“Pictures speak a thousand words, telling stories of who we were and how far we’ve come.”
I remember one time when my friend and I stumbled upon our old pictures. It was an image of us at 8 years old. The innocence we had. The curiosity we were not afraid to show. We had childlike dreams, and even though it may not have meant much at the time, we did not stop dreaming.
Looking at that picture, I could not help but think — there was a version of each of us that existed before all of this. Before the responsibilities, the expectations, the roles. Do you remember her?
I have been thinking about her lately. That little girl who had not yet learned to make herself small. The one who laughed loudly, asked questions without apology and took up space without wondering if she was too much.
She was you. And somewhere along the way, quietly and without any announcement, she started to disappear.
She was fearless once
Think back. As children, many of us enjoyed the simplest things life had to offer. We played without self-consciousness. We laughed without wondering how we sounded. We asked for help without shame. We interacted with people openly and freely, without the weight of other people’s opinions on our chests.
We were not afraid to take up space. We simply existed — fully, loudly, unapologetically.
There was a girl who had dreams she had not yet been told were too big. Who had a personality she had not yet been asked to shrink. Who had a voice she had not yet learned to swallow.
That girl was you before the world told you who to be.
Then something shifted. Slowly at first, then all at once.
When the world started shrinking her
As we approached adulthood, life was different in ways we did not fully understand at the time. We started learning to hide. To shrink. To second-guess. The question that crept in was no longer “what do I want?” but “am I being too much? Will they laugh at me? Will they approve?”
Our families had expectations. Society had its own. And somewhere between trying to meet both, we started losing ourselves.
We stopped asking questions freely. We stopped taking up space without guilt. We started performing a version of ourselves that felt safer, smaller, more acceptable.
“We were not taught to shrink. We learned it — slowly, quietly, from the world around us.”
The model before us
For many African women, our first and most powerful model of womanhood was our mother. She showed us what a woman looks like — how she moves through the world, what she carries, what she gives, what she silently endures.
Our mothers modelled what they knew. And they knew what their own mothers had shown them. Many of our women grew up without a voice of their own. They learned to give and give until they were exhausted. They did not complain because nobody had ever told them they were allowed to. And so they passed that same unspoken lesson down to us — not out of cruelty, but out of familiarity.
We watched. We absorbed. And without realising it, we became them.
This is not to say that our mothers did not do their best. They did very well based on what they knew at the time. Maybe we are the generation that gets to do it differently.
Read also: Who are you beyond the roles you play as a woman?
So what do we do with this awareness?
This is not about blaming the past or unpacking everything at once. It is simply about becoming aware. Awareness is always where change begins.
Understanding how your upbringing, your environment and the models around you shaped the woman you have become — that understanding cannot be ignored. It is the first and most honest step toward finding your way back to yourself.
You do not have to overhaul your life to begin. You just have to be willing to ask the question.
A quiet moment for you
Who was the girl you were before the world started shaping you?
What did she love? What made her laugh? What did she dream about before anyone told her to be practical?
Read also: The healing you didn’t know you needed (and why)
I would love to hear from you. Is there a version of yourself you feel you have lost along the way? Share it in the comments — you might just say what someone else could not find words for.
This is not the end of the conversation. It is only the beginning of remembering.
Remember, that dreamer never left. She has just been waiting for you to remember her.
She is still in there, and it’s time to find her.
With love,
Cheta Otiji