Meet Tendai

I am Tendai. I work in international development. I have spent my career in the field — in programmes, in policy rooms, in the long work of building systems that are meant to help people. I have also been inside a system that was built, on purpose, to confuse me.

The book is what I wrote in the years after that — the long work of finding language for the harm, of trusting my own judgment again, of writing the book I wished had been on the shelf when I needed it most.

Professional background

• Public Health NutritionistField practitioner, programme design, and policy advocacy in nutrition and food systems.
• Regional Representative, SUN Movement SecretariatSupporting national nutrition efforts across the region, working with governments, UN agencies, and civil society.
• International development professionalYears of work across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, with a focus on women, children, and the systems meant to serve them.
• WriterAuthor of What The Heck Just Happened? — a memoir and field guide for survivors of covert narcissistic harm.
• SpeakerOn self-trust, discernment, psychological safety, and the slow, careful work of finding your way back to yourself.

What I write about

I write about the kinds of harm that do not bruise, that everyone says you are imagining, that you have started to wonder if you are imagining. I write about the African context — what gets lost when the language for harm is borrowed from elsewhere, and what African readers have always known. I write about the work of returning to yourself — not as triumph, but as a daily, gentle, persistent practice of trusting your own judgment again.

What I am not

I am not a therapist, a psychologist, or a clinician. The work I do is the work of writing the book I needed — a survivor’s account, a field guide, a long conversation. The clinical work belongs to clinicians. The book argues that there is also a place for the survivor’s voice, and that the survivor’s voice has something to say that the clinician’s cannot.

For press, programming, and speaking

If you would like to feature the work, host me on a panel, or invite me to speak, the fastest way is the contact page. I read every note; I answer in the order they arrive, and as quickly as the work allows.