The Woman the Road Is Rebuilding ''Before I return to the world, the road must lead me back to myself'' (Originally published on Substack at https://substack.com/@kagwiriamurungi ) There are some rebuildings that don’t make a sound. No ribbon-cuttings. No applause.Just a woman… and a road… and a silence that stretches longer than the pain. That’s where I am now. I used to ride like the road was my stage. My motorcycle roared across counties, through cheering towns and dusty winds. People waved. I told stories that made people sit up and listen. And then it all fell apart. Not in one grand explosion but in the slow undoing of everything I held together with my bare hands. I dipped mentally. Courage thinned out. My house no longer felt like home. And the loudest applause I heard… was silence. There’s a kind of breaking that doesn’t come with blood. Just quiet. And dust. And that ache behind your ribs that whispers, “Not again.” So, I left. Not to escape but to breathe. To remember who I was before I became everything for everyone else. I boarded a bus to where I had been previously accepted, with nothing but fear, fatigue, and a stubborn ember of purpose. In Turkana, the wind didn’t cheer for me. The heat didn’t hug me. But I found stillness. I found people who looked at me and didn’t ask what broke me. They asked what I wanted to rebuild. And I began, with shaking hands and a quiet heart. I wake up now and listen to goats bleating in the distance. I sit on rocks and watch the land breathe. I think about my children. I write in a book with dust on its pages. And quietly…Without clapping…Without noise… The road is rebuilding me. It is not giving me back what I lost. It is giving me something I never had ; Peace. Depth. And a self not tied to noise. I no longer crave being seen. I crave being whole. So, if you’re wondering where I went… I didn’t disappear. I just returned to the soil. And in the silence, I’m finding the woman who doesn’t need the spotlight, only the fire inside. The woman who doesn’t beg to be heard only rides until the story tells itself. The woman the road is rebuilding. One sunrise.One dust path.One breath at a time. #KenyanWriters #WomeninAfrica #PersonalTransformation #HealingThroughStory #MotorcycleDiaries