THE HIDDEN ASSIGNMENT
A LITTLE CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR
Portia, why did you write The Hidden Assignment?
The truth is, writing a book wasn't originally my idea.
After the twenty-year silence broke, my cousin came to visit me and I told her the story. When I finished, she looked at me and said, “Write a book, Cuz.” She told me that as I was narrating the story, she felt as though she was watching a movie.
I laughed it off at first, but she didn't. From that day, every now and then she would ask me, “How far are you with the book?” And my answer was always the same — I hadn't started. 😂
Eventually, I did.
Did anything about your own story surprise you while you were writing?
Yes.
I realised how much of life I had continued living while carrying unanswered questions.
When you're inside a difficult period, it can feel enormous — almost as though your entire life has become that experience.
But looking back across more than two decades showed me something else.
Life had continued.
I had loved. I had lost. I had become a mother. I had worked. I had built businesses. I had failed at things. I had started again. I had met people who changed me.
The thing I once thought might define my whole life eventually became one part of a much larger story.
What do you hope readers take from the book?
I don't want readers to finish The Hidden Assignment believing that my interpretation of life must become theirs.
I would rather they become curious about their own story.
Maybe there is an experience they have labelled only as failure.
Maybe there is a delay they still resent.
Maybe someone entered their life briefly but changed its direction.
Maybe there is something they still don't understand.
If the book causes someone to look back at their own journey and ask:
“What else might this experience have left me with?”
then perhaps the book has done what it was meant to do.
Your husband's disappearance is central to the story. Did writing the book finally give you closure?
That's an interesting question because for a long time I thought closure meant getting answers.
I thought there were things I needed someone else to explain before I could completely close that chapter.
Writing the book made me question that.
I still don't have every answer.
But perhaps closure isn't always about finally knowing what happened.
Sometimes it is reaching a place where you no longer need the answer in order to continue living fully.
After The Hidden Assignment, do you see yourself writing another book?
Yes, I do. Writing The Hidden Assignment showed me that there are still many stories and questions I want to explore. I don't yet know exactly what the next book will become, and I don't want to force it. But I do know that this book has opened a door I never expected to walk through. I no longer see The Hidden Assignment as the end of a story. In many ways, it feels like the beginning of my journey as a writer.
Why did you call it The Hidden Assignment?
I called it The Hidden Assignment because I didn't know there was an assignment while I was living through it. For years, I simply lived the journey without knowing what, if anything, it was leading me towards.
Even when the twenty-year silence broke in 2022, I still didn't understand what the journey had been carrying. It was only four years later, while writing this book, that the assignment began to reveal itself.
That is also why I chose the bamboo tree for the cover. Bamboo can spend years developing beneath the ground before its growth becomes visible. To me, that mirrors this journey. For a long time, I could not see what was taking shape beneath the experiences I was living. Then, in its own time, the meaning began to emerge.
Was it difficult to write about such personal experiences?
Very.
But not always for the reasons I expected.
Some memories were painful to revisit. Others made me laugh. Some made me look at the younger version of myself and think, Portia, what were you doing? 😄
And there were moments when I had to stop writing because I suddenly understood something differently.
Writing from memory is strange that way.
You know what happened.
But sometimes you don't understand what it meant until you try to put it into words.
Is The Hidden Assignment a spiritual book?
It is a memoir.
But I do ask questions that don't always have neat answers.
I sometimes wonder whether certain things were coincidence, timing, something quietly unfolding, or simply life being life.
I don't pretend to know.
The book leaves room for those questions because I still have them myself.
Readers are free to interpret those moments through their own beliefs and experiences.
What Would You Ask the Author?
Every reader brings a different life to the same book. Your question may be completely different from the ones above.