MUD REMEMBERS GOLD

Opening passage

My name is Pilirani Mwadza. I am forty, a writer by instinct if not always by profession, and this is not a story about healing. I live in a body that remembers too much and in a world that prefers women like me to forget. I have learned that survival is often mistaken for strength, and endurance praised long after it has begun to cost something vital. People say I am resilient. What they mean is that I did not collapse where they expected me to. This book exists because silence did not save me. I was raised to believe that love required patience, that loyalty meant staying, and that cruelty,when it arrived quietly could be reasoned with. I believed these things long enough for them to shape my voice, my posture, and the way I learned to apologize for pain that was not mine.

What follows is not fiction dressed as metaphor, nor confession seeking absolution. It is a record. Of patterns recognized too late. Of affection weaponized. Of what happens when a woman is praised for her softness until it becomes the easiest place to wound her. Read this knowing one thing: I am not writing to be understood. I am writing so nothing is forgotten.