ORPHANED BUT NOT BROKEN
ORPHANED BUT NOT BROKEN
There are books that entertain, and then there are books that open wounds, only to pour balm into them. Orphaned, the debut work by Lebopo Bulayani, is the latter. It is not just a memoir. It is a sacred offering, an unravelling of pain, yes, but also a stunning hymn of survival.
At just 35, Bulayani carries the quiet, dignified weight of someone who has seen too much too soon. “Orphaned is a piece of hope,” she says. And truly, it is. Born out of a life punctuated by loss, where every five years seemed to bring another goodbye, it is a tapestry of truth, vulnerability, and the quiet roar of resilience.
This is not a story told from the comfortable perch of hindsight, but one written with the ink of real tears and real triumphs. Orphaned traces Lebopo’s journey from the raw edges of grief into the slow, uneven path of healing.
It is the voice of a child whose wounds were left unattended, whose pain was never translated into words because the world expected silence. In typical African homes, people are taught to be strong, to swallow pain, to move on before they’ve even learned how to sit with sorrow. But Orphaned asks at what cost.
Bulayani writes not only for herself, but for the thousands of children who sit quietly in crowded rooms, invisible in their mourning. She writes for the teenagers whose anger is misunderstood, whose grades fall not from laziness but from the aching weight of absence. She writes for the grown-ups who never got the chance to grieve as children. “Our traditional families never see the importance of counselling,” she says, and that observation echoes like thunder in a clear sky.
The book is as much a call to families as it is a comfort to the bereaved. It underscores the urgent need for presence, not just physical, but emotional. In African culture, where stoicism is often mistaken for strength, Orphaned boldly breaks the silence around mental health, therapy, and the power of asking someone simply: “How are you, really?”
And yet, it is not a book of sorrow alone. At its heart, Orphaned is about possibility. It reminds all readers that even in the bleakest of nights, the soul remembers how to turn towards light. Lebopo’s story is not just about what was lost, but what was found in the ashes. Hope. Direction. Purpose. “It shows how one can still achieve their dreams despite pain and the loss of those we depend on.”
In every chapter, readers feel the pulse of a life that refused to collapse. It’s a reminder that healing is not linear, that closure is sometimes a myth, and that the absence of those once loved can be transformed into a presence that propels.
Lebopo Bulayani may have been orphaned. But through this extraordinary work, she reminds all: you can be broken and still build. You can fall apart and still rise again. You can lose everything and still become whole.
