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 both fiction and nonfiction writing.
“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.”
Jessie Sholl