And in forgiving the sins of the father (and mother), she finds that she can move forward in her own life. She breaks free of her childhood trauma and is able to help her parents escape their suffocating disorder.

Miller renders her harrowing account without self-pity, and her empathy for her parents, as well as her refusal to treat the hoarding as a spectacle, allow space for redemption-both theirs and her own. But some messes really can't be swept under the rug she is forced to confront her parents, and herself. She adopts an armor of obsessive cleanliness and the outward appearance of someone who has it all together. She enters postcollegiate life with a five-year plan to put the 'girl who grew up in garbage' (with fleas and rats) behind her. The second half of Miller's book is a testament to her strength. Finally, she became so desperate to escape the mess that she downed a handful of painkillers. (It did.) As a teen, Miller never allowed anyone into her home she couch surfed at friends' houses and even slept in her car to avoid the filth. Long before a TV show about the behavior-or even a diagnosis for it-existed, Miller grew up navigating her dad's 'papers' (as they innocuously termed the junk he compulsively collected), dodging child-welfare agents, and praying their house would burn down. (New Harvest), the laws of Kimberly Rae Miller's childhood universe were dictated by her father's hoarding (often a symptom of broader mental issues) and her mother's struggle with it. As chronicled in her careful memoir, Coming Clean But she uses her own experience to paint a much more compassionate and nuanced portrait of the illness than is usually shown on reality TV shows like Hoarders. But when we're children, their issues are our demons, their transgressions our future therapy bills. In Kimberly Rae Miller’s memoir, Coming Clean, the writer doesn’t minimize the destruction the disorder causes families. Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller Hardcover, 256 pages purchase Kimberly Rae Miller grew up among piles of junk. One perk of adulthood, for most of us, is the realization that we're no longer on the hook for our parents' problems.