Globally, 25.8% of ever-married or partnered women aged 15–49 are estimated to have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence at least once in their lives.

World Health Organization, Violence Against Women Prevalence Estimates, 2023.

Me too.

In July 2025, I filed for divorce.
We had been married since 2005.
He was served divorce papers in August 2025.
A year later, the divorce process is still being contested and has morphed into a legal battle.

I was in Seoul on holiday when I received notice that he had been served.

I remember exactly where I was.

I was walking down a busy street in Myeong-dong, surrounded by people, when I read the message.

I stopped. Sat down on the pavement.

And I breathed.

It was so surreal.
It was one of those deep breaths that comes from somewhere beyond the lungs.

Relief.

Finally, redemption was near.

After two decades in a covertly abusive marriage to what bell hooks described as a “punishing, cruel, unloving patriarchal man,”¹ I had finally taken the step that would allow me to correct a mistake I had made at the altar in August 2005.

We had already been living separate lives since 2022 and for me, filing for divorce was a logical progression and the light at the end of a very long marital tunnel.

It was a way to finally remove the yoke of this man from my back.

I did not imagine that ending it would require a drawn-out battle of its own.

The battle after leaving

A year later, this man is still fighting the progression of the divorce process with a vengeance reminiscent of the way world leaders manufacture flimsy reasons to wage foreign wars.

There have been:

Duplicate filings.
Motions.
Hearings.
Lies.
Opinions.
A motion by him for me to pay his legal expenses.
More hearings.

Huge amounts of money spent that never needed to be spent.

Time consumed.
Tears shed.
Days lost recovering.

And a level of stress that is difficult to explain to anyone who has not experienced it.

I have cried many tears.

And yet, here I am.

Tamunokaramabia — God will complete.
Olayinka — wealth surrounds me.

Still standing

Kampe.

Good thing I am an alchemist.

I never waste a good crisis.

Every kick is a boost.
Every setback is information. Information I will pass forward to help another woman.
Every painful lesson is knowledge, gleaned and transmuted.

Each tear waters the seeds of my resolve that this mess must become a message.

In due season.

We don’t die. Our resolve multiplies.

In the past year of this divorce battle, I have learned three important things:

1. A well-funded woman is difficult to punish.

2. Our silence will not save us.

3. A woman can end a relationship and still have to fight to be free of it.

1. A well-funded woman is difficult to punish.

Being resourced is a form of protection.

Having your own money is good. In Naija parlance, we call it “vex money.”

Vex money is money that gives you the option to remove yourself from unsavoury situations

It allows you choice. Agency and reduces the extent to which financial dependence can be used as a mechanism of control.

In divorce litigation, it translates into access to legal representation, information, options, safe housing, escape, rest, and rebuilding.

Being able to access the resources I need has helped me stay in this fight for my life.

It has prevented the ‘wasband’ aka Ogbeni from punishing me without cause.

I am a resourceful woman. I have always worked. Before marriage, I had a good corporate career. I had purchased my own car, fully paid for. This was as a single woman in Nigeria, circa 2003/2004. Bros did not have a car at the time, so mine became our family car during our first year of marriage. In fact, when his people came to our city for the wedding, my car was used to pick them up from the motor park.

But I digress.

During our marriage, despite the abuse and lack of support, I held down jobs, built a thriving business, wrote books, sold e-courses, took on speaking engagements, undertook paid research work and, basically, hustled.

Each time our family relocated for his career, I reinvented myself professionally, finding new ways to work, create and earn whilst also mothering well and doing the labour of being a wife.

The economic autonomy and support system I managed to cultivate, despite his deliberate efforts to stifle my growth, have mattered enormously in this divorce journey.

Without this anchor, Ogbeni would have consumed me like a raging flood.

Being resourced can create options. Choice. Agency. A second chance. Escape

And when a woman is trying to exit an abusive relationship, knowing she has options is a welcome relief. A breath of hope. A glimmer of possibility.

It means you do not have to stay somewhere that is breaking you simply because you cannot afford to leave.

It also means that you do not have to betray yourself, erase yourself, or pander to your abuser when all you really need is a safe way out.

2. Our silence will not save us

Some of the mistakes I have made as I navigate the valley of the shadow of divorce have taught me some difficult lessons.

One of them was the cost of silence.

As a Nigerian woman, it has been drummed into me from childhood. Never wash ya dirty linen in public. Protect the family name at all cost.

But why protect someone who is actively trying to destroy you?

There were truths about the extent of the abuse that I withheld in an effort to protect. I shielded someone who was perfectly comfortable lying about me under oath when it served his interests, at my expense. And I have paid hugely for this.

My silence did not save me.

Quite the contrary.

It allowed lies to flourish at my expense and cost me legally, in time, stress, and money spent.

Now, I return to tell the truth from my mountaintops.
Every Eke market day, I will stand on the hilltops of Substack and tell it.

You are all welcome to witness.

My silence did not save me. And so, I will speak.

3. A woman can end a relationship and still have to fight to be free of it.

I have come to understand patriarchy not simply as a system of dominance, but as a system of ownership and entitlement.

Ownership and entitlement to a woman’s body, labour, care, sexuality, time, loyalty, and even her children can become “things” a man believes he has a right to claim, control, or use as instruments through which to enact punishment.

A relationship can end while that sense of entitlement remains.

Leaving, therefore, does not necessarily mean that harm ends. Sometimes it simply changes form.

And there is a cost.

A four-year study of 309 women who had separated from abusive partners found that, although their health improved over time, significant levels of depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms and disabling chronic pain remained four years after separation. At the end of the study, the estimated rates of these health problems were 3.6 to 14.6 times higher than among women in the general population.²

Divorce should not be a battlefield.

When a marriage has died, why not thank the other person for their time and presence, and release them?

Alchemising my experience

Introducing Karama Foundation

I experienced intimate partner violence inside my marriage and post-separation abuse following my filing for divorce.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of divorce, I have encountered challenges I never imagined. And I know I am not alone.

There are many women at various stages of this journey.

Many women can sense something is wrong long before they have the language to name it. They may be experiencing intimate partner violence, marital rape, coercive control, financial abuse, or post-separation abuse without fully recognising what is happening or knowing where to turn for support.

Even when they do, practical barriers such as shame, fear, financial dependence, isolation, legal complexity, cultural expectations, and limited access to trusted information can make leaving, rebuilding, or seeking help feel overwhelming.

As I navigate my own journey, I have been asking myself how I can alchemise what I have experienced and how I can turn the pain, the lessons, and the resources I have had access to into something that might help another woman.

And so, Karama Foundation was born.

There is a story behind the name. I tell it here.

Karama supports women experiencing intimate partner violence, coercive control and post-separation abuse with information, practical support, resources and community.

No woman should have to navigate this journey without knowing her options, or without someone to switch on a light when all she can see is darkness.

We are still building. If you have knowledge, experience, ideas or would like to support or collaborate with Karama Foundation, I would love to hear from you:info@karamafoundation.org.

Footnotes

¹ bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love.

² Ford-Gilboe et al., “Trajectories of Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress, and Chronic Pain Among Women Who Have Separated From an Abusive Partner: A Longitudinal Analysis,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Read the full study on PubMed Central

³ Spearman et al., “Post-separation abuse: A literature review connecting tactics to harm,” Journal of Family Trauma, Child Custody and Child Development, 21(2), 145–164. The review examined 48 published articles and identified psychological, legal, economic and child-related forms of post-separation abuse. Read the full study on PubMed Central

What do those names reveal about how they imagined, understood, and experienced the Divine, the Creator, or the Eternal Source of Life?

African peoples have always been deeply spiritual. Long before the arrival of missionaries and invaders, communities across the continent had developed rich spiritual traditions rooted in their histories, cultures, and understandings of both the material and spiritual worlds.

What, then, were the sacred names our ancestors used to speak to, honour, and understand the Divine?

Long before the words God or Allah entered African languages, African peoples had their own names for the Divine.

These names reveal how different communities understood and related to the Divine. Below are some of them.

Olódùmarè: (Yoruba)

Among the Yoruba people of present-day Nigeria and Benin, the Supreme Creator is known as Olódùmarè.

Olódùmarè is often translated simply as “God,” though the name carries deeper meanings than the English translation can fully convey.

Olú means owner, keeper, or custodian. Odù refers to a vessel, source, or sacred container. Má means never, and Rè means exhausted or depleted.

Taken together, Olódùmarè can be interpreted as:

The custodian of the inexhaustible vessel of creation

The imagery evokes an endless source from which life flows, bringing to mind imagery of the womb, fertility, abundance, and the feminine creative principle.

Tamara: (Ijaw/Izon)

Among the Ijaw/Izon peoples of the Niger Delta, the Divine is known as Tamara, meaning “She who created us.”

The name offers a striking glimpse into a conception of the Divine expressed through the feminine creative principle. Here, the Divine is understood as the creative source from which all life emerges.

Across the Niger Delta, related names for the Divine appear in neighbouring communities, including Tamuno among the Ibani, Kalabari, and Okrika peoples.

Tamuno: (Ibani, Kalabari, and Okrika)

Among the Ibani, Kalabari, and Okrika peoples of the Niger Delta, the Divine is known as Tamuno.

Like Tamara in Ijaw/Izon tradition, Tamuno reflects a shared Niger Delta understanding of the Divine as Creator, life-giver, and source. While the names belong to different communities and languages, they point to closely related spiritual ideas rooted in a common cultural landscape.

Many names among the Ibani, Kalabari, and Okrika begin with Tamuno, reflecting the central place of the Divine in everyday life. My own name, Tamunokara, is one of them.

Woyingi: (Ijaw/Izon)

Among the Ijaw and Izon peoples of the Niger Delta, the Supreme Creator is also known as Woyingi, meaning “Our Mother.”

In Ijaw cosmology, Woyingi is the primordial source of life and creation.

Together with names such as Tamara and Tamuno, Woyingi reflects a conception of the Divine rooted in creation, life-giving power, and maternal imagery.

Chukwu and Chineke (Igbo)

Among the Igbo people, the Divine is known through names such as Chukwu and Chineke.

Chukwu is often understood as the Great Spirit, the Supreme Being, or the ultimate source of all existence.

Chineke refers to the Creator, the one who creates and brings all things into being. The name is often understood through its components: Chi (divine spirit), na (that), and eke (creates).

Both Chukwu and Chineke reflect a conception of the Divine that is not confined to human gender or exclusively masculine imagery. The centrality of Chi in Igbo spiritual thought is reflected in the many names beginning with Chi borne by both women and men.

It also appears in the well-known proverb, "Onye kwe, Chi ya ekwe" meaning: When a person agrees, their Chi agrees.

Mawu-Lisa (Ewe and Fon)

Among the Ewe of Ghana and Togo and the Fon of Benin, the Divine is often expressed through Mawu-Lisa.

Mawu is associated with wisdom, fertility, coolness, nurturing, and the moon.

Lisa is associated with strength, energy, activity, vitality, and the sun.

Together, they express balance and complementarity.

Mawu-Lisa presents creation as emerging through the harmonious interplay of masculine and feminine principles. Here, the sacred is understood through balance, wholeness, and the union of complementary forces.

Onyame: (Akan, Ghana)

Among the Akan peoples of Ghana, the Supreme Being is known as Onyame or Nyame.

Onyame is creator, sustainer, and giver of life. The name reflects an understanding of the Divine as the source from which all life flows and upon which all life depends.

Even today, Onyame remains deeply embedded in Akan language and culture. Expressions such as Nyame nhyira wo (”May God bless you”) and Nyame nsa (”The hand of God”) continue to carry the name into everyday life.

Ngai: (Kikuyu, Kamba, and Maasai)

Among the Kikuyu and Kamba peoples, the Divine is known as Ngai, while among the Maasai the name Enkai (or Engai) is used. These closely related names reflect a shared understanding of the Divine as Creator, provider, sustainer, and giver of rain.

Ngai is closely associated with mountains, particularly Mount Kenya, which has long been regarded as a place of divine nearness. Prayers were traditionally offered facing the mountain, reflecting a spirituality in which the natural world became a place of encounter with the Divine.

Mwari (Shona)

Among the Shona people of Zimbabwe, the Supreme Creator is known as Mwari, understood as Creator, rain giver, sustainer of life, and keeper of justice.

In traditional Shona religion, Mwari is spirit (mweya), transcending human categories of male and female, and is sometimes described in ways that evoke the nurturing care and wisdom of a grandmother (Mbuya).

Amma (Dogon)

Among the Dogon people of Mali, Amma is the supreme Creator and, at the heart of Dogon cosmology, the origin of all existence.

Amma is understood to embody both masculine and feminine principles, reflecting a conception of the Divine that extends beyond exclusively masculine representations.

Nzambi Mpungu and Nzambici (Kongo)

Among Kongo-speaking peoples of Central Africa, Nzambi Mpungu is the Creator, source of life, and sovereign over both the visible and invisible worlds.

Nzambici is the feminine divine counterpart to Nzambi Mpungu. Together, they reflect a vision of creation grounded in the complementary relationship between masculine and feminine principles.

More Than Translations

These names are not merely African translations of the English word God. They are entire theological frameworks carried within language.

Emerging from different landscapes, histories, and cultures, they reveal the many ways African peoples imagined and related to the Divine. Some understood the Divine as Mother, others as Creator, Source, Life-Giver, Sustainer, or the ground of all existence. Some emphasized the complementarity of masculine and feminine principles, while others conceived of the Divine as transcending human gender altogether.

Every name tells us something about what a people considered sacred.

Even beyond Africa, traces of these older ways of imagining the Divine can be found. Some biblical scholars and feminist theologians interpret El Shaddai as “the Breasted One,” an image of the Divine associated with nourishment, fertility, abundance, and blessing. While the etymology remains debated, the interpretation offers a striking parallel to the maternal imagery found in many African spiritual traditions.

Whether as Mother, Creator, Source, Life-Giver, Sustainer, or Sovereign, the Divine was not always imagined exclusively as Father, King, or Lord.

Decolonising My Understanding of the Divine

As an Ibani woman with Yoruba heritage, decolonising my understanding of the Divine means reimagining my conception of God through names that are true to me and my lineage.

I can conceive of the Divine as Tamuno, or through the Yoruba praise expression Ìjìnlẹ̀ nínú Ìjìnlẹ̀ (The Deep within the Deep), to name just two.

The image of "The Deep within the Deep" brings to mind Río Abajo Río, the river beneath the river, from Women Who Run With the Wolves. It evokes an older, deeper current from which what is seen, named, and known emerges.

In doing so, I move away from my childhood concdeption of God as exclusively male and white.

Rediscovering these names is part of memory work: reclaiming, remembering, and honouring. Tell me: Which names for the Divine exist within your spiritual lineage, language, or culture? I'd love to hear them in the comments.

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But what happens when consent is not freely given?

This is where the distinction between consent, coercion, and compliance becomes important.

Consent is freely given.

Coercion involves pressure, manipulation, fear, obligation, threats, or power used to undermine free choice.

Compliance may follow when resistance feels too costly, unsafe, or exhausting. It may also emerge through trauma responses such as freezing or fawning.

As I have explored these topics, I have become increasingly interested in the space between consent and coercion, particularly within intimate relationships.

The women I have spoken with, the stories I have encountered, and my own experiences in marriage have led me to think more deeply about how consent, coercion, and compliance operate within intimate relationships.

I keep returning to the same questions:

The Logic of Entitlement

Questions of consent, coercion, and entitlement do not arise only within intimate relationships.

They appear wherever access is mistaken for ownership.

Soraya Chemaly illustrates this dynamic in Rage Becomes Her through a discussion with university students about sexting, consent, and the sharing of intimate images.

During the discussion, a nineteen-year-old male student asks a provocative question:

Another student added:

“If she gives it to him, what does she expect?”

Both comments rest upon the same assumption.

The young man had collapsed the distinction between a person and an object.

His girlfriend and a toaster.

The photograph was no longer understood as something shared within the context of a relationship. It had become something he believed he owned.

If she gave him access to her image, she should expect and accept whatever followed.

Beneath both comments is the same logic:

Access is mistaken for ownership.

A moment of permission becomes a claim of entitlement.

Consent becomes irrelevant.

The fact that the photograph had been shared voluntarily did not, in the student’s mind, create a responsibility to respect the boundaries of the person who sent it.

Rather, it became a justification for treating access as ownership.

As Chemaly observes, the student’s question was, in many ways, “an argument for his innocence and her responsibility for the outcome.”

This example may be about a photograph, but the logic extends far beyond one.

When access becomes entitlement, refusal often comes at a cost.

And when saying no becomes costly, compliance can begin to resemble consent.

The same logic continues to shape how many people think about marriage, consent, and access to another person’s body.

For some readers, these assumptions may feel abstract.

For some of us, they are painfully familiar.

When Coercion Becomes Compliance

In intimate relationships, when expected access is challenged, pressure often follows.

Sometimes it is overt.

Other times, it is subtle.

It may take the form of guilt, emotional withdrawal, the weaponisation of religious beliefs, financial control, or other consequences.

When this happens, compliance may follow because resistance feels more costly or dangerous.

Many women are socialised to prioritise harmony, manage the emotions of others, and avoid conflict, often at the expense of their own needs and boundaries.

As Soraya Chemaly observes (page 46):

Mutuality

Consent asks whether someone was free to choose.

Mutuality asks what becomes possible when that freedom exists.

The real test of mutuality is not whether someone eventually agreed under the weight of pressure.

It is whether they felt truly free and safe to choose.

bell hooks reminds us:

Healthy relationships are not built on pressure, obligation, fear, or assumed access.

They are built on mutual respect.

Reciprocity.

Care.

And the freedom to choose.

The recognition that another person’s body, time, attention, and affection are freely given, not owed.

Because consent is not simply the absence of force.

It is the presence of choice.

A Closing Note

For much of modern history, a husband could legally rape his wife.

In the United Kingdom, marital rape was not recognised as a crime until 1991.

Just 35 years ago.

In the United States, it was not recognised as a crime in all fifty states until 1993.

Just 33 years ago.

The assumptions surrounding marriage, consent, and sexual access are not merely cultural, religious, or socio-economic. For much of modern history, they were codified in law.

And today, in many parts of the world, marital rape is still not recognised as a crime.

Sources and Further Reading

• Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

• bell hooks, All About Love

• bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love

• Jill Elaine Hasday, “Contest and Consent: A Legal History of Marital Rape”

• Joan McGregor, “Marital Rape in Global Context”

Thank you for reading 🤎

I appreciate the many thoughtful conversations these essays continue to generate and welcome your thoughts, questions, and reflections in the comments.

A quick note: Book club will be returning around October or November.

I’m currently working on the book selections and format.

If you’d be interested in reading in community, let me know in the comments.

For many Christian women, this verse is very familiar.

It appears in sermons, marriage counselling sessions, Bible study groups, and conversations about what it means to be a good wife. For generations, it has been interpreted as requiring women to cede authority over their own bodies to their husbands.

These interpretations have been reinforced by other passages, such as:

“For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” — Ephesians 5:23

“Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” — Colossians 3:18

As a Nigerian woman who grew up in the Nigerian Church, these scriptures are deeply familiar to me. For generations, they have helped shape how many women understand marriage, authority, submission, and their place within the family unit.

Few beliefs reveal the intersection of patriarchy, religion, entitlement, control, and violence more clearly than the belief that a husband possesses authority over his wife’s body, irrespective of her own desires, boundaries, or consent.

Taken together, these interpretations can foster the belief that a husband possesses authority over his wife's body, that marriage itself constitutes permanent consent, and that sexual availability is a duty rather than a choice.

This logic of ownership and entitlement does not emerge from interpretations of scripture alone. It has been reinforced by patriarchal norms, legal frameworks, cultural traditions, economic structures, and religious doctrines.

One of the most devastating consequences of this logic is marital rape.

At its simplest, marital rape occurs when one spouse engages in sexual activity without the freely given consent of the other.

This form of abuse remains one of the most underreported forms of sexual violence, yet it is far more common than many people realise.

According to the World Health Organization,

This figure points to the scale of violence many women experience within relationships that should be places of safety. Statistics alone cannot capture the full extent of the problem.

Contrary to popular imagination, the perpetrators are not always overtly violent men. Often, they are men who outwardly embody respectability. They may be church-going men, educated men, community leaders, or men who see themselves and are seen by others as loving husbands and good fathers.

That reality can make the abuse more difficult to recognise, both for those experiencing it and for those observing it from the outside.

Many women do not immediately recognise what is happening to them as sexual violence. Others struggle to name it because the person violating them is not a stranger lurking in the shadows, but someone in their home; someone they know, love, trust, depend on, or have built a life with.

Others remain silent because they have been taught that what is happening to them is simply part of marriage. Some lack the language to describe their experience. Some fear the consequences of naming it.

Recognition itself does not always arrive immediately. Sometimes it takes time. Sometimes it takes distance. Sometimes it takes education. Sometimes it takes hearing another woman’s story before finding language for their own. And even when recognition arrives, shame often enforces silence.

This is one reason marital rape remains hidden in plain sight.

But silence alone does not explain why it remains so difficult to recognise, name, and challenge.

We must also examine the systems that have enabled and sustained this logic of entitlement.

The Architecture of Entitlement

The belief that a husband is entitled to his wife’s body was reinforced by more than religion alone. Legal systems, economic structures, political institutions, and cultural norms collectively diminished women’s autonomy while expanding male authority.

Legal

The idea that women do not possess full authority over their own bodies has deep historical roots.

In “When God Was a Woman”, Merlin Stone compares ancient legal traditions from Mesopotamia, Assyria, and the Hebrews. Reflecting on how these laws treated sexual violence, she writes:

The laws Stone references come from different legal traditions: Sumerian, Assyrian, and Hebrew. In the first example, the law appears to focus primarily on the act of rape and the punishment of the perpetrator.

In the later examples, however, the focus appears to shift. The violation is no longer understood as something done to the woman, but as an offence against the men connected to her: her husband, her father, her family, their lineage, or their honour. She is no longer the subject of her own story, but the object through which other people’s interests are negotiated. Her body becomes the site through which male authority, inheritance, and ownership are negotiated.

Stone’s examples suggest that a raped woman could be treated less as the primary victim of the crime and more as the object through which questions of male authority, honour, lineage, and ownership were negotiated.

The question shifts from “What was done to her?” to “Whose rights over her have been violated?”

That distinction matters because embedded within it is a profoundly different understanding of women: not as autonomous, self-governing persons with authority over their own bodies, but as daughters, wives, and dependants whose bodies are controlled, regulated, and governed by others.

These laws also raise another pertinent question:

If a woman risks punishment, shame, social exclusion, loss of status, or damage to her family's reputation after being assaulted, silence can become a form of self-protection. The burden of the violation, and often the shame associated with it, is then shifted from the perpetrator onto the person who experienced it.

In this way, shame becomes a powerful mechanism of social control.

Today, most legal systems no longer punish women for being raped, but many survivors continue to face forms of social punishment. They risk judgment, disbelief, character assassination, community scrutiny, and what can feel like reputational death. This is especially true when the perpetrator is not a stranger but a husband, partner, respected professional, religious leader, or someone admired within the community.

The result is that many women remain silent, while perpetrators remain protected.

The idea that a husband possessed rights over his wife’s body was not confined to biblical times. It continued to shape legal systems well into the modern era.

Until recently, many legal systems did not recognise rape within marriage as a crime. The law often assumed that a wife had given permanent consent through marriage itself, making it legally impossible for a husband to rape his wife.

One of the clearest expressions of this principle can be found in the writings of seventeenth-century English jurist Sir Matthew Hale. In The History of the Pleas of the Crown, published in 1736, Hale wrote that “the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife” because marriage constituted irrevocable consent. Although Hale cited no legal authority for this claim, it became one of the most influential statements underpinning the common-law marital rape exemption and shaped legal thinking for centuries.

In the United States, marital rape was not recognised as a crime in all fifty states until 1993. Even then, many states retained exemptions, loopholes, or higher evidentiary standards that made prosecution more difficult than in cases involving non-spousal rape.

Today, there are still countries where marital rape is not recognised as a criminal offence, and others where legal exemptions, weak enforcement, or cultural attitudes continue to undermine women’s ability to seek justice when they have been harmed.

Religious

For many women, ideas about authority, submission, marriage, and bodily autonomy were not learned through legal codes. They were learned through sermons, Bible studies, marriage counselling, and faith communities.

As highlighted earlier, certain biblical passages have frequently been interpreted in ways that positioned husbands as authorities and wives as those called to submit. Whatever the original intent of these texts, such interpretations often reinforced the belief that a husband’s authority within marriage was both natural and divinely ordained.

Within these frameworks, submission could be presented as virtue, sacrifice as duty, and self-sacrifice as evidence of faithfulness. A wife’s refusal might be interpreted as selfishness, rebellion, or a failure to fulfil her God-given role.

In many faith communities, these teachings were not merely theological ideas; they became expectations woven into daily life. Women were encouraged to prioritise peace over honesty, endurance over self-preservation, and self-sacrifice over self-protection.

What begins as a theological claim about authority can gradually become a personal belief about what one is permitted to refuse.

Economic

Economic dependence can profoundly affect the choices available to women. When access to housing, financial security, education, childcare, or basic survival depends upon a relationship, exercising personal autonomy may carry significant risks.

Throughout much of history, women were prevented from owning property, accessing education, opening bank accounts, entering certain professions, or controlling their own financial resources. Their economic survival was often tied to fathers, husbands, or male relatives.

When economic security depends upon a relationship, leaving, resisting, or refusing can become far more difficult.

These patterns were not confined to Europe or North America. In many parts of Africa, colonial administrations and missionary activity disrupted existing systems in which women exercised significant economic power and autonomy. Indigenous systems in which women participated in trade, agriculture, and local economies were increasingly replaced by wage-labour structures that privileged men. Educational opportunities were disproportionately directed toward boys, while girls were prepared primarily for domestic roles.

These colonial and missionary economic structures reinforced male authority while limiting women's autonomy.

Political

Women were historically excluded from many of the spaces where laws, policies, and social norms were created.

The rules governing women’s bodies were often written by men, interpreted by men, enforced by men, and debated in institutions where women had little or no representation.

Those most affected by these rules were frequently excluded from shaping them, making women's interests, experiences, and realities more easily overlooked.

The result was a political order that normalised male authority while limiting women’s ability to shape the conditions of their own lives.

Bringing It Home

Taken together, these religious, legal, economic, political, and social systems created the conditions in which entitlement could be mistaken for love, authority for care, obedience for virtue, and compliance for consent.

At the heart of this entitlement is the belief that marriage grants one person rights over another person’s body.

It does not.

Neither bride price, dowry, nor any other marriage custom grants one person rights over another person’s body.

A husband is not entitled to his wife’s body simply because he is her husband.

Marriage changes many things. It does not erase personhood.

A wedding ceremony is not a lifelong surrender of bodily autonomy.

Consent cannot be inherited through vows, purchased through bride price, granted by scripture, or assumed through marriage.

It must be freely given and capable of being withdrawn.

Every time.

I’d be interested to hear your reflections.

What stories about marriage, authority, consent, and duty have you inherited?

And which of them have you found yourself questioning?

I’d welcome your reflections in the comments.

Coming Next in This Series

• Part Two: The Space Between Consent and Coercion

• Part Three: Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Shame, Secrecy, and the Cost of Speaking

Further Reading

For readers interested in exploring these themes further:

• Audre Lorde, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action

• Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

• bell hooks, The Will to Change

• Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade

• Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman

• Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her

References

• Hale, Sir Matthew. Historia Placitorum Coronæ (The History of the Pleas of the Crown), Vol. I. London: E. and R. Nutt and R. Gosling, 1736, p. 629.

• Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976, p. 59.

• World Health Organization. Violence Against Women. Geneva: World Health Organization. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women

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Nearly every social issue is reduced to competing binaries:

• liberal vs conservative

• racism vs “reverse racism”

• patriarchy vs matriarchy

• misogyny vs misandry

Complex realities are flattened into symmetrical opposites, as though every form of harm or oppression must have an equal and opposite counterpart.

This becomes especially important in conversations about gender.

Misogyny and misandry, for example, are often framed as equal and opposite phenomena. Mirrored expressions of hostility within the so-called “war of the sexes.”

But this binary framing conflates structural oppression with interpersonal discomfort.

Systems of domination are not defined solely by hostility. They are defined by power:
who holds it,
how it is institutionalized,
and whose lives are deeply and materially shaped by it.

Misandry and misogyny do not emerge from the same historical foundation, nor do they carry the same structural weight or impact.

The former may produce interpersonal discomfort, distrust, resentment, or defensiveness.
The latter has historically shaped laws, institutions, violence, restrictions on freedom, and social reality itself. Its consequences are material.

And when we flatten those distinctions, we lose the ability to speak honestly about power.

Beyond the Dictionary Definition

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines misogyny as:

“hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women,”

While misandry is defined as

“hatred of men.”

On the surface, the terms appear symmetrical. But misogyny has historically functioned as something far more structural and institutionalized than individual prejudice.

It is prejudice reinforced by structural and institutional power.

It operates through legal systems, cultural norms, economic structures, religious institutions, social conditioning, and institutional hierarchies that position women as lesser, controllable, exploitable, vulnerable to violation, or subordinate.

While misandry may manifest as hostility, prejudice, or distrust toward men, it has not historically functioned through comparable systems of institutional or structural domination.

Misogyny has shaped laws, restricted freedoms, normalized violence, and influenced social reality.

Misandry, by contrast, has emerged in response to generations of misogyny, gendered violence, inequality, and exclusion

That does not mean misandry cannot wound.

But interpersonal hostility and structural domination are not the same thing.

They are not equivalent.

Misogyny and Historical Memory

Misogyny has been embedded in religious interpretations, codified in philosophy, justified through pseudoscience, and normalized across centuries of social organization.

Women have historically been framed as irrational, emotional, morally weaker, or naturally subordinate, while men were positioned as logical, authoritative, and inherently suited for leadership.

Today, remnants of those assumptions continue shaping workplaces, politics, relationships, and public discourse.

In Greek mythology, from which the word misogyny itself derives (misein meaning “to hate” and gynē meaning “woman”), Pandora, the first woman, was portrayed as the source through which suffering entered the world.

Similarly, in many interpretations of the Abrahamic tradition, Eve has often been portrayed as the figure through whom sin, temptation, or human downfall entered the world.

Across cultures and eras, women have repeatedly been associated with temptation, disorder, weakness, danger, or moral instability.

These narratives did not remain symbolic or mythological. They helped shape cultural attitudes, social expectations, and systems of power that positioned women as lesser or subordinate.

It is within these historical and contemporary conditions that many expressions of misandry have emerged.

Misandry as Response

There is an African proverb that says:

In other words, harm does not get to control the language or responses of those harmed by it.

While misogyny has historically taken lives, freedoms, and potential, misandry more often manifests through distrust, defensiveness, emotional withdrawal, rhetoric, or anger.

Misogyny says women should remain subordinate, should not control their own bodies, and should not possess too much autonomy, ambition, power, or voice.

Misandry says: I have been harmed by systems built around male dominance and patriarchy. I do not feel safe, and therefore, 'I choose the bear”

One seeks control and the maintenance of hierarchy.

The other seeks protection, distance, self-governance, or self-preservation.

Misandry emerges not as an originating system of domination but as a survival response shaped by exhaustion, fear, distrust, and lived experiences within misogynistic systems.

Of course, this does not make every response healthy or constructive.

But understanding a response is not the same thing as endorsing it.

It is the first step toward understanding, and ultimately changing, the conditions that produced it.

Structural Harm and Material Consequences

The distinction between misogyny and misandry is material.

Globally, women continue to experience:

• femicide

• economic vulnerability

• marital rape and intimate partner violence

• sexual violence

• forced marriage

• reproductive control

• gendered forms of social exclusion

According to UN Women, a significant proportion of women intentionally killed worldwide are killed by intimate partners or family members, revealing how gendered violence is often embedded within the very spaces where women should be safest.

The World Health Organization estimates that roughly 1 in 3 women globally experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime.

Recently, the killing of Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen, allegedly by her husband, once again forced public attention toward the deadly realities of intimate partner violence.

Similarly, the murder-suicide involving former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax and his wife, Cerina Fairfax, left two children behind and highlighted the devastating ripple effects of domestic violence beyond the immediate victims.

And these are only the stories that make international headlines.

Across the world, countless women experience gendered harm in silence, often without media attention, legal protection, or recourse.

These are not merely interpersonal tensions.

They are structural realities with material consequences.

Beyond “Both Sides”

Discomfort is not the same as oppression.

That distinction matters.

A womanist framework asks us to examine the structures of power that shape whose pain becomes systemic, normalized, and materially consequential.

Structural power matters.

History matters.

Context matters.

Material consequences matter.

Not all harm operates in the same way.

Not all suffering is produced through the same systems.

And not all forms of hostility carry the same social consequences.

What becomes possible when we stop treating all forms of harm as equivalent?

Please share your thoughts and insights in the comments!

The word Matriarchy /ˈmeɪtriɑːki/ is a hybrid term with Latin and Greek roots.

• Matri — from the Latin mater / matris: meaning mother

• -archy from the Greek archē (ἀρχή) — meaning beginnings, origin, first principle, (and later, rule or authority)

In pre-Socratic philosophy, archē referred to the beginning, origin, and the primordial source from which all things emerge. Only later, as Greek city-states centralized political power, did the word come to emphasize rule and authority.

We still hear traces of this older meaning:

• Archetype — the original form, what comes first

• Archaeology — the study of origins

• Archaic — belonging to the earliest period

If we return to that earlier meaning, matriarchy could then be understood as:

When Meaning Shifted

Language shifts with power.

As societies became more hierarchical and politically centralised, archē increasingly came to mean rule, command, and authority. Through that lens, patriarchy came to be understood as the rule of fathers, and matriarchy was assumed to mean its opposite.

Yet this binary framing may miss the deeper meaning entirely.

Maternal-centred societies were not organised around domination, conquest, or vertical control. Many were structured around kinship, reciprocity, continuity, stewardship, and social balance.

Beyond the Binary

We have been trained to imagine society through opposites: ruler and ruled, superior and inferior, masculine and feminine, winner and loser, powerful and powerless.

But what if the framework itself is too small?

What if some were organised around very different questions:

• How do we create and sustain life?

• How do we share responsibility across generations?

• How do we maintain balance and care?

• How do we ensure no one is abandoned?

Once hierarchy becomes the only imaginable social order, we lose memory of other ways of organising life and society.

How Matriarchal Societies Organised Themselves

To be clear, not every example below represents a fully matriarchal society. Many were complex societies shaped by multiple forces. Some are more accurately described as matrilineal (descent through the mother’s line), matrifocal (mother-centred households), matrilocal (where couples or families reside within or near the woman’s community), or broader maternal-centred social systems.

Yet taken together, they offer important glimpses of life beyond rigid systems of patriarchy.

Spiritual Life

The divine was not always imagined as exclusively male. Many African and indigenous spiritual traditions hold a more expansive concept of the Divine.

Rather than being confined to fixed human gender categories, the Divine was often understood through complementary masculine and feminine principles, or associated with feminine creative power and generative life-force. Across Africa, names for the Creator reflect these wider spiritual and cosmological understandings.

• Among the Ga of Ghana, Ataa Naa Nyonmo combines feminine and masculine principles and is often interpreted as Father-Mother God.

• In Ibani and Izon traditions of Nigeria, the Divine is known as Tamara or Tamuno, understood through feminine creative imagery meaning: she who created us.

• Among the Maasai and Gikuyu peoples of Kenya, Ngai is the Creator of the world and, in some traditions, invoked in feminine terms as “the she to whom I pray.”

• Among the Shona people of Zimbabwe, Mwari is a revered name for the Divine, understood as creator, sustainer, and beyond fixed human categories.

Even today, language carries echoes of older ways of imagining creation and the sacred. We still say Mother Earth, Mẹ̀tù Nẹ́tèr (in Kemetic tradition), not Father Earth.

Social Life

Kinship and belonging often flowed through maternal lines and extended networks of care. Children were held not only by parents, but by wider systems of kinship. Identity was relational rather than individualised.

Descent was often traced through the mother’s bloodline, with foremothers and maternal ancestors holding deep social and cultural significance.

In matrilocal settings, men might join the household or community of wives or mothers-in-law, placing relationship above possession.

The center of society was the living web of extended family, elders, and age groups, not the isolated nuclear unit.

Economic Life

Economic life prioritised circulation over hoarding.

Wealth moved through communities rather than concentrating in the hands of a few. Resources were tied to responsibility, stewardship, and social wellbeing. Some researchers have described such systems as a Maternal gift economy. I call it an economy of care and reciprocity.

Across numerous African societies, women held recognised authority as traders, organisers, custodians of resources, and anchors of economic continuity.

Among the Yoruba of present-day Nigeria, the Iyalode was a powerful female title associated with commerce, civic leadership, and women’s collective interests.

Among the Igbo of present-day southeastern Nigeria, economic life was closely tied to ideas of discipline, prosperity, and moral responsibility. Idi ụchụ (perseverance and industriousness) and ite ụba (the pot of prosperity) were, in some Igbo traditions, understood as gifts women inherited from the goddess Idemili, enabling them to thrive in commerce and agriculture.

This reflected the idea that economic life was not merely material, but ethical, embedded within a wider social and spiritual framework.

Political Leadership

Many indigenous and African societies developed systems of shared governance, consensus-building, and complementary authority.

• In parts of Igboland, civic life had both male and female arms of governance. Women exercised power through institutions such as the Umuada (assemblies of daughters of the lineage), who mediated disputes, upheld accountability, and influenced civic life.

• Queen Amanirenas of Kush confronted Rome militarily, won, and negotiated favorable peace terms with Augustus—restoring territorial boundaries and affirming Kushite sovereignty for generations.

• Hatshepsut and Queen Nzinga assumed titles and functions associated with kingship when circumstances required. Leadership was not rigidly hierarchical. Power could be negotiated, complementary, and responsive.

Even within the Bible, the two prominent queens presented as sovereign rulers in their own right were African: Queen Makeda (Sheba) of Ethiopia and Queen Candace (Kandake) of Kush. The rest were wives or mothers of sitting kings.

Bringing It Home

To explore maternal-centered ways of life is not to romanticize history

It is to recognise that patriarchy, control, and domination were never the only models of social organisation available. Human societies have organised themselves through many principles: hierarchy and conquest, but also reciprocity, kinship, shared responsibility, and care.

By making these organising principles visible, we contribute to remembrance. We open space for imagination around alternatives.

And in a world marked by war, inequality, social fragmentation, ecological crisis, and exhausted social bonds, remembering other ways of organising life is not indulgence. It is necessary.

The task is not nostalgia, but discernment: What from the past might be reworked for the present? What principles of care and shared responsibility might still serve us now?

In the beginning, mothers.

Women have long stood at the origins of humanity as bearers of life, those through whom the world is continually born, nurtured, and protected.

Care, cooperation, reciprocity, creativity, and stewardship are not relics of a forgotten past.

They are among the oldest foundations of human flourishing, and they remain our deepest resources for building what comes next.

What might it look like to build these principles into the systems we create today?

I'd love to hear what resonates or what questions this raises for you.

Book recommendation:

For readers interested in exploring these themes further, Heide Göttner-Abendroth’s Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy: West Asia and Europe is a rich and thought-provoking work.

Each term describes a distinct relationship to power, lineage, and liberation. Understanding these differences matters. Let’s unpack what they really mean.

Patriarchy: Institutionalized Male Dominance

Patriarchy isn’t just about individual men having power. It is a social system embedded in institutions, cultural norms, and structures that concentrate authority and legitimacy in men, whilst systematically subordinating women.

It establishes malehood as the standard of authority and full personhood, positioning women as secondary, dependent, and subordinate.

This subordination expresses across multiple dimensions:

• Economically: Women often earn less and have historically faced barriers to property ownership, access to bank accounts, financial autonomy, and broader economic opportunities. Their reproductive rights have also been controlled or restricted by the state, limiting autonomy over their own bodies.

• Politically: Leadership, governance, and institutional authority have historically been and continue to be male-dominated, shaping laws, policies, and power structures that govern society.

• Socially & culturally: Women are often defined in relation to men as helpers, or “helpmeets,” reinforcing patriarchal power in intimate relationships. In some cultures, bride price formalizes marriage as a transfer between families; women take their husband’s name, bear children to continue his lineage, and often have limited or no property rights in their father’s or husband’s home. From personal experience, I know how terms like “helpmeet” are weaponized to frame women’s roles as service and obligation rather than partnership. Within this framework, marriage can function as a hierarchy in which women are expected to provide emotional, domestic, and sexual labor as duties owed, rather than as expressions of mutual care, consent, and reciprocity. Patriarchy is thus reproduced, entrenched and normalized through everyday relational dynamics.

• Intellectually: Male rationality is assumed, while women are stereotyped as emotional, irrational, or less capable of intellectual authority or leadership.

• Religion: Patriarchy is reinforced through teachings that position the Divine as male, (and white). In most religions, the feminine is absent or erased in representations of the sacred, and in some religious texts, women are restricted from speaking or holding authority in places of worship.

• Psychologically & emotionally: Patriarchy shapes masculinity by demanding emotional suppression from boys and men. Boys are socialized to equate vulnerability with weakness and dominance with strength.

  “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”- bel hooks

Patriarchy sustains itself through socialization, normalizing male authority and female subordination.

Matriarchy: Authority and Social Stewardship

Matriarchy is often misunderstood when viewed through a patriarchal lens. In patriarchal logic, power equals domination, so it is often assumed matriarchy means women dominating men. It does not.

Matriarchy reflects a different philosophy of authority, one rooted in responsibility, continuity, and stewardship rather than domination. It emphasizes relational balance, communal responsibility, and the long-term well-being of the community.

In matriarchal systems:

• Mothers anchor lineage and continuity

• Children are central to communal responsibility

• Egalitarian. Authority flows from stewardship, not coercion

• Men and extended kin support the mother–child axis without controlling it

• Social organization prioritizes nurturing, protection, and collective well-being

Structurally, matriarchy is often expressed in matrilineal societies, where lineage and inheritance flow through the maternal line. Among the Akan of Ghana, for example, the Queen Mother holds institutional authority, including the power to nominate or depose chiefs, serving as a guardian of lineage continuity and social balance.

Feminism: Resistance to Gender-Based Oppression

Feminism is a social movement and liberatory framework aimed at ending sexism and gender-based oppression. It emerged in the late 18th and 19th centuries in response to patriarchal systems that denied women agency, legal recognition, political participation, economic ownership, and personal autonomy.

Early feminist movements in Europe and North America often centered white, middle-class women seeking equality with white men, while marginalizing Black, Indigenous, and working-class communities. For example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leading figure in the American suffrage movement, argued for prioritizing the enfranchisement of white women over formerly enslaved people:

Stanton’s position highlights the racial limitations of early Western feminist frameworks. While these movements were often hailed as progressive, they were deeply exclusionary, fraught with elitism and racism, and frequently achieved gains at the expense of Black people and Indigenous communities.

Black feminist scholars, such as bell hooks and Alice Walker, expanded feminism to show that liberation from gender oppression is inseparable from race, class, and economic systems of oppression.

Womanism: A Framework of Collective Liberation

Coined in 1983 by Alice Walker in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, womanism builds on feminism but expands its scope to address race, class, and gender. It centers the survival, wholeness, and well-being of entire Black and marginalised communities.

Womanism goes beyond feminism to address intersecting layers and systems of oppression:

• Sexism

• Racism

• Classism and economic exploitation

• Other intersections of marginalization

According to Walker, A womanist is committed to the restoration of an entire people, not domination over others.

Womanism as a liberatory framework is inclusive, spiritual, and relational, emphasizing interdependence, continuity, and collective wellbeing.

This quote reflects womanism’s focus on collective restoration, rather than limited, exclusionary reforms

Matrilineality and Patrilineality

Matrilineality and patrilineality describe how societies organize lineage, inheritance, and social identity.

Matrilineality is lineage through the maternal line.
Inheritance, identity, and continuity flow through mothers. For example, among the Akan of Ghana, lineage and royal succession pass through the maternal line.

Patrilineality is lineage through the paternal line.
Inheritance, identity, and descent flow through fathers, organizing continuity around male ancestry.

These systems reflect different cultural logics of descent and social organization. They do not inherently imply domination, but shape how continuity, responsibility, and belonging are structured.

Reflection

Let me know how this resonates. Which of these social systems or liberatory frameworks do you see shaping your community or your own life?

Share your thoughts in the comments. Asante!

Suggested Reading:

• bell hooks – The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (Atria, 2004) & Communion: The Female Search for Love (William Morrow, 2002)

• Alice Walker – In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (Harcourt, 1983)

• Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí – The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (University of Minnesota Press, 1997)

• Ifi Amadiume – Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (Zed Books, 1987)

• Nkiru Nzegwu – Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture (SUNY Press, 2006)

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Through controlled, ritualised cutting or scraping, the skin is shaped into permanent incisions and textured scar patterns rich with symbolic meaning. This long and often painful process communicates complex messages about identity, social status, and belonging, making the body a site of knowledge, culture, and memory.

Scarification rituals are governed by deep knowledge systems, skilled practitioners, and precise cultural protocols that vary across regions, ethnic groups, and lineages. The resulting intricate designs symbolize collective identity, spiritual beliefs, protection, and rites of passage.

Unlike most ink tattoos, scarification adds texture and relief, making it both seen and felt. This enhanced visibility was especially important on melanin-rich skin, where the body was never an isolated canvas but a site accountable to the community, legible within social, spiritual, and cultural systems. Scarification also served as a social language, easily read in contexts where identity, status, and meaning needed to be immediately recognizable within communal and relational networks. Through these marks, shared identity became tangible, reinforcing communal ties, responsibility, and belonging.

For the Bétamarribé people of the Benin Republic, scarification marked the stages of life, with rituals extending from early childhood through adulthood. Children received their first marks at two or three years old as initiation into the community. Later, abdominal and back markings accompanied adolescence, and gender-differentiated scars signified adulthood, marriage, and pregnancy. Completing the full scarification rites was believed to provide spiritual protection and medicinal benefits.

In communities where these marks represented essential social transitions, missing the expected scarification could limit full social recognition, affecting participation, reputation, and communal belonging.

Pain in these contexts was ritualised, gaining meaning through ceremony, community witnessing, and spiritual framing. Enduring it signified readiness, discipline, and transformation.

Scarification practices vary widely across Africa, reflecting the continent’s rich cultural diversity. In parts of present-day Nigeria, including Edo, Igbanke, Akure, Olige, Umunede, Ondo, and Agbor communities, facial and abdominal scarification convey meanings tied to identity, protection, fertility, aesthetics, and medicinal purposes.

Scarification often intersects with indigenous medicinal knowledge systems. Controlled bloodletting through scarification served as a therapeutic intervention for certain health conditions, including abdominal pain, sickle cell–related complications, and ailments historically understood as disorders of the blood or spleen. Among the Esan people of Edo State, splenic enlargement known as Udeh is addressed through a form of artistic abdominal scarification called Uvinmi.

These procedures are performed by specialised traditional practitioners, each with distinctive and recognisable designs, often differentiated by gender and lineage. While cross-cultural frameworks differ, the underlying principle of controlled bloodletting as a therapeutic technique continues to exist within contemporary biomedical practice.

In Igbanke communities, scarification, known as AMA, is used to treat specific ailments. These designs are also admired on pregnant bellies, celebrating fertility and marking the transition into a revered stage of life, a practice also observed among the Kaleri women in Borno State.

Scarification was also widespread among the Peulh/Fulani communities, particularly among women. Facial markings, especially around the lips and cheeks, signified beauty, identity, and belonging, and in some cases served medicinal or protective purposes rooted in indigenous knowledge systems.

In Northeast Africa, among the Nuer of South Sudan and western Ethiopia, a form of scarification known as Gaar, often consisting of four horizontal lines across the forehead, marked identity, belonging, and social recognition. The Dinka of South Sudan similarly practiced forehead and abdominal scarification for comparable social, spiritual, and medicinal purposes. Many elders still carry these marks today as living records of lineage and community.

In Southern Africa, including among the Hlubi, facial scarification performed using blades historically marked communal belonging, lineage, and identity, reinforcing collective memory and social cohesion across generations.

In Black Panther, Killmonger’s body marks draw on authentic African scarification practices, introducing global audiences to their depth, symbolism, and intentionality, and offering a counter-narrative to long-standing colonial misrepresentations.

The art of scarification is changing in Africa. Today, these marks are disappearing.

While Western frameworks have often treated scars as something to hide or erase, in African contexts, they have been a source of pride, markers of identity, belonging, and cultural memory.

Colonialism, missionary interruption, and neo-colonial pressures dramatically reshaped perceptions of scarification. Viewed through Western imperialist and homogenising lenses, it was increasingly labelled primitive, unattractive, or demonic. These judgments introduced fear and shame, erasing recognition of the skill, consent frameworks, and deep knowledge systems required to sustain the practice. Many communities reduced or abandoned these practices, often not by choice but under pressure to conform to external norms.

Yet the cultural memory endures.

As with many African traditions, scarification and scar-inspired aesthetics are re-emerging globally, often detached from their original contexts and repackaged through fashion, social media, and capitalist outlets.

Beauty, value, and meaning should not only be recognized once they are extracted, transported to the West, and repackaged.

As the Akan proverb aptly cautions:

Did this post resonate, or did you learn something new? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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My full name is Tamunomiekarabia, meaning “God will complete”. The shortened form is Tamkara.

But my father used to call me Karama.

He passed away 18 years ago, and since then, no one else calls me by that name. Remembering a name that is no longer spoken carries a quiet ache.

So sometimes, I call myself Karama.

I do it to remember the tone and timbre of his voice, to lean into his presence, and to honour the bond we shared.
It is my way of keeping his memory close, of reclaiming and holding my name with care.

Our loved ones live on through their essence, in how they are remembered and spoken about, in the lessons they leave behind, and in the values they pass forward. I often speak my father’s name aloud, thank him, and wish him rest.

I am deeply grateful for the gifts he passed on to me: kindness, a strong sense of family, a love for literature and journalling (my father was a journaller before it was a thing), generosity, tenacity, resourcefulness, and a spirit of entrepreneurship.

Sometimes, when I look closely in the mirror, I catch traces of him reflected back at me in my tooth gap, my full cheeks, and my kind eyes.

My father was many things at the same time.
He was an engineer, a multi-passionate entrepreneur, a reader, a community leader, and a devoted family man.

He was always exploring new ideas and ventures, long before computers and social media shaped how we imagine possibilities. His creativity, curiosity, and drive continue to inspire me, and I carry his lessons forward in my own life.

He was not one for taking many photographs, and in those days, we did not capture moments the way we do now. I often wish we had taken more.

“Those we love do not vanish; they echo in the lives they touch, in the names we speak, and in the love we carry forward.”

Tell me: What names are waiting to be spoken aloud and remembered?

Across many Indigenous societies, kinship was not organised around romantic permanence, but around the continuity of life itself.
No child was illegitimate. Care was collective. Responsibility was shared.

Across parts of Africa and the wider Indigenous world, responsibility for children, lineage, and continuity was located in the mother and her kin.

Among the Akan of Ghana — including Ashanti/Asante, Fante, Akuapem, Akyem, Bono, and related groups, lineage (abusua) passes through the mother.

Children belong to their mother’s clan. Inheritance, identity, kinship, belonging, and ancestral continuity flow through the maternal line. Succession, including chieftaincy legitimacy, is traced through the queen mother’s lineage. A man’s primary social obligations are often to his sisters’ children rather than his biological offspring.

In many contexts, children were raised in their mother’s household, which functioned as the central unit of family and lineage. Fathers contributed economic support, guidance, and ritual participation, but they were not the primary heads of their children’s households. Their responsibilities often extended to their sisters’ children, while they engaged with the wider social and economic life of the community.

Continuity was anchored through the mother.

In some precolonial Yoruba and Igbo societies (Nigeria), even where naming or descent was patrilineal, child-raising and protection were historically collective and woman-centred. Women did not disappear into marriage. They remained daughters, sisters, and lineage holders within expansive kin networks supported by aunties, grandmothers, and communal care structures.

African Scholarly work underscore these insights. In Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society, Ifi Amadiume draws on earlier ethnographic studies, including P.O. Nsugbe’s documentation of the matrilineal system of the Ohafia and S. Ottenburg’s (1968) analysis of the dual descent structures of Afikpo villages.

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí’s The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses examines how Yoruba social organisation was misinterpreted through Western gender frameworks, showing that gender was relational, contextual, and socially organised rather than biologically or hierarchically fixed.

These kinship structures are not unique to Africa. It appears across Indigenous societies worldwide.

Among the Mosuo (southwest China), family life is organised around women’s households. Men may form intimate relationships, but children remain with their mothers and are raised by maternal kin.

Among the Minangkabau (Indonesia), the largest matrilineal society in the world, property, ancestry, and continuity pass through the mother’s lineage, while men move between households.

These historical patterns of maternal anchoring set the stage for understanding how patriarchal structures later reorganized social allegiance.

Biology as Witness

In human genetics, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is inherited only from the mother. Fathers contribute nuclear DNA, but mitochondrial DNA comes solely from women. Both sons and daughters receive it, but only daughters have the ability to pass it on to the next generation.

This is why scientists use maternal lines to trace ancestry, population history, and human migration. In many African spiritual traditions, ancestral connection is likewise traced through the mother.

So when people speak about “preserving a bloodline,” what is usually being preserved is social lineage: name, property, and cultural identity.

Genetic lineage, however, is biologically carried and transmitted through the woman.

While conventional culture often organizes lineage through men, biology sustains it through women.

What many Indigenous societies understood through cosmology, social organisation, and lived knowledge, science now confirms:

Lineage is maternally anchored.

PART II — From Maternal Anchors to Patriarchal Control

Before delving further, it’s important to clarify what we mean by matriarchy. A matriarchy does not mean women dominate men. Unlike patriarchy, which concentrates power in men, a matriarchy places mothers at the center because they are the source of life. Children and the lineage are the priority, and society organizes itself to protect, nurture, and sustain them.

In such systems:

• Mothers anchor lineage and social continuity.

• Children are the focus of communal responsibility.

• Men and extended kin support the mother-child axis, but do not control it.

• Authority flows from the source of life rather than hierarchical male power.

In societies where women historically anchored lineage and continuity, these structures were gradually disrupted. Patriarchy re-engineered allegiance, repositioning women from anchors of kinship to dependents.

As societies shifted toward private property, nuclear family structures, state formation, and inheritance through male lines, women’s bodies and reproductive capacities became sites of regulation and control.

The collective guiding question shifted from who raises the children to who controls descent, lineage, property, and legitimacy.

Colonial rule, religious doctrine, legal marriage contracts, enforced surnames, and inheritance laws reinforced this shift. The rise of the nuclear family accelerated it further: lineage was narrowed, clans were dismantled, and households replaced communities as the primary unit of care.

In this reordered world:

• Women were repositioned from lineage-holders to dependents.

• Collective care gave way to isolation.

• Motherhood, once central, became subordinated to marriage and rendered illegitimate without it.

• A woman’s primary duty was no longer to her children and kin, but to her husband — and through him, allegiance to the state, religion, and male inheritance systems.

The expectation became permanence at any cost. Anything less was framed as failure and often punished.

An African womanist and decolonial lens

African feminist and decolonial thinkers such as Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, Ifi Amadiume, and Sylvia Tamale have long challenged the idea that patriarchy is synonymous with African culture. Their work shows that many African societies organised kinship, gender, and power in ways that did not centre male dominance or female subordination.

Patriarchy, as it is now experienced, is not simply “tradition.” It is tradition interrupted and reorganised through colonialism.

The Quiet Remembering

What I am opening here is foundational: a remembering of lineage and kinship structures that long predate the systems many of us have inherited.

When a woman says, “My allegiance is to my lineage,” she is both remembering and interrogating a historical rearrangement of loyalty.

This is not opposition.
It is alignment.

With continuity.
With care.
With responsibility.

In many Indigenous worlds, this foundational understanding was never controversial.

The children were always ours.

If this post resonates, I’d love to hear your reflections or experiences. Asante!

I hope you were able to mark the end of the year and the beginning of a new one in a way that felt aligned for you.

Every year, on January 1st, we ring in the New Year with shouts of “Happy New Year!” to friends, family, and loved ones. But does the New Year really begin universally on January 1st, or are we responding to one particular calendar system — and, in doing so, adopting a way of organising time that emerged from a specific historical context?

The start of the year has not always been marked on January 1st. In parts of Europe, the year once began around March. This changed in 1582 with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar under Pope Gregory XIII.

Over time, this calendar became widely adopted across much of the world, often through colonial administration, religious authority, legal systems, and governance structures, where it was enforced as the standard for civil, commercial, and institutional life.

(If you’ve ever wondered why October is the tenth month when octo means eight, this is part of the reason.)

Beyond the widespread Gregorian calendar, many Indigenous cultures continue to follow calendar systems that are more closely aligned with land, seasons, and spiritual practices.

Before the Gregorian calendar

Before the widespread adoption of the Gregorian calendar, many African societies, like many Indigenous cultures elsewhere, followed their own calendar systems. These were not organised around a fixed numerical date, but around land, seasons, agricultural cycles, and spiritual life.

Time wasn’t simply counted forward.
It was cyclical. Contextual. Relational. Observed and experienced.

Across Africa and many other cultures, there were diverse ways of keeping time, and the New Year often fell in relation to seasonal change, agricultural cycles, and moments of ecological renewal, rather than on a fixed date.

For example:

• In Yoruba calendrical systems of West Africa, the New Year falls around early June.

• The Ethiopian and Eritrean New Year, known as Enkutatash, is celebrated in September.

• Among the Tsonga, Pedi, and Tswana peoples of Southern Africa, the New Year is also marked in September, when vegetation begins to grow again after winter.

• Chinese New Year follows a lunar calendar and usually falls between late January and February, close to the arrival of spring.

What connects these moments isn’t the date itself.
It’s attentiveness to change in the environment — in nature and in the seasons.

New beginnings were marked when something was actually beginning.

If the Gregorian New Year doesn’t feel like the New Year for you, you’re not alone. You may simply be remembering, or more attuned to seasonal rhythms than you realise.

Calendars are never neutral

Calendars don’t just tell us when things happen.
They quietly shape how we think about work, rest, urgency, productivity, and renewal. This is why timekeeping is a cultural phenomenon, not a neutral one.

Psychologist Amos Wilson observed that the way history is organised shapes how people understand themselves and their place in the world. When one system of time becomes dominant, it doesn’t simply organise dates. It influences context, identity, and how societies imagine progress, balance, and even destiny.

Bringing it Home

In the Northern Hemisphere, January sits in the middle of winter. In much of the Global South, it falls within very different seasonal patterns, often shaped by harmattan winds, rainfall, or agricultural cycles rather than cold and dormancy.

Historically, in parts of the world where winter brings colder temperatures and shorter days, this season was associated with slowing down, conserving energy, and preparation. Growth was expected later, not immediately.

Seen this way, it becomes easier to understand why January may not naturally feel like a “fresh start” for everyone. That feeling isn’t a lack of motivation. It’s often a mismatch between cultural expectations and seasonal reality.

A culturally intelligent and historically informed approach recognises January 1st as one calendar system among many, and makes room for different rhythms of renewal, rest, and readiness.

Not everyone is meant to bloom at the same moment or to hit the ground running on January 1st.

I would love to hear which New Year traditions or seasonal markers are meaningful in your culture or community. Please share in the comments.

Best wishes for 2026, in whatever season, rhythm, or calendar feels most aligned for you.

In community,
Tamkara

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Sankofa (pronounced SAHN-koh-fah) is a word from the Twi language of Ghana meaning “to retrieve” or “go back and get it.”
It comes from three parts:

• san — to return

• ko — to go

• fa — to fetch, seek, take

The Sankofa symbol is often depicted as a bird turning its head backward to retrieve a precious egg in its beak while its feet face forward.

It reminds us that even as we move along life’s journey, there is wisdom in looking back, in retrieving intelligence and guidance from the past, from trusted elders, from our indigenous knowledge systems, and from the journeys of those who came before us.

Sometimes we must go back, not in longing but in learning, to revisit the parts of ourselves that life has caused us to forget, the parts we had to set aside to survive, and gently but firmly reclaim them.

It is okay to change. To see things differently, think differently, and move differently through this world. This is not starting over. It is returning with experience, wiser, clearer, and more whole.

Sankofa reminds us that we can (introspectively) look back without losing forward motion or turning into a pillar of salt. We can go back and get it — the lessons, the strength, the forgotten parts of ourselves and carry them gently into the future.

Tell me: what part of yourself, or what wisdom from your lineage, are you ready to go back and retrieve?

In Community,

Tamkara

Recursion is a word many may know from computer science, logic, or psychology. But in African Indigenous wisdom, it holds a deeper meaning. It is the intentional act, often enacted through ritual or ceremony, of looping back to the ‘origins’ of something to symbolically choose a different path and, in doing so, create a new and better outcome.

Recursion is neither regression nor escapism. It is transmutation and restoration. Across African and other Indigenous healing traditions, people return to water, fire, breath, and to the site of their wounding in order to process trauma, choose differently, and plant the seeds of new beginnings.

Recursion is never about running away. It is a running towards—towards the root, towards the memory, towards the wound—in order to enact change.

The Akan speak of Sankofa: “to go back and fetch it.” The Yorùbá return to water for cleansing and renewal. The Zulu revisit sites of pain with ritual to plant something new. The Dagara bury symbols at the place of wounding as a way of release.

These traditions remind us that healing is neither linear nor singular. It is cyclical—spiral, even. With each ceremonial return, each recursion, each ritual, the knot of pain loosens its grip, and in its place, a new seed is planted and nurtured.

Now I become Myself

Leaving an abusive marriage has been a lesson in recursion for me.

The initiation of divorce brought relief, a welcome separation from what bell hooks describes so aptly as “a punishing, cruel, unloving, patriarchal man.”

But healing is never linear, especially when time, energy, love, and care have been invested for over twenty years.

Amidst the legalities of this process, I often return to the site of the wounding, the origin, the memories, the pain, the angst, the stress of it all. And each time I return, I do it differently. I allow myself to witness what has happened, to process it, to make a different choice, and to transmute it into something new.

One thing I have found to be true is this:

Two things can coexist. I can dance in my kitchen after tears of release. I can hold the pain of releasing an illusion alongside the hope and excitement for new and emerging possibilities.

I return to the wound, and in that return, I let the light enter.

What Recursion Looks Like for Me (and How It Might Look for You)

These words speak to the heart of recursion.

For me, recursion has meant circling back through water, breath, and memory work. For you, it may look different. Here are some practices I hold in my toolbox

Water — Long baths that feel like a reset, or tears that wash away years of holding. Sometimes even simple naps, a surrender to rest, can be deeply restorative.

Journaling and Fire — For me, it is journaling and curating, writing, reflecting, and collecting thoughts, images, and ideas that help me process what has been. For others, it could be writing letters you will never send, then burning them, letting the flames be a symbolic act of release and renewal.

Breath — Slow, deep, grounding breaths that reclaim space in my body once occupied by fear.

Each return has changed me. Each time I circle back, I reclaim a little more of myself, a little more peace, a little more freedom. And yes, joy — even in what others might deem the most difficult time of my life.

Healing Isn’t Linear

Recursion isn’t regression.

It is restoration. It is transmutation. It is expanding into new possibilities.

Indigenous traditions knew this, and their invitation is to, when safe and able, symbolically return to the wound, the water, the fire, the breath, our practices again and again, and to choose a different path. Each return brings more strength, more grit, and more possibilities. Each cycle plants something new.

🧘🏿‍♀️ I have recorded a gentle body-scan breathwork audio to guide you through your own recursive return. You’ll be invited to gently revisit tension or pain in the body, breathe into it, release it, and plant something new, a small act of restoration for yourself.

I’m rooting for you 💚

Leave a comment if you have thoughts to share. Also respond to the poll below.

Ways to work with me.

• Breathwork: Breathe and share: Guided breathwork sessions that invite presence, release, and restoration, combined with space for reflection and connection.

• African History & Language Resources – Curated tools and courses to reconnect with heritage, languages, and indigenous knowledge systems.

• Organizational Workshops – With over 21 years as an HR Leader, I help teams build healthier, more connected, culturally aware, and happier workplaces through wellbeing strategies and culture mapping or competency workshops.

In community,

Tamkara

Growing up in Nigeria, I often heard the saying:

“Marriage is a university you never graduate from!”

Well… as an overachiever, look mum — I just graduated 🙂

Alongside this saying, came another more sobering warning: “God hates divorce!”
These messaging and others like it shaped my early understanding of marriage, obligation, and the Divine.

As I began researching indigenous African traditions and ways of being, I discovered a very different story. One that challenged the doctrines I inherited, revealed the agency women once held in precolonial African societies, and reshaped my understanding of the Divine.

Divorce in Precolonial Africa

In many African cultures, divorce was not the shameful taboo it is often considered today. Women could leave husbands who were unkind, incompatible, harmful or unable to ‘provide’.

Among the Wodaabe of Niger, the annual Gerewol festival (often called the “wife-stealing” festival, though the name can be misleading), demonstrated that both men and women could separate without acrimony and choose to remarry without condemnation.

In precolonial societies, children belonged to the community, and it truly took a village to raise them. Single parenthood was therefore never stigmatized. Queen Nandi, mother of Shaka Zulu, is a powerful example: she raised her son independently, shaping him into a great leader, while retaining her honor as Queen.

These traditions reveal that, in many contexts, women exercised greater choice, agency, and independence within marriage and family life than is often assumed. The stigmas we know today emerged later, shaped by colonial disruption.

Marriage, Power, and the Colonial Disruption

Africa scholar Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, in The Invention of Women, details how colonial powers imposed rigid hierarchies that upended these flexible precolonial systems.

As Oyěwùmí notes:

In other words, in Yorubaland, women did not always change their surnames to their husbands’, and royal daughters often remained in their natal compounds, raising children within their own lineage. In this way, they retained influence over their children and exercised a measure of autonomy and self-determination within marriage.

Colonial powers disrupted this autonomy by imposing male-centered hierarchies:

Missionary education further restricted women’s roles:

Oyěwùmí also observes:

Where women once exercised choice and authority, colonial structures narrowed their power, reshaping marriage into a tool of social control. The family became defined as “the man plus his dependents”¹, muting women’s other identities and turning the household into a site of patriarchal dominance.

These shifts also influenced spiritual teachings, reinforcing rigid, gendered notions of God and framing divorce as a moral failing.

Tamuno and the Genderless Divine

This brings me back to the warning I received growing up: “God hates divorce.”

But what does “God” mean in African contexts, and how is our concept of the Divine expressed?

In many African cosmologies and spiritual systems, the Divine was rarely imagined or confined in rigid gendered terms. The Divine may be described as father, mother, spirit, ancestor, or all at once.

The Divine was neither strictly male nor female, but the embodiment of both—or neither. This fluidity reflects a deeper understanding of transcendence: the Divine moves beyond human categories, holding opposites in balance.

This expansiveness allowed people to experience God personally, locally, and in the rhythms of daily life. It was only with European missionary influence that God was imagined as male—and white.

Across the continent, examples abound:

• Izon and Ibani (my heritage): God is Tamara or Tamuno—“She who created us.” This is the inspiration for the “Tamuno” in my name.

• Maasai and Gikuyu (Kenya): Pray to Ngai, sometimes invoked as female.

• Igbo (Nigeria): Honor Chukwu or Chineke, both gender-neutral.

• Shona (Zimbabwe): Revere Mwari, neither male nor female.

• Dogon (Mali): Honor Amma, creator of earth, fertility, and rain—beyond gender.

Is it really so far-fetched to imagine the Divine as non-masculine?

After all, creation itself begins in the body of a woman. That is, quite literally, a God act. 🌱

So I imagine Tamuno—She who created us would hate abuse far more than divorce. I imagine She would bless acts of self-preservation, and approve walking away from harm.

✨ Gentle Reminder

Take a moment today to listen to the guided meditation Uncertainty: Trusting the Unfolding:an invitation to settle into presence and trust.

If you’re feeling uncertain or need support, Breathwork can help you reconnect with your body, release tension, and restore calm. I would love to breathe with you. Sessions are designed to fit your schedule:

• 20-minute Refreshers – Quick resets to release stress

• 60-minute Deep Sessions – Dive deeper into balance and clarity

Other ways to work with me.

• African History & Language Resources – Curated tools and courses to reconnect with heritage, languages, and indigenous knowledge systems.

• Organizational Workshops – I facilitate sessions designed to help multicultural teams thrive by building cultural awareness, cultural competency mapping, and strengthening collaboration, while integrating wellness practices to reduce stress, enhance cohesion, and boost productivity.

References

1. Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 93, 127, 129, 151.

I would add: It is also an artist’s duty to reflect and hold a mirror to our collective lives.

As an artist, a woman, a storyteller, and a survivor of an abusive marriage that spanned over twenty years, I am choosing to do just that: to reflect, to hold up the mirror, and to finally speak the truths I have carried in silence for far too long.

As September begins, we enter Virgo season, for reflection, healing, and intentional growth. This month also carries the energy of the new moon, a moment to plant seeds for new beginnings, reclaim what is ours, and step courageously into transformation.

It feels fitting that this post on the next chapter of my life aligns with a season devoted to clarity, transmutation, and renewal.

For over twenty years, I lived in a marriage that echoed what bell hooks, in The Will to Change (p.13), so aptly described as being:

“trapped in a bond with a punishing, cruel, unloving, patriarchal man.”

Those years slowly dampened my voice, my joy, and my sense of self.

In the last couple of years, I have been piecing myself back together, understanding what happened, reclaiming my power, and learning to to release through soul work and alchemy.

As I shift direction in my life and begin a new journey through the opportunity to divorce, this Substack page will also shift.

In the posts ahead, I will be writing about:

🌿 Surviving (narcissistic) abuse within a long-term marriage or partnership
🌿 The emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental toll, and the profound costs of staying versus the courage of choosing oneself.
🌿 Reclaiming my time, voice, body, essence, and breath through practices of everyday wellness, joy, and breathwork—practices that mirror the process of letting go and transforming wounds into wisdom
🌿 Research on the legacies of Western patriarchy and how they shape our lives today, alongside lessons from Indigenous knowledge systems, matrilineality, matriarchal traditions, and circular economies, building on the work of bell hooks, Oyeronke Oyewumi, Alice Walker, and Angela Saini

I will also share the breathwork and healing practices that carried me through, the resources that supported my work of soul-reclamation, and the tools that continue to help me heal and thrive.

If this space speaks to you, I invite you to share it with someone who may need these words, this community, and this light.

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A Broader Truth

Research from the Pew Research Center and the Institute for Family Studies shows that women in the U.S. initiate nearly 70% of divorces¹.

While this statistic is U.S.-specific, the broader truth resonates worldwide. Women across cultures often carry the emotional weight of marriages and are frequently the first to recognize emotional harm, dysfunction, or abuse. Leaving is rarely easy. Societal expectations, financial barriers, cultural stigma, and concerns for children hold many women back, regardless of geography.

I know this because I have walked that path and have chosen differently.

By sharing my story, taking something painful and transmuting it into something meaningful. I have learned that staying silent is far more dangerous than speaking up. Anything kept in the dark grows mould, festers into dis-ease; bringing it into the light allows it to heal.

I am transforming pain into ministry…into art.

As Sue William Silverman wrote:

My Journey

I am in the early days of a divorce, feeling reflective and thankful for a second chance to correct one misstep. This journey is also asking me to remember, to reflect, and to unearth memories I once set aside to survive, memories that have lived in the shadows, because all forms of abuse thrive in the shadows and in silence, twisting narratives and creating alternate realities.

This space, this page, is my refusal to participate in distortion or be pulled into a version of reality that erases my voice and my life. Choosing courage means seeing clearly, speaking openly, and stepping fully into my life after years of silence.

A new chapter begins, and you are warmly invited.

An Invitation to Travelers on This Journey

If you are on this journey and cannot yet see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are welcome here. If you are a kindred spirit who has walked this path, your presence matters. And if you know or love someone on this path, this is a safe space for you too.

This Substack will mostly be free and accessible to all. Some of the more delicate and sensitive pieces, the ones that still tremble when I write them, will be protected behind the paywall.

May our stories break the silence.
May our voices reclaim our timelines.
May our breath return us to ourselves.
May we find hope, truth, and courage to walk into the light together.

As we enter this new month, may it remind us that even in times of upheaval, every ending can be the doorway to a new beginning. May we embrace truth, cultivate courage, and honor the journey of reclaiming ourselves.

Just as in the guided meditation I shared above, endings create space for new growth, and our inner humus nourishes the seeds of what is to come.

Tokyo Vibes: Shibuya Streets, Summer 2025

Thank you to my faithful Substack subscribers!
Your support inspires me every day. 💛

If this space speaks to you, leave a comment below and share it with someone who may benefit from this community.

With love and breath,
Tamkara

Disclaimer: The views and reflections shared in this post are my own, drawn from my own lived and personal experiences and no one else.

Reference:

¹ Pew Research Center and Institute for Family Studies

Note: This is an old post from 2024 that I never got around to sharing. I’m clearing out my drafts and posting some updated reflections that still feel timely. Be sure to check out the breathwork video at the end.

Share Notes from Tamkara

A few months ago, I sat down with my son to watch the horror movie Smile on Netflix.

Worst decision ever.

I hated it—but felt strangely compelled to finish it. I was hoping for some kind of resolution, a way to stem the relentless tide of trauma the film so vividly portrayed.

For those unfamiliar, Smile (2022) is a psychological horror film that imagines trauma as a contagious force, passed from one person to another through proximity, eye contact, and a shared experience. In the movie, witnessing another person’s suicide sets off a horrific chain reaction: the witness becomes the next host and victim, doomed to suffer the same violent fate, and pass it on to the next witness continuing the cycle of trauma.

What haunted me most was the main character, Rose. After witnessing her client’s suicide, she becomes the next host of the contagion. Desperate to break the cycle, she isolates herself, believing that if she dies alone, with no one there to witness it, the trauma might finally end.

The chilling message at the heart of Smile: hurt people hurt people.

When trauma goes unhealed, it doesn’t just disappear. It ripples outward, spreading through families, communities, and across generations. Breaking generational or communal trauma requires conscious, sustained intervention.

These themes resurfaced for me recently when I watched the trailer for Tyler Perry’s Straw.

While I deeply admire Perry and the incredible cast, I’ve made the choice not to watch it. Not because it’s not important work, but because I’m learning to protect my nervous system. I choose not to keep revisiting trauma through film, even when it’s beautifully rendered.

I respect the storytellers who take on this emotional labor, and I also respect my own limits. Rather than absorb more emotional weight, I turn to tools that help me find ease and lightness in my life.

One of the most powerful tools I return to again and again is breathwork.

It helps regulate the nervous system and create space between what we feel and how we choose to respond. It invites us to witness our own pain with compassion—without passing it on.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or carrying more than is yours to hold, I invite you to pause, watch the video below and try this simple Box Breath practice with me:

Breathwork: Box Breath Technique

In this video, I share a gentle variation of the classic box breathing technique. It’s especially helpful if you find counting while breathing a challenge.

Instead of counting in your head, you use your fingers to “draw” the sides of a four-cornered box on your palm with each phase of the breath—inhale, hold, exhale, hold—anchoring your focus through touch rather than counting.

This blends breathwork with somatic awareness, making it easier to stay present and grounded, especially during moments of stress or anxiety.

Here’s how it works:

• Inhale — draw the first side of the box on your palm

• Hold — draw the second side

• Exhale — draw the third side

• Hold — draw the fourth and final side to complete the box

Repeat the sequence slowly, as many times as you need.

Try it with me, and let me know how it feels for you.
Did it help you feel more present?
Did it make the breath feel easier to connect with?
I’d truly love to hear your experience.

🌀 Explore my breathwork offerings here

Have you seen Smile? Or Straw? Or maybe another film that left you feeling emotionally heavy or reflective? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
And even more importantly, let’s talk about how we heal together, in community.

With breath, with boundaries, with each other.
🫶🏾

Tamkara

We often think of investments in terms of money, assets, or business deals.
But what happens when we invest our time, energy, emotional presence, and sacred parts of ourselves in the wrong people, places, or pursuits?

• How do we recover and redeem the time?

• How do we move past the opportunity costs of misaligned choices?
  (Opportunity cost is what we miss out on when we choose one path over another — the unseen alternatives we never explored because our energy, time, or presence was invested elsewhere.)

Time, unlike money, doesn’t return in the same way.
And yet, I believe there is a quiet, sacred way to call our energy back, reclaim presence, gather wisdom, and begin again — this time, from experience.

✨ Five Gentle Steps to Reclaim Your Energy After Misaligned Investments

1. Acknowledge the Loss
Be honest with yourself.
Recognize that the investment didn’t bear fruit.
Allow yourself to grieve.
Some things weren’t meant to grow, and that’s okay.

2. Reflect on the Lessons
Detours and misalignments often hold hidden wisdom.
Ask yourself: What did this teach me?
Let those insights become your compass.

3. Release Regret
Let go of the what ifs and if onlys.
You made the best decisions you could with what you knew at the time.
Extend grace to yourself. You’re growing.

4. Reassess Your Priorities
Take a moment to review where your time, energy, and attention are currently going.
What activities, people, or commitments genuinely nourish you, and which ones drain you?
Make a simple list.
Then ask yourself: What deserves more (or less) of me right now?. Use your answers to make small but intentional shifts.

5. Redirect Your Energy
Begin again, this time with intention.
Pour into what aligns with your values and your becoming.
Let your next investment be wiser, more measured, and rooted in truth.

🌿 A Word of Wisdom

An African proverb reminds us: “You learn how to cut down trees by cutting them.”
Experience is also a teacher. Even wrong turns can reveal the right direction.
You didn’t fail — you learned. And now, you move forward with deeper clarity.

🌬 Breathwork Prompt: Reclaiming Presence

Take a moment to pause and breathe

Inhale: I call my energy back to me
Exhale: I release what no longer serves

Inhale: I am present in this moment
Exhale: I choose to begin again, with intention

Remember, nothing was wasted; you’ve gathered wisdom for the rest of the journey.

💌 Join Me: Stillness After the Storm

I am hosting a virtual breathwork session for healing, clarity, and coming home to self after an upheaval.

🗓 Sunday, June 8, 2025
⏰ 60 minutes
📍 Online via Zoom → Link here.

This session is for anyone navigating:

• Emotional burnout

• Life transitions

• Relationship endings

• The quiet ache of starting over

I hope to see you there! Reserve your place here.

Exhale what was. Inhale who you’re becoming.

In Community,

Tamkara

Share Notes from Tamkara

My African name is a prayer, a prophecy, and a form of protection.
It’s a testimony of how I got here — a map that continues to guide me.

Tamunokaramabia means "God will complete" in the Ibani language of Nigeria.
(There’s a longer deeper story behind this name — ask me another time :) )

Olayinka means "Wealth surrounds me" in the Yoruba language of Nigeria and West Africa.

In many African cultures, names are never just names.
They carry meaning.
They hold memory.
They tell the story of how we came to be — anchoring us in identity and speaking into our future.

Let’s talk about Yoruba names.
More specifically, let’s talk about Oríkì.

What is Òríkì?

Òríkì is the oral praise poetry of the Yorùbá people of Nigeria.
It is spoken or chanted in rhythmic tones, often accompanied by the gángan — the Yorùbá talking drum. This drum mimics the tonal patterns of the Yorùbá language, echoing the chant and amplifying its meaning.

• Orí means “head” — symbolizing a person’s spiritual essence and destiny.

• Kì means “to praise,” “greet,” or “pay homage.”

Together, Òríkì is the act of praising the essence of a person — literally greeting their head. And when you understand the head (orí) as the seat of destiny in Yorùbá cosmology, this act becomes profoundly spiritual.

Òríkì is more than poetry.
It’s more than a form of endearment.
It is a declaration of identity and a spiritual invocation.

It is how we call forth greatness from within.
It affirms a person’s place in the world and paints a vision of where they are going.

Òríkì is also communal.
It doesn’t just speak to the individual — it recounts their lineage, uplifts their ancestors, celebrates their extended family, and acknowledges their character and potential.

Because in Yorùbá culture, the self is never separate from the collective.
Identity is shared.

The African philosophy of “I am because you are” finds one of its most powerful expressions in Òríkì.

A Personal Story

My mother’s Òríkì is Abeni — “I begged God for this child.”
Mine is Agbeke — “A child to be carried and pampered.”

But my daughter wasn’t given an Òríkì at birth — mea culpa. 😔

During one of her weekly Yorùbá lessons, her tutor asked,
“What is your Òríkì?”

She responded confidently,
“Odunayo.”

He smiled gently.
“That’s your given name, not your Òríkì… What is your Òríkì?”

That weekend, we called her grandmother on Zoom.
My daughter made her request with sincerity and curiosity.

And her grandmother gifted her the most beautiful Òríkì:
Aduke — Beloved. Deeply loved.

When she heard it, she paused and asked,
“But is this true? Am I truly loved by everyone?”

The answer was immediate and unanimous:
Yes!!!

Examples of Òríkì and Their Meanings

• Àníké – Meant to be pampered

• Àríké – One who should be adored at first sight

• Adunni – A delight to have

• Àshàbí – Chosen to be born

• Ajadi – A child that ends conflict

• Àjànì – Fought for and cherished

• Iyàndá – Chosen to be created

Tell me: What is your name?
What stories live within it?

If you’re open to it, I’d love to hear the meaning behind your name.

🎧Listen to an Òríkì and learn more about Òríkì and Yoruba names here.

If you’re curious about learning the Yorùbá language — or exploring other African languages — we offer Yoruba lessons and more.

Àdúpẹ́ (Thank you) for reading.
May you be blessed with a name that feels like home or the courage to seek a new one.🧡

In community,

Tamkara

I’ve got some (exciting) news to share!

First, I want to express my heartfelt thanks for being a part of my Substack community. Your presence here truly means the world to me, and it’s been such a joy to share my journey(s) with you.

Over the past few months, I’ve been reflecting on how I can best authentically show up in a way that is more aligned with AND representative of my time and capacity. As a result, I’ve decided to transition from (ir)regular Substack posts to more regular and dedicated updates via my existing email list.

Why the shift?

I’m pivoting in 2025 (more on that in my upcoming newsletter)!

And as I pivot, this change will help streamline my communication and allow me to focus on sharing more meaningful and cohesive updates, something that’s easier to do with one main platform.

What’s next?

I’ll continue to share occasional updates or mini posts here on Substack, but for consistent news, updates on new projects, and ways to connect, I’d love for you to join my email list.

Click here to subscribe to my email list!

I hope you accept my invite and I look forward to continuing this journey together.

Thank you again for being such an amazing part of this community!

See you on the other side!

Tamkara x

Imposter syndrome has a way of creeping up, especially when we’re in new or challenging spaces. It can arise when we compare ourselves to others, causing us to feel like we don’t measure up or that we’re falling short of expectations.

When these feelings arise, acknowledge them, but don’t let them take root. Instead, affirm to yourself:

Take a deep inhale… and a full, grounding exhale.

"I belong in all the places that I find myself."

Beloved, if you were not ready and equipped for this moment, the opportunity wouldn’t have come your way. Trust and believe that you belong!

Root yourself in this truth.

Upcoming Community Breathwork Session: Finding Presence

Gentle reminder, our next community breathwork session, Finding Presence, will take place on Sunday, November 24th.

Join us as we explore this important theme together.

Imagine the possibilities if we took a moment to shift our focus from the future and fully situate ourselves in the present moment.

What might we experience?

More clarity, deeper connections, greater presence, and increased joy? Link to join

In community,

Tamkara

*Not all work weeks start on Monday. For those in countries where the week begins on Monday, let this message serve as your anchor. Wherever you are in your week, take a moment to center yourself with the video above.