Becoming?

The Intricacies of being an African woman born in Africa

A few days ago, I read a story that refused to leave me alone.

It was about a 20-year-old girl. Barely out of her teens. She had lived in the city with someone who took her in rent-free. She worked with an industrial cleaning agency. On the side, she was learning fashion design, free of charge, at the hands of her boss’s friend. She was acquiring skill, independence, and something even more fragile: options.

Then she quit.

She stopped learning the skill. Left the city. Got married to a man she barely knew because “her people said so.”

A year into the marriage, she reached out to her former boss. She was heavily pregnant. Her body bore marks that told a story before her mouth could. Her husband beat her and left her for dead.

Her boss took her back in. Cleaned her up. Helped her restart her training. For a moment, it seemed like the story might turn.

But a few weeks after giving birth, she returned to the abusive marriage. Because her mother-in-law said so.

When I finished reading, I didn’t just feel sadness. I felt unsettled. Not because the story was unfamiliar, but because it was familiar.

Every young woman knows a classmate, a peer, a neigbour, a cousin or a daughter of a family friend, who has a different version of this same story.

I kept wondering: what kind of woman was she becoming?
And then the more uncomfortable question followed: what kind of woman am I becoming?

You might ask, why am I bringing this up? You don’t know her. I don’t know her.

I’m bringing it up because, in quieter and more socially acceptable ways, many of us are like her.

There is often a painful gap between who we think we are and who we actually are. Between who we say we want to become and who our daily choices are shaping us into. And the reason we don’t always notice that gap is because there are so many voices narrating our lives at the same time — family, friends, culture, religion, media, social media, even our own fear dressed up as “wisdom.”

So, this letter isn’t really about her.

It’s about you.
And it’s about what’s at stake if you never pause to ask, Who am I becoming?

Living Inside Other People’s Scripts

Many of us grew up with scripts handed to us early.

Be a good daughter.
Be a respectable woman.
Be educated - because you must represent the family well.
Don’t embarrass us.
Don’t fall behind.
Don’t ask too many questions.
Don’t be ungrateful for the sacrifices made for you.

In many African contexts, especially for women, success is not just personal, it’s communal. You are not just you; you are proof that the family did not suffer in vain and evidence that God answers your mom’s prayers. You are the example that the school fees were worth it and that someone “made it out.” And maybe in extreme cases broke “generational curses”

And these expectations are not imaginary. They are real. They come with love, history, and genuine concern. This is not a story of villains and victims. It is a story of pressure.

Pressure to marry on time.
Pressure to choose stability over curiosity.
Pressure to endure because “others have endured worse.”
Pressure to be grateful even when something inside you is slowly shrinking.

So, we learn to split ourselves.

There is a version of you that shows up with your parents, careful and agreeable.
Another version with your boss, competent, restrained and endlessly capable.
Another with your girlfriends, honest, playful, sometimes exhausted, sometimes taking things “too deep”
Another with your partner, negotiating how much of yourself is allowed and struggling to get some “independence clauses”

And over time, it gets harder to remember which one is you.

We make implicit promises by accepting certain paths:
If I take this job, I will not complain.
If I marry this person, I will endure.
If I accept this opportunity, I will not want more.

Family love, in these moments, can quietly tangle with control. Not always out of malice, but out of fear. Fear that your difference will cost you safety. Fear that your deviation will invite hardship. Fear that your independence will break something sacred.

And so, we carry guilt. Guilt for wanting something different from what was planned for us. Guilt for being tired of a life that looks successful on paper. Guilt for feeling empty in rooms we prayed to enter.

Some of us are applauded, promoted and even admired yet privately depleted. We have become everything we were asked to be, and almost nothing we intentionally chose.

That is the quiet danger.

Not dramatic collapse.
But slow disappearance.

Becoming Is Not Passive

Here is the truth most of us were never taught: becoming is active.

You are not just becoming by accident. You are becoming by repetition. By compliance. By the questions you refuse to ask. By the discomfort you keep swallowing.

There is a difference between who you were told to be and who you are becoming. And the gap between those two widens when you outsource authorship of your life.

“Who am I becoming?” is not a question your family can answer for you.
Not your pastor.
Not your friends.
Not even your younger self with all her idealism.

It is a question you earn the right to ask by paying attention.

What would shift if, even quietly, you stopped asking “What do they want?” and started asking “What do I actually want?” Not what makes sense. Not what sounds impressive. But what feels honest.

Clarity is not rebellion.

You do not have to reject your culture, your family, or your faith to choose differently. You do not have to burn everything down to tell the truth. Sometimes clarity is simply naming what is no longer yours.

Becoming yourself does not happen in one dramatic decision. It happens in small acts of honesty. In noticing when your body tightens around certain expectations. In admitting when something that once fit no longer does. In speaking up instead of smiling through clenched teeth. In “changing it” when it becomes necessary without being disrespectful. Put in nicer words, ‘standing your ground.’

For many women, the hardest permission to give is not permission to succeed, but permission to want. To desire without immediately justifying it. To imagine a future that was not pre-approved.

Your life is not a group project.

It is yours to author—even if you are still learning the language.

Sitting With the Question

This week, I don’t want you to overhaul your life. I want you to observe it.

Here are a few gentle practices you can sit with:

1. Notice your shape-shifting.
Pay attention to the moments you become a different version of yourself. In what rooms does it happen? With whom? What do you gain by shrinking or expanding there? Don’t judge it, just notice.

2. Write down three things you want that surprise you.
Not things that sound responsible. Not things you can easily explain. Things that make you feel slightly exposed. Then ask: what fear lives underneath each one?

3. Have one honest conversation.
With someone you trust, say one thing you actually want, not what you should want. Notice how it feels in your body to say it out loud. Relief? Fear? Grief? That response is information.

You are not trying to fix yourself. You are trying to meet yourself.

That is enough for now.

Here’s my Invitation

I keep thinking about that young woman—not just the choices she made, but the questions she may never have been allowed to ask.

I don’t know who you are becoming.

But I know it is not fully captured by your CV, your relationship status, or your ability to endure. I know it is shaped in the quiet moments when no one is watching, and in the courage that it takes to listen to yourself anyway.

After some time away, living, observing, and sitting with questions I couldn’t rush, I’m back. Not with answers, but with intention.

This year, I want to write about identity, leadership, agency, and the women we are becoming in contexts that never planned for our autonomy. I want to sit with the uncertainty, not rush past it. I want to tell the truth gently and clearly.

So, I’ll ask you the same question I’m asking myself:

Who are you becoming - really?

If this stirred something, I’d love to hear from you. Reply. Comment. Share with a friend who might need the question.

This is Week 1.
And this is the work.