Q&A with Colleen Higgs, Author of my mother, my madness

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In my mother, my madness, Colleen Higgs offers an unflinching and humorous account of caring for her mother during the final decade of her life. Written in diary entries, the memoir captures the emotional and practical labor of care, the shifting dynamics between parent and child, and the complex mix of love, frustration, and resilience that accompanies it.

Buy the book here. Book Description: 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. Author Bio: As well as being a writer, Colleen Higgs is also a publisher; she started the ground-breaking independent southern African women's press, Modjaji Books, in 2007. She lives in Cape Town with her daughter and a cat. Looking for Trouble is her first collection of short stories. She also has two collections of poetry, Lava Lamp Poems (2011) and Halfborn Woman (2004), all published by Hands-On Books. She was recognised for her work in publishing by the Mail and Guardian, and was featured in their Book of Women 2011 in the Arts & Culture category.

1. What inspired you to write about your relationship with your mother? The book came from a secret blog I wrote about caring for her. The blog was public, but secret in the sense that it wasn’t attached to my name. I wrote as a way of documenting what I was doing, almost like ethnographic field notes. I joked that everything is material for a writer, which makes it easier to do things that aren’t comfortable or easy.
   

2. What was the process like in writing the memoir? Once my mother died, about 6 months later, I thought I might have a manuscript in the blog, so I copied it off the site and turned it into a Word document, and proceeded to read it and think about it. My friend Robert Berold read it and was excited to publish it as a Deep South book. I worked with him and some other readers that he gave it to, editing it, paring it carefully into the manuscript we finally published.
   

3. Did you encounter any unexpected difficulties or challenges? I sent the manuscript to my siblings to read. I wanted them to be OK with it, as they are mentioned in it. And my mother was also their mother. I was a little anxious till I heard back from them, but they all had a positive response and were astonished at what the work of caring for our mother had entailed. The book came out in South Africa in June 2020, and like many books that came out in Covid lockdown, it was a loss not to have an in-person launch. Despite this, my publisher says that the book has been Deep South’s bestselling title ever.
   

4. The memoir reads as a diary, with day-to-day updates, to-do lists, and small observations. Did you write these sections in real time, knowing they would eventually become part of a memoir, or did you draw from older writings and weave them together later? As I said, it was a blog. I wrote it in real time. And added from my journals and notebooks some bits that could have been in the blog. The immediacy of the writing and observations, the small details, is what gives this book its particular energy and is what makes it work.
   

5. Throughout the memoir, you share honest and blunt perspectives of your mother. Did you struggle with how much to reveal in your writing, or did you decide early on to be completely candid? How did you balance honesty with empathy when writing about her character? I think once she had died, I was OK to publish the honest account. And actually, I think my mother might have liked having a whole book about her. But she didn’t get to read it. Because it was a secret blog, I felt OK about being honest.

   The story, A River Runs Through It, has stayed with me, as MacLean articulates the mystery of those we are close to, our family. How we know people, but don’t know them. “And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”  ― Norman MacLean. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand my mother, to make sense of her, as my memoir shows, yet she still eludes me. Much of my psychotherapy and analysis has had my mother as a central mystery, the knot and root at the heart of my life.

6. You use dreams as a literary device to explore symbolism. Can you talk about this choice? Were the dreams based on your real experiences, or did you fictionalize them for the narrative? The dreams were real dreams. I’ve been in therapy and Jungian analysis for my whole adult life. Dreams are an important part of Jungian analysis. Unlike many people, I love hearing people’s dreams; they offer a window into a deeper self, a way of encountering someone more nakedly. The performative costumed way we present ourselves, especially now with social media being so pervasive, falls away, and in dreams, you get something true, something real.
   

7. The entries are often repetitive, reflecting the mundane tasks you had to do to care for your mother. This creates a sense of frustration in the reader that mirrors what you must have experienced in real life. Was this repetition an intentional stylistic choice? Yes, I had to be careful, though, I didn’t want to lose readers, didn’t want it to become too boring for the reader. I wanted to reveal in the reading what it was like to care for my mother, to embody in the writing how repetitive the work of care is. To make visible what is often invisible, the work of care, usually taken on by women in families. Unpaid, unrewarded, necessary, essential to the economy, but taken for granted, invisible. In some ways, the repetitive parts are key to the meaning of the book.
   

8. The memoir is funny despite its difficult subject matter. Did the humor develop naturally, or did you intentionally use it to balance the heavier themes? I have always had a dark sense of humour, so it just came through, and it makes me happy when readers get the humour. My sense of humour helped me to cope with the situation, especially in the re-telling of an experience, either in the blog, my notebooks, or to a person. I had become more objective toward my mother, so I didn’t take things personally, as I had done when I was younger. I was able to be a participant observer, if you like. Although I think the more vulnerable part of myself found the encounters draining. And I needed to find a way to replenish my energy after seeing her.
   

9. Did your perspective on your relationship with your mother change as you worked on the memoir? The years of caring for my mother did change my relationship with her, to her. I felt a tenderness towards her as she became frailer; the agency in her life was circumscribed to a very small part. It’s hard to articulate exactly what the change was. I think I felt less burdened by what I needed to do for her. And more able to do it, without having inner torment and struggle to do the things. I chose to do the work of caring for her.
   

10. What do you hope is the main takeaway for readers of my mother, my madness?

    I would hope that the reader feels more accepting of themselves if they do care work for parents, that they can acknowledge that it isn’t easy, and be kinder to themselves. I hope too that readers will get something out of the book for themselves, that may not be what I intended. That my book resonates with them. I hope readers are reminded how we are all flawed and limited, and most of us try to do our best under challenging circumstances.