Deborah Derrickson Kossmann and I met as resident fellows at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts several years ago. Kossman, poet and essayist of note, was working on the manuscript which would later become an award-winning memoir about her mother’s mental illness and extreme, secret hoarding: Lost Found Kept. My then novel-in-progress was inspired by renowned psychiatrist Frieda Fromm Reichmann (Frieda’s Song, Apprentice House Press, Loyola University Baltimore). Both on retreat from day jobs as therapists, we chatted a bit about our dual identities as writers and mental health professionals.
We’ve not met again in person, but over the years we have stayed in touch. It was a particular pleasure to learn Kossman received the inaugural Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award from Trio House Press for Lost Found Kept, her debut memoir. Now in the midst of launch and book tour season, Deborah continues her practice as a clinical psychologist. We caught up on the phone in one of her rare quiet moments, chatting as Deborah played with her cat.
What’s it like for you to balance being a professional in the field of mental health, individual and family relationships, and being an author, being the point of view narrator, an involved party in this memoir?
My goal is to be truthful and not let the psychologist job get in the way. Not to filter, not to manage my professional presentation or reputation. Finished, it’s an interesting process. Of course there’s psychology in the book, but it’s not a psychological book. I actually read more about hoarding after the book. Yes, being a psychologist helped me manage my mom. But I’m still a daughter. I’m feeling more exposed now, having the book out there. The best psychologists are human. And there are human issues in the transitions of aging, even if it’s not a hoarding situation. A mother with mental illness is a situation many people have. But in order for a memoir to be universal, it must be both very particular, close detail, and [include] experiences that are universal.
When did you decide you were writing a memoir?
I’ve always been a poet and an essayist. I’d started writing a book about becoming a writer before the stuff with my mother happened. I was shopping it around. Everyone said, ‘it’s amazing, but something’s missing.’
I was trying to keep my mother out of my memoir about becoming a writer, to write a book about how family shaped me into a writer — without my mother. I wasn’t going to write about her till after her death. (Laughs). Didn’t work! Andrew Wyeth said you can take out a lot of things, but they are still there, a feeling is still left, you have to put everything in.
So you were already writing, intending not to focus on your mother. But your mother’s situation deteriorated. And your urgent involvement escalated.
Yes. As everything with my mother’s house was revealed, I realized the story was my mother. That was the throughline. And you know, one usual problem with memoirs can be the soggy middle; it is hard to keep the perspective of telling a story. You can get very bogged down in what happened, find it hard to move forward, question where to end. The hoarding organized the book.
The hoarding, your discovery of the extreme hoarding, your dealing with it. Do you see it as a journey story?
Not when writing. But yes, now. Travelling through the hellish experience and what came out of it. Doing this with my mother was a transformative process for me. Validated how I always really saw her, but Mother functioned at such a high level that her illness was not acknowledged.
It becomes a story not just of your mother’s illness, but also your relationship.
During editing, I was asked ‘whose story is this?’ For me, it was always my story, my story of how I saw her. My sister and I talked about this, my husband and I. My sister and husband said ‘It is your story. Tell it your way.’ In my mind, the book was never going to be published while mother was alive, but I was submitting it. Mom died in July 2023. The book was accepted and won the prize that September. Timing is so strange. It was a question then, whether to include her death…ultimately, it was important to include it.
Reminds me of your question in the book, “Where is the line between protecting others and protecting yourself?”
This was not my shame, it felt like a family shame. And telling the secret is often my role in my family. No surprise I became a psychologist.
You’re almost giving a demonstration of the ethical uncovering of secrets.
And showing how to keep connection even in rage or pain. You don’t get to divorce your family. Sometimes it’s useful to take a break, but cut-offs don’t work. I was so happy when a reader’s review commented I had compassion. I wanted to convey compassion for everyone in the book, particularly my mother. You know I found my mother’s journal — like she was writing to me. She was a frustrated writer. This book was the only thing I wrote and never showed her. She must have known…
And you were writing to work things out with her.
Every time I talk about the book, I see something new. In a way, my mother is my ideal reader. But I kind of wrote it for me. And I’m finding everyone connects to the idea of cleaning out a parent’s house, including the thousands of children of hoarders. And I’m a writer, I wanted to write a book that literary readers would like.
You wrote with a great deal of love. Speaking of writing and readers, what’s next?
A collection of essays, Complications of Captivity. Some about therapy work. The theme throughout is the zoo, and the idea of being held…whether being held and protected is saving something or not.
Time was up, as it is in an interview or a therapy session. Still with more to talk about, we said goodbye. Since our conversation, Lost Found Kept has been named to the Book Pages Best Memoirs List. Readers are finding the book, and it’s a keeper.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell’s collection of love stories is Known by Heart. Her novel Frieda’s Song was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award, Historical Fiction. Campbell’s novel The Bowl with Gold Seams won the Indy Excellence Award for Historical Fiction. Her story collection Contents Under Pressure was nominated for The National Book Award. Her column “Girl Writing” appears in The Washington Independent Review of Books. For many years Campbell practiced psychotherapy. She lives in Washington, D.C. and is at work on another novel.