Waiheke Island, New Zealand – October 26, 2026 – Edge of Me by Monika Killeen probes psychological survival in the unusual meeting of contemporary family life, therapy and Slavic folklore. Following the unlikely therapist Myrtle, the book traces the rhythms of a single day and, in passing, slips into childhood memories, the aches of marriage, the often-uninspiring work of mothering, the weight of grief, and the porous logic of dreams and therapy.
Baba Yaga sits at the story’s core, not as myth but as an observing presence within Myrtle’s inner world. Memories rise; present moments stir old fears. The book considers how much of adult life is shaped by feelings that never quite leave. Reactions in the present loop back to earlier wounds until past and present become tangled.
The story returns to a personal “baseline,” the bottom note of feeling, tuned by inheritance, early ties, environment and culture. For Myrtle, it hums as soft vulnerability and a steady tendency toward despair. Survival is continuous.
WHY THIS BOOK?
It places psychoanalytic ideas inside the recognisable pressures of married life, parenting, work demands and everyday family life.
It uses Baba Yaga to connect Slavic cultural imagination with memory, intuition and the unconscious.
It examines how childhood abandonment and emotional insecurity can continue to influence adult attachment and fear.
It presents motherhood as both profound attachment and a slow unthreading of the shared life, as children grow increasingly separate from their mother.
It explores the coexistence of grief, destructive impulses, hope and the determination to remain fully engaged with life.
Edge of Me gives no account of recovery. Rather, it presents self-understanding as an ongoing negotiation between instinct and choice. Its epilogue returns to Myrtle’s childhood, where the mysterious witch is revealed as an internal presence associated with survival, intuition and the capacity to remain psychologically alive.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
MK was born in 1976 in former Czechoslovakia. Discontented with her world shaping in Orwell’s 1984 vision, she left in 1995, eventually settling in London. She learned English as an au-pair and later completed her legal qualifications while a trainee in a city law firm. Her academic journey continued with Master Degrees with Merit in Classical History and later, in Social Sciences. A member of the British Psychoanalytic Council and the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists, MK is a practising psychotherapist.
Book Name: Edge of Me
Author Name: Monika Killeen
ISBN Number: 9781971610160
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