When Jessie Sholl's parents separated and divorced, she could see both of their houses from her elementary school: her father's freshly painted with a yard full of flowers and her mother's junk filled and crumbling with a rusty car or two parked out front. At 10, she chose to move in with her father and stepmother full-time, but her mother's messiness -- which would balloon into a hoarding problem -- continued to affect her.

Her new book, "Dirty Secret: a Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother's Compulsive Hoarding," starts with her mother being diagnosed with colon cancer and requesting that Sholl, as an adult, put the house in her name. Sholl leaves New York for Minneapolis to help get her mother's affairs in order and embark upon a major cleaning effort, one of five or six she's done over the years.

Her book is a sleeves-rolled-up look at how she came to better understand her mother, her mother's hoarding and how she's dealt with it. While her mother has since beaten her cancer and takes antidepressants, she continues to struggle with hoarding.

AOL Health: How did your mother's house look at its worst?

Jessie Sholl: At its worst, the kitchen was unusable. The stove was broken, and there were dirty pots, dirty plates, pasta strainers and things like that stacked up on each of the four burners, and it was just coated with grime. There were actually little black bugs flying inside the refrigerator, Tupperware containers of every shape and size that were bloated from being in there so long, milk that was literally a year past the expiration date. The freezer was one solid chunk of ice with the frozen things kind of buried within it. The kitchen was the worst. We had to get her a new stove and a new refrigerator because they just weren't working.

She has one of those glass porches, so you can see from the street how high up the clutter on the porch is. You could see bicycles, empty picture frames and giant hulking dressers just shoved in there together. Then you'd open the front door to the house and on each side of the hallway there were just stacks of bags of clothes from her favorite store, Savers. RIFT Platinum Many of the bags weren't even open yet -- she would just buy them and forget about them. There were a lot of winter clothes, boots. A lot of my mom's stuff is designed for comfort. She would have electric heating pads, back massagers and lots of identical pairs of shoes. She has a thing about these sneakers that are like a cross between a clog and a sneaker, and she had 20 pairs of the exact same kind.

AOL Health: How does your mom feel about being a hoarder? Is it something she acknowledges?

JS: In terms of being a hoarder, she's a lot more self-aware than most. Many hoarders will not admit they have a problem. My mom's true hoarding didn't start until about 14 years ago, and that was when her long-term boyfriend died. That's what happens a lot with hoarding -- it's set off by some kind of trauma. There will be signs beforehand -- a lot of disorganization and very lackadaisical cleaning and things like that -- but then it's actually set off by a trauma.

Even before her hoarding, her house was always really messy, and she would buy just tons of things that she didn't need. So we would go out to lunch instead of, say, her having me over for lunch. After the real hoarding began, I would fly in and clean out her house for a week, things like that. The first time I actually said to her, "You know you're a hoarder, right?" she said, "I do, but I'm only a low-level hoarder." I just kind of laughed because it was like, okay, she even knows the lingo.

AOL Health: How do medical professionals classify hoarding?

JS: Compulsive hoarding right now is classified under obsessive-compulsive disorder, but there's a movement to have hoarding become its own discrete syndrome. Because it's not really OCD. Many people who hoard do have OCD, but most don't.

More on Hoarding:
My Mother is a Compulsive Hoarder How Many Cats Is Too Many? When Does Helping Become Hoarding? RIFT Platinum AOL Health: What's the difference between a collector and a hoarder? Or someone who considers himself a packrat?

JS: In terms of collecting versus hoarding, I think the difference is a matter of pride. For a while when I was a kid, my mom was collecting salt and pepper shakers. You display them, you want to show them off, but it's when the shelf becomes totally packed and you're just picking up any salt and pepper shaker regardless of whether it has any value for your collection that it becomes hoarding. It doesn't enhance your life the way collecting does, and it actually hinders it.

Formally, it's defined as the acquisition of and failure to discard possessions that leads to emotional distress and physical impairment of the use of your home. A lot of times with a hoarder their plumbing will stop working or their heat, and they won't call in a plumber because they're afraid if they do their house will be condemned. So they'll end up living without water.

In terms of being a packrat versus a hoarder, I think it's just a semantic thing. RIFT Platinum I think "packrat" just sounds more innocuous.

AOL Health: How common is compulsive hoarding?

JS: I think it really is more common than people realize. A lot of times a hoarder doesn't let anyone into their house and so people don't know.

For a while the statistic was that there were 2 million Americans who were hoarders and then it was 3 million and then the latest I saw was 6 million. I think it's become more known.

I think even five years ago people thought of hoarders as, "That's just the crazy cat lady," or as selfish people. And now people are realizing it's a mental illness, like bipolar disorder. You wouldn't blame someone or judge someone for having depression or needing to take an antidepressant. It's kind of the same thing with hoarding.

AOL Health: Why did you decide to write this book?

JS: It's something I never thought I would write about, because I really didn't tell anyone about my mother's hoarding other than my husband. But then I joined a support group for children of hoarders -- I was shocked to find out one even existed -- and I was amazed by the amount of shame, embarrassment, anger and sadness we were all carrying around. We were carrying this huge secret, and I just thought, rift gold I'm a writer -- I can bring it out into the world so that people know about it and take away some of the power of the secret.

Before I even mentioned the idea to my agent, I asked my mother if she would mind, because if she minded, I wasn't going to do it. But she thought it was a good idea because it would help hoarders and other children of hoarders.

AOL Health: What are some of the biggest problems children of hoarders have?

JS: It's really hard when you have a secret for so long to have a fully authentic relationship with someone. I did tell my husband -- I was really afraid to tell him about my mom, but he was just awesome from the beginning. rift gold He never judged her, and he's helped me clean out her house. But I hid it from all of my friends, and I think most of us do that, and you can't really have a true relationship with somebody when you're hiding so much of yourself.

AOL Health: Is there a cure, or have any therapies been found to be particularly helpful?

JS: It's a condition that has a lot of comorbidities -- there's almost always another illness tied in with it -- and that's what makes it so difficult to treat. RIFT Platinum You can treat the depression but then you have to get through the anxiety and then you have to get to the information processing problems that make up the hoarding. I think the therapy that's been shown to be most effective is cognitive behavioral therapy. There's not, unfortunately, a drug or anything like that.

AOL Health: What reactions have friends, relatives and readers had to the book?

JS: My dad is a really private person so I was worried about his reaction to it, but he really likes it. My friends all knew vaguely that my mom had some kind of mental illness. There was a period in my 20s where my mom and I didn't speak for almost seven years. Rift Gold But none of my friends really knew the extent until I started writing the book and then I began telling people. They've all been really supportive. And the book's been out only two weeks, and I've already gotten a lot of e-mails from other children of hoarders who told me how much they liked the book and how good it made them feel to know that they're not alone. It's been really rewarding.

I had two friends tell me that their mothers are also hoarders. Rift Gold That was really shocking. I've had a ton of people say, "Oh, my cousin is a hoarder, or my uncle, or my neighbor down the street when I was growing up." It seems like everyone knows someone.