My Version of Events
Essays on loss, courage, and the return to self
The YOU Turn
Ever reached a point where your life felt heavy. Not dramatic, not catastrophic…
Just really HEAVY?
I did.
At first, I blamed everything outside of me. My race. My gender. My upbringing.
Then I complained about the systems, the ceilings, and the silence.
Some of those factors were true. But they weren’t the whole truth.
One day, exhausted from searching outward, I made a different kind of turn… I turned inward.
What I found there was not what I expected. And it changed the way I experience everything.
Inside the Collection
Why I Am the Shebeen Princess
At ten years old, I had already mastered the art of editing my life.
When my classmates said,
“My dad’s a lawyer.”
“My mom’s a doctor.”
I said: “My dad works in a big factory.”
Too ashamed to say: “My dad runs a shebeen in Thembisa.”
I didn’t understand then that behind the shaky, and sometimes shady, reputation of informal township businesses lived wisdom, grit, and radical innovation.
I didn’t know I was being raised inside a masterclass in survival.
Today, I am the proud product of something we called The Cold Beer Promise.
Stranger in My Mirror
I’ve always known I wasn’t built for the uncertainty that comes with “situationships.”
So when he said, “I like you… but I’m not available,” I should have walked away.
Instead, I negotiated.
Not with him — with myself.
I then experienced a particular kind of loneliness, the one that comes from being wanted but not chosen. And it did something quieter than heartbreak.
I call it identity erosion: a slow disconnection from ones own reflection.
The Death & Rebirth of a Strong Black Woman
All my life, I was taught what a strong Black woman looks like.
She wakes before the sun.
She carries everyone.
She never breaks.
She never rests.
I believed in the strength of a Black Woman. I admired her. I was being trained to become her.
Until the day I realised something dangerous: What they called resilience, could also be indoctrination.
This is about a death. Not of a woman. But of a myth…
And the rebirth that followed.
I Am More Than My Card
Imagine walking into a room and realising that people have already decided who you are.
Not because they have met you before.
But because they have read your card.
A card that lists a few simple facts:
Name. Race. Gender. Language. Nationality.
From those details, an entire story is quietly constructed.
Expectations form. Assumptions settle in.
No one announces these conclusions aloud.
But they are there, shaping the room before you even enter it.
For a long time, I tried to correct the story.
I explained myself.
I defended the parts of me that didn’t fit the narrative.
I negotiated with assumptions that were never mine to begin with.
Until one day I accepted that the card will always arrive before I do.
And the story formed by the card is not mine to control.
The best I can do is to just show up.
As a whole person: complex, evolving, and fully present.
Because I am more than my card.
