Hello, Hello! Hope everyone is pushing through. There is a lot going on in the world these days, sometimes asking “How are you” seems inadequate. Perhaps the right question is, how are you all holding up? Let me begin by thanking Toritseju for sharing so openly last week. A lot of you reached out to express your awe and prayers, which I shared with her. A warm welcome to everyone who signed up to join us on this journey, I look forward to writing your stories as well.
Last week was a blur, I was consumed with work. I did not even proofread the last post before sharing it. I wanted to apologize for the typos but really, I am not sorry. English is the language of Colonialism…Lol. I am glad everyone focused on the message instead of nit-picking the errors though. Today, I will keep things simple and share some thoughts that have been in my head all week. I feel like after Toju’s piece, we should sit and reflect a bit before we move on to the next heavy story I am already working on. Shall we begin?
Here is how Toju’s shared the last piece with her circle. “SHAME - That is what I felt for years. I felt so ashamed that bad things kept happening to me. I opened up a bit when I came back in 2017. I remember people telling me to testify and not allow my JOY to be stolen, but it already felt like someone had punched my gut and stolen everything. I avoided it. Thankfully, the floodgates opened last year, I finally allowed my mouth to speak and my heart to heal. I am so amazed and grateful that people still want to hear/read, that people respond, that people are touched and healed”
It shook me, it played in my head all week, I could not understand it and yet I understood it. The overwhelming response to Toju’s story was wonder, awe, speechlessness, and hope. Everyone marveled at how brave Toju was and yet…shame. How can one who has lived through such victory, be ashamed. I could not understand it, but then I drew references to a similar cycle in my life recently, a series of unfortunate events - from battling my health, to job redundancy, to fighting for my mum’s health as she battled long Covid and loss of memory, to rejection after rejection in my quest to find a new job…nothing even close to what Toju experienced yet, I never spoke up about any of these because shame. It was easy to mask and easier to keep being light and airy as I was expected to be.
What is shame? There are many dictionary definitions of shame but the ones that resonates the most in this situation would be “a loss of respect or honour”, “an unlucky/disappointing situation”. Shame is closely related to guilt, which is “a feeling you did something wrong, that somehow you contributed immensely to the events that have shaped you. Shame is the feeling that your whole self is wrong.
As I muse about these definitions, I can see how a series of misfortunes would lead anyone to this feeling of shame. Why me? Why always me? The insensitivity and lack of empathy as well when you sometimes share, and it is brushed off. I had a friend once say to me “I am so happy you have had this fibroid surgery done so we can hear word, this said a few hours post my surgery by the way, when I was still in intense pain and high on medication. Naturally, when the wild effects of the hormonal medication - Zoladex, kicked in or the other issues I then faced occurred, I could never talk to her about it and I slowly drifted away… because “to not share one’s truth, is not to share at all”. I speak to women all the time; I hear them apologize for the treachery of their wombs. I understand it, society expects you to bleed in silence and God forbid you bleed, cramp and then leave evidence all over the place. How dare you!
We inherit shame by the way. At least, My sisters and I did. My mother chose silence over sharing. My mother had a retroverted uterus, which is when the uterus curves in a backward position at the cervix instead of a forward position making conception harder. I never heard about this until last year when I started writing these stories. Neither did my sisters share that they both had fibroids until I called Ebele (older sister) crying when my abdominal scan showed multiple fibroids. I thought I was dying honestly; I was so bloody naïve. Imagine my confusion when she casually said, “But I have fibroids, and so does Ada”.
Shame can also be passed on to us because people will not just educate themselves and their ignorance makes for careless statements. Take Uche, who hid her fibroid surgery from everyone because when she mentioned it to her highly “educated” male colleague, he asked if she could still bear children after the surgery. Olodo. Shame, especially when it pertains to the feminine body, is incomprehensible and irrational because we honestly are not in control of our hormones. Yes, you can eat healthily, exercise, go plant-based, try whatever you like, but I suspect that on balance, life is up to time and chance. I notice that shame is more amplified now by a society that chooses to glorify “soft life” over real life. The eventual question is “Why is my own so different? Why is my life full of woes? Why can’t I be like all these people on the reels with glamourous soft, fun, carefree, sunny lives. I am here to remind us all that oftentimes, real life can be messy and hard. It is a cacophony of shame, fear, anxiety, pain, winging it and "chesting it” interspersed with joy, happiness, laughter and hope, rarely the other way around.
You are not your shame. Even if you have convinced yourself, you played a role in the things that have befallen you, you are still not your shame. Somehow you are still here, reading this and that counts for something.
As I wrap this up, I must reflect on Olere. Olere is Nwaamaka’s friend who died on Friday from myomectomy complications. I had not seen her in years but last month, bumped into her at a 70th birthday so when I read the message “I lost Olere”, her image was clear. She had massive multiple fibroids, more than twenty and had been told for years to take them out but was afraid. Eventually, they became so massive that they began to compress her vital organs. The doctors advised a total removal of the womb as they were deeply fused together but she could not bear this thought, single and without a child of her own. The surgery was carried out on Thursday mindful to leave the womb in…she would lose too much blood to make it through…dying a few hours afterwards. I listened to Amaka wail and be bitter that she chose her womb over her life, I reminded her that it was not long ago that she herself faced death squarely and then chose adoption. It is never an easy decision to let go of what one believes is the bedrock of womanhood. May God help us all.
That is all for today. I hope you are inspired to share this post and your own journey as well. See you all next week when I share Jokotola’s womb journey. Till then, keep going…