There is sorrow in my heart, and there is fear. A fear that a version of me is stuck somewhere in time. A fear that I will spend the rest of my life searching for someone who is, unfortunately, myself.

I am twenty-seven. When I was nineteen, I wanted this life with everything in me. I wanted adulthood because I thought it was a place people eventually arrived at. I wanted stability. Responsibility. The freedom to make my own decisions. I wanted to buy books simply because they interested me. I wanted to travel when I desired to. I wanted a home that looked like me.

Now I have those things.

I have a beautiful apartment. I arranged every corner to my taste. I finally have the kind of quiet I always imagined I would.

But there is something I didn’t expect.

I think I lost someone on the way here.

Not the ambitious girl.

Not the hopeful girl.

The girl who observed.

She was always watching. Watching people. Watching conversations. Watching the world make fools of itself. She could sit through an ordinary afternoon and leave with an idea that refused to leave her alone. She could look at someone and wonder what their soul looked like. She could look at society and see the limbless monster she is; unable to fight her own wars, so she turns us into soldiers instead. Judges. Juries. Enforcers. Victims. Sometimes all in the same lifetime.

I dare say I once saw her soul.

It was dark and void.

Writing used to come so naturally that I assumed it always would.

Then one day I began treating it with contempt.

I thought it was strange. Too unconventional. Too philosophical. Too much.

There was no applause.

No audience.

No proof that what I was making mattered.

So I slowly stopped believing in it myself.

That hurts to admit.

Because I can see now that my greatest critic was never the world.

It was me.

And now I remember.

I remember what it felt like to disappear into an idea until the world outside became quieter.

I desire that again.

I long for it.

This isn’t simply nostalgia. I don’t miss being nineteen. God knows I don’t.

I miss the part of me that believed an ordinary moment deserved to be examined.

I miss the girl who thought every conversation was hiding a philosophy.

Returning to her won’t be easy.

At nineteen, imagination arrived like an unexpected visitor. Now it feels like someone whose trust I have broken.

My talent has become like a jilted lover, more sensitive than the tender horns of a cockled snail. She startles easily. She no longer comes because I ask.

Perhaps she shouldn’t.

I left first.

But I don’t think she has gone forever.

I think she is waiting to see whether this time I will choose her when no one is watching.

So I will wait.

I will write.

I will nurture.

And one day, I will earn her trust again.

I made acquaintance with an older woman in her 50s recently. She mentioned her single friend, who is around the same age, buying a house in her town so they could live closer and be more present in each other’s lives. It sounded cute but also a little alien to me, and it took me a while to process why.

After much contemplation, I realised I had never really opened my mind to the possibility of older women living without the companionship of husbands and children, whether by circumstance or by choice.

Among older generations of women, there is a concept of friendship groups where they attend events together, make financial contributions together and support one another as they move through life. Recently, I’ve also seen younger women in rural communities on TikTok following this path, although they’re sometimes mocked by people who think it’s all a bit odd.

It isn’t odd. It’s important.

I know friendship groups, like every other group of people trying to do life together, are bound to come with some drama and conflict. But I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

Recently, we have women moving through life without making connections with people living through the same experiences they are simply by virtue of being women. Instead, we place our entire sense of companionship and fellowship in the family system of partners and children. I don’t think it should be so.

While nothing beats the fellowship of an immediate family, I think it’s equally important to build strong, credible relationships outside those systems. We won’t spend every day of our lives with a partner, and even the children we give birth to will one day have lives of their own. Some women won’t experience these roles at all. We have to recognise ourselves as individuals who exist to meet people, relate to them, impact them and build community.

I don’t even want to touch on the women who get married and suddenly feel the need to cut off their friends because of a change in marital status... a status that, if life has taught us anything, can change at any time.

Keep your friends, girls. You’ll need people to laugh with when your boss is annoying you, people to remind you who you were before you became someone’s wife or someone’s mum, and if life takes a different turn than you planned, people who still know exactly how you like your plantain, remind you of who you are and won’t let you go through life alone.

King Asa of Judah sought God so eagerly; reforming Judah and turning the hearts of the people towards him. He turned against his own family in reverence to God by deposing his grandmother for idolatry.

The writer of the Bibles’ Chronicles repeatedly mentions how God gave Asa rest on all sides, and how God won all the battles against Judah for his sake. A picture of an absolute reliance on God was painted and it was beautiful. But something tainted this beautiful picture. One day, the King of Israel rose against Judah, and Asa took matters in his hands like any proactive King would do. He took some treasures and sent them to a neighboring ruler, soliciting his help. The ruler came through and saved the troubled city.

You might be asking how this event taints Asa’s relationship with God. I mean, what is the point of being a King if you can’t make political decisions to save your people? You see, after Asa’s action, a seer called him out and labelled his decision as foolish, in response, Asa got the seer thrown in prison and refused to acknowledge his error. Three years later he fell ill– a perfect opportunity to ask God for help– but he still refused to go to God! He relied on physicians and died from that illness, a final act of defiance!

We live Asa’s story everyday, sometimes we become so reliant on ourselves, skills, resources and support system that we forget to go to God first. We keep running to everyone and everything but God. I have been Asa in many ways; running to the next logical conclusion, place or person to get a solution from, chattering to the nearest person about my sob story to find some relief. Until a day came, there was nothing anybody could do to help, there was no logical solution in sight(which is weird in retrospect, because in reality, it wasn’t as serious as it looked and felt), and I was left with my problem for the first time, miles away from home in a studio apartment and terrible weather!

I had thought my problem through and logically analysed every possible situation and I suddenly remembered a funny tweet I read. It said: “when God wants to have a serious conversation with a man, he puts him in a studio apartment in the middle of nowhere, with no one, just him and his God”. “But I know my God!” I argued with myself, I didn’t think it applied to me, I was doing my best praying, reading my Bible and regularly in church. It suddenly dawned on me that I had never directly talked to God about my problem, I was so smart in my own ways that I never really went to him.

It took a lot to get to a point of humility and go to God. I hadn’t even cried, but once my knees touched the ground, I cried ugly tears. It was embarrassing because I wasn’t crying from the weight of my problem, but from getting to a point of prayer. I kept thinking– have handled tougher situations myself in the past, when did I become weak, where has my strength gone?

Some days into my supplications to God, I realized I had a bigger problem, bigger than the one I was praying about. I, Deborah, had become embarrassed about praying to God for help? Is this pride? Is this over confidence? Stupidity? I now cried the actual tears. Because how did I even get here?

I ended up focusing on fixing the posture of my heart and forgetting the actual problem. When I began to feel settled in my heart I looked at the problem that brought me to my knees and it was but a scratch that felt like a gaping wound. Not something to lose sleep over, something that resolves itself!

When I look back I am genuinely grateful for that problem and my mental exaggeration of it, I am grateful for choosing to go to God in humility instead of trying and trying in my own strength. I am ever conscious that I am at risk of making Asa’s mistakes and I’m doing my best to remain in a constant state of humility towards God.

I’ve talked too much. On a final note, please don’t be like Asa, there is beauty and strength in being helpless in the sight of your father, he loves you!

I had a prompt to read about David, to read about the promise of God upon his life and all he went through after the promise. Adullam stood out for me because my Pastor(Apostle Emmanuel Iren) once said something about raising men from the cave of Adullam, and it struck me. I even wrote it in my diary. Just two verses about this cave of Adullam, yet so profound. I’ve read a number of articles about Adullam and they are profound. Everyone talks about how he was a leader in a difficult situation and carried the burdens of others while burdened himself.

I think everyone called out to a purpose would find themselves in a cave of Adullam at some point or even more than once in a lifetime. David was chosen to be a leader of a great nation but he first had to be a leader in a cave of broken people. When you’re in Adullam you do what God has asked you to do, in the absence of the audience he has sent you to, in the absence of the resources needed to do it on a grand scale. You do it, wherever you are and with whatever you have. I am presently in an Adullam, I’m in a place contradicting all of his promises to me, and whenever I ask him what I should do, he says DO(that which he has always told me to do).

Apart from walking in purpose, you must be patient in Adullam, never ever look at the person next to you, or compare yourself with anyone. I couldn’t get a timeline of how long David spent in Adullam but I know it must have been a while. You will wait, you will forge the world around you and set your face as a flint on your own journey.

Don’t give up, God is with you.

Nothing described so far ends with the individual woman. That is the quiet tragedy of it. What is unexamined does not disappear; it moves. It travels through language, behaviour, expectation. It becomes atmosphere. And eventually, it becomes inheritance.

Children raised in the conditions of endurance learn its logic early. They learn what is rewarded and what is tolerated. They learn where care flows and where it is extracted. Even when no harm is named, patterns are absorbed. Silence teaches as effectively as speech.

A son who grows up emotionally tethered to his mother often carries into adulthood a confused sense of loyalty. Intimacy elsewhere can feel like betrayal. Partnership can feel like abandonment. He may struggle to offer himself fully to another woman, not because he lacks capacity for love, but because love has been bound to obligation. What he learned as care now interferes with reciprocity.

A daughter raised in the shadow of maternal sacrifice often internalises a different lesson. She learns that womanhood is measured by endurance, that love requires disappearance, that a good life is one in which her needs remain secondary. She does not need to be told this explicitly. She has watched it lived.

In both cases, the inheritance is subtle but decisive. Relationships are shaped not by choice, but by rehearsal. People repeat what feels familiar, even when familiarity is costly. The cycle continues not because anyone wills it to, but because few are taught how to recognise it.

What makes this inheritance especially difficult to interrupt is that it is morally camouflaged. It is passed down under the banners of duty, love, tradition, and strength. To question it feels ungrateful. To resist it feels disloyal. And so many do not resist. They adjust. They reinterpret. They survive.

But survival is not neutral. It leaves residues. It creates distortions. A culture built on endurance eventually mistakes deprivation for character and calls it virtue. It confuses longevity with health. It praises resilience without asking what damage made resilience necessary.

Breaking a cycle like this does not begin with rebellion. It begins with perception. With the willingness to name what was normalised. With the courage to grieve what was never allowed to exist. This is difficult work, because grief asks for honesty without consolation. It does not offer replacement narratives. It only asks us to see.

For some women, this seeing will come too late to change the shape of their lives. That does not make it meaningless. Awareness does not need to be productive to be true. For others, it may arrive in time to interrupt the handover—to refuse to pass on what they were given simply because it was given to them.

There is no purity in endurance. There is no moral superiority in suffering well. A life lived in quiet diminishment does not become justified by its duration. It only becomes harder to mourn.

What we inherit is not destiny. But it is powerful. And unless it is brought into language, it will continue to speak through us—into our marriages, our parenting, our expectations, our silences.

This series began with attention. It ends with responsibility. Not the responsibility to fix what cannot be undone, but the responsibility to stop calling harm by gentler names.

Woman, woman—what you carry does not have to be what you pass on.

There is a moment when a woman realises that the love she hoped to find elsewhere has found her first in her children. Not as a supplement, but as a replacement. Not as one source of meaning among many, but as meaning itself.

For the first time, she is needed without negotiation. Her presence is not optional. Her care is not conditional. Her love is not weighed, evaluated, or withheld. A child does not ask her to be smaller. A child does not require her to justify her emotions. In this relationship, she is central, unquestioned, and indispensable.

This can feel like redemption.

After years of emotional economy—measuring words, tempering desire, absorbing disappointment—this love arrives without demand for self-erasure. It does not ask her to disappear in order to be kept. It does not punish her for needing to be seen. And so she gives herself to it fully, sometimes without realising how much she is giving.

What began as care slowly becomes attachment. What began as devotion becomes reliance. The child becomes the place where her unmet needs quietly gather: the need to be valued, to be chosen, to matter without shrinking. This shift is subtle. It is rarely conscious. It is almost always justified as love.

And love is the one thing society will not question.

Motherhood is framed as total devotion, and so excess is easily mistaken for virtue. Sacrifice is celebrated without limit. There is no widely accepted language for moderation in maternal love, no cultural framework that distinguishes nurturing from enmeshment. A woman who gives everything to her children is praised, not asked what she has relinquished in the process.

But when a child becomes a source of purpose rather than a recipient of care, the weight changes. Children are not built to hold meaning. They are not meant to stabilise adult identity, regulate adult emotion, or serve as proof that a life was worthwhile. When they are asked to do so, something essential is displaced.

For the child, this love can feel suffocating even as it is affirming. Boundaries become difficult to establish. Autonomy feels like betrayal. Independence is received not as growth, but as abandonment. The child learns that their role is not merely to become themselves, but to remain close enough to keep their mother intact.

For the mother, separation becomes intolerable. Any movement away is experienced as loss. Any resistance as ingratitude. She does not recognise this as control, because it is rooted in fear rather than dominance—the fear of returning to the emptiness she once survived.

This dynamic does not require cruelty to be damaging. It only requires need.

Sons raised in this atmosphere may struggle to form adult partnerships that do not feel disloyal, even in their own marriages. Daughters may internalise the belief that womanhood is defined by self-abandonment, that love is proven through depletion. In both cases, intimacy becomes tangled with obligation, and care becomes inseparable from guilt.

And still, the cycle is rarely questioned. A woman who lives through her children is not seen as lacking a self, but as fulfilling her role. The moral language surrounding motherhood makes examination difficult. To ask whether this is healthy feels, to many, like betrayal.

Yet the cost is visible. It appears in marriages strained by interference, in adults who feel responsible for their parents’ happiness, in lives shaped around emotional debt rather than desire. It appears wherever love has been asked to carry more than it can hold.

To attach one’s meaning to one’s children is not devotion; it is displacement. It burdens them with expectations they did not consent to and tasks them with repairing wounds they did not create. It ensures that when they fail—as all children eventually must—the original ache returns, sharper for having been deferred.

And so what was meant to be love becomes inheritance.

Woman, woman—no child should be asked to complete a life that was never allowed to begin.

By the time she arrives at marriage, she is already prepared. Not prepared for intimacy, but for endurance. Not prepared for mutual recognition, but for adjustment. She brings with her a lifetime of practice in self-restraint, emotional labour, and quiet concession. This is often mistaken for readiness.

What she meets there is not a single kind of man, but a familiar structure. He, too, has been shaped—by observation, expectation, and inheritance. He has learned what marriage looks like by watching it, absorbing its hierarchies without instruction. In many cases, he has learned that authority belongs to him by default, and that care belongs to her by obligation. Love, if present, is secondary to function.

He does not necessarily see himself as unkind. He may even believe he is fair. But fairness, as he understands it, exists within a framework that already centres him. His needs are legible. His ambitions are supported. His frustrations are granted space. Hers are absorbed, deferred, or reinterpreted as excess.

This imbalance is rarely announced. It emerges gradually, through expectation rather than decree. Who adjusts their schedule first. Who absorbs inconvenience. Who is expected to “understand.” Over time, the pattern settles: her flexibility becomes the solution to every point of friction.

When conflict arises, it is often managed rather than resolved. She has learned that harmony is safer than truth, and so she moderates herself. She chooses language carefully. She learns which topics provoke withdrawal and which are simply not worth raising. The cost of peace becomes silence.

In some marriages, this imbalance is enforced through emotional withdrawal, control, or fear. In others, it is maintained through benign neglect. The form varies, but the effect is similar: she learns that asserting herself risks destabilising the relationship, while enduring preserves it. And because she has been taught that preserving relationship is her highest calling, she complies.

On the rare days when clarity breaks through—when she glimpses the disparity between what she gives and what she receives—she often meets resistance not only from her partner, but from the world around her. Family members urge patience. Religious language reframes suffering as virtue. Cultural narratives remind her that marriage is hard, that men are difficult, that this is simply how things are.

These structures do not need to be conspiratorial to be effective. They work because they echo what she has already been taught. Doubt is framed as ingratitude. Discontent as immaturity. Wanting more as ignorance of reality.

Eventually, questioning becomes exhausting. She stops expecting reciprocity and starts managing disappointment instead. What once felt temporary becomes permanent. What once felt wrong becomes familiar. She adapts again.

With time, adaptation hardens into identity. She becomes “the strong one,” “the reasonable one,” “the one who holds things together.” This earns her a measure of respect—often late, often conditional. She is valued not for who she is, but for what she withstands.

And yet, even this respect does not nourish her. It acknowledges function, not self. It rewards endurance, not presence. The parts of her that longed for tenderness, curiosity, expansion remain untouched.

At some point, she may find herself defending the very structure that diminished her. Not because it fulfilled her, but because questioning it now would require mourning what was never allowed to exist. It is easier to believe the sacrifice was necessary than to face the possibility that it was avoidable.

And so she stays. Or she leaves quietly. Or she remains physically present while withdrawing inward. The outcome differs, but the pattern holds: a woman trained for smallness finds herself in a system that depends on it.

Woman, woman—this was not a meeting of equals. It was the collision of training and expectation.

No one is born knowing how to make herself small. This knowledge is taught, reinforced, and rewarded. It is delivered quietly, long before it ever needs to be enforced.

A girl learns early what is permitted of her. Not always through instruction, but through response. She notices which parts of herself are welcomed and which are tolerated. Curiosity is indulged until it becomes inconvenient. Confidence is charming until it becomes threatening. Desire is acceptable only when it is modest, controlled, and directed outward. Ambition, if it exists at all, must be softened, explained, and justified.

She is not told she is inferior. That would be too obvious. Instead, she is taught hierarchy through implication. She learns that harmony matters more than honesty, that being liked is safer than being clear, that restraint is evidence of virtue. She learns to read rooms before reading herself. She learns to anticipate needs before naming her own.

This education is consistent across cultures, though its language varies. In some places it is framed as morality, in others as tradition, in others as love. But the lesson remains the same: do not take up too much space. Do not want too much. Do not ask for what cannot be easily given.

By adolescence, the training has settled into instinct. Emotional depth is tempered. Anger is rerouted into guilt. Assertiveness is rebranded as aggression. She becomes skilled at self-editing, at shrinking her inner life to match what can be accommodated. The reward for this discipline is approval—subtle, conditional, and deeply persuasive.

Central to this training is the promise of future recognition. If she is patient enough, agreeable enough, desirable enough, she will be chosen. And in being chosen, she will finally be seen. Love is positioned not as a mutual exchange, but as a destination—something reached through compliance rather than met through equality.

This belief shapes her understanding of achievement. Success outside of relationship is treated as secondary, sometimes even suspicious. What she builds, learns, or creates is quietly devalued if it does not translate into desirability. She internalises the idea that connection is her primary offering, and that everything else is decoration.

What is rarely acknowledged is the cost of this orientation. A person trained to live toward external validation slowly loses access to internal authority. Decision-making becomes anxious. Boundaries feel unnatural. Desire feels dangerous. Over time, she no longer knows whether what she wants is genuine or merely adaptive.

And yet, this loss is framed as maturity.

The woman who has learned to suppress disappointment, to rationalise neglect, to tolerate imbalance is praised for her resilience. She is described as “easygoing,” “understanding,” “low-maintenance.” These are not neutral compliments. They describe a person who has learned to absorb discomfort quietly, without disrupting the system that benefits from her flexibility.

When she eventually enters marriage, this training does not disappear. It becomes useful. Her capacity to accommodate, to excuse, to endure is now framed as commitment. Her silence becomes peacekeeping. Her shrinking becomes sacrifice. What once limited her now sustains the institution.

It is important to say this clearly: this conditioning does not originate in individual men or individual families alone. It is upheld by structures that depend on women’s emotional labour remaining inexpensive and endlessly renewable. Religious narratives, cultural myths, and social expectations converge to ensure that a woman who resists diminishment is not merely disapproved of, but morally suspect.

By the time she begins to feel the quiet ache of erasure, she has already been told that wanting more is selfish. She doubts her own perception. She questions whether the problem is real or imagined. And because she has been trained to locate fault within herself, she adjusts again.

This is how smallness becomes normal.

Not because women lack capacity, but because capacity has been managed. Not because women do not desire fullness, but because fullness was never meant to be accessible. What is presented as natural order is, in truth, careful design.

Woman, woman—nothing shrinks by accident.

There are women who have grown older without really growing. Their lives have progressed in visible, socially approved ways like education, marriage, children, responsibility but something essential within them remains suspended. What we often mistake for maturity is, in many cases, adaptation. What we praise as strength is frequently survival.

These women are not rare. They are familiar. They are our mothers, aunts, teachers, neighbours. They are the women we describe as “selfless,” “long-suffering,” “strong.” They function. They show up. They endure. And yet, beneath the surface of competence, there is often an unresolved hunger—an emotional need that was never met, never named, and eventually rendered unspeakable.

For many, childhood did not offer safety in the ways that mattered most. Love was conditional. Attention was earned. Affection was inconsistent or absent. In some homes, emotional expression was discouraged; in others, it was punished. A girl learned early that her needs were inconvenient, excessive, or shameful. So she learned to minimise them. She learned to wait. She learned to hope quietly.

That waiting did not end in adulthood. It simply changed form.

Marriage and motherhood became the socially sanctioned spaces where she was finally allowed to give and perhaps, she hoped, to receive—love. The promise was subtle but powerful: here, in these roles, your sacrifices will mean something. Here, your longing will be justified. Here, you will be needed.

But roles cannot repair what was broken before language existed.

A woman who has never been loved without conditions does not suddenly learn how to receive love because she has become a wife. A woman who has never been seen does not become visible simply by becoming a mother. Instead, she brings her unfinished self into these roles, believing that devotion will heal what deprivation created. Sadly, this mostly never happens.

When it does not, she turns inward rather than outward. The culture has already taught her that disappointment is a personal failure, not a structural one, and she has learnt over time to question herself rather than the systems around her. She assumes she has not given enough, endured enough, sacrificed enough. And so she gives more.

Over time, her inner life grows smaller. Not because it lacked potential, but because it was never given room. She learns to live through function rather than presence. Her worth becomes measured by usefulness. Her identity becomes inseparable from what she provides. The idea of a self that exists apart from service begins to feel indulgent, even immoral.

This is how little girls remain alive inside grown women.

We never see the effects of this emotional stuntedness until boundaries are difficult to hold in these women’s relationships and resentment leaks out sideways. Control replaces intimacy. Love becomes anxious, consuming, or possessive. They appear most clearly in the relationship between mother and child—where, for the first time, love feels safe enough to risk everything.

A child cannot abandon her. A child cannot withdraw affection as punishment. A child needs her in ways that feel unquestionable. And so the emotional needs that were never met by parents or partners quietly relocate. What was once longing becomes attachment. What was once absence becomes clinging.

None of this is done with malice. It is done with desperation.

And yet, intention does not erase consequence.

A woman who never had the chance to become herself cannot teach her children how to be whole. She can only teach them how to survive. And survival, passed down unexamined, becomes inheritance.

This is not a condemnation. It is an observation. One we avoid because it questions the system we were raised and are living in. And as a society we don’t like questions, we are resistant to introspection and change. But until we are willing to name the cost of emotional neglect—especially when it wears the face of duty and sacrifice—we will continue mistaking endurance for maturity, and longevity for growth.

Woman, woman—what lives inside us does not disappear simply because we grow older.

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I am not certain whether we, as a society, have failed to fully understand the implications of marriage for women or whether it is simply that I have only just begun to understand them myself. I do not know which is more troubling.

What I do know is that this subject, in one way or another, has touched every life I know, including my own. It sits quietly in our homes, in our families, in the stories we repeat and the ones we never tell. It is not a subject that announces itself loudly. It reveals itself slowly, often too late, and usually through the lives of women who have learned how to endure without ever being asked whether endurance was the goal.

I want to speak about this carefully. Not because the subject is fragile, but because it has been overburdened with noise. Every discussion about women, marriage, and family is quickly conscripted into an ideological war of liberal versus conservative, modern versus traditional. I am not interested in that battle. I am interested in what is true. I am interested in what survives scrutiny. If there is wisdom on either side, I will take it. If there are lies on both, I will leave them, unapologetically.

We often speak of marriage and motherhood as though they are self-evident goods, milestones that naturally confer meaning. A woman who marries and raises children is assumed to have “done life correctly,” especially if she manages to do so while suppressing complaint and sometimes ignoring abuse. Endurance is praised. Sacrifice is romanticised. Quiet suffering is reframed as virtue. And so long as a woman remains functional—married, reproductive, present—few questions are asked about the internal cost.

Only later do those questions begin to surface. Sometimes they surface as exhaustion. Sometimes as resentment. Sometimes as grief that has no socially acceptable language. And sometimes they never surface at all. A woman can live an entire life fulfilling expectations, meeting obligations, holding families together, without ever being asked whether her inner life was allowed to exist.

What makes this difficult to confront is that the system does not appear violent on the surface. There are sometimes no dramatic villains or singular moment of betrayal. There is instead a slow accumulation of small concessions, each one justified, each one survivable. Choices made under pressure are later reframed as destiny. Adaptation is mistaken for desire. Over time, a life that was never consciously chosen begins to feel inevitable.

I am aware that speaking this way will be uncomfortable for some, it is uncomfortable for me too, as this has sat in my drafts for so long. It may sound ungrateful. It may sound dismissive of women who have found real joy in marriage and motherhood. That is not my intention. Meaning does exist there for many. Love exists there. Fulfilment, too. But the existence of genuine joy in some cases does not negate the quiet devastation in others, and even loud, echoing devastation in some. Both realities can be true at once.

This series is not an indictment of marriage, nor is it a rejection of family. It is an attempt to examine what we have normalised without examination, and what we have demanded of women without ever naming the cost. It is about the emotional, psychological, and existential consequences of asking one group of people to shrink themselves in order to keep a system intact.

I am not writing as an authority. I am writing as someone who has begun to notice patterns that I have struggled for years to unsee. Patterns in mothers and daughters. In marriages that persist without intimacy. In women who appear strong, capable, and accomplished, yet seem oddly absent from their own lives.

Perhaps this awareness has come too late. Perhaps it is arriving at exactly the right time. I do not yet know. But I know that pretending not to see it any longer feels dishonest. I do not have answers, but a willingness to look closely at what we have inherited, what we have endured, and what we continue to pass on, often without meaning to.

This is not a conclusion. It is only the moment I stopped looking away. Woman, woman—there is something here we have not yet named.

The truth remains that, as a woman—no matter your education, your wealth or want, your faith, your humility, your perseverance, your defiance, your brilliance of mind or depth of feeling—there will come a time when misogyny knocks at your door. And you will rise to defend your dignity. For no matter how wide you open your home, no matter how generous your welcome, no matter how much dissonance you are willing to cradle in your chest to make room for this guest, it will never be enough.

One day you will understand: it never came bearing the arm of friendship, nor the cloak of protection, as you were taught to believe. It came only to conquer—again and again—until not only is your offering exhausted, but your very self eroded. And even in that hollowing, you will be asked to carry its creed to your children, and to stand against the women who dared bolt the door against it.

Some women will hear the knock and refuse to turn the latch. Some will let it cross the threshold, and then—through the ache of recognition and the fire of defiance—will drive it back out again. Some will surrender, handing it the keys in silence. But the most forsaken are those who first opened their eyes to find this visitor already enthroned at birth, knowing nothing but its presence. For them, the choice is cruel: to abandon the comfort of “home” in order to forge another, or to surrender to the lie that this, as it is, was ever meant to be.

When I saw Lewis Capaldi’s "Survive" pop up on my Spotify new releases, I felt this little spark of joy. Like, "Oh wow, he’s back!" It felt like a bit of sunshine breaking through on a gloomy day. I still remember feeling genuinely heartbroken in 2023 when I watched that clip of him at Glastonbury, struggling to sing. He’d been diagnosed with Tourette’s just the year before, and you could see how hard it was becoming for him to perform. I remember thinking, “What’s going to happen to his career now?”

But here we are, two years later, and Lewis has come back with a song that reminds us to keep going even when everything feels heavy. It’s like he’s saying no matter how messy or painful life gets, there’s still a reason to hang on. Not illness, not failure, not anything should make us forget that.

So, this post? It’s a little pep talk for me and for you, lovely reader. I know it’s hard sometimes. Just getting out of bed can feel like a marathon. Facing people who’ve seen you at your worst, talking in rooms where you have stammered or walking back into places where you’ve stumbled — it’s tough.

But there’s something beautiful about trying again. Even if we don’t “win” in the traditional sense, even if there’s no trophy or confetti at the end, there’s growth. There are lessons. And that’s something, right?

So don’t just survive. Do the stuff that makes you feel alive. If you sing, sing. If you write, write. Keep doing the things that make you you.

All my love.

I say this with some level of shame—I used to be one of those women who believed that male friendships were safer and more beneficial than female friendships. I have had a few female friends in my life, and some came with issues—backstabbing, derogatory comments disguised as jokes, and hints of jealousy too obvious to ignore. Being the sensitive person I am, I quickly removed myself from these situations, cutting ties without hesitation. I have had some good female friendships too, but sometimes I wonder if they worked out simply because I kept my vulnerability in check and maintained firm boundaries.

Men, on the other hand, felt easier to deal with. I knew what to expect and what boundaries to set to protect myself if things ever got out of control. But now I ask myself—were these genuine friendships? Was one person offering companionship with the hope that it would turn into something more, while the other lied to themselves that it was purely platonic? And can I really experience the depth of companionship with a man that I would with a fellow woman?

I hate to generalize, but men often move through life so brashly, failing to notice the little details and approaching situations with a level of logic that strips away the beauty of sharing and contemplating problems. When a woman truly cares for you, she treats you like a flower—she learns your edges and your smooth parts. She creates a space where you can crawl in and simply be yourself. I know this because I have loved and been loved by women. And I have reached a point where I only want to give that love to someone who can comprehend it and give it back.

I need someone who notices the subtle differences in shades of pink, someone who understands that true support is often just listening and offering a hug, not rushing in like a knight with a sword. Most importantly, I need someone who experiences the world the way I do. I would be lying to myself if I said men and women experience life in the same way. I wouldn’t say one has it better than the other—I can only speak for my kind, and we don’t have it easy.

I believe every woman reaches this realization—some early, some late. Some acknowledge it, while others lie to themselves. But I will not continue lying to myself.

I started writing a motivational end-of-year piece, but it felt so unoriginal I couldn’t bring myself to post it. Lately, I’ve felt unoriginal—not just in my writing but in how I live, how I read, and how I interact with the world. I’ve been avoiding confronting concepts that deeply affect not only me but the people I love.

Looking back on my recent newsletters, I noticed traces of originality at their core, but they were padded with advice and encouragement I thought people wanted to hear. That’s not me—or at least, not the me I used to be when I started writing five years ago. What changed? Who told me I had to sound like a motivational speaker, sprinkling anecdotes to make my pieces more palatable? Who decided that’s what I needed to do?

I might be building the image of someone who has it all together, and that is a massive lie. I’m failing—spectacularly at times—but it’s not entirely bad. I’m learning, though often through tears and frustration. Still, it’s fascinating. There’s so much I want to write about, far beyond myself and my struggles: life, uncomfortable truths, and issues that are rarely addressed.

But here’s my conflict: I want to be the Christian sister who encourages others and focuses on the positive. Yet the world isn’t all positive—not for Christians, not for anyone. And when we confront certain realities—like misogyny, femicide, gender inequality, or sexual exploitation—those conversations often get twisted or labeled. Should I keep pretending these things don’t exist, even though they prevail everywhere, including in the church? Should I engage in the endless gender war I see every time I log online? Aren’t both sides right and wrong at the same time? What is the real answer?

And what about the emotions we don’t talk about enough? The mental health struggles we trivialize with memes and jokes? The 2 a.m. feelings of someone broken by their own mistakes and a harsh society, unable to share for fear of being misunderstood—or worse, rightly judged because, yes, they are responsible for their woes? I want to write about those moments.

And adulthood—the constant realization that every decision matters, with consequences that cling to you like a second skin. You can shed everything else, but when you face the mirror, those choices still stare back at you. Yet, life doesn’t stop. You carry them, hoping to make better choices next time.

My 2024

This year was a mix of everything. I received unexpected blessings. I laughed. I cried. I drowned in my own woes but eventually stood up and washed them off. I took a risk without calculating the cost, and its consequences stung—and still sting. I failed. I won. And through it all, I stayed hopeful for a better 2025.

One constant held me steady: God. He never left me. He never lied. His perfection revealed my imperfections, and I could have been lost in the sadness of that realization. But His love held me and helped me through it. For this, I’ll be eternally grateful.

Looking Ahead

**slips on motivational cap**

The year ends today, and in my hands—and yours—lies another opportunity. An opportunity to make a change in our lives and to step into the things we know, deep down, we were born for. So, will 2025 be that year?

I love you, see you next year! ❤✨

For an adrenaline junkie like me, waiting is tough. I thrive on movement, always needing something to do. Even when I should rest, I find myself wandering around the house—rearranging, rewashing, staying busy, or involving myself in things that don't concern me. I love the hustle, the feeling of being burnt out and out of breath. And if I ever had to wait, it had to be brief, with something to keep me occupied. I blame my mind—a racing horse that took me years to put a rein on. Even in sleep, vivid dreams play out like movies in my head. So, having to wait for long periods, unable to do anything but wait, feels like a nightmare—like prolonged sleep paralysis. It sucks.

I’ve just come through a season of waiting, and it changed me. At first, I stressed myself out—overthinking, beating myself up, crying most days. But I soon realised how futile this was. Oh, I used to be such a crier. During a typical crying session, I’d mentally list every negative thing that’s happened to me over the past decade, to spark the pain, stir the tears, and cry to my fill. During one of such sessions at the start of this waiting period, I found myself almost amused at the ridiculousness of my reasons-to-cry-list. That's when I realised this neurotic behaviour didn’t solve anything. I got tired of myself. But I then became confused—crying was my go-to whenever I faced problems, I didn’t know a better way to handle them. Though my problems eventually got solved, I’d be mentally worn out by the time they were. Don’t laugh at this, I had a specific spot in my room for my crying ritual—I was that invested.

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One day, I was praying, listing my needs to God, lamenting on how tired I felt, when it hit me: I hadn’t put nearly as much energy into prayer as I had into my crying rituals. I’d created an altar for negative thinking, but not for talking to the One who could actually solve my problems. That’s when I decided to turn my crying altar into a prayer one. There were still tears, but instead of looking back at past pains, I started looking to God and His promises. Whenever the urge to dwell on my sorrows came, I’d turn to the Word of God and pray with it. I shut out the ghosts of past experiences and focused on what God had promised me.

Did I receive answers immediately? No. I’ve learned that prayer isn’t just a litany of requests we present to God, expecting Him to respond exactly as we wish. It’s a two-way communication, where sometimes He guides us to take action or realign our priorities.

A fitting analogy is this: when you come to God with a crumbling house, He doesn’t simply patch it up—He breaks it down to the foundation and rebuilds it stronger.

And that breaking? It tears you apart. Everything you thought you knew gets challenged, and even those who love you can’t save you. Only the Potter can complete what He started. But be rest assured, nothing dies in His hands. Yes, you’ll be broken, but you won’t die. In fact, you’ll live more fully than ever before, if that makes sense. It wasn’t until I turned to God that my real waiting began. Looking back now, I can laugh at how beautiful the process has been, but in the moment, it was hard.

The first thing I noticed was that my anxiety disappeared. I no longer felt the urgency to get what I wanted. I even stopped praying about it. Instead, I started seeing areas of my life that needed work. It was as if scales fell from my eyes, revealing my own role in my failures. My prayers shifted, and I began praying and working on myself. That’s when I realised: waiting had saved me. If I’d gotten what I wanted earlier, I would’ve sabotaged it. I also saw that God’s purpose for me in what I desired went beyond my ambition. This deeper understanding has given me a greater motivation to treasure what will come.

Now, I know that whenever I’m in a season of waiting, it’s an opportunity to learn. It’s God saving me from myself or for something better. I also feel stronger in my faith—I have evidence of it now. I can boldly declare that God is good! I’m humbled, too, because before this experience, I almost felt perfect. I’ve learned to continually submit to growth and change. The journey of life and faith is one of ongoing transformation.

Shame is a powerful emotion, often accompanied by anger and self-disappointment. It’s like a heavy cloak, trailing behind you, announcing to the world, "Look at what I am." On some days, it paralyzes you, keeping you confined to your bed, unable to face a seemingly perfect world. It makes you wince at your reflection and struggle to hold back tears in public—tears that always win. Darkness becomes your sanctuary, and silence a welcome relief. At times, it feels like a hand gripping your throat, forcing you to fight for each breath. At night, its cruel laughter wakes you, leaving you counting the seconds until dawn. Shame is a malignant force, slowly devouring the best parts of you. Left unchecked, it can take everything—even your last breath.

Shame convinces you that whatever happened is your fault. It lays out all your flaws, listing them as reasons why you deserved the pain. It traps you in an illusion, where friendly smiles feel like mocking sneers, making you overly sensitive, blurring the lines between reality and perception. You tell yourself that feeling shame is justified, fearing that the alternative is shamelessness. Who wants to be called shameless? What you don’t realize is that the opposite of shame isn’t shamelessness—it’s dignity. And to reclaim your dignity, you need courage.

Courage to look at your trauma or circumstances and say, "So what?" Courage to fight for joy, to push yourself to experience beautiful things despite the past. And remember, even the people who mock you or seem perfect have their own shame. They’ve failed too, cried through sleepless nights, and carry their own flaws. They’re as human as you are. No one has the right to rub your pain in your face—and only fools will try.

To return to the places where you’ve failed, to walk into the rooms you once fled, not in shame, but with your head held high—that’s true strength. Step out of your mind. What has happened has happened, but it doesn’t have to define you anymore.

Dear Reader,

It’s the weekend, and I imagine you might still be struggling to get out of bed. As you read this, I hope it makes your heart flutter if you’re in love, or tighten with pangs if you’re trying to escape it.

I believe love never dies. If you ever stopped loving someone, perhaps you never truly did. It lingers quietly in your heart, unspoken. You might never cross paths with that person again, never hear their voice, never hold them, and maybe you won’t even think of them every day. You could move on, be with others, even love others. But on certain days, when the warmth of the sun touches your skin, when chocolate melts on your tongue, or when you see someone who resembles them or shares their name, you remember. In that instant, your heart skips a beat, and you realize—you will always love them.

Months, even years, will pass. You'll live a full life without them, love others more deeply than you loved them, and carry on as if your paths never crossed. But what you feel for them will remain unique—love, enduring and unchanging, always.

Here are a few love songs to listen to:

If you’re in love:

If you’re trying to escape love:

This is a call to toss your plans aside. I have something important to share with you. When does the competition end? When will the comparisons stop? If you're just stepping into adulthood, it's not uncommon to see some of your peers seemingly ahead in life—whether they’re from secondary school, university, or home. If you're not where you think you should be, the temptation to compare yourself has likely crossed your mind. Life is unpredictable; those you felt two steps ahead of today could appear ten steps ahead tomorrow. Without a clear sense of purpose or commitment to your own journey, fear and failure can easily creep in.

This newsletter is a reminder that we each have our own path. Living in competition with others or comparing yourself to people who don't even see you is pointless. You may see someone's success, but you rarely see the struggles or advantages that got them there. It's essential to stay focused on your own course and work diligently at it. The real question is: have you found your purpose? This is one of life’s most important questions. Without a sense of purpose, we end up living for others, chasing the next trend, moving to the latest happening spot—caught in cycles, without ever mastering or finding true fulfilment.

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Purpose defines success for us. As we age, we begin to realise that success goes beyond finding love, landing dream jobs, or becoming wealthy or famous. With every achievement, there's often a hollowness that diminishes the satisfaction of all we've worked for.

I know this might sound cliché—something you might have heard in Sunday school or from a pastor on Instagram. But it remains true: our purpose is in God. It sounds simple yet vague, especially if you see God as someone who just wants you to avoid sin and be devoted. It feels counterintuitive to believe that your purpose lies in a God who asks you to drop your cross and carry His, to take your eyes off this life and fix them on Him. How could this kind of God help you make something out of your life?

Well, I'm sorry to break it to you, but there is no true purpose outside of Him. Without Him, all you're chasing are empty, baseless goals that won’t bring real fulfilment. There’s nothing more blessed than finding God. You start a new life, one not lived for yourself, but for His glory. And finding purpose in God doesn’t mean you have to become a pastor or start a church. While we are called to spread the gospel and live to glorify God, we’re also meant to thrive in different areas of life, making positive contributions to the world.

The problem with chasing purpose without first finding God is that we become slaves to whatever we're pursuing, worshipping it instead of worshipping Him. Aligning yourself with God’s purpose is what makes you truly relevant. While the world tells you that your purpose lies within you, the truth is your purpose lies in God. You’re not the centre of the universe—sorry to say. God is, and with Him, you’ll live life in the effortless rhythms of grace.

Two songs to listen to as you reflect on purpose:

I ended up wandering Benin for about an hour, caught between two choices: go see an acquaintance who had been professing his love to me for months, or brave the perilous road to Ughelli, where kidnappers lurked and drivers were too fearful to travel.

Looking back, I often replay that day in my mind, imagining a different choice. Some days, I tell myself I made the right decision by going to Ughelli. After all, the new man might have disappointed me even more and left a deeper scar on my fragile heart. Going to Ughelli helped me seal the inevitable: a love story that had ended long before I realized it. If I hadn’t gone, I would’ve blamed myself for the relationship’s failure.

At that point in the relationship, I was walking on eggshells—he was too much of a coward to end things and was trying to shift the blame onto me. Meanwhile, I was playing a game of perfection, protecting my reputation because so many mutual friends were involved. According to him, they all doubted I could be faithfully committed in a relationship.

We had each other by the neck until the very end. When he realized my perfectionism couldn’t be manipulated, he conceded and ended it—sending a pathetic breakup text after I’d left Ughelli and the dust had settled. Did I win? Yes. Everyone we knew now saw him for the unserious person he was. Did I lose? Yes.

By then, it wasn’t even about love—it was a game I had taken too seriously, one that put my life at risk. That decision sowed the seeds of deep anger and resentment in me, unlocking a cold side of myself I hadn’t known existed—the ability to cut people off mercilessly and be the “bad guy.” In the months that followed, I would storm through people’s lives, both beautiful and flawed, showing them all the duality of my nature. I came to love this newfound power, yet on certain nights, I cried over the loss of the naive part of me—the part that stayed warm and unguarded in people’s lives, regardless of the depth or outcome of our relationship.

If I had stayed in Benin, I might have experienced something different. That person had been offering me so much love and companionship; I might have found the love of my life or perhaps a pain so profound it would have awakened the artist in me. Who knows? I loved seeing Benin as I wandered aimlessly in search of a cab to Ughelli. I imagine what it would have been like to get drunk with him, pretending to be vulnerable as an excuse for him to open up to me. I can still hear his eastern accent—one I strangely adore in men. From experience and rumor, I’ve learned that men from the east often offer more devotion and commitment than the ones from the west, who seem only to bring love bombing and pain—sons of Lucifer, whom I am apparently cursed to continually meet and fall for.

Now, whenever I feel stuck or lost, I think about going to Benin. There's this urge to pack a bag, travel there, and just roam around for no reason at all. I feel like I owe myself at least three days in that city. It feels like Benin holds a decision I have yet to make or a lesson I’ve yet to fully learn.

It’s no surprise that Nigeria struggles. We lack belief in the importance of process, in the inevitability of failure, or in the lessons learned from tough days. We chase quick answers, instant success, and find ourselves in a constant race with others—focused on being first, not on quality. This mindset has infected every aspect of our lives. In schools, cramming to pass and choosing only profitable courses is the norm. In churches, prophecies and miracles are sold, while we miss the everyday miracles in small victories or even in failures. Testimonies that cause a congregation to shout “God is good!” dominate, but God is good whether you land that dream job or not. He is good when you wake up each morning despite unhealthy habits and aimless scrolling through social media. His goodness is unwavering.

Our culture’s obsession with success, without regard for the process, is why young lives are sacrificed for ritualistic purposes. It’s why people accept the motto, “In life, just get money, nothing else matters,” and nod in agreement like agama lizards. It’s why, in a failing economy, teenagers are breadwinners, while parents look the other way, never questioning the source of income. 

And yet, when we move to countries with better systems, we adhere to their rules, or at least pretend to. But the moment we return home, devaluation of the naira grants us the power to be corrupt, to exploit. Home becomes more than a place of comfort or a place to easily access good ofada or banga soup; it’s a place where we can jump queues, misuse law enforcement for personal gain, underpay and mistreat domestic workers, and pressure others to chase money at any cost.

Nigeria aside, this is a reminder to pay more attention to the little things: how we spend our time each day, what we reach for in the morning, our behaviors, and the habits that shape our character and values. These are the things that truly matter—not the big results, not the applause.