One Wee Spark

 It's been years since I've posted here at 1weespark. I didn't disappear, however. I had my head down, studying hard to get my MSW in clinical social work. And writing. Writing in a different way than I had been writing here. Creating content that I needed desperately thirteen years ago when my mother's health started getting iffy. Since January, I've been working on creating content that focuses specifically on what it is like to have a parent who hoards ( PWH ). As a clinical social worker and as someone who grew up amidst my mother's trash and treasures, I wanted to work specifically to create resources for adults like us. This is challenging, to be sure, because although we often have similarities in our stories, it's necessary to remain aware that each family has its own challenges. Anything that I create, it's important to me that it embraces the spectrum of experiences. Similarly, it's important to me to honor your expertise and your insight i...

It was six years ago this fall that my mother fell in between the piles of trash , treasures and trinkets in her home, leading to the most difficult season in my life thus far. I wandered through that period with few resources and guides. It wasn't that no one else had been in a similar situation. It was that so many families and individuals were keeping the hoarding secret held so closely and tightly that I did not have access to their knowledge, their experience, their wisdom. Swirling Question, courtesy of flickr But no more! More and more families are sharing their secrets and offering advice. My brothers and sisters from the hoard (along with myself) are finding our voices and helping others find their way through these tough situations. If today you find yourself on the brink of a forced hoarding intervention, or if you simply know that someday you may find yourself there , I hope you will head over and check out this list of questions I've put together. Helping ...

When I first offered the Buried in Treasures Workshop in May 2012, I had a shortsighted view of what we were doing. My goal initially was to educate myself on hoarding behaviors and learn to help my mother. I fell into the group process accidentally--because the structure for help was a group format, and because as I tried to make sense of my life in relation to my mother's hoarding behaviors I had gone public. I became the most accessible point of hoarding information in Spokane. My focus was on the "now," and did not extend beyond the 20 weeks it would take to hold the workshop by much. I knew I needed to make ongoing, long-term support after the workshop available but my vision into the future didn't extend very far. (Borrowed from the Internet, original source unknown)

Borrowed from thewatershed.com As a child growing up in the emotional and environmental chaos that is a hoarded home, I believed that somehow my desire to change or help my mother find her own change was enough. Psychologists call it magical thinking, and it occurs for all children to differing degrees. Magical thinking is the belief that a child has that somehow their actions initiate or stop other actions that are independent of their actual abilities.  But many children grow up to become broken, hurt adults (as I am and continue to overcome) that have not been able to identify how their magical thinking is simply that... M  A  G  I  C  A  L.

[Credit is due to my dear friend TLH for the word picture contained herein. It's all my writing, but I owe her for the visual that helped me find "my way" so to speak!] Have you ever been on a road trip in a city that you were not familiar with, and although relying heavily on your trusty GPS when you realize that you've made a turn just seconds before the GPS dialogue begins, "Recalculating...?" Honestly, I find that female voice slightly condescending as she points out what I've already realized. Duh! I know! And yet, twenty minutes later, that same female voice warns me to bear left when the freeway forks ahead. That voice is calm and soothing when it guides me, welcoming and reassuring.