Under My Skin is a deeply personal memoir about love, spiritual awakening, and the painful journey back to oneself.
For years, the author lived what seemed like a stable and ordinary life — until a sudden encounter reopened a connection she could not explain. What followed was a profound inner transformation that forced her to confront betrayal, manipulation, and the shadows hidden within relationships.
Through experiences of emotional abuse, spiritual awakening, and the struggle to protect her daughter, she gradually learns the most important lesson of all: unconditional love does not mean sacrifice.
This story explores the complex idea of twin flames, empathy, narcissistic dynamics, and the difficult process of reclaiming personal power.
Raw, reflective, and deeply emotional, Under My Skin is a story about breaking free from toxic attachment, choosing self-respect, and rediscovering the strength to return to yourself.
Under My Skin is a deeply personal memoir about love, spiritual awakening, and the painful journey back to oneself.
For years, the author lived what seemed like a stable and ordinary life — until a sudden encounter reopened a connection she could not explain. What followed was a profound inner transformation that forced her to confront betrayal, manipulation, and the shadows hidden within relationships.
Through experiences of emotional abuse, spiritual awakening, and the struggle to protect her daughter, she gradually learns the most important lesson of all: unconditional love does not mean sacrifice.
This story explores the complex idea of twin flames, empathy, narcissistic dynamics, and the difficult process of reclaiming personal power.
Raw, reflective, and deeply emotional, Under My Skin is a story about breaking free from toxic attachment, choosing self-respect, and rediscovering the strength to return to yourself.
Since I was little, it often seemed to me that I was living some kind of repeating life.
As if everything had already happened before.
As if I had already lived through it all.
I can’t say that I looked very different from other people or behaved differently.
No.
I did stupid things just like everyone else.
In fact, I probably did even more stupid things than others. But those mistakes taught me what not to do.
I realized this much later.
I also can’t say that I was better than anyone else.
On the contrary, when I was a child, I was the classic ugly duckling. I was clumsy. My hair was thin. I had pimples. And—oh my God—I was a genius.
I thought very quickly. By the age of five, I already knew how to read fluently, solve math problems, and write. Because of this, my teachers loved me, but my classmates and their parents often disliked me. They thought I was showing off simply because I was capable.
Since childhood, I had very strong intuition.
Sometimes it even felt as if I could hear people’s thoughts. And strangely enough, I never felt crazy for thinking that.
Because of this, I always knew when my friends started forming alliances against me. Friendship was difficult for me.
My friends at school were constantly turning against each other, and I didn’t like being part of that. So I avoided getting too close to anyone.
But I did have one beloved friend.
She was only two days older than me, and our mothers were even in the maternity hospital together.
With this friend, I went through many of my most important teenage lessons.
In many ways, she felt closer to me than my own mother.
My mother is a completely separate—and very painful—subject for me.
My mother was a very complicated person.
She had a difficult childhood and grew up with strong narcissistic traits.
My brother, who was eight years older than me, was her golden child.
I was the black sheep.
My father loved me very much, but he never wanted to argue with my mother because he loved her deeply. He also had a very gentle character.
Many people disliked me simply because they disliked my mother and brother.
And that was deeply unfair to me.
Behind the closed doors of our house, I was the black sheep.
I was nothing like them and never truly felt at home in my own family.
To the outside world, my mother and brother presented the image of a perfect family.
But behind the scenes, it was very different.
Silent treatment. Manipulation. Emotional abuse.
All of this was part of my childhood.
I was never physically beaten, but I was constantly made to feel small and inadequate.
The only warm place in the house was my father.
But as I grew older, even he began to pull away.
My mother was jealous of our closeness.
My mother spent a lot of time with her own mother—my grandmother.
My grandmother performed rituals. My mother said that she healed people.
Even as a child, I felt that something about it wasn’t quite true.
My grandmother was not a healer.
She practiced darker things—attempts to influence people through rituals.
I understood this only much later.
And I also realized that there was probably a reason why I was so often sick when I was little.
My grandmother believed I was strong enough to handle it.
She thought I had a powerful aura from childhood.
She knew how to read energy fields, and she believed that people like me live under special protection.
She believed that such people come into the world with a mission—and therefore cannot die before fulfilling it.
She seemed convinced of that.
So from a very early age, she exposed me to things that she believed would build my resistance to dark influences.
My mother had a very unhealthy attachment to her mother.
When I was very young and couldn’t refuse to go with her, my grandmother would often give me something bitter to drink. After that, I would become sick.
Later she would say that I was always sick—and again give me something bitter.
My grandfather hated her for this.
But strangely enough, perhaps those experiences made my body stronger.
Even now, I rarely get sick.
When I was five years old, I finally refused to go to my grandmother’s house anymore. I also refused to drink the bitter drinks she offered.
From that moment on, I almost stopped getting sick.
My grandmother died when I was fourteen.
My grandfather died first. She passed away soon after him.
Her death was long and agonizing.
She slowly bent forward until she was almost folded in half, and then she lay there for a long time.
During those final days, she constantly asked my mother—who stayed with her the entire time—to bring me to see her.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I didn’t love my grandmother.
When she died, I felt nothing.
I felt sadness for my grandfather, but my feelings toward my grandmother were different.
I always felt that she had used my energy when I was a child—when I was too young to protect myself.
When I finally came to see her, she was almost dead.
I could feel it, though I couldn’t explain how.
She asked me to take her hand.
But I didn’t.
I simply sat there and watched as life slowly left her body.
At that moment I felt completely numb—even though I am usually a very emotional person.
It was very strange.
I was watching someone die—a person whose death would completely change my life.
Because when she died, her power passed to me.
But at the time, I didn’t know that yet.
After my grandmother’s death, something in me changed.
I had loved playing with dolls for many years. I still collect them even now.
But suddenly I lost interest in many of my childhood activities.
It felt as if I had become an adult overnight.
And that was an extremely difficult period in my life, because my mother never truly understood me.
As I grew older, I also became beautiful.
But I didn’t do anything special to make that happen.
I simply had beautiful eyes, long eyelashes, and good legs.
I also had a natural sense of style.
My aunt once gave me a stack of women’s magazines, and I learned a lot about fashion from them.
Everyone seemed to appreciate me—except my mother.
For her, I was always stupid and always doing everything wrong.
She hated that I wanted to improve my appearance, and she disliked anyone who encouraged me.
But by that time, I had already stopped listening to her.
At one point, she left me alone with my father for six months so she could focus on my brother—even though I begged her not to.
I needed her very much, but she refused to stay.
By the time she returned, I was already different.
From that moment on, I no longer needed her.
My childhood ended abruptly, as if it had been cut off with an axe.
Another strange thing about me was that I could never truly fall in love.
I liked boys, and boys liked me.
But it never felt like the kind of love everyone else described.
I never lost my mind over anyone.
That’s why people called me cold.
I had two unhealthy attachments in my life.
Interestingly, both men looked almost identical.
The same hair color. The same eyes. The same character.
Both relationships taught me the same lesson: to choose myself.
Later I understood why these situations kept repeating.
They were repeating scenarios.
Something that had already been written.
Because I had a twin flame.
Half of my soul in another body.
It’s a strange feeling to know someone you have never met.
But at the same time, you already know him.
It’s the only person in the world you cannot pretend with.
The only person who will see you exactly as you are.
Even the darkest parts of you.
And still stay.
I had a
twin flame.
And somehow, those men reminded me of him.
I was searching for him.
Even though I didn’t know it yet.
Twenty-two chapters chronicle the rise and fall of a gut-wrenching relationship that brings both pleasure and pain to the author in this eclectic mix of memory and poetry.
The author is a “genius” and an “empath” who’s a “classic ugly duckling.” We learn that she had a difficult childhood as she describes the strained relationships with her mother and brother. Although her father was gentle and loving, she feels like she was the family “black sheep” and suffered from childhood emotional abuse. When her grandmother dies, “her power passed to me” writes the author. After her grandmother’s passing, she becomes an adult almost overnight, observing “My childhood ended abruptly, as if it had been cut off with an axe.”
The author later discovers her “twin flame.” This person is “your own soul in another body.” She eschews her twin flame and marries someone else, is relatively happy and focuses on her husband and raising her daughter. When her husband falls ill and subsequently recovers, “the tiny, invisible closeness that once existed between us disappeared.” Shortly thereafter the author learns that she’s “different.” A “dark empath.” A “walking karma.” Whatever that means.
She starts to remember who she really is. And starts searching for another man, her “twin flame.” A series of traps and mistakes are navigated, resulting in “emotional overload.” Thus, the author and her “twin flame” are like two ships that pass in the night – always close but never touching. Think Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke. Or Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County. The rest is pretty much Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
The title is explained in chapter 22, Connection. The narrative closes with the enigmatic line, “And finally, I returned to myself.”
This book is beautifully written but easily broken, like a chime in a storm. It’s lush but lopsided — evocative on the surface, preachy in the bones, with a “woe is me” vibe that wears thin after a while.
Regarding style, the writing is pretty much free verse. Most paragraphs are one or two sentences. It’s as spare as a scarecrow, allowing readers to fill in the blanks themselves.
Some readers will find this memoir an interesting cautionary tale about betrayal, manipulation, and breaking free from a toxic relationship while learning to choose self-respect. Others may find it as dense as a pea soup fog. Whether or not it will appeal to a broad audience remains open to question.