Raised by a Shadow

𝘚𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘺 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘮

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I have been writing this book for most of my life.

Not in one long draft, and not with any clear plan. I wrote it in small fragments as it happened – in notebooks, on scraps of paper, in my diaries. Small pieces of truth, written in secret. At the time, I didn’t know how else to survive what was happening to me. I only knew that if I wrote it down, it felt slightly more real, slightly more bearable.

Every time my mum found those pieces, she destroyed them. She would scream, accuse me of lying, of trying to make her look bad. Pages were ripped up and thrown away. Sometimes whole notebooks disappeared. The message was always the same – what I was experiencing was not allowed to exist, and neither was my voice. Writing became something I did knowing it could be taken from me at any moment.

But I kept going.

This book exists because I refused to stop writing, even when I was told I was wrong, dramatic, ungrateful, or making things up. It exists because I wanted to make sense of a childhood shaped by fear, control, and emotional manipulation. And it exists because I wanted to turn something painful into something honest – something that might help someone else feel less alone.

Raised by a Shadow is a memoir about growing up unseen under a narcissistic mother. It explores the quieter forms of abuse – the kind that leave no visible bruises but shapes the way you see yourself, your worth, and your reality. It is written from lived experience, with restraint and care, but to tell the truth as clearly as I can.

The book is now published and available worldwide on Amazon.

If you choose to read it, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to sit with my story, to see what my childhood was like through my eyes. My hope is not sympathy, but recognition – that somewhere in these pages, someone might feel seen, understood, or a little less alone.

If this resonates, the story is longer.
Raised by a Shadow by Chloe Puzio is available now.