a beautiful startling and candid memoir about growing up without boundaries in which ariel leve recalls with candor and sensitivity the turbulent time she endured as the only child of an unstable poet for a mother and a beloved but largely absent father and explores the consequences of a psychologically harrowing childhood as she seeks refuge from the past and recovers what was lostariel leve grew up in manhattan with an eccentric mother she describes as a poet an artist a selfappointed troublemaker and attention seeker leve learned to become her own parent taking care of herself and her mothers needs there would be uncontrolled impulsive rages followed with denial disavowed responsibility and then extreme outpourings of affection how does a child learn to feel safe in this topsyturvy world of conditional loveleve captures the chaos and lasting impact of a childs life under siege and explores how the coping mechanisms she developed to survive later incapacitated her as an adult there were material comforts but no emotional safety except for summer visits to her fathers home in south east asiaan escape that was terminated after he attempted to gain custody following the death of a loving caretaker a succession of replacements raised leverelationships which resulted in intense attachment and loss it was not until decades later when leve moved to other side of the world that she could begin to emancipate herself from the past in a relationship with a man who has children caring for them yields clarity of what was missingin telling her haunting story leve seeks to understand the effects of chronic psychological maltreatment on a childs developing brain and to discover how to build a life for herself that she never dreamed possible an unabbreviated life