The Collector

When a mother's love isn't supposed to hurt, but it does.




In order to silence her emotional terrors, a woman finds peace in the act of adopting and refurbishing homeless, antique-material objects who, like her, are abandoned, alone, seeking safety, and loving home.




I am a collector. I adopt heirlooms who seek shelter in dusty antique shops with hopes of finding a new home. I rescue them to fulfill my innate desire for love, and they repurpose their lives to save mine.

I am filling my home with archives: remnants of a past that has been given up-someone's past-but not mine. I'm covering my ruin with a vestige of serenity and safety. Objects that exude longevity, family, and love.




THE COLLECTOR is a sixty-thousand-word memoir set in the current time spanning one summer while my daughter is home from college. Mothering, though the most wonderful gift, has not been second nature for me. My role model was my fifteen-year-old, raped, neglected, love-starved, alcoholic, and abusive mother who suffered from severe depression.




This particular summer spent with my daughter brought calmness over my emotional terrors. I found my way to peace and happiness by becoming a collector of moments missing from my childhood. Moments represented by antique furniture and artifacts with history unknown and much different than mine.




As my daughter and I, or a piece of furniture and I, share beautiful moments together I reflect on the exact opposite moments of my childhood. These reflections are chronological and evolve into the moment when I realized I needed help. I decided that I hated being a walking volcano. The reupholstering of an antique couch that belonged to my mother affirms that chapter of my life. With each layer of fabric a story of horror from my past and its closure.




Like Mya Shanbhag Lang's What We Carry, THE COLLECTOR mourns the loss of the mother you had. THE COLLECTOR also mourns the loss of the mother you needed and hoped would surface, but never had.