I wasn’t allowed to express myself in my childhood room.
Lillian Peck 23:18
So, it never really felt like your room?
TN 23:22
I kept my stuff there, and I did simmer in it. I never felt that it was my room to do what I wanted to with it. Never.
Lillian Peck 23:38
How has this affected your living space, your control of your living space?
TN 23:44
At this moment, I’m a minimalist. We keep almost nothing. My house is spotless. I have a housekeeper, and she says that we’re the cleanest people she’s ever worked for. I always gave my son free rein of his room and his belongings as long as he kept it tidy. This is kind of an interesting aside. When I changed my son’s room from a little boy’s room to a teenage room, we redecorated. He had input on that and everything. My mother requested the contents of his childhood room. She wanted to hoard his childhood. I felt that it wasn’t so much about the items; it was about hoarding the childhood and just never getting rid of anything. She never let anything out of her control, even though she didn’t have control over it.
Lillian Peck 24:49
Did you oblige?
TN 24:50
Absolutely not. There was a little statue that he made in art school, and she got that. I told her, “Those are J’s belongings to do with what he will. They are not your belongings.”
Lillian Peck 25:10
Have you ever felt conflicting feelings towards your mother?
TN 25:16
My feelings towards my mother are very negative and have been for very, very long. I have developed some sympathy for her because of her dementia. I do feel sorry for her as well. But I really only take care of my mother because no one else will. It’s what my father and her father would have wanted. It’s just an obligation.
Lillian Peck 25:44
Do you have any siblings that refuse to be in the picture?
TN 25:48
I have two half-siblings. They’re her daughters, and they absolutely have zero contact with her. The younger daughter, who’s eight years older than me, has not seen my mother since 2017. The older daughter, who’s 11 years older than me, probably last saw her in about 2007.
Lillian Peck 26:21
Do you remain in contact with them?
TN 26:24
I am. I have minimal contact with the daughter, K, is her name. I have minimal contact with her. I keep her updated on her mother’s condition, usually via email. My mother had urosepsis in October. It did not look like she was going to survive it. I emailed my sister, and she responded by asking what I was going to do with her body.
Lillian Peck 26:57
So, definitely not a stable community that you have to lean back on?
TN 27:03
Absolutely not. When my mother dies, I will never have anything to do with this woman. The oldest sister, V, doesn’t even know where I live or have my contact info. I am okay with no contact. I support that. I support that with my friends. I’m a nurse. I support that with my own patient’s children.
Lillian Peck 27:31
Do you know where your boundaries are?
TN 27:34
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely,
Lillian Peck 27:38
Kind of switching over to hoarding as a mental health issue. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about hoarding, especially from outsiders?
TN 27:52
That cleaning up will fix it and that the children have any control over what their parents do. There’s a lot of blame on family members, and hoarders will resort to violence to protect their items, and the general public does not understand that. I hear a lot, “But it’s your parents,” but I don’t believe that people should have to associate with their abusers. And hoarding is abuse.
Lillian Peck 28:35
Was there any point during your mother’s life before you put her into assisted living when you were considering calling Adult Protective Services?
TN 28:53
I would have liked to, but I didn’t, because as a registered nurse, I work with geriatrics, I know how this system works, and I knew that they wouldn’t give in assistance because in [REDACTED], what they look for is: Do you have electricity? Do you have AC? Do you have heat? Do you have running water? Do you have fresh food in a refrigerator? And do you have egress? And she met all of those criteria. I do call Adult Protective Services for one of my patients. I work in home care, so I go into homes of the elderly and hoarder homes too, which might be interesting to you, because I am very objective in hoarder homes. It’s not my parent, and I actually will help make plans for hoarders to be in compliance and stay in their homes, especially if there are pets involved. I do have to call Adult Protective Services. I probably call them about six times a year, and it’s not just for hoarding.
Lillian Peck 30:14
You talked about pets. Did your mom ever have any pets?
TN 30:19
We always had at least one dog. Yeah, and with the last dog, she believed the dog was afraid of being groomed. She believed that the dog was afraid of the vet, but she wanted to keep the dog’s hair long, so she would sedate the dog and attempt to groom the dog, brush out every mat herself over a period of two days, and then she would keep the dog hair. I really felt that the dog suffered. I got a hold of the dog one time when they went out of town and had it shaved and she became furious. My dogs go to the groomer every six weeks. We also have dogs that don’t shed because I can’t tolerate and have a real problem with loose dog hair floating around.
Lillian Peck 31:32
Do you know if your mother’s parents were hoarders?
TN 31:36
Absolutely, they were not. We called my grandmother’s house the museum. But my mother kept every single thing of my grandmother’s that did not go to the estate sale or her sister and hoarded the items in a storage unit where her sister didn’t have any access to them. I secretly have been cleaning out the last storage unit and sending items to her sister that belonged to her sister that she kept away from her sister, which has caused her sister a lot of happiness that she has them and a lot of anger towards my mother that she kept them from her.
Lillian Peck 32:29
Is your relationship with your aunt, her sister, better? Do you connect with her?
TN 32:35
She’s my best friend. She’s the mother figure that I have.
Lillian Peck 32:42
Do you live near her, or is she farther away?
TN 32:51
My Aunt, L, lives in [REDACTED], but we text several times a week and share photos. She does check on her sister. My mother is unable to use a phone anymore, but she did try very earnestly to contact my mother and text her, and keep in touch with my mother. My mother was non-responsive. Even when she was able to respond, she was non-responsive. My mother always felt inferior to her sister for some reason.
Lillian Peck 33:26
Is her sister older than her? Younger?
TN 33:29
Her sister’s 13 years younger.
Lillian Peck 33:33
So there is big age difference.
TN 33:34
Big age difference. And her sister has no hoarding tendencies. Zero.
Lillian Peck 33:43
I did some research and found that hoarding could be genetic, so that’s why I was asking.
TN 33:50
I think there is a component to that, absolutely, just that there’s a genetic component to mental illness, and I think that just follows. Also, I think that people who spend childhoods in a hoard never learn what you’re supposed to live like. They never learn how to clean, how often the sheets should be changed, how often your clothes should be washed. I think there’s a genetic predisposition, and then there’s the environment that they’re raised in. I’ve thought a lot about this for years and years.
Lillian Peck 34:33
Do you feel comfortable talking about your experience with outsiders in your life?
TN 34:39
Absolutely, I’m honest with everyone.
Lillian Peck 34:42
What took you to get to that point? Was there ever a point where you were ashamed about it?
TN 34:50
I kept her secret for a very long time. Hurricane Harvey blew that secret wide open. I decided to tell my truth after Hurricane Harvey, not keep her secrets anymore, and that was very freeing.
Lillian Peck 35:14
Do you ever feel like people don’t understand your situation or pass judgment?
TN 35:21
Absolutely, absolutely. I think people think, “I’ve got a lot of shoes; I’m a hoarder.”I don’t think they understand the dysfunction and the filth and the damage it does to the people around them. Because I see clutter all the time, right? And you know, the generations that I work with as my patients, their houses are full, but they’re not hoarded. There’s a big difference. There’s a lifetime of possessions, and then there’s hoarding.
Lillian Peck 36:07
At what point did you realize that your mother’s behavior was not just a behavior, not just clutter, but more of a mental health disorder?
TN 36:19
It would have been when my dad died. We discovered that she had been making him put garbage into storage units. She had been making him put stuff up in the attic, which she had no business going up into the attic. That’s when it really came to a head – everything that she’d been hiding from us because she couldn’t hide it anymore because she needed our help.
Lillian Peck 36:51
What advice would you give to others who might be experiencing similar challenges with a hoarding parent?
TN 36:58
Get as far away as you can, if you can, and never look back. I regret that I did not leave the area for college, established a career, and married somebody whose career is stuck here as well. But then again, when I was college-age, it wasn’t like this. I don’t think that we owe hoarders anything and that people are being abused by their hoarder relative, that they just need to cut off contact, and if they can physically remove themselves from the area, I think they should. I don’t think people should try to clean out because it damages you physically and mentally.
Lillian Peck 37:50
How has grappling with this situation helped shape your identity or values outside of just keeping your space tidy?
TN 37:59
I think I’m really an advocate for adult children, period. Because I deal with adult children who have physically ill parents, who have financially abusive parents, whatever. So I think I’m a big advocate for adult children, and I think my mother taught me what kind of mother not to be, because she also has narcissistic personality disorder and was neglectful and distant during my childhood. I very close relationship with my son.
Lillian Peck 38:50
I guess I’ve run out of official questions, but I wanted to open it up and give you a chance to say anything that you really wanted to get out, if you haven’t had the chance to say it yet.
TN 39:03
We’ve discussed the myths the general public has about hoarding disorder. And I also think that the mental health professions approach it completely wrong. You know, if you watch the Hoarders TV show, allowing people to touch everything and make decisions and coddle people is, I think, the wrong approach. Really, I think the only time the mental health professions should get involved in it is when the hoarder seeks help themselves because otherwise, I think it’s an incurable, progressive, sometimes fatal disease.
Lillian Peck 39:49
I guess I’ll share my story a little bit. My mom has been a hoarder my entire life. I’m 23 currently. Yeah, so I grew up in that. I’ve gotten past it and am living on my own now. I discovered the Facebook group a little more than a year ago, I think. I haven’t been very active in it because, you know, I’m still coming to terms with my mother’s hoarding, and it’s a little hard, little fresh, but my mom went through a house fire, about a year ago. And now she’s selling the home that you know was hoarded. We moved around, so it was one of the homes that I had lived in for a good amount of time. But I thought about my experience and everything you’ve said about your mother, something clicked with my mother. It’s very similar.
TN 40:49
You do find that though, especially with the female hoarders, that there’s so many common threads among these women.
Lillian Peck 40:59
I spoke to someone who has a father who hoards and even his behaviors were so similar, like, for example, their father can’t hold a real official job. My mom’s the same way. Did your mom have trouble holding a job because of her hoarding?
TN 41:23
Actually, no, she was a very successful political organizer, and she ran phone banks like a general in the army. There’s the OCD part, but she neglected her family for her career.
Lillian Peck 41:48
So, there was a balance issue?
TN 41:50
Yes, and then the appearance thing, right? Because a lot of people are walking around that look just fine on the outside, and you have no idea what their house looks like, right? To this day, if she had control over it, it would look perfect. Was your mom like that, or was she more sloppy?
Lillian Peck 42:11
It was more sloppy, I guess. But yeah, there was a certain level of deception with showing it to the general public. She was never open about it.
TN 42:27
Were you ever afraid that child protective services would be called on you?
Lillian Peck 42:33
Actually, they have been. I don’t know if it’s necessarily Child Protective Services, but the city I live in, Worcester, Massachusetts, has had several enforcement officers come by. The city inspection came by, and kind of looked around. My mom tended to keep things outside of the home as well, but more towards the back of the house, so they would come by and tell her to clean it up and then threaten to come inside the house if she did not clean it up. And there were several times that happened. Additionally, we had some neighbors across the street who were complete neat freaks and didn’t like the idea that anyone was different than they were, so they called the city of Worcester.
TN 43:21
Did that cause you a lot of stress as a child?
Lillian Peck 43:24
At that point, I was in college. I was in my undergraduate education. My mom communicated it with me, but it wasn’t the biggest deal because my brother had started going to college then, so she was by herself in that home. And as you said you were secretly hoping for things to change, secretly hoping for something to knock it down, I was secretly hoping my mom would be forced to live somewhere else. It’s a guilty secret, a guilty shame. I don’t feel good that I don’t want her to live there, but in the back of my mind, I’m like, “Thank God the house burned down”.
TN 44:00
You should never feel any guilt about it, ever. Yeah, I’ve absolved you of your guilt. Did you ever wish that somebody could come to rescue you?
Lillian Peck 44:08
Oh, absolutely. There was a time in my life during my high school years when not only was the hoarding the worst, but my mental health wasn’t doing well because I couldn’t have friends over. I had a boyfriend at the time I couldn’t have over. I felt trapped in that space. So I reached out to my father, who divorced my mother when I was 11, and asked if I could move in with him, but he’s since moved on to a new family. I have step-siblings and a stepmother, and he said, “I don’t have a place for you.” But it’s okay. I was in therapy for several years, I’ll say that.
TN 44:51
I’m just sorry that happened to you. That’s just sad.
Lillian Peck 44:55
It’s the way it is, unfortunately, with hoarding. I am under the same thought that hoarding is not something you can change unless the person truly wants to. And with my mother’s hoarding, she went through a fire and still has tendencies, even though she’s with a partner that keeps her in check. But she still collects things. She still has a hard time parting with things. It’s not nearly as bad, and definitely not, I would say, a hoarding house, but she still has the tendencies.
TN 45:30
Did she try to keep items that were damaged in the fire?
Lillian Peck 45:34
Oh, absolutely, yeah. When we were going through the home, because it didn’t topple, there were things still in there. I took a single item out of there that I thought could be preserved. It was a little metal lamp with glass, like a Tiffany lamp. She tried to save everything. It all smelled like smoke and plastic.
TN 46:08
That’s a shame, yeah. So, what are your career ambitions?
Lillian Peck 46:12
I’m currently going into science journalism and science communication with Johns Hopkins, and because of my experience with hoarding, I find that writing about mental health just kind of clicks. So this paper that I’m writing is for one of my classes, but I’m really involved in it, and I’m hoping that if an opportunity to publish it in the future comes up, of course, with your permission and anyone else who’s involved, and I could always even remove your initials and make up new names for you, I would be interested.
TN 46:50
I think what you’re doing, you know, exposing this, even if you’re just exposing it to your class, and hopefully, on a wider level, you’re advocating for families of hoarders.
Lillian Peck 47:04
I agree that the hoarding shows don’t show anything of substance. It’s nothing. Nothing’s real, and you never get the perspective of the family members besides them being like, “Oh, wow, this was hard.” So, I think there’s a lot that hasn’t been talked about, and I want to talk about it.
TN 47:28
I think there’s a lot more anger and verbal abuse on the part of the hoarder to the families than people ever understand.
Lillian Peck 47:37
They don’t show that on television. They can’t.
TN 47:41
My mother would fight you over a shopping bag.
Lillian Peck 47:45
My mom doesn’t get angry. She plays the victim. She’ll start getting pouty.
TN 48:01
The overlap of narcissism and hoarding fascinates me because there is such overlap.
Lillian Peck 48:11
And it’s overlapped with OCD and depression, anxiety. My mom has ADHD.
TN 48:18
Always untreated.
Lillian Peck 48:21
So many things culminate in hoarding. And trauma, of course. The interesting thing about my mother is that her mother was more of a hoarder than my mother was because her mother hoarded animals, unfortunately. I never met my grandmother. She died when my mom was 17, so that’s another part of it, but she told me stories about how there were 30 to 40 cats all around the house, not controlled at all.
TN 48:56
That’s when authority needs to step in.
Lillian Peck 49:00
But my mom told me that at that point, it was just her and her sister against her mom. No one else was involved. They were young at that time, and they had no idea what to do.
TN 49:11
It was always a secret.
Lillian Peck 49:14
Exactly. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate talking to you, and this article means a lot to me.
TN 49:28
I would love you to send me a copy. I will text you my email address. I would love to see a copy of it. As as a nurse, I had to learn how to be nurse, right? So I always support people in their scholarly endeavors, because you can’t do research withoutsubjects. Yeah, you can’t learn about people without the people participating with you. So keep up the good work.
Lillian Peck 49:58
Thank you!
TN 49:59
I love science writing, I love my scholarly articles.
Lillian Peck 50:04
The amount of content that I’m getting, honestly, might turn into a few articles, all of which will have your initials only. So anything that comes up in my future that I think you would be a good source for, I will let you know and send a copy over to you.
TN 50:25
Going back as you’re writing, if you have any questions or want to clarify anything, or want more details, just let me know definitely.
Lillian Peck 50:31
Absolutely! I’m going to save your number. And I think especially since you deal with hoarding outside of your own family, I think you’re invaluable person to have by my side, so I’m going to stay in contact.
TN 50:44
It is different. To me, my objectivity to other hoarders shocks me.
Lillian Peck 50:54
Yeah, it’s shocking. Honestly, I can’t imagine being put into a situation that reminds me of my mother’s again.
TN 51:01
But I’m also very protective of my caregivers because I do the initial intakes, and that is my caregiver’s work environment. There are work environments that I will not send a caregiver to. I’m very protective of other people being exposed to that. Thank you so much for allowing me to participate. I hope you get a good grade.
