Recovery Diaries In Depth
Welcome to Recovery Diaries In Depth; a mental health podcast that creates a warm, empathic, and engaging space for discussions around mental health, empowerment, and change. Executive Director and podcast host Gabe Nathan brings a unique combination of lived experience with mental health challenges, years of independent mental health and suicide awareness advocacy, and an understanding of the inpatient psychiatric millieu as a former staff member at a psychiatric hospital. This extensive background helps him navigate complex and nuanced conversations with a diverse array of guests, all of whom are vulnerable and engaged; doing their utmost to eradicate mental health stigma through advocacy, storytelling, and open conversation.
Guests who have previously contributed a mental health personal essay read their essays aloud during the podcast and then chat with Gabe about what has changed in their lives since their essays were published on the site. By engaging in deep discussions with people living with mental health challenges like bipolar disorder, trauma histories, addiction issues, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive or eating disorders, Recovery Diaries in Depth further carries out Recovery Diaries' mission to #buststigma by showing people that they are not alone, instead of just telling them. This mental health podcast features guests from all over the world and, while their own personal experiences are unique, the human experience is what unites, inspires, and connects. Subscribe, like, share, and enjoy!
Recovery Diaries In Depth is supported in full by the van Ameringen Foundation.
Recovery Diaries In Depth
Hoarding, Helping, Hoping: An Interview with psychologist Deborah Derrickson Kossmann, author of "Lost, Found, Kept: A Memoir" | RDID; 121
"Love is what gives us the strength to balance the anger."
It seems improbable that a human being who has shouldered the weight of so much trauma, so many secrets, so much shame could come to this conclusion, but this is part of what makes Dr. Deborah Derrickson Kossmann such a powerful writer, and such an unshakable empath.
In this episode of Recovery Diaries in Depth, Deb speaks openly about her mother's descent into hoarding disorder, their immensely complex relationship, and broader issues related to mental illness, trauma, anxiety, and recovery in this fascinating interview with host Gabriel Nathan. Deb's book, "Lost, Found, Kept: A Memoir" is a stunning, award-winning debut book from this therapist/author who confronts so much buried pain with such compassion, not only for her mother, but for herself and for others going through similar trials in life.
"Lost, Found, Kept" is far more than a story of one woman's mental illness, it is a complex narrative woven and stitched through time that traces, through objects and memories, a story of what happened and how, and what comes after shame is discovered and uncovered.
Deb shares with Gabe what writing "Lost, Found, Kept" was like, why she decided to tell this story, how she navigates her two lives as therapist and as writer-- one requiring discretion and boundaries, one necessitating public openness-- and she vulnerably shares about what it has been like to navigate the immensely complex nature of coming to grips with a family member's mental illness when you yourself are a practitioner.
This book and this interview are, ultimately, about survival of what threatens to consume and destroy, what lies buried under detritus and secrets, and what can emerge to give hope, strength, and love. Listen, and share.
Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they're always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting www.wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.
Hello, this is Recovery Diaries In-Depth. I'm your host, gabe Nathan. Thanks so much for joining us. We're very happy to have you here. We are so delighted and lucky to have on the show today Deborah Derrickson Kossmann. She is the author of Lost Found Kept A Memoir, the winner of Trio House Press' inaugural 2013 Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award. Deb is also a psychologist and we are delighted to have her here.
Gabe Nathan:Each week we'll bring you a Recovery Diaries contributor folks who have shared their mental health journey with us through essay or video format. We want to see where they are in their mental health journey since initially being published on our website. Our goal is to continue supporting our diverse community by having conversations here on our podcast to follow up and see what has shifted, what has changed and what new things have emerged. We're so happy to have you along for this journey. We want to remind you to follow our show for new and back episodes at recoverydiariesorg. There, like the podcast, you'll find stories of mental health, empowerment and change. You can also sign up for our mailing list there so you never miss a new podcast episode, essay or film, and you can find this podcast pretty much anywhere. You get your podcasts. We appreciate your comments and feedback about our show. It helps us improve, make changes and grow. And, of course, make sure to like, share and subscribe. Deborah Derrickson-Kostman, thank you so so much for joining us here on Recovery Diaries In-Depth.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Gabe Nathan:It is an absolute pleasure. Can you just tell us very, very briefly a little bit about who you are, what you do and why you're here?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Well, I've been a clinical psychologist for more than 30 years, but I've also had a second career along with that, as a writer, and I published my first book in January of this year. It's called Lost, found, kept. It's a memoir, and it won the Aurora Polaris Prize in Creative Nonfiction from Trio House Press, and it's the story about my mother, who spent more than 30 years hiding out in her house, which became a very bad hoarding situation, and how my sister and my family and I resolved the situation, but also talking about my growing up and how we got to that place where my mother felt she had to do that.
Gabe Nathan:So I have a couple of things to say in response to that mini introduction. The first is I'm very glad and grateful that you went into a helping profession, that you are helping others, because it's so clear when you're reading the book what an empath and what a feeler you are. And that's obviously not the only criteria for being a good clinician. But it had better be up there, and I'm just very grateful for that Because, as someone who lives with mental illness and someone who's been in therapy since 2010, I know how important that is to be able to have people like that to go to. So thank you for that. It's kind of like a thank you for your service spiel to a veteran or something like that, but it's okay. And I want to say too it's so shocking that this is your first book, because it's so good. And what does good mean? We're going to get to that later all of the qualities that make the book what it is, the qualities that make the book what it is.
Gabe Nathan:But what I couldn't escape from when I was reading the book is just how visceral it is and how you have an ability to place the reader in time and space, which can be quote the hoarder's house and that feeling of retching as you're going from room to room, or whether it's a violent or frightening scene from your childhood. You know situations that I've never been. Well, I have been in a hoarder's house, but not to this extent, situations most people, let's say, have probably never been in. It's really extraordinary. So, what a debut work. And I want to get right into that debut work, if you don't mind, by just reading a small section from the end, if you don't mind, by just reading a small section from the end, if you don't mind.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Yeah, so this is from the epilogue of the book. I close my journal. There will always be sadness. I think I've chosen to work as a psychologist and to be a writer, both callings that require courage to explore the unknown.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:In the hoarder house I found a large unframed print art I suspect my mother meant for me to have. It depicts a tiny mouse holding a stick up in the air as it balances a board with a big lion crouched on top. The background is Africa, with grasses, a few trees and a dirt road leading toward a purple blue sky. It's called anger management. After we cleaned out the house I had it framed and hung it over my desk in my private practice office. Am I that mouse or that lion? And which one is my mother?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:I walk downstairs to join Mark, my husband, for more coffee. As we sit together reading on the sun porch, the birds on the feeder cardinals, blue jays and starlings chirp loudly. The wind chime hung outside near the old magnolia gong softly in the summer breeze. Love is the gravity that tethers us here. Love is what gives us the strength to balance the anger. When I was in high school, my yearbook quote under my unflattering senior photo was from James Thurber. Every time I ask anybody for the moon, it gets larger and farther away, but the earth holds on regardless. It's love that keeps it there.
Gabe Nathan:Love that gives us the strength to balance the anger. Love that gives us the strength to balance the anger. So my wife and I have been talking a lot about your book.
Gabe Nathan:Good, Obviously it is good, it's very good, but one of the things that we were talking about was sparked by that section, and so I'm really asking you this question, as much for her, as it is for me, as it is for our listeners, as it is for you how do you process that anger? How do you process that anger is the first part of the question, and then how do you help others do the same thing in situations that are totally unique to them?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:And I'm just going to pause there. Well, I think you know one of the concerns that I had about the book when I wrote it was do I sound too angry in the book? That I had about the book when I wrote it was do I sound too angry in the book? Because, as you know from reading it, you know there was so much frustration and so much rage and so much pain around what we discovered in my mother's house and, because of my long family history of losses and traumas and some other kinds of things, it was very complicated to go into that house and part of the narrative, through line of the hoarding, sort of pulls together all of those strands you know from my childhood and growing up about how we got here with my mother. I think you know the anger.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:One of the ways that I really tried to temper it and I think this is true when we think about how we deal with our own families and things that have happened in our own families is to try and look at ourselves with a lot of compassion, because I think you know that feeling is just a feeling, it's normal.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:You know anger can be used for good or for ill and it's a signal that something is not okay. You know, generally it's a signal about that our boundaries have been crossed or that something is too much or that we need to protect ourselves in some way. So I think that if you can answer anger with compassion and with care, sometimes you can help dissipate it. I will say along those lines that there are some things that I don't think are forgivable and I think there are some things where you may have anger, you know, kind of forever. I mean, I can think about certain aspects of that house and still wind myself up pretty good about it. But I think what I tried to do in the book was to really have compassion for my mother's situation, but also really compassion for me as well, and that was actually harder to do than having the compassion for my mother. I think it's much harder to have compassion for oneself when one is really struggling with a lot of negative feeling. So I think that, you know, I think that's part of it.
Gabe Nathan:I think that's universal For me personally. I think that's universal For me personally everybody's allowed to make a mistake but me. And when I do it it's like I mean, as you know, I'll let people in on the, I'll peel the curtain back a little bit. So I fucked up this podcast like what? Eight times. I know even that's not true, like that's hyperbole, right, like it wasn't eight times. But in my mind even that's not true, like that's hyperbole, right, like it wasn't eight times. But in my mind that's what it feels like and it is this incredibly outsized reaction that feels completely legitimate in the moment, because making fucking up or making whatever it is feels cataclysmic. But really it's just about being human, um, but I I do want to touch on something that you said.
Gabe Nathan:You mentioned forgiveness and and that there are some things that are unforgivable. I was also talking to my, my wife, about this just over making lunch. There's so much out there in, I think, in pop psychology and even in therapist's office and in writing, about how you have to forgive and about how that's the way. And if you don't, you know you're carrying this bag of bricks and it's really just hurting you If you're holding on to anger onto anger at someone else, and you know so. I'm so curious about your take on that with yourself, with patients in life in general.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Well, I think that you know I say to patients and you know certainly I feel this myself. I mean I've done a lot of therapy myself which I talk about in the book. You know, I think you know there's a thing in psychology and sort of in our you know kind of easy meme world about, you know, forgiveness in a very I don't know pop psychology sort of way, and I don't think it's helpful. I do think that forgiveness requires an act by both people in a sense of joining together and each of them owning their own piece of what happened. And that doesn't happen a whole lot. I think what happens is that, more commonly, what we need to do is reconcile with the realities of the situation and, for ourselves, come to a place of acceptance about things having happened. You know these things happened and they weren't good, they were painful to me or they hurt me, and what happens then, you know, is a kind of freeing piece about your choices, about what you do with your own part of that. The other person may not be able to engage around it.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:My mother never talked about the hoarding house, you know. I talk about this in the book. After it happened, you know it was very in my family we often don't talk about things very directly, so there was always that, but particularly shameful things. I think forgiveness is a complicated thing. I think we sort of reconcile.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:I think some things, like I said before, are unforgivable, but I also think that you can make your peace with what happened and I think when we talk about carrying stuff around, it's about kind of right-sizing that anger and that emotion. You know those are things that happened in the past and they affected us and the more we understand what happened and the more we can right-size our you know feelings about it, the better we are in terms of dealing with stuff that happens after. You know, of freeing in writing the book and actually it was kind of freeing about dealing with the hoarding situation generally is, you know, from the beginning of my book I talk about how having an awareness from a very young age about my mother's, you know, having some mental issues and struggling herself and my mother functioned at a very high level. She was a nurse. If you met her you would have loved her. You know she was bright, she was creative, she was a nurse. If you met her you would have loved her.
Gabe Nathan:You start to clean that uniform every day.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:She was bright, she was creative, she was an interesting person, she had a good sense of humor, like all of those things were true about her. So what was interesting about you know, and kind of validating and actually kind of freed me up maybe I wouldn't go as far as forgiving perhaps, but to kind of be able to move away from it in a way was that dealing with the hoarding house sort of was validation. This was always there. I mean, there was always a mess inside. And now everybody knew that there was a mess inside and that this was reality. Even in my own family, I think my sister was in denial about some of the ways that my mother behaved and was, because she behaved differently with my sister than she did with me. And you know, I think there was something kind of freeing about like yeah, this is reality, it's not pretty, is?
Gabe Nathan:this the sister that you messaged from the house saying like you'll never sleep again.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Yes, yeah, the sister I grew up with.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, yeah, you'll never sleep again. Yes, yeah, the sister I grew up with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, I? To go back to what you were saying about right-sizing emotions, I'm very curious, as someone who has these two career paths, which are similar in some some ways and also not in others, which one of them helped you kind of right-size your emotions?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:That's a great question.
Gabe Nathan:Maybe they both did or in certain ways. But I mean, I'd love to hear you explore that.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Yeah, that's a great question. I think both, in a way, Like I became, you know they're both callings for me being a psychologist and being a writer, and you know. So both careers have kind of nurtured each other in a sense. And I think, you know, part of my promotion for the book is like how could I be a psychologist and deal with it this way, Like how can I have a situation like this as a psychologist? Because we have this idealized idea of, like mental health professionals, being able to cope with anything.
Gabe Nathan:Well, please you don't have to worry about that on the show.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Yes, but you know, but I think there is sort of that mythology about somehow and curiosity about like well, so why didn't you deal with it? Why didn't you deal with it sooner? Why couldn't you have done something different? And I think that being able to write about it was not cathartic. If we think about putting together the book. The book is a work of art. What was cathartic is every day.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:When I came back from that damn house, I sat down and I journaled, because journaling has always been something that's helped me process the world around me. I have I'm, up to 71 journals. I have like, so like. When you talk about the visceral reaction of like certain scenes in the book and being in that scene, a lot of that material came right out of my journal. I mean edited and, you know, shaped for the book. But that raw material is, you know, did help me make sense of it and you know, and I think, trying to understand that, and I think this is an important point about hoarding disorder.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:It's a mental illness. I mean it became a DSM diagnosis in 2013. The statistics are startling about it. It's one in 40 people in this country experience a. You know, there's different levels of it. My mom was kind of DEFCON five but you know, from minimal clutter to like full-on, you know crisis like we were in with my mom, but it's a huge percentage of people I mean it's a higher number of people than people who are diagnosed with a major mental illness, like schizophrenia. So it's like when you and it's not discussed, there's so much shame and so much hiddenness and secrecy about it that you know people just don't realize, or they kind of know but they don't really know.
Gabe Nathan:Or, like you know, as a suicide awareness advocate. I think a lot of people look at it the same way. That won't happen to me, right, that's someone else. That'll happen to someone else, or maybe my. The guy that I went to, you know, sat behind in sixth grade, you know, took his own life at 40, whatever, okay, that's him, it will never be me. I think that it's almost impossible for the brain to process and conceive that scenes like you're describing could possibly be my mother's house or mine, until it's happening, you know, just like suicide, until it hits, hits. It's like oh my god, my family, me.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Well, and it's such a complicated diagnosis, gabe like we don't my field does not understand it well it used to be considered related to obsessive compulsive disorder and now it's more thought about in relation to addictive disorders in terms of, like you know, and anxiety disorders and depression. Often what kicks it off is grief and loss, so there's a trauma component. There was definitely that component with my mom and my family and you know, if you look at you know it's not understood well how to treat it because we don't really understand how it happens.
Gabe Nathan:Also like suicide, another. What do we understand about it? What do we know about it? How do we prevent it?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Right and you know, and like with suicide, there's been tremendous strides, I think, in the last 10 years in suicide awareness and kind of understanding and talking about like, okay, these are things that help or these are things that you know can change that outcome.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:I think with hoarding disorder, one of the issues is that it's one in 40 in the regular population, but in the elderly population there's like 2% in the general population, it's like 6% in the elderly population. So what you really have are people you know my age or our age, who are cleaning out their parents' houses and stepping into a situation where their parent has begun hoarding. They've had a major loss, they've had cognitive difficulties, they've struggled with depression, maybe physical limitations, and now suddenly they can't cope and now suddenly things are spiraling out of control. Now suddenly things are spiraling out of control, and so that's another piece of this as well. You know my mom, you know, built this wall. You know this house was kind of a wall between her and the world and she went out into the world but the world did not come into that house.
Gabe Nathan:She went out in the Camry filled with shit also.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, house.
Gabe Nathan:Well, she went out in the Camry filled with shit also. So yeah, the car was like that too.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Well, and also, you know I have to laugh because we, as we finished cleaning out the house, the next door neighbor who had been incredibly helpful to my mom and had done a lot of stuff for her, when she wouldn't let my sister and I do it, came over and was like oh, and, by the way, like your mom put a few things in our garage. I was just like it's actually very common, you know, people buy a storage unit or they buy an additional house or they, but like you know, the neighbor had let her like store stuff in the attic and by the time that was happening the stuff was so weird that she was keeping. It was like very, very strange stuff. Like you know, I couldn't sort of understand.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:You know you can sort of see the archaeology of the hoard and sort of the different timelines. You know there was kind of the pre-my grandmother's death hoarding and then there was the post-grandmother's death hoarding and it looked very different. And you know I I wasn't joking, I think in the book at one time I say to my sister you know, looks like a serial killer lives here, but it's like the hoarding equivalent of a serial killer, you know yeah, and just as taboo, feeling um, um, that that increase of awareness in the last 10 years or so, um, was that part of the motivation?
Gabe Nathan:I mean, it sounds like a dumb question but I'm I'm assuming that was part of the motivation for writing the book, helping move that needle um towards you know, decloaking shame and just saying, like this shit is happening, this happened to me. I can talk about it, and not only just talk about it, but in an eloquent, moving way. I'm assuming that was part of the motivation.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Well, I think you know there was a version of this book that I wrote and tried to get a literary agent around in like 2014. And what was interesting is that in 2014, I had decided that I wasn't going to write about my mother until she died, like I had pretty much made that agreement with myself that I wasn't going to write about it. And you know it's interesting because you know every literary agent and you know that saw the manuscript was like you know the writing's great, this is a beautiful book, it's like, but there's something missing. And you know I couldn't tell the story because we hadn't been in the house. I could speculate, I mean I could sort of include her in the story, but it really until 2016, when we went into that house and what happened after the cleanout was, I decided it was my story. I decided this is my story and I can tell this story. The story needs to be told and in fact, in a weird way, the hoarding, you know, organized the book I had been struggling with, like kind of what is the, you know, kind of narrative through-line in this book, and the hoarding provided that structure. So you know, ironically, the disorganization and the chaos of that house and of the situation you know kind of helped me make sense of my family in a way. It helped me sort of put it together in a different way than I had thought about it before.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:And my mom was alive when I finished this book. So actually today is the two-year anniversary of her death and you know, she died in July of 2023, and 2023 was a terrible year. But right before, one of the two or three good things that happened that year was that right before my oldest my sister's oldest daughter got married in September, I found out that I had won this prize, and the irony of this prize is that it's named after the Aurora Polaris Prize. My mother loved astronomy and space and all of that and I couldn't help but kind of think that there was a little bit of a you know an okay from her about the book because of that Starry magic. Yeah, it was kind of strange, but she'd be mad at me about telling the secret.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:But my mom was always really supportive of my writing. So in a weird kind of way, I've wondered if she knew that I was writing it, because up until the time that, like 2016, 2017, we always talked about my writing and I shared stuff with her and stuff, but then, after I started working on the book, I didn't really talk with her much about it. Our relationship had changed, and so I always wondered though I mean, my mother was a very smart and intuitive woman in many ways and that on some level she knew I was writing it, but she never asked and we never talked about it well, and that goes back to the whole thing about we don't talk about things, and I mean that resonates hard with me.
Gabe Nathan:I'm very much from a family we don't talk about it. Family, which, of course, has put with me I'm very much from a family we don't talk about it. Family which, of course, has put me on a path to writing on Medium and writing on Substack and being a mental health advocate and not shutting the fuck up as an act of resistance and rebellion.
Gabe Nathan:That's what happens. It's the same thing as raising a child in a puritanical family and super strict. They're going to go out and do whatever as soon as they can. It has to get out.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Yeah, well, you know the old thing. You know, we're only as sick as our secrets, right, like there are things that are private. The things that are secrets generally are not so healthy in families. You know, privacy is one thing, secrecy is something else.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, well, hopefully my mother's listening. I have a question related to the comment. You said that sometimes you get comments from people about you know, you being a mental health clinician, and how did you not know and why didn't you intervene? Just to share a little personal thing I think I mentioned to you in an email I used to work at a psychiatric hospital in Norristown.
Gabe Nathan:I used to work at a psychiatric hospital in Norristown and as a staff member I noticed pretty quickly how fucked up we all were and how struggling we all were and losing ourselves in this fight against serious and persistent mental illness and recidivism and assaults and all of that stuff. And when I first started working there, I was like I am going to come in here from 7 to 3 and do my job and keep my head down and get the fuck out of here and I'm not going to get attached to these people. And of course, that didn't happen. And I got very, very attached to folks who I worked with in a trauma bonding crisis crazy way, probably very unhealthy, but it happened and as a theater major, I was looking for a way to bring us together and so I staged this production of Our Town with the staff. We rehearsed for four months from seven to 10. Nurses worked seven A to seven P. They would race to the theater and put the show on in december of 2015, twice for the community.
Gabe Nathan:And, and I ended up giving a talk at the international thornton wilder conference about doing our town in this environment with these people and talked about how it changed us and what it was like, and, and you know, gave this 20-minute talk and was answering questions. Someone said I don't remember anything. Anybody said, except this one person. Of course, it's always the one person who said oh so you did this for you and the staff, why didn't you do it for the patients? And I like, immediately I felt so hurt and so like, so guilty. Like, of course I should have done it for the patients. What the fuck? What was I thinking right, like how could I, as a mental health professional, been so insensitive to these folks who are so clearly suffering and are deprived of their rights and 302 and all the rest of it, and we have keys and we can come and go as we please and all of that stuff. But I felt so ashamed and so guilty and I wonder if those comments and questions like that does that hurt you?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Does it feel like you know? I don't actually, because I think part of it is about you know mental health. Folks have some mythology around themselves about you know kind of you know trying to kind of hold onto a facade about things, and I think you know if you're you know to be a healthy person, you know working in this field, you know you're doing your own therapy, you're looking at your own stuff. There's not a human on the planet that doesn't have, you know their own baggage.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:There's a line in the book that I use in therapy a lot with people where I say you know the goal in life is not to go through life carrying a steamer trunk of your you know shit and your old stuff, but to be carrying a small carry-on of it Because you're never going to get rid of it. You're always going to have your own stuff and so you know the people not understanding or people kind of you know. I was at a book group and somebody said you know my family, we never would have like let my mother alone for that long.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:The sisters would have been there, the kids would have been there, like everybody would have been there.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:And you know, and I was like that is a cultural like it was really interesting because we started talking about the cultural implications of this that you know, in you know kind of WASP families where there's secrets and you know that kind of thing and shame, and you know it's a different kind of cultural milieu than a different family, like you know, and you know this person had grown up in a large, you know, Irish Catholic family with, like you know, a lot of everybody was sort of in everybody else's stuff and you know.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:So I think trying to understand people's you know questions about this stuff is coming from their own curiosity and sort of you know, like I think it's a wonderful, our town was actually one of my mother's favorite plays. We took her to see it in New York and I think it's, like you know, for the staff in that environment is a very cool thing be able to do with them what you did, because I think in order to work with patients, people working with patients need those creative outlets and those ways to express themselves, because that's how you stay real. Stay real.
Gabe Nathan:Thank you, I really appreciate that and I it's. It's. It's lovely to remember. We just had a reunion. I guess it was 10 years. It was 10 years in 2024.
Gabe Nathan:And went back to the stage which is it's on the the grounds of the state hospital and and it's um, I don't know, it was kind of a wild thing. Um, very cool. Thank you, um.
Gabe Nathan:But that brings me to a question about memory. For you, um, and you know, I think not to speak for you, but from what I read, a lot of the memories that you have of Willowbrook Road and from your childhood are not great. Yes, my question is what do you do with that other than put it in a book and try to make sense of it and try to make art from it? Golly, this is another conversation I was having with my wife. We talk a lot. That's good. I guess it was really stand-up comedians who really mine trauma for laughs and how that can be so, so unhealthy, and so I think, re-traumatizing, and I think there's all kinds of implications surrounding that and all kinds of complicated things related to humor and what is funny and why. But I guess from your perspective, it's a different thing and I just want to ask you about that, about, about memory, and what do we do with that?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:I think, a couple things. I love watching comedy and humor because I think there's something so wonderful about being able to be resilient enough to create something out of that pain, like you know, I think most creative people use. You know, I think one of the useful things that we can say about suffering is that if you can make something out of it, then maybe it was worthwhile in some way or at least you know, had a you know something to do with it other than just the suffering part. Right, and one of the things that you know to your point, like I admire about comedians is that there's a way of crafting things, and part of how you craft things is you're choosing what you're using to tell the story. So one of the things in a lot of memoirs I found is that, like two pet peeves about memoir One is that it often gets soggy in the middle. So it was really important for me to make sure that the story that I was telling was tight and that you wanted to read it and keep reading it and you kind of couldn't put it down and it didn't get soggy in the middle and one of the problems with that soggy in the middle part is that what's important to me as a person is not necessarily important to the story and to what you need to get from the story. So, like, particular incidents might be really relevant to how I grew up and what I learned and how you know what happened, but they're not relevant to the story that I'm telling. So, in a way, you're curating a life. You know. I'm curating this part of my life to tell you about it, and this part of my life is about telling you the story of my relationship with my mother, where there was a lot of pain and trauma, and I think I also tried to include things that were not always painful, but my mother was not an easy person. So you know what's in there is in there. There are some side stories about other traumas and loss that relate to my mother. Some of that is probably a different book. There are some interesting editorial choices when I talk about my fathers and like how I chose to handle you know that history with them. You know. I think that you know.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:So the second piece about memoir is that it's hard to figure out where to end a memoir right, memoir right. So when I finished this manuscript, my mom was still alive, so the book ended with her being in assisted living and, you know, making this change in her life and starting to hoard in her room in assisted living. But I think one of the decisions that got made when Trio House took the book was you know, do we include the end scene with my mom? You know my mom's death, and it felt right to do that, to sort of have the closure and have that be the end of the story. So having a sort of more set ending and less open-ended ending was important. But I think the memory piece is I don't want to traumatize the reader of the book. I want the reader to understand how we got here in the story. You know, and part of that story is telling some of the things that happened. You know that were not easy things.
Gabe Nathan:So that brings me to another question the balance between your life as a clinician and your life as a writer, and this idea you know we talked about, like the therapeutic facade or the mask that's how they put it at the hospital. You have to wear your mask and not let anything shake you, and all of that. But so there's a real dichotomy that I see about professional distance between yourself and your patients and then this kind of obligation as a memoirist to really put yourself out there, and that's. I just want to know how you navigated that and did you experience like internal conflict with that.
Gabe Nathan:It's a great question what do you do?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:So when I started, so I've always had two careers right and I've always written. I've written, you know, future articles and essays and poetry, and up until the point when the internet got really, really big, it was very easy to keep things separate, like people, wouldn't? You know people? I could be a writer and I could be a psychologist and never between would meet biologists and never between would meet. Then, with the advent of the internet, it got a little bit different and when I got some big publications, like in the New York Times, occasionally, you know, a client would come in and say that they had read something or they had, you know, and those were my New York Times pieces were mostly humorous, modern love pieces. So they were, while they were personal, they were kind of more not like this book, you know, I mean although this book has humor in it, it's a little bit different.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:So when I, you know, I made the decision to write this book and I think part of it was trusting that the universe was going to be okay with it and that I would work out with whatever clinical stuff I needed to work out with. Now I should also say that I'm kind of at a later stage of my career. I'm kind of winding down toward retirement. I'm not retired. I have a pretty still pretty full private practice but I'm not taking new clients. So that makes it a little bit easier, although I have to say I'm a little bit sad because since I published the book, I've had a few writers reach out who wanted therapy and I'm kind of disappointed about not being able to do that, because I really enjoy working with creative people.
Gabe Nathan:Refer, refer, refer.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Yeah, well, I talk to. It's funny because I sit on the Pennsylvania State Psychological Association's Ethics Committee and I have a specialty in legal and ethical issues. So I think a lot about boundaries and about some of the things that come up with clients and I think that in our field, when I've taught legal and ethical and I've taught clinical classes, we don't talk enough about how we use ourselves in an ethical way. We sort of, you know, I think people have this idea of sort of this therapist mask, you know, and they'll say you know, how did you feel about that? Right, like you know, and sort of do the stereotypic therapist thing. And I think part of what we have to teach students is how to be genuine and to be comfortable in themselves and to have done enough of their own work to be able to be flexible and be relational and be able to navigate complicated interactions with people and model how to do that.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:So when the book was about to be published, the sort of king of you know, he's kind of the god of ethics in the Pennsylvania, actually American Psychological Association, sam Knapp, he's a wonderful person and he ran, you know, he worked for on PPA for a very long time.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:He's written numerous books about it, and I said to him I was at an ethics meeting and I was like you know, suddenly it dawns on me I'm a little bit nervous about publishing this book, like people, like everybody's going to read it, you know, like I don't know everybody's going to read it, you know, like I don't know who's going to read it, like I, you know, and I have clients who knew about it and people saw it because it got publicity and so it's been a very interesting process of kind of you know, some people have brought it up because it impacted what they felt about what was happening in art therapy, or they identified with a particular part about the book, like the mother part of the book, or you know some other aspects of the book. Or you know kind of talking about not wanting to read it because not wanting to see me as a real person, because of where they were in their therapy, which also was plenty fine.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:You know, like you don't have to read my book, that was not you know, it's like they would find out about it and they'd be like I don't want to read your, like that's fine, don't read my book, it's good.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:But I think you know, just kind of on a case-by-case basis, sort of talking about that and being able to say, you know, everybody has their traumas, everybody has their history, and it's about what you do with that. You know, and you know your history, you know what happened in my history doesn't impact you, unless it's something that you feel I won't understand or I won't get or maybe I will get or you know whatever that is and we'll talk through it, because it's like any other clinical issue or thing that comes up in therapy you just talk about it and you figure it out. But I will say it's been, it's actually been lovely in some ways. Yesterday got an email from a client I hadn't seen for probably I don't know 16 years, who had read the book and had reached out and sent a lovely email about it, and those kinds of gifts are really nice, you know, surprising but nice.
Gabe Nathan:May they keep coming. You deserve them, and I think that's part of the wonderful thing about putting any creative work out into the world. You know, of course there's those ethical implications for you as a clinician, but just the act of sending out this thing and having it touch and move people and resonate with people, I think it's extraordinary and very vulnerable and very giving, and part of the reason why I wanted to have you on here is it's because we have people doing that here from all over the world all the time, and I've been doing this job here since 2016, 15, 16. And I'm always astonished when we get new submissions, new people who are just willing to put themselves out there, people in countries where mental health is so, so, so stigmatized, to the point of it being dangerous to talk about things. It's really stunning, and I think, too, that there are still people who have the attitude that if you're talking about your mental health, you're attention seeking or you're like. That just blows my mind.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Well, and I think, one of my fears about this, even when I was doing the website, which FYI is lostfoundkeptcom. There's a few pictures and some other resources on the website that people might find helpful other resources on the website that people might find helpful.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:But I think you know, one of the things I did not want was you know this is not an episode of hoarders. You know it's not an exploitive. You know this is about a real story, with real and not that those aren't real stories, but there's a kind of an exploitation about sensationalizing the hoarding aspect of it and you know it's like we call them hoarders, not people who hoard, and it's like other kinds of mental illness with that stigma. It's like you know you aren't a hoarder, you're a person who's doing the hoarding behavior.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, person first language. So there are, like mental health advocates I know, who are trying to reclaim like I'm a bipolar, I'm a schizophrenic and like there's so much hot debate around person first language. But I, my personal opinion, is how can it be anything other? You are a person first, literally.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Well and I struggle with this as a mental health professional because I think to your point, it's good that there's less stigma about some of this stuff and there needs to be less stigma and we need to be able to speak more freely about it. But you are not your diagnosis. You are not. You know, and you know I'll see younger people sometimes and they'll be like this is who I am. It's like no, that's something that you deal with, that you've got, that you cope with. It's not that there's anything shameful about it, but you're more than that. You're more than your diagnosis. You're more than your cancer diagnosis. You're more than your bipolar diagnosis. You are a person and I think one of the things I really tried to do with my mom is that she was an extremely complicated person and there were some really wonderful things about her.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:You know her. Probably partly the mental illness gave her a kind of fluidity and a kind of, you know, like purely creative, boundary merging sort of way of bringing us up Like everything was magical in a way. There was so much creativity and so much playfulness and, you know, and it was a little atypical. You know, we had you know, I joke because I mentioned it in the book, but we had the birthday fairy, like other people, you know, along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and whatever else, we had the birthday fairy and she would come and bring the presents, you know, and my mother had a whole story about how she communicated with the birthday fairy, you know, and my mother had a whole story about how she communicated with the birthday fairy, like, but that kind of creativity, you know, was also, as a kid, like, incredibly joyous and incredibly, you know, good, um, in so many ways, um, but also a little strange, you know.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:So she was all of these things, you know. She could be mean, she could be, she could be mean, she could be complicated, she could be angry, she could be difficult, but she also was very caring and had this very kind of way of looking at the world that was really kind of magical in some ways.
Gabe Nathan:And when you think about that magic, I think I don't know. I think a lot of people aspire to take what's good and hold on to it and take it and make it into something new as they get older. As you've taken that magic, how do you sprinkle that through your world now?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Well, I think I mean I credit my mom for a lot of my creative. My mom was a frustrated writer, so I credit her a lot for my creative. You know I was an art major. I went into college thought I was going to be a visual art major. I mean, I love dance, I love music, I write. I you know all of that stuff was stuff she exposed us to growing up. And also, you know one of the magical things about her she was very she didn't get to go to college and have the full academic experience. She was a registered nurse, so she did nursing school and she taught herself a lot of things.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Like I remember, when I was probably seven or eight, we spent a summer where we she had, you know, read everything about all these different religions and you know, she's like we're going to learn about all the different religions and we're going to go to a service for each of these kinds of religions and you're going to see, like, how other people worship God and, like you know and I look back on that and think, you know, it's magical in a way but it also, you know, taught us an incredible amount of empathy and understanding. Like, no, none of my friends grew up that way. They knew about their own religion. They didn't understand other people's religions. They never thought, you know, they were never taught that other people's religions are as valid as your own. Right, but my mother, like you know, sort of you know, she had those values and she wanted to kind of, you know, share those things and that part of her parenting was really pretty remarkable. Like we went, you know, she took us to children's orchestra concerts and, like you know, exposed us to things.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:You know, and I do talk about that in the book and you know, and I think you know, despite her own limitations and her own struggles, she was able to provide a lot of that to my sister and myself, you know, and to her grandkids. She was a very good grandmother, you know, but I think you know. The other question about this right is that, you know, I think it's very easy to see people in black and white. It's sort of like when I was angry with her, when I was dealing with the hoarding house situation, I mean, it's like that was all-encompassing and while, you know, and I talk about the scenes where I'm cleaning up the stuff from my sort of magical childhood or some of the good interactions that happen and it's sort of like having all that stuff crapped all over literally. You know, and I think you know, part of health is being able to hold both of those things. You know that she was both this and she was this things.
Gabe Nathan:You know that she was both this and she was this. Yeah, and I think it's that. It's that nuanced way of looking at people and the world and ourselves that's gonna help get us through. Um, so so much and for so much of my life I've struggled with that black and white thinking about myself and about other people, and the more I've opened up to gray, the better it's gotten.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Yeah, the richer life is. I mean, life is much richer when you can see the nuances and you don't have to make judgments about one way or the other way. And you don't have to make judgments about one way or the other way. Yeah, I mean, everything right now is kind of pushing us in those directions and I think it's a problem.
Gabe Nathan:Yeah, Less polarization, more color, more nuance and more grace, more nuance and more grace. The book is called Lost, Found, Kept a Memoir, Deborah Derrickson-Kostman. Thank you so, so much. What a gift this has been.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:Thank you for having the conversation. It's been really fun to talk about this and a different kind of slant to it, which has been really enjoyable. I appreciate that game.
Gabe Nathan:My pleasure. You can find the book at lostfoundkeptcom. Where else Deb?
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:You can get it from the Evil Amazon, and you can also get it from bookshoporg or Trio House Press, and there's active links on the Lost Found Kept website. If you love it, leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. It really helps me. We're going to have an audio book probably, though not for a little while, but the contract was just signed, so there will be an audio book and there is an ebook as well. And also, if any of your listeners have a book group or are interested in having an author come to a book group, I'd love to do them and I'm happy to come and visit your book group, and you can find that information on the website as well.
Gabe Nathan:Wonderful, but she is not accepting new clients.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:I'm not accepting new clients, sorry.
Gabe Nathan:Bummer. Thank you, Deb. Thanks so much for joining us.
Deb Derrickson Kossmann:You're welcome, Gabe. Thanks for having me.
Gabe Nathan:Thank you again for joining us in conversation today. It's beautiful to see the progression of our contributors. Thank you so much to psychologist and author Deborah Derrickson-Kostman. She is the author of Lost, found, kept a Memoir. It is the winner of Trio House Press's inaugural 2013 Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award. We are so grateful to Deb for spending some time with us on Recovery Diaries in depth. Before we leave you, we want to remind you to check out our website, recoverydiariesorg. There, like this podcast, you'll find additional stories, videos and content about mental health, empowerment and change. We look forward to continuing to grow our community. Thank you so much for being a part of it. We wouldn't be here without you. Be sure to join our mailing list so you never miss a podcast episode, essay or film. I'm Gabe Nathan. Until next time, take good care.
