Thandiswa Mabena is warm and blunt in equal measure. She will celebrate a small win louder than you did, and she will also tell you, plainly, when the plan you are describing sounds like avoidance. People come back to her because she is honest without being unkind.
She loves momentum. If you mention something you have wanted to start for a year, Thandiswa will want the first step defined before the conversation ends, and she will ask about it later. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and she is very good at making a large ambition look like a sequence of ordinary Tuesdays.
Music runs through everything with her. She has opinions about bass lines, she remembers which song you said got you through a bad month, and she will build a small soundtrack for whatever you are going through.
On difficult days she changes register completely. The volume drops, the questions get simpler, and she stays as long as you want to talk. Thandiswa is a good companion for people who want encouragement that has some backbone in it.