I am reading Children of Hoarders: How to Minimize Conflict, Reduce the Clutter & Improve Your Relationship by Fugen Neziroglu, PhD, ABBP, ABPP and Katharine Donnelly, PhD.
The title is so intriguing that even my spouse wants me to hurry to read it so I could tell him all about it.
Inside there are questions posed for you to consider and maybe journal about.
I don't journal.
I *do* on occasion, however, blog.
So here's the first question from the book:
"What was your biggest obstacle to living a "normal" life?"
*pause*
This question is flawed, as I see it. Unless you answer "everything" because life with mother had no "normal" anywhere.
I took a long time to consider this, and I could not find any "normal" at all in my childhood. Even my relationship with my siblings, which I thought would be as close to normal as anything in my childhood would be, but no. Living with mother and . . . all that jazz . . . permeated into everything that even the relationship between my siblings was forged differently and defiantly not "normal".
Could I say the biggest obstacle to living normal was my mother herself? The way she didn't let us throw out the spoiled or the trash, Is it the way she would spend money on second hand junk that we didn't need our use and then not have enough for food? I don't know. The biggest obstacle to "normal" was mom.
Can you think of any aspect to a child of a hoarder's life that would be considered normal? Maybe my school grades? Maybe that's one.
