We all make choices based on people around us, and then we convince ourselves we found purpose. We grow, mirroring the life of others and sometimes never getting the chance to sit and ask ourselves questions about what we really want.

You probably studied Medicine, Law, Engineering, Nursing, Accounting… the big five. You are probably a nurse now convincing yourself it was your choice. A choice you made at 14. An age no other choice made by you was considered. How then, were you trusted to make a life decision at 14. Now you are 34. You’re so sure it was meant to be … but was it? You didn’t have a choice, did you? You don’t know any other way, do you?

At 34, maybe it is a little too late for you. Or so you think… You love to paint anyway, but you were convinced it was just a hobby. Well, you wouldn’t blame them, they wanted to make sure you had something to hold on to in the declining economy. You never really got the chance to explore your likes. No wonder you hate your life. You don’t do anything that actually sparks joy.

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You work an amazing corporate job. You love your job… This year, a lot of people started content creation. You liked the attention. You wanted people to see you. A creator posted about trips to Barbados. So… you quit your job and bought a tripod stand. At least Kate quit her job 2 years ago and now earns in millions, you watched the story time she did on instagram. But… here you are, it has been 6 months since you quit your job. You’re broke. You’re stranded. You are confused. You never should have quit, right?… Now you are realising you actually know nothing about Kate, you don’t know why Kate quit. Kate hated her job. Kate has always been a creative. Kate’s story was not your story. But yet, here you are…

We are so carried away that we look around and want to be like everyone around us. That’s why one minute you love your life and after scrolling on instagram for 30 minutes, suddenly you need a wardrobe change, you need to realign your career, you’re behind in life, you need a silk press… you need…

The problem now is everyone is talking online, and not everyone is making sense.

It is very important that your happy is your happy. Have you ever sat down to ask yourself the things you like? The things that make you happy? You probably don’t like that outfit, do you? It is trending anyway so you will make yourself uncomfortable because it is what everyone else likes. What do you like doing with your time? Do you really like that? Are you sure? What makes you happy?

Yes, you made a choice at 14 but now you are 34. Good for you if you love that choice. I love my choice. I decided to become a lawyer. I love to write. I love being a legal researcher. I love books. I love Academia. But if you’re not like me, it’s not too late to explore that hobby. I know you wouldn’t quit your job. I wouldn’t tell you to. But there is always room for something new. Sign up and join a painting club. Paint on weekends. Paint for fun. Gift your friends your paintings. That feeling of emptiness will eventually go away.

I hope your happy is your happy. I hope you make choices you want to make because you have thought about how they make you feel. I hope you stop trying to be like everyone else. I hope you do your thing even if everyone else calls you crazy. I hope you never settle. I hope…

Even if you think it is a little too late to start again, how about starting from where you are? Take a note and write down the things YOU LIKE. Look at your life, is everything you like something that was trending online? Have you ever put social media away and gone out to actually think about yourself? Have you taken a walk to have clear thoughts?

Have you? Is your happy right now truly yours?

Is your happy truly your happy?

🤎

Yommy Ayilara

I know how hard it is to have so many things to say in an environment where having so many things to say is … well… A PROBLEM

‘Oh Yommy, you talk too much!’

I think I have heard those words more times than I have heard someone say ‘I want to listen to you’.

It is so hard being so multifaceted. It is extremely difficult having a mind that has so many compartments. So many… I like to call my mind BUSY. Oh girl, she is so busy. I had to learn how to intentionally shut down some thoughts and also learnt how to go about my day with a list of things to do because girlllll! If there is no list to follow? I could think of changing my career path and apply for an online course at 12:00am, lol

Now, you know what is contradictory? The fact that different people have different perception of ‘the talkative girl’. I have to get to a level of comfort with you to speak and keep on SPEAKING. Do you get it now or do I have to spell it out? Okay I will.

Every time I was shut up, I was shut up by someone I thought I could comfortably speak my mind to.

The combination of being a talkative and an emotional person is torture. It’s like having so many feelings and feeling the need to talk about ALL THE FEELINGS. When you feel big, you talk bigger. There is always something to talk about.

And I hate to admit that nobody really listens.

I think it has also become a reflex statement. I have noticed that I am also called ‘the talkative’ when EVERYONE is talking. Made me learn the art of shutting up.

Ignore messages. Respond selectively. Never respond. Respond half heartedly. Promise to respond ‘later’.

This is probably why I will always hold my pen & hope all the ‘talkative’ girlies have started publishing their books too, lol.

The talkative girl writes because when a glass cup is so full and you keep it under a tap running with force, you break it. I’m the glass cup. The running tap? my thoughts. I don’t want to break. So I write to give room.

Is the talkative girl selfish? Never. Life is a rollercoaster. There are so many things happening to people at different points. I do not expect the world to stop to listen to me speak and I do not need you to want to listen. I think this is just so you know… THE WHY.

I don’t always have things to say, but when I do, please listen.

I am learning over and over again to keep it down but you are not trying. Well, maybe I don’t see it.

Yommy Ayilara.

The Problem Was Never the House.

I came across a tweet a few days ago. A lady was lamenting the number of women buying houses, buying cars, furnishing apartments and generally becoming financially independent. well, she did water it down a bit but we all know… The ‘initial’ tone suggested that something had gone wrong. It was as though women having assets was evidence of a society drifting in the wrong direction.

I found it fascinating.

Women are buying houses. Big houses. Their dream homes. That part makes perfect sense to me. What fascinated me was that in 2026, a woman’s financial progress is still capable of making strangers deeply uncomfortable.

Women have always worked. Women have always contributed economically. The difference is that more women are now able to convert their labour into ownership. They are signing tenancy agreements without waiting for marriage. They are purchasing cars because they need them. They are decorating homes they paid for themselves. Somewhere along the line, ordinary adulthood became controversial simply because women were the ones experiencing it.

I have always wondered why society speaks about women’s independence with so much suspicion.

A man moving into his own apartment is understood as a milestone. A woman doing exactly the same thing somehow becomes a conversation about modern feminism, masculinity, marriage, or whether she has become “too independent.” It is remarkable how quickly a woman’s ordinary life becomes public commentary.

I think the real issue has never been accommodation.

It is expectation.

For generations, women were taught to organise their lives around anticipated male provision. Housing, financial stability, and long-term security were imagined as things that would eventually arrive through marriage. When women begin building those things for themselves, they interrupt a script that many people never realised they had memorised.

Women have done anything extraordinary, but because independence changes relationships with choice. A woman who can comfortably pay her rent, buy her furniture and sustain her own life approaches relationships differently from a woman whose survival depends on one. She has more room to ask difficult questions. More room to leave. More room to choose. More room to say no.

Perhaps that is what people are reacting to.

The house is just bricks.

The car is just transport.

The furniture is just furniture.

The real conversation is about what financial independence gives women permission to do with their lives.

And I suspect that has always been the part that made people uncomfortable.

🤎 Yommy Ayilara

I have been so quiet lately and that is the peak of my frustration. What is happening to women in Afghanistan is deeply sad to watch. I have tried to write about it so many times but…

My heart is so heavy because we are all watching the steady removal of women from spaces that should naturally belong to them. Education, work, public life, visibility. The things that make a life feel like it is fully lived. We are all watching…

In a world that constantly speaks about progress, this is unsettling to see. We are in an age where gender equality is discussed widely, where institutions, campaigns, and global conversations exist around women’s rights. And yet, in reality, situations like this are still happening in very direct and visible ways.

I have taken steps back to question what progress really looks like when it can exist in speeches and documents, while at the same time, women elsewhere are experiencing the opposite of progress entirely.

There is also something about how quickly these situations risk becoming background noise. The first wave of attention comes, people react, and then life continues elsewhere. But for the women living through it, there is no pause. It is continuous. It is daily life.

This gap is difficult to sit with.

It is one of the reasons why women keep speaking. Why I will always speak. They keep attention on what would otherwise be forgotten too quickly.

There are moments when I think about how fragile progress actually is. How easily rights that were once gained can be reduced again. And how much of what we call advancement still depends on constant attention and pressure to remain in place.

It could be me.

It is sad. It is exhausting to think about. And it is also a reminder that these conversations are not finished.

Women will continue to speak about it, because there is really no other option that does not lead to forgetting.

🤎

Can we stop calling exhaustion in women “strength”?

I was thinking about Mother’s Day and the way it always unfolds. When the messages start coming in and the posts starts going up, I cringe. Maybe I get the intention behind it. But I still find myself stuck on one question. What exactly are we celebrating when we say all of that?

There is a way women are described that is … ‘the kind of woman who just keeps going no matter what life throws at her’ ‘the struggle she went through…’ ‘even when I did ***, she still held on and stayed...’ -

Now, I want to be clear that this is not about people who are genuinely working with limited resources and doing their best within those realities, but about the broader expectation placed on women to carry more than their share even when support should exist.

Take a look at it closely, a lot of what gets called strength is actually overload. It is women doing too much with too little support. It is women holding homes, families, work, emotions, and expectations all at once, and still being praised for how well they manage it.

At some point, that starts to become the definition of a “strong woman.” Not someone who is supported or balanced, but someone who has learned how to survive without enough help. Someone who has adapted to carrying more than they should have to carry. And we celebrate it.

If we are honest, the praise does not always translate into change. We admire the woman who is exhausted and still showing up. We admire the mother who is stretched thin and still managing everything. We admire how much she can carry without breaking. But we do not always ask why she is carrying so much in the first place.

Over time, that changes the expectation. It becomes normal. It becomes assumed that women will manage. That they will figure it out. That they will keep things together no matter how uneven the load is. And when they do, it gets labelled as strength.

…but strength should not have to look like constant exhaustion.

A woman should not need to be overwhelmed to be respected. She should not need to be breaking quietly for her effort to be seen. There is something strange about a culture that only fully acknowledges women when they are overextended.

And I think that is the part I keep coming back to. A question about what we are actually reinforcing when we use those words so casually.

There is another version of womanhood that does not get talked about enough… that in fact gets demonized. A woman who is supported. A woman who is not constantly compensating for gaps. A woman who is not praised for surviving too much, but allowed to live without that pressure in the first place.

That version does not fit into the usual language of endurance. But maybe that is the point.

Maybe we need to stop making exhaustion the thing that gets attention.

On Mother’s Day, I find myself wanting something slightly different in the conversation.

So to every woman reading this, whether you are a mother, a daughter, someone who is caring for others, or someone simply trying to get through your own life quietly, I hope today is not just about what you have carried. I hope it is also about what can be taken off your shoulders. I hope it is about ease where there has been too much weight. I hope it is about rest, even if only in small ways.

Happy Mother’s Day to women everywhere. May it not only be a celebration of how much you can endure, but also a reminder that you deserve to be supported while you live, not only praised after you have survived.

Yommy Ayilara 🤎

Between us, Women

Someone introduced me to a new person recently, and before I could even say anything, they added, “don’t worry, she’s actually really nice.” It was said so casually, almost like reassurance. Like something needed to be balanced out before I even opened my mouth. I knew exactly where it was coming from. The person had seen my work, knew I write about women, and probably felt the need to soften whatever impression that might have created.

And I remember thinking, why did that need to be said?

That quick need to make a woman seem approachable, easy, non-threatening. To make sure she is received well before she even has the chance to be received at all.

I ended up saying something along the lines of, you don’t have to like me… Just to clear the idea that I needed to be presented like that.

That situation made me think about how often women are expected to come with that extra layer of reassurance. Not just to be themselves, but to also be palatable. To be understood in a way that makes other people comfortable from the start.

And it is subtle.

It is in the way people describe women. She’s strong, but she’s very humble. She’s opinionated, but she’s still respectful. She speaks her mind, but she’s really sweet. There is always something added, just to make sure the first part does not feel too much on its own.

You rarely see that same urgency when it comes to men.

A man can be direct, assertive, even difficult, and it is often taken at face value. It does not need softening. It does not need a disclaimer. It is just part of who he is. But with women, there is often this quiet expectation that whatever you are, it should still be easy for people to accept.

And when it is not, it becomes something to manage.

Sometimes it is just in how people respond to you. The slight shift in tone. The way someone feels the need to “explain” you to others. The way being clear or firm can quickly be interpreted as something else entirely.

So you start to see the pattern.

It is not always about being liked in the obvious sense. It is about being received in a way that feels comfortable for everyone else. And when that comfort is not guaranteed, someone steps in to create it.

That moment reminded me how deeply that expectation sits.

Even when you are not trying to be likeable, even when you are simply existing as you are, there is still this quiet pressure around how you should come across. As if being a woman already comes with an unspoken responsibility to be acceptable.

This is something I found myself thinking about while writing The Life That Chose Me vs The Life I Chose. Not as a personal struggle, but as something I kept noticing around me. The way women are framed, described, adjusted, even before they speak for themselves.

And I think that is where the question really sits.

Why does it feel necessary to prepare people for a woman?

Why does she need to be softened, explained, or balanced out?

Because underneath all of that is the same idea. That who she is on her own might not be enough, or might be too much, unless it is presented in the right way.

And that is where the pressure comes in.

Not always loud, not always direct, but always there in the background.

Yommy Ayilara.

How small moments of praise quietly shape what is expected of girls

I saw a post recently where a mother was praising her toddler - maybe two or three years old - for having “motherly instincts.” The child was comforting her younger brother, paying attention when he cried, or maybe trying to take care of him. It was framed as something beautiful and something to be proud of.

And maybe it is.

Oh I think it is!

But …

At that age, what does “motherly instinct” even mean? And more importantly, why is that the language we reach for so quickly when it comes to girls?

There’s anything wrong with a child being caring. That’s not the issue. But, I have a big problem with how quickly that care is named. Something that starts to feel like part of who she is, rather than just something she did in a moment.

And yeah, exactly how it begins…

A girl is described as “naturally caring,” “understanding,” “mature for her age.”

Over time, those descriptions become something she lives up to. She becomes the ONLY one who notices. The ONLY one who adjusts. The ONLY one who takes responsibility for how other people are feeling.

That’s exactly what makes it difficult to question later on. Because there’s no clear moment where it was imposed. It’s just something that was encouraged, consistently, until it became familiar.

And once it’s familiar, it becomes easy to rely on.

You see it in small, everyday ways. In how girls learn to read the room early. In how they become aware of tone, timing, and reactions. In how they start to manage situations , keeping things from escalating, keeping people comfortable.

Again, none of this stands out as a problem on its own. It fits into what people recognise as good upbringing. It makes sense within the environment.

But over time…

It creates a version of a girl who is dependable in a very specific way. Someone who can be counted on to hold things together, to absorb tension, to make things smoother for everyone else. And because that role is rewarded, it’s rarely interrupted.

It’s only later

sometimes much later

… that the pattern becomes more visible.

And that’s where it gets complicated, because personality is harder to question than rules. You can push back against rules. You can’t easily separate yourself from something that feels like who you are.

So any change that happens tends to be slow.

It’s a less about rejecting everything and more about paying attention. Noticing when something is a genuine response, and when it’s something that has been practiced over time. Deciding, in small moments, whether it still makes sense.

There isn’t a clear conclusion to it.

… well, maybe a growing awareness of how certain expectations settle in, long before anyone has the language to name them.

And once you see that, it changes how you look at those early moments…

quietly doing more than they appeared to.

Yommy Ayilara 🤎

Nobody really prepares women for what leaving home does to them.

Now, I’m not writing about the practical parts - those are easy enough to figure out (New city, new routines, new people). That adjustment is visible. What isn’t visible is the internal shift that starts quietly and then refuses to go away.

When women leave home, they gain awareness.

Things that once felt normal start to feel deliberate. The expectations, the roles, the way they learned to move through the world - it all becomes clearer when there’s distance from it. And for many women, that clarity is unsettling.

You start noticing how often you were expected to adjust. How quickly you learned to read the room before expressing yourself. How being “a good woman” was never clearly defined, but always somehow understood.

And the difficult part is that none of this feels extreme. It’s subtle. It’s layered into everyday life. Which is why it takes leaving to even recognise it.

For a lot of women, the first real shift isn’t confidence. It’s discomfort.

It’s the moment you realise you don’t actually know what you like without considering how it will be received. It’s catching yourself over-explaining a simple decision. It’s hesitating before saying no, even when you want to.

Leaving home doesn’t erase those instincts. It exposes them.

And then comes the tension.

Because now there’s space to do things differently - but doing things differently doesn’t feel natural. It feels wrong at first. It feels like you’re being difficult, or selfish, or “too much.” Because you’ve spent so long learning how not to be.

So women find themselves in this in-between phase.

Not who they used to be, but not fully comfortable in who they’re becoming either.

They start experimenting in small ways. Speaking a bit more directly. Taking up a little more space. Choosing themselves in situations where they normally wouldn’t. And even those small shifts can feel significant.

But no one really talks about how uncomfortable that process is.

There’s this expectation that independence should feel empowering all the time. That once you leave, everything clicks into place. But for many women, it doesn’t.

It feels like unlearning.

It feels like questioning things that were never presented as questions. It feels like outgrowing behaviours that once made life easier, even if they made you smaller.

And the reality is, not everyone around you adjusts at the same pace.

So now you’re not just navigating a new environment, you’re also navigating how people respond to the version of you that is no longer as accommodating as before.

That’s where it gets complicated.

Leaving home doesn’t automatically make women free. It just gives them the distance to see what they’ve been carrying.

And once you see it, it’s hard to ignore.

So the real change isn’t the move itself. It’s what comes after.

The noticing. The questioning. The slow, often uncomfortable process of deciding what to keep, what to let go of, and who you’re allowed to become when you’re no longer being watched as closely as before.

That’s the part no one prepares women for.

And maybe that’s why it changes everything.

Yommy Ayilara

love letters from Wani.

Growing is beautiful. One morning you wake up and realize your mind is sharper, your thoughts are clearer, your style is beginning to make sense, and you can confidently tell the kind of person you are.

Growing is also very hard. On some days (scratch that, MOST DAYS), you feel like you have to make choices that you don’t want to make, you fight to get up from bed, you struggle to decide, you struggle to eat, you struggle to cook - you just STRUGGLE.

BUT… I LOVE THE IDEA. I LOVE THAT YOU HAVE AUTONOMY. I LIKE THE FACT THAT YOU REALIZE THAT YOU HAVE ALL THE RESOURCES IN YOUR MIND TO GET THINGS DONE - LIKE YOU’RE THE BOSS OF YOUR LIFE. IT FEELS LIKE YOU’RE IN A COMPANY WHERE YOU CALL THE SHOTS & TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO DO - Just that here, ‘people’ is YOU.

I start my days knowing that my life is mine, knowing that I can do as I please, knowing that I get to choose what I want.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are so many factors in my life that affect what I choose, but these are principles I have chosen to live by.

Now, WOMEN.

There is something about growth that society does not want women to experience. It’s the exact reason child marriage is still a thing and the exact reason older men want ridiculously younger women.

Something about a young mind? It can be easily manipulated.

Women are taught from a young age to always remember that ‘their husbands must approve’ , ‘he must like it’ - So, they prepare for an imaginary man and hold on a bit so their likes, dislikes, and choices can mirror the personality of this said partner.

I don’t agree that the order of things is for a person to grow to a certain age, understand the concept of decisions, choices, themselves, the things that they like, and then suddenly have to forget all that and absorb the personality of another person. Society intentionally wants to groom women to be shadows of other people.

I have learnt things about myself that I never knew existed - I am also too grown to stop eating a certain thing or change my entire style and personality because of another person who got to learn about themselves the way I learnt about myself.

BRING BACK AUTONOMY IN RELATIONSHIPS

Oppssss, sorry. I meant LET WOMEN HAVE AUTONOMY IN RELATIONSHIPS.

Relationships without autonomy quickly turns into one with dependency and control. You don’t have to stop eating your favorite food because you got married to someone who does not like it. It’s absolutely fine for him to eat something else. You don’t have to stop everything that gave your life meaning because of a partner. Well, I don’t…

Women should be able to connect without losing themselves and should be able to maintain their individual identity, agency, and decision making power while being emotionally connected to someone else.

Your husband does not have to like it. You’re a person too. You liking it is enough.

Yommy Ayilara

I haven’t written in a while, honestly I don’t know what to write. Even as I’m typing this right now, I’m a little all over the place. I want to talk about chaos, and then I want to talk about denial, and then I want to talk about decisions - I want to talk about the items in my cart, the nice brown shoes I saw at Zara, and the smell of the perfumes at Zara - I want to talk about the decisions - I want to talk about everything and anything all at the same time - let this give you a hint to how the state of my mind is. *a confused little princess*

✨ The inability to pick and choose ✨

Thinking out loud : I think there should be a master class explaining to people how to transition into adulthood and decision making. Oh my! I’m so over making big decisions! - Now, it was cool deciding what course I wanted to offer in university, or simply what hairstyle I’ll wear for summer - what’s the worse that would happen? I won’t like how the style looks? I won’t like the lecturer? I’ll get bored?

But…

What about the decision that determines how your life turns out? Decisions about what to do, where to go to, where to live, who to welcome into your life … How to start, what to do, how to do, who to do, what, how, to, do… DECISIONS decisions DeCiSiOnSSSS! Can I catch a break! Can WE take a moment to sleep!

Welcome to *decision fatigue 101* !

I feel so sharply these words in my chest … ‘don’t worry you’ll soon understand’ - our parents ATE! Because bruhhhh do I understand?! A lot!

*Rest* *Less*

I’ve decided to do less now - to rest. To not bother myself over things I can’t control & most importantly to let it out - to talk, to write, to live, to breathe.

As someone who handles things in isolation, writing is the only thing that makes sense on days like this, in seasons like this. I want to promise to always write to you, I want to promise to always let you know and to always share with you … but I’m not a liar.

But hey! Writing this took a weight off my chest. It felt like I had a conversation with a close friend. Thank you for being that friend. Thank you for being here. I know I’ll write more.

To the ‘way back’ people, tell me you missed when Yommy used to write like this! - The chaos. The ‘it felt like you were blabbing’ … Oh yes! This is me blabbing in my notes. I just talked your ears off.

Writing is how I express myself, I genuinely believe not everything written will make sense - that’s the point - an expression sometimes is just an expression.

Yommy Ayilara

Today is International Women’s Day, and if I’m being honest, I’m not in the most triumphant mood.

I’m a little tired. A little quiet. In a phase where everything feels heavier than it should.

But even from here, I’m thinking about women.

About the way women move through the world with a kind of depth that is hard to explain to anyone who has never lived inside it. The way we carry thoughts, ambitions, fears, tenderness, brilliance - sometimes all in the same hour. The way we understand each other without needing to say very much.

And even on a day when I feel a little low, that still feels important to say.

I love women in the small, ordinary ways: the conversations, the honesty, the sharp minds, the quiet strength, the refusal to disappear.

So even if this note is softer than I imagined it would be, I still wanted to write it.

And today, even from where I am, I am thinking of you.

Yommy Ayilara 🤎

Every time a rape allegation surfaces in Nigeria, there is a predictable second wave of commentary. Suddenly, social media becomes saturated with warnings about false accusations.

“Women lie.”

“Men’s lives are destroyed.”

“False accusations are just as bad as rape.”

The timing is not accidental.

False accusations do exist. That is a factual statement. However, credible research across multiple jurisdictions consistently estimates false reporting rates for sexual assault between 2% and 8%. Studies conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia repeatedly place false reports within that range. While Nigeria lacks comprehensive centralised sexual violence data, there is no evidence suggesting our rates are uniquely higher. What Nigeria does have, however, is overwhelming evidence of underreporting.

According to the World Health Organization, one in three women globally experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. In Nigeria, surveys conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics and international agencies indicate high prevalence rates of sexual violence, particularly among young women. Yet reporting remains low due to stigma, fear of retaliation, police inaction, and social ostracism. Many cases never reach formal systems at all.

This context matters.

When people equate false accusations with rape as though they occur at comparable frequency, they distort reality. Rape is widespread and underreported. False allegations are statistically rare and heavily scrutinised. Conflating the two creates a false symmetry.

The pattern becomes especially revealing in moments of public controversy. When a rape allegation trends, individuals who were previously silent on sexual violence suddenly become passionate defenders of men falsely accused. They did not campaign for better investigative procedures. They did not advocate for survivor support systems. They did not demand improved forensic capacity in Nigeria’s policing system. Their concern emerges only when an allegation threatens a man’s reputation. Any man - unknown, known, non-existent.

That selectivity exposes motive.

If someone’s first instinct in response to a rape claim is to centre hypothetical false accusations rather than the allegation itself, the issue is reputational protection. It is an attempt to dilute the seriousness of sexual violence by immediately inserting doubt.

It is also important to distinguish between two realities. A false accusation can damage a person’s reputation and career. That harm is real and should be addressed through due process and evidence-based investigation. However, rape involves bodily violation, psychological trauma, long-term health consequences, and in some cases death. Treating these harms as identical ignores scale, frequency, and impact.

Proportion is not dismissal.

In Nigeria, the greater systemic issue is not a wave of false accusations destroying innocent men. It is a justice system that struggles to secure convictions in sexual assault cases, forensic processes that are under-resourced, and a culture that often discourages survivors from reporting in the first place. Conviction rates remain low. Many survivors withdraw complaints due to pressure or intimidation. These structural realities do not align with the narrative that men are broadly endangered by false claims.

The question, then, is not whether false accusations exist. They do. The question is why the conversation about them becomes loudest precisely when women speak about being harmed.

If the concern were genuinely about fairness, we would see equal energy directed toward improving investigative standards, strengthening evidentiary procedures, and supporting both due process and survivor protection. Instead, what often emerges is rhetorical panic - a way to shift focus from the allegation to the accuser.

That shift discourages reporting, reinforces stigma, and signals to survivors that speaking up will result in immediate suspicion rather than serious engagement.

A mature society can hold two truths at once: false accusations are wrong, and rape is a widespread, underreported crime. What it cannot do responsibly is inflate the former to neutralise the latter.

When “what about false accusations?” appears only as a reflexive defence against rape allegations, it stops being a concern about justice. It becomes a strategy.

And strategies can be recognised for what they are.

Yommy Ayilara 🤎

There is a pattern in the way masculinity is policed that most people recognise but rarely interrogate.

When a man behaves in a way that is considered weak, emotional, incompetent, or cowardly, the language used to discipline him is strikingly consistent: he is compared to a woman. He is told he is “acting like a woman.” His masculinity is questioned by associating him with femininity. In everyday speech, “woman” becomes shorthand for inadequacy.

This is not harmless banter. It is not just playground teasing. It reveals a hierarchy so normalised that it hides in plain sight. For an insult to work, it must rely on a shared assumption. If calling a man a woman diminishes him, it is because womanhood is already positioned as lesser. The insult is effective only because the culture silently agrees that femininity represents weakness.

What makes this dynamic particularly revealing is that masculinity is treated as the neutral human standard, while femininity is treated as deviation from it. A man is allowed to be an individual. He is a person first, male second. His mistakes belong to him. His failures do not threaten the category of men as a whole. When a male leader makes a disastrous decision, he is criticised as an individual actor who miscalculated. His gender is rarely interrogated as the root cause of his incompetence.

Women, however, are rarely granted that same separation between individual and category. When a woman in power fails, her failure is often interpreted as evidence. It becomes commentary on women’s leadership, women’s temperament, women’s emotional capacity. The individual mistake is absorbed into the gender. She stops being a flawed person and becomes a flawed example.

This asymmetry is not accidental. It is the product of a cultural framework in which masculinity is understood as the default human condition and femininity is marked as “other.” In such a framework, men represent themselves; women represent their gender. That is why the language of insult flows downward. To degrade a man, he must be symbolically lowered toward womanhood. The hierarchy depends on keeping femininity beneath masculinity.

The implications extend beyond language. Boys who grow up being told not to “act like girls” internalise more than behavioural advice; they internalise a ranking system. They learn that anything associated with women—vulnerability, emotional expressiveness, softness—must be rejected to preserve status. This not only distances men from women, it distances them from parts of their own humanity. At the same time, it reinforces the idea that women occupy a lower social position by default.

The problem becomes even more visible in public discourse. When men commit acts of violence or corruption, we rarely generalise those actions as proof of male unsuitability for leadership. We do not circulate essays asking whether men are too emotional to govern because one man lost control. Masculinity absorbs individual failure without collapsing. Femininity does not receive that same protection.

If “woman” functions as an insult, it is not because women are inherently weak. It is because society has constructed femininity as synonymous with weakness. The feminisation of failure is therefore not a commentary on women; it is a strategy for preserving male dominance. By coding femininity as inferior, masculinity maintains its status as the standard.

This is why the issue cannot be dismissed as oversensitivity about language. Language reflects power arrangements. The ease with which femininity is weaponised tells us something about how deeply inequality is embedded in cultural consciousness. As long as being compared to a woman remains an effective way to shame a man, the hierarchy remains intact.

Dismantling this pattern requires more than correcting vocabulary. It requires questioning why masculinity is treated as the human baseline and femininity as the deficit. It requires allowing women to be individuals rather than representatives, and refusing to accept that womanhood is synonymous with weakness.

Until that shift happens, men will continue to be insulated as individuals, and women will continue to be burdened as categories. And the insult will keep working precisely because the structure that sustains it has not been disturbed.

Yommy Ayilara

There is a sequence we know too well.

A woman is harmed. A story breaks. Details emerge. For a brief moment, there is outrage. And then, almost instinctively, the correction begins.

She should have been more careful.

She shouldn’t have trusted him.

She should have seen the signs.

She shouldn’t have gone alone.

She shouldn’t have stayed.

She shouldn’t have believed him.

The language varies, but the posture is consistent. Before the perpetrator is fully interrogated, the woman is subtly reviewed. Socially. Culturally. Morally.

We call it advice. We frame it as concern for other women. We insist we are simply trying to help the next person avoid the same fate.

But what we are participating in is a ritual.

And like most rituals, it is repeated without examination.

Women have been receiving the same warnings for generations. Be modest. Be cautious. Be discerning. Don’t provoke. Don’t trust too quickly. Don’t move too freely. Protect your body. Protect your reputation. Protect his ego. Protect the institution. Protect the family name.

The list is long. The message is simple: manage the risk.

And yet, despite decades of risk management training, violence persists. Assault persists. Abuse persists. Exploitation persists.

If the advice were sufficient, the outcomes would have changed.

They haven’t.

That should force a different question. Not “How can women be more careful?” but “Why does the violence remain so predictable?”

The answer is uncomfortable because it requires us to look upward rather than sideways. It requires examining entitlement, power, and the quiet systems that protect them. It requires asking why certain men are defended reflexively, why reputations are guarded more fiercely than women’s safety, and why institutional stability often matters more than individual harm.

Correcting women is easier. It demands no structural change. It does not threaten leadership. It does not destabilise communities. It preserves the illusion that harm is an unfortunate accident rather than a recurring pattern.

In some spaces, particularly religious ones, this correction takes on spiritual language. Women are encouraged to exercise discernment, to pray more carefully, to submit more wisely, to guard themselves more tightly. While spiritual growth is meaningful, it is not a substitute for accountability. A moral framework does not neutralise predatory behaviour. A title does not equal integrity. Proximity to faith does not guarantee safety.

When harm occurs and the first instinct is to refine women’s behaviour rather than confront men’s actions, something foundational is exposed. We are more comfortable disciplining women than disciplining men.

And that comfort has consequences.

The ritual of correction does not prevent violence. It reframes it. It turns systemic failure into individual miscalculation. It suggests that harm was avoidable if only she had adjusted differently.

But violence is not a puzzle women failed to solve. It is a decision someone made.

Until the weight of responsibility rests squarely on those who commit harm — and on the systems that enable them — the advice will continue, and so will the violence.

We cannot keep recycling the same lesson and expecting a different outcome.

At some point, the correction has to move.

• Yommy Ayilara

I know what people are thinking. How can a woman claim she hates men and still date one? How can she call out nonsense and still let herself be charmed? Hypocrite. Contradictory. Pick a label - they’ll find one. And yes, I fit every single one.

Being a lover girl and a man hater at the same time is hilarious. It’s this constant internal dialogue: yes, men can be ridiculous, frustrating, clueless - but also… mine is kind of fun, okay? fine, whatever. It’s refusing to cancel yourself for the world’s insistence that your standards, your rage, your intelligence, and your heart must never coexist.

We, the lover girl man haters, have mastered a delicate art. We don’t allow one decent guy to blind us to patterns, to histories, to truths. We watch. We notice. And yes, we complain, mock, and shade endlessly while still holding his hand.

Some people call it hypocrisy. I call it honesty. It’s a refusal to let romance erase perspective. To let affection rewrite what you know about the world. To let lust blind you to patterns, laziness, nonsense, entitlement. Lover girl means fully aware, fully present, fully chaotic, and fully capable of shaking her head at a man while still choosing to be with another.

To hold love and critique at the same time, to oscillate between rage and desire, to be impossibly devoted and impossibly judgmental… it’s messy, it’s funny, it’s human. It’s a life lived without apology.

So yes. I am a lover girl. I am a man hater. I am a hypocrite. And I am thriving in all of it.

Yommy Ayilara

Society is so dramatic. And honestly, so unserious. Everything is always layered, complex, nuanced, deeply rooted. Especially when a man is the problem. Suddenly we are excavating childhoods, workloads, trauma, spiritual warfare. Anything but the obvious thing sitting right in front of us.

We are allergic to calling men stupid.

A man can repeatedly hurt, neglect, dismiss, embarrass, and inconvenience a woman, and the world will still rush to explain him.

He is tired.

He is learning.

He is not good with emotions.

He is trying in his own way.

Meanwhile, the woman is adjusting, rationalising, carrying the emotional weight like it is her job.

At some point, explanation becomes participation.

There is a particular kind of stupidity we refuse to name. The kind where a man understands consequences but simply does not care enough to change. The kind where he benefits from confusion. The kind where his comfort depends on your silence. Now, that is a choice.

And women are taught to excuse it early. We are raised to believe that love means endurance. That patience is feminine. That understanding is virtue. That if you explain yourself better, love harder, pray more, bend more, things will eventually improve. So we stay. We translate bad behaviour into potential. We protect men from the consequences of their own actions and call it loyalty.

What nobody tells women is that constant grace can become self betrayal.

Stupidity thrives where it is protected. When men are not required to think, grow, reflect, or repair, they simply do not. Why would they. Society will cushion them. Religion will spiritualise them. Culture will reward them. And women will be asked to try harder.

This is how women end up doubting their own intelligence while married to men who have never questioned theirs.

Some marriages are not hard because love is complex. They are hard because one person is doing all the thinking. One person is carrying the awareness. One person is making sense of nonsense. And the other person gets to exist comfortably inside that labour.

Calling this out makes people uncomfortable. Because once you remove the poetry, the excuses, the performance, what is left is clarity. And clarity demands action.

Maybe your husband is not misunderstood. Maybe he is not overwhelmed. Maybe he is not growing slowly. Maybe he is just stupid. And maybe the most radical thing a woman can do is stop pretending otherwise.

That truth is not cruel. It is clean. And sometimes, clean is what saves you.

Yommy Ayilara.

Love in your twenties can be loud. Opinions everywhere. Advice offered freely. Stories of what worked and what failed passed around like warnings. It becomes easy to forget that love is not a group project. It is deeply personal, and it touches the most sensitive parts of who you are.

I have learned that relationships at this stage of life require a level of self awareness that many people are still developing. Everyone is becoming someone. Everyone is healing something. Everyone is bringing habits they have not fully examined into spaces they want to feel safe.

What often gets lost in all of this is how easy it is to lose your footing. You start adjusting yourself without realising it. You pause before saying what you actually think. You soften your needs so they sound easier to meet. Over time, this becomes tiring in a way that is hard to explain.

People tend to love in the ways they understand. What feels normal to them feels right, even when it is confusing or inconsistent. When you want something calmer, clearer, more intentional, it can feel like you are asking for too much, when really you are asking for alignment.

If you are not careful, you begin to question yourself. You wonder if you are too sensitive. Too serious. Too much. You stay longer than you should because leaving feels like giving up. You call it patience. You call it growth. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is self abandonment dressed up nicely.

I am learning that protecting your sanity in love is not dramatic. It is practical. It is paying attention to how your body feels when you are alone. Whether your thoughts feel settled or restless. Whether you feel like yourself or like someone trying to maintain balance.

I know how I want to be loved. I want love that feels clear. Love that does not keep me guessing. Love that feels safe enough for honesty and gentle enough for mistakes. I want to feel chosen without being chased, valued without being tested.

In this season of my life, I am loved in that way. It feels steady. It feels respectful. It feels like I can breathe and still be desired. It does not take over my life or drain it. It fits into it.

That kind of love changes you. It makes you more protective of your peace. More selective with your energy. Less interested in anything that threatens the calm you worked hard to build.

I have also noticed how easily things shift when too many perspectives are invited in. Conversations start to sound different. Certainty softens. Small doubts appear where there were none before. I have learned that not every opinion deserves a seat at the table. This love works best when it is allowed to remain ours, understood.

I am learning that not every connection deserves access to my inner world. That attraction alone is not enough. That chemistry without emotional safety eventually becomes noise.

This is where I am now. More aware. More grounded. Less willing to negotiate my sanity for the sake of being chosen.

And honestly, that feels like love too.

Love Letters from Wani

Winter has a way of slowing everything down. The days are shorter. The light is softer. You spend more time indoors with your thoughts, whether you want to or not. It becomes harder to distract yourself from the questions you keep postponing.

Lately, I have been sitting with the confusion that comes with being a woman in her twenties. The kind of confusion that is persistent. You wake up with ideas about who you could be. By the end of the week, those ideas have shifted again.

Some weeks I feel certain about my career direction. Other weeks, I am sketching an entirely new life in my head. New interests appear. New possibilities feel urgent. It can be exciting, but it is also exhausting to keep reimagining yourself over and over.

There is pressure in knowing that the decisions I make now will matter. Where I live. What I study. What I commit to. What I let go of. These choices have weight, and sometimes that weight sits heavy on my chest.

I think what makes this season difficult is not the lack of ideas. It is the abundance of them. Too many paths. Too many versions of myself that could work out just fine. Choosing one feels like closing the door on others, and I am still learning how to grieve possibilities I will never live.

Winter does not rush answers. It invites stillness. It asks you to listen instead of react. That is uncomfortable when you are wired to feel productive by moving forward quickly.

Some days I want clarity. A clean plan. A straight line from where I am to where I am going. Other days I realise that figuring it out is not a problem to solve but a process to live through.

There is an art to this stage of life. Learning when to act and when to wait. Knowing the difference between fear and intuition. Allowing yourself to change your mind without calling it failure.

I am tired in a quiet way. Not burnt out. Just mentally stretched. Holding the awareness that time matters while also reminding myself that growth is not linear.

Winter is teaching me patience with myself. It is teaching me that uncertainty does not mean I am behind. It means I am paying attention. It means I care enough about my life to think deeply about how I want to live it.

I do not have everything figured out. I have ideas. I have interests. I have faith. For now, that is enough to keep going.

This season is not about having the answers. It is about learning how to ask better questions and trusting that clarity will come in layers, not all at once.

If you are also here, thinking, questioning, changing your mind more often than you would like, know this. You are not lost. You are in the middle of becoming.

And winter, in its own quiet way, is part of that work.

Yommy Ayilara 🤎

God has been immensely good to me. I have been in the UK for four months.

Saying that out loud still catches me off guard. Four months of showing up to a life I once imagined quietly. Four months of waking up inside prayers I used to say casually, not fully sure how they would unfold.

This morning, I cried. Not from sadness.

I was reading my devotional and there was a line that said to bring your concerns to God. I paused. I waited. I searched my mind. Nothing came up. I sat there genuinely surprised by myself.

I still have desires. I still have plans. I still have things I am working towards. But in that moment, there was no complaint forming in my chest. No urgency. No fear disguised as ambition.

God has carried me.

I can trace His help in practical ways. Logistics that worked out. Doors that opened without strain. Support that arrived exactly when I needed it. Strength that showed up on days I did not feel particularly strong.

I am not surviving. I am living.

I moved to a new city. I now pay adult bills. I live alone in my own studio apartment. My name is on things that matter. My life has weight and structure and responsibility, and I am handling it well.

That alone is grace.

I am doing well academically. I am stable. I am learning how to manage my time, my energy, my money. I am discovering that I like the woman I am becoming in this season. She is calm. She is thoughtful. She trusts herself.

I feel deeply loved.

I am loved at home. Covered. Rooted. I am loved by people who pray for me without being asked. I am loved in ways that do not require performance.

I love myself too. That did not happen overnight. It came from choosing myself consistently. From honouring my boundaries. From listening to my own voice and taking it seriously.

And above all, God loves me. I know this with a certainty that does not shake when circumstances change. I feel His presence in the steadiness of my days. In the absence of panic. In the quiet confidence that I am not alone in this life.

When I look at everything together, it is clear to me. I have a roof over my head. I have peace in my mind. I have provision. I have direction. I have joy.

I really have it all.

This season feels full.

I wanted to mark this moment. To acknowledge it properly. Gratitude deserves attention. So does contentment.

If you are reading this and you are in a season where things are working, let yourself say it out loud. There is no humility in pretending you are struggling when you are not.

God has been good to me. I honour Him for that. I honour myself for believing that my life could be this gentle.

This is my life update. And I am grateful.

Yommy Ayilara 🤎

There is a particular tiredness that does not come from doing too much in one day. It comes from doing enough every day and never stopping long enough to notice what it costs.

Many women live inside routines that keep everything moving. Work gets done. People are responded to. Plans are made and followed through. Life appears steady. What often goes unnoticed is how much inner negotiation it takes to maintain that steadiness.

You learn how to pace yourself emotionally. You decide which feelings can be attended to now and which ones have to wait. Some never get revisited. They settle quietly in the background and become part of how you carry yourself.

Over time, you stop checking in with your body for signals. Tired becomes a constant state rather than information. You continue anyway, because you can. Because you have before.

There is pride in being dependable. There is also a subtle loneliness in being the person who rarely needs anything. People come to you for clarity, reassurance, grounding. You offer it without thinking too much about whether you receive the same quality of care in return.

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It becomes easy to mistake endurance for emotional health. You are functioning, so you assume you are fine. You adapt instead of questioning whether the situation itself could change.

What often sits beneath this is an unspoken belief that slowing down will create problems. That if you pause, things will unravel. So you hold the pace. You manage yourself. You keep things contained.

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Many women have become skilled at carrying their inner lives privately. Processing happens alone. Relief is postponed. Rest is treated as something to be scheduled, not something to be woven into daily life.

This way of living does not announce itself as harm. It looks like competence. It looks like maturity. It looks like having things together.

And yet, there is usually a moment when you realise you cannot remember the last time you felt genuinely supported without having to explain yourself first.

Between us, women, it is worth paying attention to that moment.

Not to fix it immediately. Just to acknowledge that being capable does not mean being endlessly self sufficient.

The version of you that keeps showing up deserves consideration that goes beyond praise. She deserves spaces where she does not have to manage herself so carefully.

If you recognise yourself here, this is not a call to make big changes or dramatic declarations. It is simply an invitation to notice where your life could hold you a little more gently.

Sometimes awareness is the beginning. Sometimes it is enough.

Love,

Yommy 💕