Interesting read
 

I love to read nonfiction and am currently reading a memoir about hoarding called Coming Clean. It's amazing the parallels between growing up in an alcoholic home and a home with hoarding. The secrecy, hiding the truth, presenting a facade, the fear that the family secret will be found out. Even the dynamics with the nonhoarder fighting and trying to control the hoarder. The hoarder would even hide bags in closets.

Interesting too how the author recognizes at a young age that her father can't control the hoarding, its like a sickness and she protects her father but resents her mother at times.

The author mentions that in her research on hoarding she came across the statistic that ACOA's are 4x more likely to become hoarders.

A good book for anyone else who likes nonfiction. The author is Kimberly Rae Miller.

thanks Catherine. amazing all the parallels out there!?

I recently read, well listened to, an audiobook - The War of Art by Steven Pressman, about unleashing creativity and overcoming RESISTANCE. I was struck throughout at how easily one could apply the approach to recovery.

quick excerpt:

Is that what it takes? Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance? Does Resistance have to cripple and disfigure our lives before we awake to its existence? How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don't do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is telling us to? Resistance defeats us. If tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, overnight every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with the junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and the medical profession from top to bottom. Domestic abuse would become extinct, as would addiction, obesity, migraine headaches, road rage and dandruff.

Look in your own heart. Unless I'm crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And unless I'm crazy, you're no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you.

I generally don't gravitate towards non-fiction but now I'm interested in both of those books. :) Thanks for sharing ladies!

love that book quote...empowering! thanks.

Loved this book!! (and non-fiction/memoirs in general)

One of my favorite memoirs is Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller.

Thanks Anvil for the excerpt. Pretty powerful.

Catherine, very interesting! My A's mother is a hoarder, and an ACOA. My A is also an ACOA and certainly has hoarding tendencies.

I'll look up that book. Thanks for the info!

ETA: Just checked the online library catalog for my county and it's there. I put it on hold and should have it soon! Thanks again, Catherine.

We have several instances of hoarding in my family, too. All were either ACOAs or former alcoholics.

If you like Stephen King...the Shining and the new sequel, Doctor Sleep. Alcoholism, AA, Narcissitic mom...

I read Dr. Sleep about a month ago. When my husband was actively drinking Jack Torrance from The Shining always came to mind. I think in the afterward of Dr. Sleep Steven King talks about Jack being his idea of untreated alcoholism.