saying goodbye to a year i didn’t welcome

Something about this picture I took reminds me of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese.

This is a reflection on grief, migration, survival, and learning how to stay. I wrote it slowly, with tenderness, and with the understanding that not all years are meant to be productive; some are meant to be lived through.

Sometime this year, I decided to open my mind to the possibility that restarting my blog might be exactly what I need, and could help me deal with my (newfound) habit of hoarding rather than sharing. After two drafts that never saw the light of day, I realized it was still just as hard to write to publish share as it was to breathe.

Where do I even start?

Something about this year feels like a stereotype; very familiar, a scene out of old Nollywood—a meanass mother-in-law shows up unapologetically at your doorstep without invitation or notice, but then who dares to say she is not supposed to be here anyway, because this is her son’s house. Here she will always be welcomed, whether you agree or think the fuck not! She pushes your ass out of the way, glides upstairs, feels at home, and briefs you a little about how every day is gonna be a tussle and specifically, more war-like when your husband is away for work, after all, you are a no kid-stay-at-home wife who only leaves the house a few times a week to see how the girls are running your shop. She picks on everything you do and never fails to let you know how you are good for nothing other than eating her son’s money. She takes over your kitchen, and you promise to stay out of her way while patiently praying and looking forward to the end of her stay.

In five words, this year brought the thunder. This year was the thunder.

I thought more about dying than I did about living. I read more Rilke, Walcott, Bass, and Mary Oliver than the Bible. Every attempt to get my shit together was a moment of self-brutalization and humiliation. Bruh, I beat myself up and Cersei-Lannistered myself with shame before anyone else could, for taking too long on things that others did quickly. I was at capacity, fighting to stay alive rather than clearing my to-do lists. I sighed at a new day more than I welcomed it with a smile. I spent more time opening up in therapy than I did communicating intensely with people because I had become conscious of having more troubles than good news to share, and I thought it must be hard to be that one friend who is always going through it and hardly coming out of it. So I decided to embrace silence; one, because I had exhausted my performative skills, and two, because I didn’t want my authenticity to burden anyone.

In Nigeria, there is only one place you are expected to be on the night of December 31st: the Church. It’s simple: you overwhelm God with gratitude for the year gone by; many died, but you survived. Then you usher in the new year with declared blessings, wishes, and joy, learning the watchword for the new year as a spiritual amulet, a word to carry you through what may come. I remember where I was on New Year’s Eve in 2024, how my body felt untethered from home. My grandmother had died a few weeks earlier, on December 9th, and I had participated in her burial on WhatsApp the next day, because migration collapses grief into fragments and simultaneity. I buried her on a screen, sent an e-tribute for the program, celebrated her life a few months later again through pixels, and kept living.

Distance reshaped the rituals of goodbye, turned mourning into voice notes and digital spaces, and yet the loss remained stubbornly whole. Survival meant holding multiple absences at once: a grandmother, the histories and communities I had known, and a home that no longer existed as I remembered it. At the same time, I was navigating imposed identities—labels that arrived without asking whether I was ready to carry them, yet defined how (and to what extent) I could exist, grieve, and refuse to be reduced.

If I had to describe my relationship with 2025, I would say it couldn’t stand me, and I, in turn, couldn't stand it, but somehow we managed to make it work.

With every difficult nolly mother-in-law stereotype, there is always a (ridiculous) moral lesson hidden somewhere—something about the power of incredible patience, no one is too old to be humbled, and all the other things that exist. Still, somehow, in my case, I struggled to see how this year was anything but a failed attempt at productivity. I may not have so many things to be grateful for, but I am thankful for the time I spent in therapy this year, reaching out and getting the help I needed.

This year, I realized I had become one of those people who got tired of asking God for anything because I was tired of being disappointed. I am one of those people who live waiting for the next shoe to drop, because a chunk of my life has been about shoes dropping. So I go through life expecting nothing, unsurprised at travails, and surprised when good things happen to me because they don’t often. I do not get comfortable with joy easily, ‘cause I am wary it’s temporary, and I stopped dreaming, ‘cause what’s the point of dreaming when I keep waking inside the same walls?

This year, I realized how much trauma has shaped my life and how much I held against myself, even undeservedly. My life has been chiefly about ascribing my efforts to luck, self-deprecation, and flagellation; meeting timelines and missing them; and beating myself up for missed timelines and mistakes, mourning them excessively before my punishment comes, because performing penance might get you a reduced sentence. It’s hard for me to see or celebrate progress when I’m convinced I should have met them before now. You tell yourself you are what the world calls a late bloomer, but half the time, you feel like Ceviche from Grey’s Anatomy—what do you mean that’s a win and not delayed expectation finally met? In 2025, every day presents a new reason to self-hate, and the idea of dying felt like rest, and living was torturous.

But more importantly, beyond realizing how much trauma has stifled my joy and made me fearful and passive about life, I learned there is no moving forward, no crafting new narratives, without giving myself grace and forgiving myself for the things that were both mine and weren’t mine to bear. I learned not to be quick to dismiss myself or to undermine the big, hard things: moving to a new country without family, where my Nigerian work experience doesn’t mean much. I have also learned to love on me by reminding myself that my presence in this world is valuable, by watching people pour into me so joyfully, and by holding me so tenderly.

When I think about how I would like to be with myself in my journey with falling in love with self and life, Ellen Bass’s The Thing Is comes to mind: to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it (because there’ll be days like that and these days have been many). On the days when it felt like I would give in and I just couldn’t get there with (love) myself, I have always returned to Rilke’s Let this Darkness Be a Bell Tower and Derek Walcott’s Love After Love, reminding myself that the time will [surely] come when, with elation, [I] will greet myself arriving at [my] own door, in [my] own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self.

At the end of the day, one might argue that there is a moral lesson, not so ridiculous, in my challenging coexistence with 2025; all the tears I have shed this year aren’t meaningless. They led me somewhere, to something, and most importantly, to community. There may be one thing I couldn’t finish this year, and I hung it around my neck like a noose, but there were so many things I did get done, no matter how much my mind tries to convince me they weren’t as significant.

I am grateful for the womxn and folx who held my hands through the debilitating turmoil that was this year, opened the doors of their heart and home to me, and reminded me in the words of Mary Oliver that [I] do not have to be good, [I] do not have to walk on [my] knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. [I] only have to let the soft animal of [my] body love what it loves.

This is my testimony: This year, I drove myself to the edge of the ocean, but I didn’t jump; I danced. And for 2026, I only ask that God show me how good it can get!

Cheers to living freely and confidently, not shrinking, getting things done, opening myself up to new possibilities and experiences, and finding more non-performative spaces in 2026. Wishing y’all a happy holiday and a fantastic new year.