Humor columnist Maggie Lamond Simone has kept Central New York readers in stitches for the last two decades, but it’s only recently that she’s published a memoir of the lifelong pain she’s been dealing with: obsessive-compulsive disorder.
While Simone, 53, of Baldwinsville, has been open in her writing about her struggle with alcoholism, it took her eight years to pen “Body Punishment: OCD, Addiction and Finding the Courage to Heal,” which was published last month by Central Recovery Press.
“This book really came about in an effort to model authenticity for my kids,” Simone said.
Simone said her son and daughter knew she was an alcoholic, but she wanted to share with them her struggle with OCD so they’d never feel the need to hide in shame for their own problems. (Simone’s daughter, Sophie, also has OCD.)
“I realized if I was totally honest, I was going to have to talk to them about things I hadn’t before so they don’t ever have to be ashamed of anything,” Simone said.
Though Simone quit drinking by age 30, the compulsions of picking at her skin and pulling out her eyelashes and eyebrows didn’t go away.
“[I thought], ‘Are you kidding me? This stuff is still here!’” she said.
It wasn’t until age 38 that Simone finally googled her symptoms and found that they had names: trichotillomania (hair pulling) and dermatillomania or excoriation (skin picking). What’s more, she found online support groups and chat rooms full of people dealing with the same compulsions.
“I cried so deeply at the realization that all this time I could have known … at 7 or 17 or 27 that this was a thing other people had and I didn’t have to hide,” Simone said. “My problem all those years wasn’t the OCD, it was the shame that something was wrong with me.”
Writing “Body Punishment” wasn’t easy for Simone. She went away on the weekends to write because her house felt like too much of a “safe place” to recall painful memories.
“I spent so much of my life trying to forget stuff and pushing stuff down so it wasn’t always threatening my sanity, so when I wanted to actually recall it, I couldn’t do it in my house,” she said. “I’d throw this stuff up on a piece of paper over the weekend and then go home and get on with my life. Just getting the memories out on paper was hard.”
The title of the book came from a karate test in which a student must withstand several blows to the stomach without flinching. The chapters of the book are named for karate belts, the first being the beginner’s white belt and the final being the black belt.
One of Simone’s goals in writing “Body Punishment” was fighting the stigma of mental illness.
“The only difference between a mental illness and a physical illness is geography,” she said. “People think mental illness is a moral weakness or a thing that you’re making up in your head, and all those little theories need to be dispelled.”
Simone said she dreams of the day when people who take psychiatric medications for depression, schizophrenia or other disorders are as accepted in society as those who take insulin for diabetes. That goes especially for children.
“There should be no stigma or no pain. There’s no magic potion to make this stuff go away, but if kids could talk about it like they do an ankle sprain,” Simone said, mental illness would be normalized.
Most of all, Simone hopes her book can be a conversation starter for families. She said parents can use the book as a jumping-off point if they notice their child is engaging in compulsive behaviors such as pulling their hair out.
“It’s not an indictment of the people in my life, it’s not navel-gazing … it’s to start the conversation to help somebody help somebody else,” she said.
Simone said “Body Punishment” might be her “life’s work” and possibly her final book.
“Humor writing put me in a place where I was able to do this, so I don’t know what will be next,” she said.
She hasn’t totally sworn off a follow-up, however.
“One of the psychiatrists who did an endorsement of the book asked if I’d ever consider writing one for kids,” Simone said, adding that she’s considering doing so.
Recently, Simone read excerpts from “Body Punishment” and signed copies of the book at Barnes and Noble in Liverpool.
While she’s still uncomfortable discussing the pain of OCD in front of a crowd, she said the response was “awesome.” One woman thanked Simone for her bravery in sharing her story.
“Just that sense of hope — just hearing somebody say ‘I think this is going to help them’ was overwhelming because that’s what it’s for,” she said.
“Body Punishment is available in bookstores and on Amazon. For more information, visit maggielamondsimone.com.
