Self-Trust Starter Guide
Five gentle steps to help you reconnect with your own judgment after emotional manipulation.
Download PDF →Author · Speaker · Researcher
Helping women find their way back to themselves — out of relationships where the cruelty was hidden in the kindness.
Tendai is the author of What The Heck Just Happened? — a memoir and practical guide for women navigating coercive control, emotional abuse, and the long, gentle road back to self-trust.
“The problem was never recognition.
from What The Heck Just Happened?
The problem was permission.”
Books helped me survive.
They gave me language when I couldn’t explain what I was experiencing.
They gave me permission to trust myself again.
I hope my writing can do the same for someone else.
— Tendai
The Book
What The Heck Just Happened?
A memoir and field guide for women navigating covert narcissistic harm — written from the African context, by an international development worker who thought she knew how systems worked, until she was inside one that had been built to confuse her.
Each chapter closes with a Lesson and a What this means for you right now prompt. The book is built to be worked with — not just read.
Why I Wrote This Book
A short note from the author
A short video is coming — Tendai speaking directly to readers about what the book is, what it isn’t, and who it’s for.
A short note from Tendai — coming soon
Resources
Wherever you are in the work
Free, gentle starting points — guides, reading lists, and prompts to help you trust your own judgment again.
Understanding Gaslighting
What it sounds like, how it works, and why it is so hard to name when you are inside it.
Read the guide →Books That Helped Me Heal
The authors, memoirs, and field guides that taught me the language I could not find on my own.
See the list →Journal Prompts
Short, gentle prompts to help you listen to the part of you that already knows.
Open the prompts →