Monday morning came with two kinds of pressure: an empty tank of petrol and a full inbox. Dodo had slept too lightly, dreamt too vividly, and woken up too early with the taste of truth still in her mouth from Friday night’s journal entry.
Portia had already left for school, Henry was half-awake over toast, and Dodo was hunched over her laptop scrolling through client emails and unpaid invoices.
Then she saw it: a message from The Real Woman Project, a digital magazine she’d contributed to a few times before. The subject line read:
> Feature Pitch: When the Wound Writes Back
Her breath caught slightly.
She clicked.
> Hi Dodo,
We’re putting together a July feature titled “When the Wound Writes Back” — a series of personal essays exploring how pain shapes the stories we tell. Wou
