Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr - I Am Because We Are

To Ugogbe, with Love

Ugogbe mirror.

A friend once suggested that I would only be able to tell my mothers story once I had the experience of being a mother. It turned out that she was half-right. It took me losing a pregnancy to connect fully to the story of my mother, Dora Akunyili.

After my husband and I learned that our nine-week-old baby showed signs of incompatibility with life, I reached out to my father. Ndo, sorry, he comforted me. Even Mummy too experience loss with pregnancy ya, he said, speaking in a stylized Engiligbo. It was the first I had ever heard of this, and even more shocking was learning that such a loss had happened not once, not twice, but three times, with the third occurring right before she had me. Worried I had somehow missed such an important story, I inquired with all five of my siblings, none of whom knew. In sharing details of bleedings and operations, my father shared as well the tears that accompanied each experience. Yet, for all those years, she kept it to herself. Perhaps it was true to her personality her ability to move through difficulty with learned ease, sweeping pain away like dust under a dark stairwell or maybe it was because of the social stigma surrounding miscarriages, which compels women to mourn in silence.

In the weeks that followed, as my husband and I navigated the path of letting go, I experienced such dense pain marked by a mix of sadness, rage, and complete dejection, which, at its lowest point, called for a completely different texture of strength: a softness that required me to fully acknowledge pains powerful embrace. I had to learn to recognize and reject anger as my mask, as even the slightest things got me into a fit of violent wrath, trusting that, with time, all would be well, and that it was okay not to feel like my usual self in control, unflinching.

In control was how I had seen my mother approach even the most challenging situations. It was one of her greatest teachings. Now I was searching for the right fit for my skin.

I wondered about my mothers pain that which she carried and that which she buried. The ache of leaving home at such an early age; of living through a devastating civil war, followed by the loss of those she loved the most. This all happened to a girl still in her teenage years. And just when life seemed to offer her a break, a different pain awaited her. By then she had learned to transform her disappointment into unshakable strength, which served her in battle against forces contributing to senseless human suffering across her beloved homeland, Nigeria.

What happens to pain over time when its consigned to silence?

As I wrote my mothers story as if in her own voice, weaving its complex textures into a narrative, I found that her strength was far more apparent than her pain. On the journey of piecing together her truth, I discovered that strength and pain are mirrors of one another, for strength grows to protect from pain, and pain builds strength.

My mothers legendary brand of strength did not allow for her to linger on that which was not as she desired; rather, she fought for that which was within her control. To this, she gave everything, trusting in her own capacity and the guidance that fuelled her fire. In her last public words, she said, A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. Therein was her truth: the belief and trust that she mattered, that we all matter, and that our actions have the potential to reverberate through time and space. As she saw it, it was in the best interest of our shared destinies to act in selfless dedication to truth and to one another.