I was doomscrolling recently (may God save me), and I stumbled on a video of a white girl who found out she was going blind in two months. She booked a flight, traveled to one of the poorest countries in Asia, served, gave, raised money, experienced everything she could before the darkness came, and documented the whole thing on Instagram. How inspiring!

Now, if that had been a Nigerian, the next line of action would have been a series of prayers across different prayer houses, attacking and blaming the devil, and then a fundraising attempt on social media, because where even is the money to keep up with treatments or live as a disabled individual in Nigeria? Family members crying on Instagram Live while relatives gather to fast and intercede. Where is the money to book a flight and explore, how much more dream about these things when survival is already a big enough hassle?

My sister sent me one that altered my brain a little and ultimately led to this article: this white dude who camped overnight in a forest where lightning strikes repeatedly, just because he wanted to capture it on camera. It was pitch dark, and when the lightning struck, this guy ran toward it to capture the effect. Ran toward it without any apparent care for his life or the after effects. If he was scared, the fear simply did not win. I doubt such scenarios are common among black people. I am sure exceptions exist, but the percentage is definitely low.

And these are just two out of millions of white people taking big risks, changing careers on a whim, moving to random countries because they felt like it, doing things the average Nigerian kid watches from afar and labeled under things beyond our reach as usual.

We Knew From the Movies

Think about every horror movie with a strange sound, creaking floorboards and a shadow moving ominously in the dark. What is the familiar next step the white character does? They always go toward the sound. They even say hello and walk down the basement stairs, sometimes alone at midnight with barely a light. That could never be me as a black girl. I would have screamed the name of Jesus with the full capacity of my voice while my legs carried me in the opposite direction at full throttle.

These movies are honestly not exaggerated. We see how daring these people are in real life. It is only white people who voluntarily camp in a forest, who embark on solo hiking trips across entire countries with just a backpack and a vague plan. They are the ones who quit stable jobs to travel the world. They skydive as a casual weekend activity. Some of them voluntarily swim with sharks for the fun of it. Who does that? Lol. What a blessing it must be to move through life with that kind of sheer, unbothered audacity.

Meanwhile in Sinners, when those vampires showed up, the Black characters were not playing at all. The immediate response was to lock them out without even taking chances or peeking to find out what exactly was being dealt with. No hello, is someone there. Just an immediate understanding that there was an enemy that didn’t need to be investigated or explored.

Sinners captures how differently we are wired when it comes to risk, danger, and the unknown. White people see something terrifying and get curious. We do not even need to see it fully before the alarm bells go off and survival instincts take over completely.

But why is that? Why are white people more daring, brave in the face of danger, risk loving and seemingly addicted to adrenaline?

My Theory

It is not just the money, as most people tend to conclude, although yes, having a safety net makes risk feel considerably less catastrophic.It is not just infrastructure or the government, we will get to that. It is also not just the passport disparity, that glaring, exhausting reality where theirs opens the world and ours barely gets us through. All of these are active contributors but they are not the entire picture.

A significant part of what separates the white girl who flies out to a rural village when she is going blind from the average Nigerian who does not even have the luxury of such thoughts, is fear. Specifically the kind of fear that gets built in from childhood and stubbornly difficult to displace.

One only has to think slightly about how the average Nigerian is raised to see the fear factor clearly. If not living in fear of God, then fearful of parents. If not parents, then a lecturer or the bulk of them. If not lecturers, then the church, where criticism is treated like an attack on God himself and used as spiritual blackmail against anyone who dares challenge anything. The community and every other institution are not left out either. Simply having a contrary opinion and voicing it in the presence of elders is enough to be labelled rude and disrespectful. Respect is practically a god in itself in our society. Every single institution passed through in this country has fear as its primary operating language. It is how things have always been done. Fear is the currency and most of us have been spending it our whole lives without fully realising it.

The God Factor

This is not a jab at Christianity or faith at large. Growing up in a deeply Christian home means the context is well understood to a reasonable extent. But the observation is this: the very countries where Christianity thrived for centuries are largely not as religious as we are now. Most of them were not raised with heaven and hell as daily, operational, active fears. For most of them, risk is just risk. For us, risk is risk plus what if I die doing this, is my way right with God, what if this is outside of his will, the Bible says honour your father and mother so if they say no and something happens after disobeying them, does that unleash the wrath of God?

Growing up in perpetual fear because of this is something I understand personally. Every night before sleeping, I was always scared of dying in my sleep and going to Hell. As a self aware troublesome child, sinning regularly was my lifestyle; the fear of hell was constant. It did not stop me from living as I pleased but it cast a permanent shadow on everything. To be honest, the fear has not fully subsided; there is still a background paranoia, a fear of dying suddenly and missing heaven.

The first time I had my first kiss in university, I spent 48 hours inconsolable, convinced I was going to hell for it. Some would call me a drama queen and honestly, fair. But what do you expect? It is just what happens when fear has been the primary operating system of my whole life. When every institution all through childhood keeps hammering what the wrong move will cost: eternal damnation, loss, and the list goes on. The conditioning of the average religious Nigerian is simple: stay indoors, seek God’s face first, and beg for a sign before making any move.

Zero Voice, Everywhere

The Nigerian parent factor is a major catalyst as well. Some would say they are doing the best they can, that they were raised the same way and are simply passing on what was handed to them. The sad part however, is that despite seeing how stifled that upbringing made them, many are not particularly interested in learning and unlearning. But the whys and why nots are not the crux of today’s conversation.

The effects of the overprotectiveness and micromanaging are glaringly evident. People in their mid twenties, fully grown with jobs and opinions and entire lives, cannot make basic decisions about moving out because the parental verdict is complete, final, and unappealable. Course of study cannot be chosen independently, careers cannot be changed without extensive permission seeking, a different opinion cannot be voiced at the dinner table because when an elder is talking in a Nigerian home, there is simply no room, all that is left is to listen without even as much as a whimper.

The bar for disrespect is so low that simply disagreeing out loud qualifies. Questioning a lecturer is practically signing your own academic death warrant. Pushing back on anomalies in church gets labelled as rebellious or backsliding. Disagreeing with a boss is out of the question when unemployment rates are astronomically high. So people stay in unfavourable conditions, holding on to jobs where bosses are treated like mini gods, because the alternative feels too risky to even consider.

Creativity is constantly stifled. Curiosity gets quieted. The adventurousness never develops because it gets scared out before it has the chance to bloom into its full potential.

And then the government steps in to finish the job entirely.

The Government Effect

Even managing somehow to grow up with curiosity intact, a sense of adventure still alive, and the audacity to want to try something daring, is not enough. The environment makes it extraordinarily difficult to act on any of it.

Infrastructure that is largely nonexistent means basic survival consumes the mental and physical energy that should be available for dreaming and risk taking. Camping in a forest is not a thought that surfaces when kidnappers have essentially taken those spaces hostage. Dreaming is not easy when the rising cost of fuel, unavailable basic amenities, and stretching the little available until the end of the month have colonised the entire thinking faculty. Insecurity means that even the simple act of going for a walk is a full risk assessment. A system that does not protect means failure is not a learning experience with a safety net. It is potentially catastrophic with no recovery plan in sight.

White people can take risks partly because their governments have created conditions where risk does not automatically mean ruin. Healthcare exists if something goes wrong. Social support exists if a career change does not work out. Gap years are a realistic option. Passports open doors without constraints. Infrastructure does not require spending half of all available energy just maintaining basic functionality. The floor is higher and so the ceiling feels genuinely reachable.

For the average Nigerian, the floor keeps shifting downward while all available energy goes into just staying afloat. Where exactly is the space to be audacious in all of this

So What Would It Actually Feel Like?

Do you ever wonder what life would look like if raised without all of it? Without the fear of eternal damnation before every decision. Without parents whose word was final and unquestionable. Without a government that made survival the only available ambition. Without every institution quietly conspiring to produce smallness, obedience, and gratitude just for existing.

We were raised in a fear factory and most of us did not know it because fear was the only air available. It did not feel like fear. It felt like respect, faith, and knowing your place.

I just want to know, at least once, what it feels like to run toward the lightning without all of that weight.

Have you ever traced a decision, or the absence of one, back to this? Drop it in the comments. I genuinely want to hear your version.

I once asked my mother what my Oriki is. For those who do not know, an Oriki is a Yoruba praise poem, a collection of words that traces your lineage, identity, and people. It is the poem your Yoruba grandparents sing to you, the deeply meaningful, culturally rich words your folks back home call you by with love and devotion. Well, my very religious Christian mother looked at me with mild bewilderment and responded, without missing a beat, that I did not have one.

“Why, mother?”

“It is not Christian-like and frankly, what do you need an Oriki for as a Christian?”

According to her, some of these Orikis are laden with adulations to the gods of our forefathers, so why indulge when you have been covered by the blood and dedicated to Jesus Christ?

Well, if the Oriki is not Christian-like, surely there would be other things to define me as a Yoruba babe? Lol.

The Christianity Takeover

I grew up in an extremely Christian home, one that did not coexist peacefully with core Yoruba culture. I suspect this is a familiar story across most Nigerian and African homes, a consequence of how thoroughly the gospel of Jesus and other religions have spread far and wide. Festivals, Fuji music, masquerades, and any form of paying homage to the gods, all the Yoruba folktales including Sango, Obatala and the likes, were either banned or firmly discouraged. Like, what do you mean Olodumare sent Orisha Obatala to form the world, and then Oduduwa ultimately completed the task and became the first divine king of the Yoruba, when the Bible clearly states that God is our creator, and Jesus died for our sins? So who exactly are Obatala and Oduduwa? No disrespect to the Yoruba legends, of course.

I am a twin, and in Yoruba tradition, twins carry specific names. The firstborn is called Taiwo, meaning the one who first tasted the world. The second is Kehinde, the one who comes after, the one who sent the other ahead to survey the land first. These are not merely names but stories, an entire philosophy about birth, order, and the sacred relationship between two people who arrived together. My parents did not give us those names, instead we were given Christian names. Mind you, my mother is a twin herself who was named Kehinde but eventually changed her name to a Christian one. You can see just how deeply the Yoruba culture has been eroded and tradition quietly set aside. I am certain a lot of Nigerians can relate, even across other cultures and traditions.

I remember asking my father these questions a few months ago: what makes me Yoruba in this dispensation? What is left of the culture to actually claim as mine? I have no real affiliation with my hometown or its practices. I have visited probably three times from childhood to adulthood. The first time I remember was around the age of ten, and the last was roughly three years ago for my grandmother’s burial. I did not grow up attending ceremonies, learning rituals, or sitting with elders who could pass the stories down. Everything typically associated with being Yoruba, the festivals, the music, the spiritual practices, the reverence for the gods of old, had been labelled backward, or worse, evil, and quietly discarded.

So what then is my identity as a Yoruba girl? I mulled over this question for some time before the realisation began to trickle in.

What I Found

I discovered recently that I genuinely love listening to music in the Yoruba language. Not as a cultural exercise, not as a deliberate attempt to reconnect with my roots, but simply because it moves my spirit to the core. The melody, the lyrics, the way the language sounds when sung, the tone, the intonation, the remarkable smoothness of it. There is a musicality embedded in the language itself, so when I hear music sung in Yoruba, something stirs in me that I cannot entirely articulate. Gospel, secular, Fuji music, it has all been a glorious rediscovery.

I remember when we lived in Lagos and I could not speak a word of Yoruba, and then we moved to Osun State and had to start picking it up. I was quietly resentful, convinced we were “turning local.” Can you imagine being an adult unable to understand songs by BBO, Ebenezer Obey, Seyi Vibez, or Pasuma all because I didn’t want to be seen as local? The heavens forbid!

I also discovered how deeply satisfying Amala is, especially when paired with gbegiri, ewedu, and the inu eran and ponms that ensnares the soul and beguiles the palate. I discovered not just that I enjoy eating it, but that making it comes naturally to me in a way that feels almost instinctive. Perhaps because we grew up eating it so frequently, lol.

I also love speaking Yoruba. I love the way it rolls off my tongue, the way certain phrases carry entire worlds of meaning that cannot be translated without losing something essential in the process. The way the curses roll off the tongue with alarming ease, the way no English equivalent can fully capture certain words, phrases, or proverbs. I love the humour embedded in it, the wisdom of the proverbs, the way an elder can make what sounds like a casual observation turn into an entire philosophy.

What This Means

I went looking for my Yoruba identity in all the places it was supposed to reside; the festivals, the Oriki, the naming traditions, the cultural practices, and found most of them either absent or inaccessible due to how I was raised. But somewhere in the searching, I unearthed something far more intimate. Music that reverberates through the soul, the sumptuous Amala delicacy, and a language so intricately layered and immersive.

And you know what? That seems to be enough. Christianity may have eroded a significant portion of Yoruba culture, but certain things will live on. I still have questions I cannot answer about my identity, my hometown, and the practices I never had the opportunity to learn.

But I love our music. I love our food. I love our language. I love the soulful, deeply resonant names.

Omo Yoruba ni mi o. How about you?

What makes you identify with your tribe? Have your cultural practices been eroded by religion, or has your family managed to retain them? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

I should probably disclose upfront that I have a complicated, possibly unhealthy relationship with Romcoms. I am not entirely sure if my disdain for the genre stems from the very reasonable observation that they are unrealistic, and cringe, or from the quiet, creeping suspicion that I will most likely die alone and these things are just rubbing it in. Either way, you now know this review is biased. It is also painfully accurate, whether you Romcom enthusiasts want to admit it or not.

Ariella and her wahala have pushed me to write my first ever book review. The audacity of this woman, you guys! Spoilers ahead. I cannot help myself, I need an outlet.

Ariella. Where Do I Even Begin.

Ariella’s character has to be the single most aggravating character I have had the unfortunate pleasure of encountering in recent reading memory. I understand what the author was going for, easy going, fragile, soft, the kind of girl you want to wrap in bubble wrap and handle with extreme caution. I get the angle, but it still rubbed off me the wrong way sha.

The tears. Lord, the tears. Every single scene, tears either pooling in her eyes or actively streaming down her face or dramatically threatening to make an appearance at any given moment. Girl, please. Get yourself together. And the apologies, the endless, unnecessary, one million apologies for things that did not even warrant an apology. I spent a significant portion of this read wanting to slap sense into her.

I will give Ariella one thing though. Leaving the way she did, packing up and walking out without warning, was the boldest thing she did in the entire book. Chaotic and slightly unhinged, absolutely. But she did that, thank the Lord! She still went back and forth after, but that one exit? Respect, reluctantly given.

Beneath all the softness and the tears though, Ariella was actually not that great to the people around her and I will not be taking questions. She was not a good friend to Lara nor was she a good partner to Jasper. She essentially performed the role of wife material, complete with the cooking, the homeliness, the timidness, the whole package, to reel Caleb in, I mean unintentionally, but even though! and we are supposed to find this charming? In this day and age, my people?

The Trope That Needs to Retire Immediately

I have serious, serious beef with the ho boy meets humble sexless girl trope and I need the literary world to know this. It is tiring, outdated, and actually offensive. The idea that a woman must perform domestic perfection, cook beautifully, want nothing flashy, maintain her virtue while the man does whatever he pleases, in order to finally make him settle down, is not the love story we think it is. In big 2026. Ola Tundun, come on now.

The author mentioned Ariella’s cooking and homeliness enough times to get me genuinely offended. No be joke, abeg. The boys kept hammering on how homely she was, how she was enough to make him settle down, like this was her greatest achievement and we should all be taking notes. Nope babes, we will not be taking notes. A woman’s domesticity is not a character arc or redemption tool for a man who could not keep it in his pants. We have been here before and should be past it by now tbh. rolls eyes

I hate when I have to defend a man, but here we are. Jasper was boring, yes. Dull, perhaps. But boring is not evil and the author really tried her best to convince us otherwise. The evidence against him was, to put it generously, thin. He wanted Ariella to cook for him and picked the meals daily, which, not fine by any stretch, but also not the villainous act the book needed it to be to make its case. If Tundun wanted us to see Jasper as genuinely toxic, she needed to give us considerably more to work with, because what we got had us grasping for straws. Boring is not a character flaw serious enough to warrant the prosecution energy he received from everyone around Ariella. All the author needed was for Ariella to communicate like an adult and half this book’s problems would dissolve instantly. But no. We needed the drama

The Rest of Them

Lara spent the entirety of this book performing the role of the funny, hard, promiscuous, unbothered best friend so aggressively that it just didn’t fit into that personality she was given… It just felt forced, I don’t know if I’m just overthinking it sha.

Caleb I have no strong feelings about either way, because nothing about the ho boy storyline is new. Always dangerously fine, sexy, promiscuous, and then miraculously settling down with a timid unsuspecting girl. Nothing new. Sigh.

And Ariella’s brother, Zachrys, who was the only character allowed to have any real edges, eventually had to soften too; apparently nobody in this book is permitted to remain complicated for longer than a few chapters. Even Louisa, who should have just been allowed to be properly terrible, got the redemption arc. Tundun, we can handle a villain. We will not cancel you, I promise. Give us something to work with.

What Pissed Me Off The Most

Ariella leaving Jasper would have been completely fine, even satisfying, if the reasons had been sufficient. If you want to explore yourself, leave a boring relationship, choose something that actually excites you, do so by all means and with my full blessing. Choosing yourself is valid. I applaud ladies in men’s field anyway, so go girl! But the reasons given were so thin, so unconvincing, so obviously constructed to make Jasper look worse than he actually was.

What I cannot stand is an author too cautious to make a character properly villainous because they are worried about how the audience will receive them. Too careful to let anyone be genuinely irredeemable, and in trying to keep everyone likeable, made nobody particularly interesting.

Making Ariella seem like one goddess incapable of wrongdoing, except for the way she left her fiancé which was even kind of justified by others, ugh! Like a unsuspecting timid lady who used her homeliness to reform a philandering man, and then expecting us to fawn over, is genuinely cringe. I would not have finished this book if not for my personal policy of completing books I pick up regardless of my feelings. Roommates is making me seriously reconsider that policy.

This is apparently a trilogy. I will not be reading the rest. My blood pressure cannot handle it.

Two stars, and I am being generous.

If you read this book and somehow enjoyed it, I would genuinely love to understand your reasoning. The comments are open. Come as you are.

Life had been doing its thing recently. I was on my bed, absentmindedly scrolling through Netflix at an ungodly hour, looking for nothing in particular, when Anne with an E appeared on my screen. The series that the first time I watched it in 2022 had snot running down my nose in a way that wasn’t in any way dignified, but who cares?

I clicked on it without deliberating and spent the next however many hours completely absorbed, laughing, crying, and rewinding scenes. For someone who barely re-watches movies or series, that says a lot. Glad I did, though; it was exactly what I needed for the kind of week I was having.

Consider this less a review, more a love letter to the lessons.

She Had Every Reason Not To

Anne was born into circumstances that would have extinguished most people before they had the chance to become themselves. Unwanted, passed around, mistreated, considered a misfortune by the world. I personally do not think I could have survived it. Her childhood leaves indelible marks that could never fully fade. It is one riddled with stigma, bullying, unbridled hatred, and abandonment, or so she thinks. She is not meant to survive such a life. Growing up in such a hostile, unforgiving environment only means a girl who should grow up to be hateful, subdued, utterly exhausted of life, sour, malicious, and in despair. This is a stigma that follows her everywhere she goes, even when it seems like she is starting a new life. So how could she have survived that? Not just survived, but thrived and left such indelible marks on everyone she encountered.

She never loses her wonder. Never loses her almost reckless delight in the world around her. She names things, loves fiercely, feels everything at full volume, and never once apologises for her sheer delight and childlike excitement. Her colours shine brilliantly regardless. She finds beauty in a tree, in a brook, in a conversation, in friendships, and describes it with such genuine enthusiasm that made me embarrassed for every time I had walked past those same things without a second glance, let alone the kind of glowing, effusive appreciation she gives them so freely.

It is not just how she moves through everything so cheerfully. It is knowing that cheerfulness is a choice, made repeatedly and deliberately, in conditions that give her every legitimate reason to abandon it. Most people, handed Anne’s early life, would have given up on life. Most would have decided, somewhere around the fourth or fifth betrayal, that the world did not deserve their warmth. Anne never makes that decision. This is not naivety; her character is nowhere close to that.

She sees people clearly, understands cruelty, and is acutely aware of the inhumane words and labels thrown at her. However, she refuses to be defined by their opinions and slurs. She refuses to extinguish the light in her eyes. She refuses to dim her world, to shrink away and remain in the background. She refuses to be intimidated into accepting a title for herself that she has not chosen.

She also carries the awareness that she is not considered conventionally attractive. Her red hair, her freckles do not fit the image of what the world around her deems beautiful. She wishes things were different sometimes and never pretends otherwise. But it is never enough to stop her. She understands, perhaps earlier than most, that there is far too much to do and offer the world for physical appearance to be the thing that defines her ceiling.

There are more important things than beauty, and you will have all the opportunity to find out, Marilla tells her after another of her tirades on her less beautiful features, which is exactly how she goes about life.

She comes close to losing herself a few times. There are moments in the series where we watch the light in her flicker, where the weight of everything weighs her down, and we assume it is enough to break her. However, she always finds her way back. She decides, over and over, to protect her wonder and excitement, even when everything around her seems to be working against it.

Broken things have such sad beauty. After years of stories, triumph, and tragedy infused into them, they can be much more romantical than new things that have not lived at all.

To be born into such cruel circumstances and spend the better part of her childhood in even worse conditions, yet still be able to view the world with such warmth and wonder, is the kind of inspiration the world genuinely needs more of. This is not to say it comes easily. There are numerous moments where Anne breaks down and nearly resigns herself to fate, like when she almost abandons school altogether after relentless bullying, and the very enthusiasm that makes her so alive keeps landing her in trouble. But she is never ultimately deterred. She has her meltdowns, her collapses, and her moments of genuine despair, and still chooses to view her situation as beauty in disguise. How extraordinary that is.

I wish I could move through the world the way she does. With that quality of attention, that excitement, that pure unadulterated joy in the smallest things. That refusal to let difficulty calcify into bitterness. That insistence on finding the romantical in things that have been broken and mended and broken again. Josephine captures her perfectly when she says, life had so many colours through her eyes; it painted my world forever. She captured her character perfectly and also spurred me. I want to move through the world in a way that colours everyone’s world.

It is not what we get out of life, but what we put into it.

Anne understood that before she was even old enough to have the words for it.

The Kind of Friendship You Pray For

I do not have adequate words for Diana and Anne’s fierce friendship and loyalty.

What they have is one of the purest things I have watched unfold on a screen. Their love does not negotiate, keep score, or require constant tending to survive. It is steady and unshakeable despite the stark contrast in their backgrounds and statuses. Friendship is something I hold deeply sacred, and watching these two find each other, hold each other, and choose each other repeatedly across circumstances that keep conspiring to pull them apart was a sight for sore eyes in the most sincere sense of that phrase.

There is a specific scene I will hold close for a long time and genuinely hope to replicate in my own relationships.

Diana’s mother, shaped by the prejudices of the time and the village’s deep suspicion of Anne’s circumstances and origins, severs their friendship after an innocent mishap involving wine mistaken for tea. She says things to Anne that no child should be on the receiving end of, let alone have to absorb alone. Anne is shaken and devastated, with no choice but to accept the verdict.

And then, not long after, Diana’s younger sister falls gravely ill in the night. Most of the adults are away. Diana, terrified and out of options, runs to the one person she trusts completely and without reservation. Anne. Who has every reason in the world to hesitate.

She does not hesitate.

She gets up, goes over, and does what needs to be done. No expectation of reward, no moment of deliberation about whether the family deserves her help after what was said to her. She shows up for her friend without flinching, resolute and unhesitating, because that is simply who she is. No amount of being treated badly has managed to erode that part of her.

The aftermath of this encounter was the icing on the cake for me. Walking home through the dark with Matthew, Anne reflects that the very family who treated her so cruelly in her earlier years had, without intending to, given her the exact knowledge she needed to save Diana’s sister that night. That those painful years built something in her that comes through precisely when it matters most. That even that chapter, the one that had every right to produce only bitterness, has been quietly teaching her something she would need later.

I find that both beautiful and faintly terrifying as an idea. That nothing is entirely wasted. That we can look back at the things that broke us and find something in them worth acknowledging, even if gratitude feels like a stretch. There are lessons buried in even the most brutal circumstances, however incomprehensible they feel while living through them. It is a generous way to navigate difficulty. Dangerously generous, some might argue. But Anne says it with such unaffected sincerity, like it is the most natural conclusion in the world.

There is also Diana running to Anne in the dark, knowing without question that Anne will come. That level of certainty about another person is a rare and beautiful thing. It is my definition of what I want when I think about the kind of friend I want to be and the kind of relationships worth keeping.

What Loss Does to People

The highlight of this series is its realism, which makes it even more endearing.

Marilla and Matthew are rerouted by loss before the story even begins. The death of their brother, their mother’s subsequent collapse into a grief she never recovers from, quietly consumes the lives these two people might have otherwise lived. Neither of them ever discusses the effect on their futures. They simply adjust, shrink their worlds down to a rigid routine, and get on with it.

Matthew, gentle and deeply unexpressive, pours everything he has into his farm and his horses because that is the only available outlet for him. He becomes even more withdrawn and awkward, unable to articulate himself, because there is simply no room for that kind of vulnerability in the life that has been handed to him. Marilla makes herself useful, capable, and indispensable; usefulness is the one form of love she knows how to give and receive.

Obligation can be a prison, and that line describes her experience precisely, as a child and well into adulthood. There is a routine that sets in the moment they lose their brother, and then their mother, who cannot find the strength to stay present for her remaining children, entrenches it further. Marilla never allows herself to move past it and experience life beyond those walls. She turns away love because of her unflinching devotion to family, sacrificing the fuller life that could have been hers. She stays because leaving would have meant becoming someone she could not recognise. I am not even sure she ever allowed such thoughts to surface long enough to consume her.

Then there is Gilbert. A boy, still young enough to have his whole life ahead of him, who has to grow up almost overnight. He does not abandon his ambitions entirely but has to carry them alongside an enormous adult burden, working twice as hard, paying for help he can barely afford, managing a farm and a gravely ill father simultaneously while his peers are simply being young. He does everything within his power. Shows up every single day without complaint. And yet his father dies anyway.

Life is simply unfair. The sobering reality that we can love with everything we have, show up without fail, sacrifice without expecting anything in return, and it still not be enough to keep the people we love. Grief does not care how hard one tries or how much is given. Indeed, grief is the price you pay for love. It is not a punishment. It is simply the cost of having loved at all. Which almost makes it worth it. Almost.

And then Bash and Mary. These two find each other against considerable odds, love each other with a fullness and a tenderness that is genuinely beautiful to witness, build something together, and bring Delphine into the world. And then Mary dies. Just like that. Life is unforgiving in that way. It does not reward people for loving well, trying hard, or deserving better. It simply takes. Delphine will grow up without her mother, with only the shape of her absence and whatever Bash and the people around her can carefully piece together of who Mary was. How devastating.

This series understands that grief does not have a tidy exit and does not offer one. It simply shows people living through it the best way they possibly can.

And That’s Just the Half of It

I came back to this series absentmindedly, not expecting to feel as deeply as I did when I first watched it in 2022. But if anything, I have come to experience and appreciate even more than I did then.

Anne with an E is so layered that I could go on and on and still feel like so much was left out. The beauty of community, for instance, the way the villagers show up to rebuild the Gillis home after the fire without being asked and how they rally around Sebastian when he loses Mary. The quiet but steady march toward the liberation of women, watching female characters inch toward autonomy in a world that is not particularly interested in granting it. The friendship between Anne and Miss Stacy. The way the series handles race through Sebastian’s storyline with a directness that is uncomfortable and necessary. There is so much here.

There is no straight path in art or in life. Sometimes there is no path at all. One must break down the walls and machete their way through the woods to get where they need to go.

Anne with an E is about optimism as a practice, not a personality trait. About friendship as something you do rather than something you simply have. About the devastating reality of grief and its aftermath. It is one of the most human things I have ever watched, and I suspect it will continue to find me every few years and remind me of something I had slowly stopped paying attention to.

All we can do is our best regardless of what we know or do not know.

Starting there seems like enough.

I was in church recently when I noticed a woman walk in with her two kids. One of them had that look, you know, just the right amount of everything. Pretty, put together, the kind of child that makes strangers stop and comment. The other was quieter, less striking, just there. And as people came to greet them, I watched the usual happen in this sort of dynamic. The fawning, the compliments, the attention all funnelled in one direction while the other child just awkwardly stood there, watching, soaking it all in.

She is probably too young to understand what was happening fully. But I kept thinking about the version of her that is fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five, who has seen that moment play out enough times to begin making assumptions about herself. About what she has, what she lacks, and where she stands in the unofficial ranking that isn’t spoken about but understood.

Observing the mother afterwards added to the intrigue. The more striking of the two was more active, louder, and more demanding of attention; of course, the mother naturally gravitated toward her. I am not passing judgment on the mother; I do not know their dynamic, and it would be unfair to sum up their entire relationship in one Sunday morning.

But I noticed it, and it got me thinking about how much of the experience of being the one the room does not quite light up for is about the accumulation of little events rather than big, dramatic ones. Who gets looked at first. Who gets the phone when both of them want it. Who the room lights up for. Who the relatives pull into a hug first, while the other stands slightly apart, awaiting their turn, which never quite arrives with the same enthusiasm.

My Experience

My experience of this is a little different from most. I was a difficult child, intentionally and enthusiastically so, and I say that with zero regret. People comparing me to my siblings never stung the way it was probably intended to, because I was never interested in being the favourite. Actually, if anything, I actively resisted it. I did not want to be the child my parents could comfortably pick over another, so I made sure nobody was too comfortable picking me for anything peacefully.

However, as a twin, comparison comes with the territory, whether it is invited or not. Growing up, I was the difficult one. My twin was not. I mean, compared to myself, I was basically the devil, so the bar was not difficult to clear. But this particular comparison among adults is worth discussing, and thankfully, not in a difficult way. My parents didn’t compare us as kids.

The ease with which my twin moves through social situations is what makes him stand out. In a matter of minutes, he can enter any space, any event, and any age group and feel at home. It makes no difference if the people in his immediate vicinity are strangers, close friends, older, or younger. From the outside, he moves through everything with a fluidity that seems almost effortless. It is genuinely a superpower, and I mean that without a trace of sarcasm.

Meanwhile, I have always been the one who prefers the background. Who finds it difficult to initiate. Who, even when I do eventually connect with people, finds it hard to sustain the relationship over time. I can be in the same room as him and watch him hold a conversation with someone we both just met, effortlessly, while I am still internally calculating whether it is too soon to say something.

There’s Always a Disconnect

We do not talk enough about what this odd dynamic does to the relationship between this set of siblings. Not much in my situation; the comparison never really piqued my curiosity in the first place. However, I have seen it subtly erode other siblinghoods. Siblings where one is intellectually gifted and the other quietly gives up, since the comparison makes the effort seem futile. Siblings where one is more socially magnetic and the other quietly comes to the harmful conclusion that they are insufficient. Siblings where one has their life more visibly put together and the other internalises the gap as personal failure rather than a difference in timing or circumstance.

People in proximity perceive the deep, unsaid gap between them, which no one actively discusses. Sometimes the favourite person is aware. They may overcompensate and carry their anguish and silent guilt about it. The other one loves their sibling genuinely, but cannot always separate that love from the exhaustion of constantly being measured against them. So they just exist alongside each other, close in proximity, navigating an unspoken situation.

Most of these are innate. It's not anyone's fault that some children are born with a social ease that others struggle to acquire throughout their lives. However, it becomes more complex in the context that develops around such distinctions.

Some parents pick favourites and are completely conscious of their words and actions. Some make offhand remarks, casually, that embed themselves in a child's memory and never go away without realising the impact. “You are not as sharp as your brother. Your sister never gave us this kind of trouble. Why can't you be more like them?” Said once in frustration and forgotten by the parent before the day is out, however, carried indefinitely by the child who absorbed it. Even after making every sincere attempt, some parents are unable to hide which child they find more enjoyable to spend time with, comprehend, and publicly applaud. And kids are constantly observing, especially the subtly astute ones.

It does not stay within the confines of the home either. The teacher who consistently calls on one sibling first and compares. The aunt at every family gathering who launches into a full, animated conversation with the favoured one before registering that the other is standing right there. The family friends who ask after one sibling’s career, one sibling’s relationship, and one sibling’s trajectory and then pivot with a courteous grin and a perfunctory “How are you?” that isn’t exactly a question. The church members. The neighbours. Everybody seems to have a favourite, and for some reason, it’s always the same in every situation. By the time the other sibling is old enough to articulate what has been happening, it has already done considerable work on how they perceive themselves.

Some people figure it out eventually. They strike a balance, stop measuring, create something that is entirely and unmistakably theirs, and reach a point where the comparison no longer has any power over them.

However, some people carry it far longer into adulthood than they had planned. It shows up as how uneasy they get when someone gives them a sincere compliment, as if they can't quite bring themselves to believe it. In how relentlessly they work to be seen, and how oddly hollow it feels, even when they are. In how they enter rooms, still running that unconscious assessment, questioning whether they truly matter. The favoured sibling is out there living their life, oblivious of any of this, and the other one is still somewhere in the quieter parts of their mind, trying to close the gap.

The Questions Are Infinite

What do you think about being the “lesser” sibling? Have you genuinely made peace with it, or does it still keep you up at night? Did it curdle into jealousy, into rivalry, into something you are not particularly proud of? Or did you manage to disentangle your sense of self from your sibling’s shadow and construct something that is entirely, confidently yours?

And if you are the “favoured” one, I am curious about you too. Did you know? How do you navigate your relationship with the “less favoured” ones?

I am not asking from a place of judgment. It is just one of those conversations that deserves to happen more openly than it does.

If this is your story, the comments are a safe place.

Yes, God is real. And somehow, that single conviction has only made the questions heavier.

Being a child from a religious home comes with routines, unanswered questions, and expectations. There is already a picture of what that life should look like. Consistency in prayer. A natural understanding of the Bible. A visible, steady faith, and of course, taking up the mantle from young adulthood.
For as long as I can remember, I never fully understood it.

This is not an assault on God, on Christianity, or on faith. It is the accumulated weight of too many unanswered questions that has sat heavily on my chest for years. There has always been a hollow gap between what is happening around me and what I actually grasp.

My parents deserve credit. Despite the rigidity and religiosity, they made genuine attempts to explain things and placed real value on personal fellowship. But even with that, beneath the mandated participation, strict attendance, enforced rules, much of it was still rooted in fear, reverence, and the unspoken decree that a child must love and revere God without hesitation. The expectation to be endlessly grateful for a life I did not request for, a salvation I certainly didn’t one sign up for, and the privilege of knowing the one True God.

The moment I had some freedom and left for school, I stopped showing up the same way. Church became occasional. I tried, at different points, to feel something, to reach something genuine, but it never quite arrived.

This is not about my conviction or personal journey with God. It is about the questions. Not because I expect resolution, because honestly, it does not seem like anyone truly holds those answers, but because I need to lay my mind bare and ask on behalf of everyone else with these same quiet, persistent thoughts with nowhere to put them.

Christianity is often described as peaceful, and I agree. There is a certain stillness that comes with trusting God, a quiet reassurance that carries us despite the difficulties. But that peace does not cancel out the pain. It just asks us to carry both at once. To endure, to suffer, to lose, and then in the same breath, to be grateful. To never complain too loudly. To receive whatever arrives, however brutal, and call it grace. The expectation is not just that we believe. It is that we remain thankful through all of it, without much room to admit that some of it is genuinely hard to accept.

And Still, It Continues

There are children consumed by suffering, not as a consequence of anything, just as circumstance. People who live carefully and still die in abrupt, senseless ways. Terminal illnesses that stretch pain to its absolute edge, slow and grinding, and completely indifferent to how decent a person was. And children are not exempt from any of it. If anything, they sometimes absorb the worst of it without ever being anywhere near the reason for it.

No one asked to be here. So why this much suffering? Why this much quiet, low-grade hopelessness running through ordinary life? Starvation. Assault. Loss that is not an event but a permanency. Some people are born into circumstances where pain is not an interruption but the definition and entirety of their lives. Some have to navigate all of this in bodies that are already burdened. This is not mockery, just an honest attempt to understand why existence has to come in such harsh, uneven forms.

There are entire regions, and they seem to grow, where suffering is not a season but their ongoing reality. War. Displacement. Hunger. People are born into it, live inside it, and most of the time do not make it out. And even within all of that, eternity is still waiting at the end as an additional variable.

Meanwhile, people with the genuine capacity for love and stability cannot have children, while others, already stretched past their limits, have more than they can nurture and protect, and the cycle continues.

If Jesus died for sin, why was that the chosen path when other possibilities seem like they could have existed? Why did redemption have to take that specific route? Why is gratitude expected for something no one asked for in the first place? Why does life so often feel like endurance rather than actual living? Work, survive, push through, repeat, and then it ends? What is the point, exactly?

God is all-knowing. Nothing happening now is unexpected. Every instance of suffering, every broken outcome, every devastating choice, was already known before it even began.

So why allow it?

Why create people, acknowledge from the start that they are flawed and breakable, and then place the full weight of moral choice on their shoulders for their entire lives? Why does choosing what is right feel like constant resistance, while the ‘poor’ choice come off natural?

Looking beyond personal experience does not make it any easier to understand.

There is no clear balance to any of it. It is something we all acknowledge quietly, brood over, and then cover up with the familiar phrase, “God knows best,” which I’m certain He does. But still doesn’t make it any less unsettling. The state of the world right now is heavy. Wars. Death. Loss. And it raises the same question again and again, all for what?

Then there is the structure of belief itself. Heaven and Hell. The idea that after everything a person endures and survives, there is still an outcome that carries the weight of forever.

If the ending was already known before the beginning, then what is the actual purpose of making people live through the in-between?

Why allow a system where humans navigate confusion, pressure, and circumstances beyond their control, and then attach eternity to the outcome?

They say Christianity is easy with God, but navigating life without cutting corners is anything but easy. Sin is attractive, convenient, and even feels natural. And that begs another unsettling question: why is it wired that way?

These Are Not New Questions

They have been asked across generations, wrestled with by theologians, philosophers, pastors, and ordinary people who just needed something to hold onto. Entire books have been written. Sermons preached, frameworks built specifically to address them.

And yet. For all the effort, none of it really goes deep enough. The answers exist, but they only graze the surface. They are not substantial enough to explain the abysmal state of the world or why pain seems to be the standing order of everyday life. Everything, of course, gets traced back to Satan, and then to Adam and Eve. Which is quite something when you think about it. The entirety of human suffering, every war, every illness, every broken life, all of it hinged on the choices of just two people.

Yes, God is real. That part is not in question.

Everything else is. And the concept, as it stands, is deeply unsettling.

I would not end this without the usual: It is well, and may God have mercy. Because really, all we can ask for is God’s mercy; He alone has all the answers.

There is no “light.” Nothing new in current day Nigeria. The generator decides to pack up on this same random Wednesday morning, which would have been fine, or at least tolerable, except that no light doesn’t mean silence here. It means everyone else’s generators pick up the noise right where yours stopped.

So there I was in the sweltering heat, in the din of other people’s power, sweating over work deliverables that did not care about any of this, only when I turned them in. The newly installed Wi-Fi provider, my latest attempt to escape the abysmal network I had been dealing with for months, had also stopped working the day before.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, dejected, wrung out, seething, and hanging on dearly for life, a question burned deep: where do we go from here?

And honestly, that particular Wednesday was not the catalyst. The real question has been building for five years.

This is not for sympathy. This is just from a tired Nigerian youth who has given her all and is now spent and mentally defeated.

Five Years and Counting

I have been working since my early twenties. Multiple jobs, gruelling hours, putting in the work to build a future, or so I thought: five years plus of that. And I have been mulling over a question I have been avoiding for quite some time: what has it actually amounted to?

Not rhetorically. Actually asking.

When I do the honest accounting, I cannot tell whether I have built something or just managed to stay afloat. Have I been hustling backwards this whole time? Is this what trying looks like in Nigeria, and should I just recalculate my expectations of what the return is supposed to be? I am clueless. And being this clueless, after five years of relentless grind, is quite sad, I’m sure you agree with me.

Five years of work and I am almost certain I have barely moved an inch from where I started.

Same Script, Different Decade

There are complaints about this country that are older than I am. Far older than my parents and their parents even. They have been written down, sung out loud, documented, discussed, and here we are in 2026, still adding our voices to the same record. A whole generation has been born, now fully grown, yet the standard of living has not improved. Not even in the slightest.

There is something particular about being a youth in Nigeria , about only knowing the after, about inheriting a mess we had no hand in making and bearing the brunt for it anyway. The complaints in conversations I am having now are the same ones that were happening when I was too small to understand them. Light. Water. Security. Cost of living. The script is identical, only the faces seem to be different.

So the next of action is to try to do the small things. Step outside, breathe, move your body. Except even that, apparently in Nigeria, is costly.

How Hard Is It to Take a Walk?

I decided recently to start taking walks. Just to move, to breathe, to feel fresh air on my face, to give my brain something that was not a screen or a deadline. A simple, restorative activity, or so I thought.

On my first evening out, a dog chased me. I screamed in sheer terror. Who wouldn’t? These things happen anywhere, so I will not put that entirely on Nigeria. But just a few steps after that ordeal, a man accosted me as I stepped out of the estate, more or less bellowed at me about the dangers of walking around that “late” with my phone, and even threatened to snatch it. It was 7pm. I was rattled, took his advice, quickened my steps, and changed direction. I was not going to be easily deterred though, so I kept walking.

Further up the road, a man stopped his car and asked for my name and number. I politely gave both, but that was apparently insufficient because he wanted me to get in and go “chill” with him. I said no. He did not find that particularly relevant. I said no several more times. He persisted. I eventually crossed to the other side of the road and ran back to the sanctity of my house.

I did not stop walking after that. I still take the walks because I need them, for my health, for my head, for the simple human thing of feeling air on my face after a day indoors. But a restorative activity has curdled into a routine, not a release. I am conscious the entire time, tracking my surroundings, hyper-aware of who is behind me, calculating, quickening my steps at the mere sound of a footstep. Something meant to be the simplest free thing available to any person has become a chore, a burden.

And that is before we even get to travelling. A road trip to another state, the kind of spontaneous thing that is supposed to just be a decision you make on a free weekend, is a full risk assessment now.

The questions are innumerable; which roads. What time. How best to avoid the kidnappers on the highway. What the security situation looked like last week. The things that are supposed to help us breathe require the same mental energy as everything else. There are no safe spaces here, no real escape, just low-quality problems. Everything chips away at the little left of you.

So you give up on the outside and come back in. You pick up your phone and call someone. Thinking at least ranting will help. It does not. It just confirms that everyone around you is equally exhausted, equally stuck.

The Conversations

You call a friend to check in, and within minutes, without either of you planning it, you are deep in a competition neither of you signed up for. The stifling heat with no light to power a fan, let alone an AC. Fuel prices that keep climbing as reflexively as you inhale and exhale. A salary that was barely enough six months ago and has somehow become less enough since then. No savings, because saving requires having something left over after needs, and the needs have long swallowed whatever comes in at the end of the month.

Nobody is keeping scores. It just pours out because everyone is saturated with the same grievances, and the phone call becomes the only place to set them down temporarily, before you hang up and go back to the sizzling heat.

And then someone tells you to stop complaining and keep praying. Pray for the leaders specifically. The ones currently making the decisions that produced the heat, the fuel price, and the salary that cannot save you. Pray for them quietly without complaint, because that’s what faith is meant to look like. No criticism allowed; apparently, God knows best and appointed them himself.

I grew up in church and understand the context. But being told to intercede for the very people draining the life out of you, with a smile, as though that is a reasonable thing to ask of someone, requires a reserve of composure I do not always have. We have been praying and fasting for years. What has it produced? What exactly has the docility gotten us?

And just when you think the conversation cannot get any worse, someone tells you that you are simply not trying hard enough.

The Exhaustion Is Not Laziness

The response to any honest expression of tiredness in Nigeria is always to pray, utter the usual “it is well” mantra, or some version of your mates doing more with less. Maybe. But some of us have been doing more with less for so long that we have lost all memory of what enough is supposed to feel like.

My twenties were supposed to be the building years. That is what I believed, what I was told. Instead, I have spent a significant portion of them putting out fires that should never have been lit, navigating circumstances beyond my control, working hard with little or even nothing to show for it.

I have worked, and now I’m drained in a way that sleep does not fix, in a way that a good weekend does not uplift, in a way that has stopped feeling like a phase and started feeling like permanency. Even watching football, which used to be an escape, has refused to patch the gaping hole in my young adult chest.

And so here I am. Back to Wednesday morning. Back to the same question that started all of this.

So, Where Do We Go From Here?

I do not have the answers. I do not have lessons on being a resilient Nigerian, and never will. I do not have motivational speeches or prayers. I have the burnout, the lethargy, the mental defeat, and a question that keeps me up at night.

Where do we go from here?

Is this just life now? Are we going to keep running in circles? How long before this country stops asking so much of the people it has already taken so much from? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

I need answers. We all do.