Books
What The Heck Just Happened?
A memoir and field guide for women navigating coercive control, emotional abuse, and the long, gentle road back to self-trust.
A Memoir · A Field Guide
One woman’s story. A book you can work with.
I knew something was wrong long before I was allowed to believe myself.
This is a survivor’s account of a covert narcissistic marriage, written from the African context and grounded in the work of an international development professional who thought she knew how systems worked — until she was inside one that had been built, on purpose, to confuse her.
The book is also a field guide. Each chapter closes with a short lesson and a prompt: what this means for you right now.
What’s inside
The shape of the book
- Prologue — the morning after a night that ended nothing
- Part I — The shape of it — on the marriage’s outward appearance, and on what was happening underneath
- Part II — The language problem — why the most common words for this harm are not the right words, and what is lost in translation
- Part III — Inside the box — on isolation, on the slow work of forgetting your own voice, on the architecture of the marriage
- Part IV — What it costs — on grief, on loss, on the children who witness, on the people you become when the marriage is in charge
- Part V — The African context — on culture, on silence, on the people who tell you to stay, on what the family and the church do with this
- Part VI — The door — on the moment of leaving, and on the long road back
- Part VII — The work — on healing, on memory, on the self that was always there
- A Closing Word — to the reader, briefly, about the work that remains
- A Field Guide — the lessons, the prompts, the work you can do with this book in your hand
- Research Notes — the sources, the thinkers, the work that taught me to name what was happening
Each chapter closes with a Lesson and a What this means for you right now prompt. The book is built to be read, and re-read, and worked with.
“The gentleness is not the absence of the cruelty.
from What The Heck Just Happened?
The gentleness is the shape the cruelty takes.”
What readers are saying
Early responses
More endorsements will be added as the book approaches publication. Get in touch if you would like to be considered as a reviewer or blurber.
For reading groups
Book club & discussion guide
A printable discussion guide is in preparation — with questions for each chapter, prompts for personal reflection, and a short note on how to use the book in a group setting. Available here when the book ships.