Let me start with a confession: I’m a lover girl. Like… unapologetically. I love LOVE. I love the idea of it, the feeling of it, all of it. The soft things, the big gestures, even the quiet, everyday kind. I love those Nollywood movies where everything somehow works out in the end, where love wins, where it’s messy but it still finds its way back to something whole.

But honestly, this didn’t come from movies. It’s just in me.

I naturally want to love someone deeply. I want to care for my person, to make him feel seen, understood, appreciated, considered, and chosen. I want him to feel safe with me—that after GOD, I can be that place where he can just exist without pressure, without having to be “on” all the time, without carrying everything the world expects from him as a man.

And I don’t think it’s too much to want that reciprocated. That part, I’ve always known about myself.

Love is necessary. But it isn’t sufficient.

What I’m only starting to understand now is something a bit harder to accept: just because the love is real doesn’t mean it’s enough.

I think we’re all raised, in one way or another, to believe that if two people love each other, they’ll figure it out. That love will carry everything. Fix things. Make things work.

And I really believed that. A part of me still wants to believe it.

But now I’m starting to see the difference between believing in love… and believing that love alone can sustain a relationship.

And the realization isn’t dramatic. It’s not like one big moment where everything clicks. It’s small things. Little doubts. Feelings you try to ignore. You tell yourself you’re overthinking, that you just need to be more patient, more understanding, give a little more.

Sometimes that’s true. But sometimes… you already know. And you’re just not ready to say it out loud yet.

That love, on its own, isn’t fixing what’s missing.

The less romantic parts

I think that’s the part that shifts something in you. You realize it was never about not loving enough. It’s that love was never the only thing that mattered.

There’s other stuff. Less pretty, less talked about things. Like being on the same page in life. Actually, being available for each other—not just physically, but emotionally too. And honestly… reciprocity.

Because wanting to give someone everything, wanting to be their safe place, doesn’t automatically mean it’s happening on both sides. And no matter how much you love them, you can’t force that into existence.

And what makes it even harder is that the love doesn’t go away.

You can still love someone. Deeply. Sincerely. And at the same time feel that something isn’t quite right. That something important is missing.

And that’s such an uncomfortable place to be in, because you’d think realizing things would bring clarity, maybe even relief. But sometimes it just brings this quiet kind of sadness.

Like… oh. This feeling I thought could carry everything actually can’t.

Still a lover girl

I think there’s some kind of growth in that though. Not in a cold or cynical way. I’m still a lover girl; I don’t think that will ever change.

But maybe it’s just about not putting everything on love anymore. Not expecting it to do the work that requires two people, effort, timing, alignment… all of that.

Love might be the base, but it’s not the whole structure.

But I do believe deeply that GOD already has that kind of love waiting for me. The kind that receives what I give and gives it back. The kind where I don’t have to question if it’s mutual.

Maybe I’m just not there yet and that’s okay.

For now, I’m just trying to ask myself a different question. Not “do I love enough?” but “does this have what it takes, beyond love, to actually last?”

Even though that question is uncomfortable… it feels honest.

Nobody tells you that the first relationship you ever have with a man will become the blueprint for every one that follows.

Nobody tells you that losing him too soon — before you had time to really know him, to understand him, to ask the questions that were slowly forming — would leave a particular kind of silence. Not just grief. Something harder to name than grief.

A gap where understanding was supposed to grow.

I didn’t get enough time with my father. Not enough time to learn who he really was, why he was the way he was, what he carried. He passed away before I could figure that out. And for a long time, I didn’t realise how much of my adult life has been shaped by that unanswered silence.

This post is for every woman who recognises that silence. Who lost her father too soon, or never really had him, or had him physically but not emotionally. Who grew up and found herself, somehow, still trying to make sense of it — in the way she loves, in the way she protects herself, in the way she moves through the world.

We fall for what we know

It rarely looks obvious from the inside.

You meet someone. There’s a pull — intense, familiar, almost magnetic. You tell yourself it’s chemistry. And maybe it is. But sometimes, underneath the chemistry, there’s something older at work.

We are drawn to what we recognise. And when what we recognise is absence — a father who left too soon, or who was there but somewhere else entirely — we find ourselves, repeatedly, reaching for people who can’t quite meet us where we are.

Not because we’re broken. But because that particular distance feels like home.

We twist ourselves to be chosen

Here’s what the father wound does quietly, over years.

It plants a question deep inside — am I enough to make someone stay?

And that question follows us into every relationship. It shows up as over-giving, over-explaining, shrinking ourselves to fit, saying yes when we mean no. It shows up as working twice as hard to keep someone who was never fully present to begin with.

We don’t do this consciously. We do it because somewhere along the way, we learned that love is something you earn. That you must be useful enough, easy enough, good enough — to be chosen.

And the exhausting part is that even when we are chosen, it never quite settles the question.

We never fully trust that they’ll stay

Even in relationships that are genuinely good, there’s often this low hum of waiting.

Waiting for it to fall apart. Waiting for them to leave. Waiting to be disappointed in the way we always knew we would be.

So, we keep one part of ourselves held back. Just in case. A small, protected corner that we don’t let anyone into — because that corner has been hurt before, and it remembers.

What looks like independence from the outside is often, on the inside, a very old form of self-protection.

We learn to do it all ourselves

This one I know intimately.

When you lose your father too soon, you don’t get the luxury of leaning on that presence for long. You figure out, early, that you must be your own foundation. You become capable, autonomous, strong. You run on masculine energy — controlling, managing, always one step ahead — because softening feels dangerous. Because waiting for someone to show up feels too familiar, too risky.

And that strength is real. It carried you. It still does.

But sometimes that same strength becomes a wall. Receiving feels uncomfortable. Vulnerability feels like weakness. Letting someone take care of you means trusting them not to disappear — and trust, after losing someone too soon, is the hardest thing to give.

So, you do it all yourself. Because at least that way, you won’t be caught off guard.

What this isn’t

This isn’t about blaming our fathers.

Mine left this world before I could understand him. And I’ve spent years trying to make sense of it — wondering what had formed him, what burdens he bore, and what made him the person he was. Those answers will never come. What I’ve learned instead is how to live with the weight of never knowing. Slowly, imperfectly, I’ve made peace with it.

Understanding the father wound isn’t about pointing fingers. It’s about seeing clearly. About recognising the patterns so we can choose differently — consciously, slowly, one small step at a time.

It’s about asking: is this person actually right for me, or do they just feel familiar? Am I giving from a place of love, or from a fear of being left? What would it feel like to actually let someone in?

These aren’t easy questions. But they’re the right ones.

I don’t have this figured out. Not even close.

But I’ve found that simply naming it — seeing the pattern, tracing it back to where it started — already changes something. Not everything. But something.

And sometimes, that’s enough to begin.

At 19, I had a picture in my head.

Not a plan exactly — more like a feeling. A version of me that would exist by 30. Confident, settled, moving forward on something that mattered. Someone who had, if not all the answers, at least a direction.

I’m 30 now. And that picture? Still just a picture.

For a while, that gap — between who I thought I’d be and who I am currently — was something I carried quietly. I didn’t talk about it. I just felt it, in the background, like a low hum that never quite goes away.

And so, I did what a lot of us do: I read. Articles about discipline, productivity, how to finally stop procrastinating and start. I saved them. I highlighted them mentally. I told myself, “This time I’ve got it!“.

And then nothing. Or almost nothing.

The reading felt like moving. It was safe, comfortable, rewarding even. But at the end of every article, the project was still in the same place. And I was left with something heavier than before — this quiet guilt of knowing and still not doing.

What I didn’t see at the time: I wasn’t looking for information. I had plenty of that. I was hiding. The articles were a way to feel like I was getting closer to that picture — without ever risking the moment of actually trying.

Because trying meant something terrifying. It meant starting now at 30 and admitting I hadn’t started sooner. It meant being visible. It meant failing in front of people who’d been watching and waiting.

It was easier to read one more article.

Until one day, something shifted. Not dramatically — just a quiet thought that snuck in between two saves and one more scroll:

What if I just gave it a try? I wouldn’t die of it anyway.

That was it. No epiphany. No perfect plan.

Just the smallest possible step: close the article. Open a blank document. Write one line — not a goal, not a roadmap. One honest line about what I truly wanted to build.

And here’s what I’ve learned since then, slowly, imperfectly:

The fear of being behind doesn’t go away when you start. But it changes shape. It goes from this paralysing weight — it’s too late, you should have done this already — to something smaller, more manageable. Almost like background noise you learn to move alongside.

The picture I had at 19 isn’t the one I’m building anymore. And I think that’s okay. Maybe the point was never to become her — but to finally start becoming someone I recognize.

An honest note — because I owe you that

I’m not here to sell you a miracle recipe. I don’t have one.

I struggle just as much. There are days I fall back into the loop, re-reading my own notes without moving an inch. I’m far from having this figured out — very far.

What I’ve found is simply this: since I started writing, I’ve been learning day by day to take one small step toward this discovery. Mistake after mistake. Without trying to fix everything at once.

I’m not claiming to have figured out how to truly know yourself. I don’t think anyone fully has. But I’m trying — a little better than yesterday, a little more honest than before. And for now, that’s enough.

And you — is there a version of yourself you thought you’d be by now? What would it feel like to just... give it a try?

Thank you for reading me…

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It’s not sadness. It’s not boredom. It’s more like standing in the middle of your own life and feeling slightly outside of it — like you’re watching yourself go through the motions without really knowing why.

That’s where I was when I decided to start this.

I didn’t have a business idea. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t even have a clear sense of what I was good at. What I had was a series of questions I kept coming back to — about money, about relationships, about the emotions I’d learned to manage by ignoring them.

I started asking myself what I actually knew. Not what I’d studied. Not what I was certified in. What I knew — from living, from observing, from paying attention to others, to the things left unsaid.

And something shifted.

Not because I found answers. But because I realised I’d been waiting for permission to think out loud. Permission to not have it all figured out. Permission to start before I was ready.

This newsletter is that permission — given to myself, shared with you.

I don’t know exactly where this is going. But I know it’ll be honest. On the inner work we don’t talk about enough. On money and the strange power, it has over how we feel about ourselves. On the relationships that shape us in ways we only understand years later.

One essay at a time. No filter.

If you’re here, maybe you need that permission too.

— Unfiltered