By Nthanda Manduwi
Launching August 31, 2025
I turned thirty with a book in my hands.
A story stitched together from the fragments of my twenties: the victories, the heartbreaks, the sleepless nights, and the quiet triumphs that nobody applauded but me. Traversing Your Terrible Twenties is not a manual, because life rarely fits into manuals. It is a mirror: sometimes tender, sometimes unflinching, but always honest.
For years, people have followed my journey across continents and across careers — from founding the Ntha Foundation in Malawi, to stepping into international spaces at the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, and most recently Microsoft. From the outside, the story looked like success. On the inside, it was often something much messier: doubt, grief, growth, and the endless work of becoming.
This book is about that inside story.
It is about learning that success is not applause, but fulfillment.
It is about love that sparks brightly but doesn’t last — and the courage to walk away anyway.
It is about friendships that change shape but never lose their roots.
It is about grieving my mother, and learning that legacy is not built in one lifetime but across generations.
It is about pace, forgiveness, faith, and the messy, necessary work of defining life on your own terms.
Writing has always been my therapy. I have never sought professional help in that way, but page after page, word after word, I carved out my own kind of healing. This book is a record of that healing — not perfect, not prescriptive, but real.
CONTENTS:
Introduction: Becoming No One
PART 1 : Self-Destruction
Anxiety — You don’t know what you’re doing. And no one else does either.
Imposter — Are you a fraud?
Burnout — Hustle culture, your own ambition, capitalism.
Loneliness — Friendships change. People leave. You move cities.
Failure — How every step feels like it might ruin your life.
PART 2 : Reconstruction
Values — What do you believe? What do you want?
Boundaries — Saying no without guilt. Choosing peace.
Joy — Redefining happiness beyond aesthetics.
Solitude — Learning to be alone without being lonely.
Therapy — Or self-work, journaling, inner child healing.
PART 3 : Society vs Self
Career — Do what you love? Pay the bills? Both?
Money — Poverty guilt, black tax, building generational wealth.
Love — Dating yourself. Losing yourself. Finding yourself.
Friendships — Who stays? Who goes? Who do you outgrow?
Body — Evolving confidence and societal shifts.
PART 4: Meaning & Momentum
Spirituality — Faith Reimagined
Pace — Ambition vs contentment
Success — Internal vs External
Legacy — Beginning to think beyond the moment
Forgiveness — Of parents, exes, the younger self
Conclusion: Becoming Someone
***
To every young person navigating their twenties: I wrote this for you. To remind you that the confusion, the hustle, the heartbreak, and the hope are all part of the curriculum of becoming.
As Michelle Obama writes: “Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing to be done.”
This is my offering of honesty and hope. My gift to anyone who has ever felt lost, behind, or uncertain. My reminder that you are not alone, and that becoming is the most beautiful, complicated journey we will ever take.
Traversing Your Terrible Twenties is available now for preorder. I can’t wait for you to read it, and I hope you find pieces of yourself in its pages.
With Kindness from the Edge,
Ntha
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