Ever since her eccentric, rebellious mother entered assisted living, Colleen’s to-do list keeps growing. Her phone rings nonstop with demands.

I need cigarettes.

I’ve run out of toilet paper.

Mom's Cokes are nearly finished.

Have you paid the levy yet?

Meanwhile, Colleen is also raising her own daughter, holding together a marriage and business, and navigating a web of inherited mental health issues.

My Mother, My Madness is Colleen Higgs’s diary of her mother’s final ten years. At once funny, harrowing, mundane, chaotic, and full of insight, it chronicles the exhaustion, affection, guilt, resentment, and love that arise when the roles between parents and child reverse—and how she learns to find meaning in the madness.