“Unraveling Secrets of the Heart: Deborah Derrickson Kossmann’s Journey in ‘Lost Found Kept’ Reveals the Power of Redemption”
LL: Was it healing at all? To keep or relinquish? How about the process of writing the book? Did you find it freeing or re-traumatizing?
DDK: The healing part of the clean-out was having validation about my mother’s mental illness and how it influenced her relationships. I’d struggled with this all my life. The process of writing memoir is hard because every memoirist wants to include details and events that are very important to the writer but aren’t vital to the reader’s understanding of the story. In a way, there’s a kind of editorial clean-out that happens to the detritus of every narrative. I wanted this book to be clear, like glassy water where you see things underneath as you sail through it. Using metaphor, nonlinearity, certain kinds of description all added to the layers of meaning, hopefully without slowing the story down.
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