Hi, beloved blog followers. The following entry is an example of the kind of thing I am including in the book I'm working on. The book is framed around blog material, the cancer, etc., but I am weaving in some (mostly composite) client stories. I am having fun. Tell me what you think, either here or via email. Thanks very much -- p

I get a call from a concerned daughter. Her mom, Anne, appears to be a hoarder. The daughter came home to visit recently and was blown away by how bad it’s gotten. Anne buys things – dresses, shoes, vases, knick knacks, coats, lamps, throws, mugs -- pretty compulsively, and all the kids are all worried about mom. They are worried about losing her in the stacks of boxes in the house, and worried about being left with the stuff when she is gone.

Anne has more than a dozen full-sized Christmas trees in the basement, dismantled and packed in red and green boxes. Each has its own set of decorations, of course. When they’re all set up, the house is fantastic – a childhood dream of a winter wonderland, tiny lights in every corner. But getting to anything in the basement involves the kind of operation they undertook when those Chilean miners were trapped. It is driving her husband and kids a little nuts.

The Easter items are in stacks of pink and green boxes, and Anne could open a wholesale business selling plastic bunnies, eggs, and chicks. She leases 6 storage spaces for the overage that doesn’t fit in her house.

When Anne comes in for her first session, she is cheery, cranked up to a tightness that I can’t seem to help her loosen. Supposedly this is “resistance,” a way of distancing from her feelings and locking her knees against growth and change. I find myself liking her very much, and befriending the resistant, resilient person with her heart of gold, silver, tin, rattan, crystal, beach stone, Plexiglas, pewter, wood, and fur.

She wants me to know she is okay, that she just loves having stuff around her. She loves that if someone is looking for a Halloween costume, she has exactly what you are looking for. She keeps it all in order, and she loves that she can get her hands on a pair of fangs and have them ready for you by tonight’s party.

Anne’s very fondest childhood memories are of going to the dump with her dad. He would find treasure among the trash and bring it home, his eyes sparkling with delight in the fabulous find. Her dad got caught in his own eddy over time, to the point where home health aides could not get to the back bedroom when he needed help near the end. Still, I find it difficult to pathologize his daughter’s behavior. She needs help with her compulsive behavior and the anxiety that drives it, but geez, so do I.

Anne sees that there is a problem. She sees that she sometimes has more of a relationship with things than with the people she wants to be close to. As we work together, she begins to find another way of dealing with her belongings. She starts giving away huge amounts of it – to strengthen her connection to the people she loves. The dresses, gowns, and boas go to a friend and his collective of drag queens. These guys think they have simply died and gone to heaven when the boxes of booty arrive. It turns out Anne is not exactly a hoarder; she is a giver who has a desperate need to have things on hand that she can pass to others.

I am not sure how long the giveaway will last, and when she might feel the need to replenish her supplies. Plus we haven’t gotten to the storage spaces. Still, the house is getting cleared of large numbers of brightly colored boxes. It is bittersweet for her, and she doesn’t part with everything, of course – of her Easter things she keeps the sheepish wolf in bunny clothing, which seems so apt I can hardly stand it.

I am about to ask, “Is it a relief to get rid of all this crap?” And then I remember that it’s not crap to Anne, so I say, “How is it to be letting go of all these things you’ve gathered over the years?” She tears up, and I realize I’ve made the right choice.

“Crap” was my own stuff about sometimes feeling weighted down by my belongings. I remember being able to fit everything I owned into a VW bus. There is a small but real part of me that misses that. I get that Masahide poem: “Barn’s burnt down. Now I can see the moon.”

All I do is encourage Anne to focus on her feelings before she feels the need to buy something, and to try to figure out if there is another way to address that feeling. She takes the ball (football, baseball, volleyball, soccer, super, croquet, bocce) and runs. She just wants to recreate the sort of moments she had with her dad.

I feel a bit like a fraud working with Anne. She is more proper than I am, for one thing, and has lots of ideas about how people should behave. I feel a little busted as she talks.

She tells me an in-depth story about how she used to be a 5^th grade teacher and taught children about the word shit. She explained to them in great detail why it is ignorant and uneducated to say the word shit. She drew a pile of shit on the board, and described it. That’s a gutsy thing for a teacher to do. Is this what you mean to say? she asked them. Is this what you would like to be talking about? This stuff that comes out of your body? The stuff that smells like this? That has this texture? Can you think of others words to say what you mean?

My mom felt the same way. She once told me that she pictured actual rats whenever she heard the word. Once as we drove along in the VW bus, she cried, “Ding dong dang it!” and I thought something really, really bad must have happened. Like we were in deep b.m., for sure. It turns out she had forgotten her purse. It must have hit her at a weak moment.

My mom and Anne both had strong feelings about expletives being, more than anything, uncreative.

When Anne leaves the office, I feel a wave of relief. Shit, I think. That was a close call.