Burnt Letters is a raw, poetic memoir about surviving emotional abuse, reclaiming self-worth, and healing from the invisible wounds of childhood trauma. Told through unsent letters and haunting memories, this story unpacks the slow unraveling of a woman who believed she was beginning a new life—only to discover she had stepped into a well-disguised trap.
Through the lens of a toxic relationship, the author reveals how love-bombing, manipulation, and shame can erode identity and silence the strongest voices. As the pages burn, so do the illusions—of safety, of love, of who she thought she was. With brutal honesty and lyrical storytelling, Burnt Letters examines the generational cycles of trauma, the high cost of silence, and the fierce work of rising.
This isn’t therapy talk—it’s battlefield poetry.
Perfect for survivors, trauma-informed clinicians, and anyone who’s ever whispered, “Why didn’t she just leave?” this book doesn’t offer tidy answers. It offers a mirror. A reckoning. A hand held out in the dark.
Because some stories aren’t told to be understood—they’re told to be felt.
Burnt Letters is a raw, poetic memoir about surviving emotional abuse, reclaiming self-worth, and healing from the invisible wounds of childhood trauma. Told through unsent letters and haunting memories, this story unpacks the slow unraveling of a woman who believed she was beginning a new life—only to discover she had stepped into a well-disguised trap.
Through the lens of a toxic relationship, the author reveals how love-bombing, manipulation, and shame can erode identity and silence the strongest voices. As the pages burn, so do the illusions—of safety, of love, of who she thought she was. With brutal honesty and lyrical storytelling, Burnt Letters examines the generational cycles of trauma, the high cost of silence, and the fierce work of rising.
This isn’t therapy talk—it’s battlefield poetry.
Perfect for survivors, trauma-informed clinicians, and anyone who’s ever whispered, “Why didn’t she just leave?” this book doesn’t offer tidy answers. It offers a mirror. A reckoning. A hand held out in the dark.
Because some stories aren’t told to be understood—they’re told to be felt.
The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. — Maureen Dowd
I never felt like I belonged—not in my family, not in my relationships, not even in my own skin. I used to wonder if I was a gypsy or maybe an alien dropped on Earth by mistake. Maybe adopted. Anything that explained the gnawing feeling that I was the Black Sheep, born to stand out in a world that didn’t want to understand me.
I wore rose-colored glasses for self-preservation. They weren’t just for love—they filtered every part of my life. I wore them far longer than I should have, and by the time I finally took them off, the damage had already been done.
After my second divorce, I started journaling my thoughts and feelings in hopes of finding a spiritual awakening—some miracle, a quick fix to solve all my relationship problems.
Also after my second divorce, I signed up for graduate school to finally achieve my lifelong dream of becoming a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I was going to start school in January. This was going to be my year of putting Chrissy first!
I devoured book after book in hopes of healing my broken soul. I read Kerri Hummingbird Lawnby’s Awakening Me: One Woman’s Journey to Self-Love and Enitan O. Bereola II’s Gentle Woman: Etiquette for a Lady, From a Gentleman. I then read Don Miguel Ruiz’s books. I started with The Four Agreements and then moved on to The Mastery of Love.
But, as I read each new book, I realized that I needed to learn boundaries—no, I needed to learn how to uphold healthy boundaries.
I’m not sure if it was loneliness or the challenge of reaching for my dreams, but I remember feeling so afraid.
One night, in desperation, with red and swollen eyes and a throbbing head, I gathered incense and candles. The full moon’s light guided me as I placed stones and crystals in a circle around me. I lit the candles, and the dragon’s blood incense burned like a warning. Sobbing on the living room floor, I called out to something—God, the universe, my higher self, anything that might listen, “I don’t care what you do – fix me. Please… bring anything you want into my life to fully break me wide open…I cannot live this way anymore—I’m so broken.”
I wrote letters I knew I’d never send. One to my father, asking forgiveness for the heartaches I put him through, two more to my ex-husbands—raw, unfinished goodbyes laced with guilt and sorrow. I set the letters on fire. Watched them curl and disappear like the versions of me that had lived for others too long.
And that’s when the universe answered.
The next day, I woke up, took a deep breath, and thought, Okay, today is the day things are going to change for me.
I leaped out of bed and laughed as my dog Daizy wiggled her way out from under the covers. I said, “Daizy, let’s go; time to tackle this day!” I have been an early riser for as long as I can remember. Maybe my grandmother instilled this trait in me. Even before the 5-Second Rule was written, as soon as my alarm went off, I would jump straight out of bed and get moving.
My oldest daughter, Lynne, once said to me, “Mom, you’re the type of person that when your feet hit the floor the Devil says, ‘Oh, shit, she’s up.’”
I planned to meet Lee, an acquaintance I had met through my friend Dave. Dave lived in the same development as me. He was a bit older than I was, but a great friend. He encouraged me to pursue my graduate degree, and occasionally, we went out for breakfast.
Lee was married, and I would meet him at a diner down the road from time to time. I was researching why married men cheat on their wives and think it’s okay, and Lee was more than happy to be seen in public with me and answer all my questions. Lee had been married for over thirty years to the same woman and was known for being flirty with younger women. I once asked him Why do you meet with me in public places? I mean, aren’t you afraid your wife will find out?
Lee said, “No, and I don’t care, really. There are things she doesn’t give me anymore. Maybe…if she saw me with another woman, she would act better towards me.”
After we finished our lunch, we waited to pay; this guy sat at the counter and asked Lee if I was his sister.
Lee said, “Frank, you know my sister.”
“Is that your girlfriend?”
“No!”
The guy turned to me. “Hey, if you’re not his girlfriend, can I get your number?”
I asked the waitress for a pen, grabbed his greasy napkin, scribbled my number, and dropped it on his half-eaten plate. “God help me,” I muttered as I walked out.
Lee looked horrified. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“He’s not gonna call.” I shrugged.
What kind of man would call a woman after she just insulted him and acted like that?
But he did.
I’m unsure if it was a curse, stupidity, or what, but I had this uncanny ability to leap before I thought. Usually, I jumped with both feet straight in, and then, while I sank in the quicksand, I’d think, Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
The next day, the guy from the diner called and wanted to meet for lunch.
What did I have to lose? I had the day off from work, and it was supposed to be a beautiful December day with unusually warm temperatures in the mid-60s.
Frank and I met at an Indian restaurant. When I pulled into the parking lot, he was in a small red sports car. It was old, but it didn’t have any rust on it. I thought he wasn’t my type when he stepped out of the car. He was shorter than most of the men I usually dated and dressed in jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt. I am five feet seven inches tall and like to wear three-inch heels, so I try to date men at least six feet tall. He had this small brown leather pouch tied around his neck by a brown string.
As I approached him, the aroma of earthy tones mixed with the scent of musk hit my nose. It was not a cologne I had ever smelled before. I asked him, “What kind of cologne is that?”
Frank said, “Patchouli. It is an essential oil.”
I was obsessed with essential oils—the first flicker of deeper curiosity was lit, one that would eventually set my soul on fire.
He thanked me for meeting him and walked me into the restaurant. It was set up like a buffet. We entered a large room with tables and trays of different types of Indian food. I had never had Indian food before, so I had no idea what to try.
I grabbed a little from each of the trays.
We walked down a few steps to a sunroom with tables in front of the windows. The sun’s warmth felt good. The view was amazing. I could see the interstate and the pine trees lining the highway.
Growing up, I passed by this place every day, but I had never been here before.
Frank and I sat down, and at first, we made small talk.
He asked me what I did for fun, my hobbies, my favorite foods, and what type of man I was interested in.
I told him, “I love hiking outdoors or working in my flowerbeds and vegetable gardens. I haven’t gone to too many restaurants, but I love Italian food. As for a man, I really don’t have a type per se; I’m not looking for a relationship. I just would like someone to do things with from time to time.”
Frank gestured to the waitress to fill our glasses with water.
Frank went into detail about traveling to New Zealand, Costa Rica, and the band he played in.
Frank was nothing like any of the men I had ever dated. I always seemed to date uneducated men or businessmen who tried too hard to impress me. Frank was down-to-earth yet knowledgeable and didn’t seem to care if I liked him or not. He just asked questions about me for the most part.
He made me feel comfortable, at ease, like a warm blanket on a cold night.
I was shocked when he said he was just a few years ahead of me in school and I wondered why we had never met before today. I could not believe we had gone to the same school, lived in the same neighborhood, and had never bumped into each other before yesterday.
After we ate and chatted, he asked me if I wanted to go on a hike on top of Big Pocono. I immediately said, “Yes.”
I love to hike and be outside. It was such a beautiful, warm day.
We walked to the cash register, and I said, “I will pay for my own meal.” I was a strong, independent woman. In my first marriage, I did not hold down a full-time job. I put my dreams on hold for my family. Now I had money.
Besides, I didn’t know this guy and didn’t want him to think I was looking for someone to sponge off.
He gestured for me to go ahead of him and pay for my meal, and then he opened the brown leather bag around his neck and pulled out some cash.
When we got outside, Frank offered to drive us to the top of the mountain just a few miles away, and then he would bring me back to my car.
I agreed—naïvely and eagerly. I jumped in his car.
There was something about him I couldn’t place. The patchouli, the way he didn’t try too hard, the pouch around his neck. It wasn’t attraction—it was curiosity… maybe fate. Or perhaps the universe is testing whether I meant it when I asked to be broken wide open.
Growing up, I could see the mountain from my house, and my family even watched the fireworks light up on the 4th of July. Yet I had never been on any of the trails on top of Big Pocono.
As Frank and I drove up the windy road to the top of the mountain. I texted my friend Liz to let her know where I was going.
I looked over at him and said, “You’re not taking me up here to kill me, are you?”
He laughed and said, “How do I know you’re not going to kill me?”
I followed Frank up that mountain, thinking maybe I was saying yes to a hike. But deep down, I was saying yes to something else. Something I didn’t fully understand yet.
I didn’t know it then, but that day changed everything.
Don’t overlook the trigger warnings before reading this book! I found myself in tears before I had even made it out of the prologue. Burnt Letters is the very personal experience of author Christina Ditchkofsky. She takes the reader through the emotional roller coaster that was her relationship with an abuser. From how they met, through the vicious cycle, and to how she finally learned she needed to escape despite constantly being emotionally torn. It is easy for anyone outside looking in to judge a person who is stuck in a toxic relationship, but it is much harder to understand what it is truly like inside the clouded mind of someone who has been sucked into a trauma bond. This book is intended for those who have experienced domestic abuse and also to enlighten those who do not understand what it’s like for a person who has become dependent on the person hurting them—just how difficult it can be to break the chains you’ve not realized you’ve become tethered to. Oftentimes, we do not just wake up one day and choose this chaos. It is usually ingrained in us from very early on in our lives.
As someone who has experienced abuse in similar ways, I both love and hate this book. My hate, however, stems only from how much I saw myself in Christina. I love being able to view such content from a perspective of knowledge, like I do now—seeing the red flags forming in this book that my once naive self would have fallen for, just like Christina did. I am thankful to be wiser than the little girl I once was, but my heart still hurts for that little girl in me, who knows that sometimes the only reason for the pain we feel is because we are guilty of giving our love to those who would rather use it against us than give us love in return—because we were not given the tools from childhood to recognize healthy relationships and boundaries.
Favorite quote: “It was about the little girl inside me still searching for safety in unsafe places.”
Cluster-B personalities tend to follow similar patterns and manipulation tactics. When you are a person who has learned to recognize those tactics, you’ll notice the “red flags” from the very beginning as they unfold throughout this book. For those who had to grow up with a damaged inner child, it can be much harder to pick up on these signs. We crave knowing what it is to be loved so badly that we are easily blinded in the heat of the moment by those who make us feel “loved”—despite it being disingenuous.
Aside from a few minimal errors I noted, there’s nothing I would change about this book. Every time I picked it up, I could not put it down. I was hooked from the very beginning, and since it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, I am still hooked—ecstatic to see that there is an anticipated second book in the works. Overall, I give Burnt Letters 5 out of 5 stars. To those who have survived abuse, those still caught in the cycle, and those seeking to better understand what it’s like in the mind of an abuse victim. I highly recommend this read, and I cannot wait for the next one!