This One’s for the Girls Who’ve Had Enough (Of Everything)
Dearest Gentle Reader,
It has been 29 days since our last tête-à-tête, and I have missed you deeply. I could have written you sooner, but you see, I spent the last month invoking my period like a farmer praying for rain when she didn’t show up over a week past schedule. I usually dread being on my period because it means bracing for impact from the infamous electromagnetic shocks my rectal area is still not used to, but this time last month, I was begging for it to arrive.
You’re probably wondering how I ended up here. Well, truth be told, I threw caution to the wind, and… it may or may not have been during ovulation. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? The good news is that I’m in the clear and have fully recovered from being sucker-punched from the inside. Anyway, tell me about your month (insert smiley face).
Is it just me, or has the air felt different these days? I don’t know if it’s because a full tank of fuel now costs more than minimum wage or the constant whining about multiple Mother’s Day celebrations, but I do know that it’s exhausting. So is hearing “it’s not that deep” when speaking passionately about women’s healthcare.
Let’s catch up on all that and more in the sections we’ve put together just for you, starting with Women’s Health, What Women Wish, and my personal fave, Feminist Exposé.
What Women Wish
April was Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and as always, it’s a time to push for the cultural shift we need in order to better address consent and boundaries. Since the #MeToo movement, we’ve made strides in understanding that consent isn’t just a checkbox, it’s the baseline. Still, there are some behaviors that should never even come close to that line, like catcalling. It’s the unwanted and unnecessary evil in far too many women’s lives.
If wishes were currency, and every time a woman was catcalled she received a dollar, female entrepreneurs would be swimming in funding. That’s how pervasive it is. But here’s the thing, this isn’t about having thick skin or a compliment gone wrong. It’s about the right to exist in public spaces without being objectified or harassed. The right to walk, work, or simply be, without a chorus of unwanted commentary trailing behind.
It’s sad and exhausting that our comfort is often treated as secondary to someone else’s audacity to impose. So, let’s keep calling it out, whether individually or collectively, because together we act, and united, we change.
Women’s Health
On a different note, or perhaps a related one, let’s talk about health. Not just the “eat clean, meditate, stay hydrated” kind, but the kind of care that acknowledges the specific struggles of being a woman. Naga Munchetty’s book, It’s Probably Nothing: Critical Conversations on the Women’s Health Crisis (and How to Thrive Despite It), hits the nail on the head. I highly recommend it.
It’s a bold reminder that women’s healthcare is in crisis, and being sidelined or gaslit when we raise concerns is dangerous. It challenges the “suck it up” culture that expects women to endure pain like it’s our natural function. I remember speaking to a doctor once about my irregular periods (which come twice every month) and you wouldn’t believe he told me that once I start giving birth, I won’t feel as much pain. As in, I should give birth in this economy just so I can stop feeling pain???
Munchetty’s message is clear: your symptoms are not “just hormones,” your pain isn’t imaginary, and your health is not a secondary priority. She emphasizes the importance of speaking up, demanding better, and taking charge of our health narratives.
We can’t stress this enough, women deserve respect: in our bodies, in our healthcare, and in our everyday spaces. The world is better when we’re not just heard, but truly listened to.
Buchi Emecheta: A Feminist Force in African Literature
Buchi Emecheta wrote like a woman who had been told to keep quiet for too long. Her pen was her protest, quiet but unwavering, tender but unafraid. In a literary tradition dominated by male voices, Emecheta dared to centre African women not as supporting characters or suffering saints but as complex individuals living at the intersection of patriarchy, poverty, migration, and motherhood. Her feminism was not just theoretical; it was lived, it was fierce, and it was deeply Nigerian.
Born in Lagos in 1944, Emecheta was married off at 16, moved to London shortly after, and by 22, found herself a single mother of five, abandoned by a husband who burnt her first manuscript. From the ashes of that moment rose a defiant writer. Her novels — Second-Class Citizen, The Joys of Motherhood, The Bride Price, The Slave Girl — shattered romanticised ideas about motherhood, tradition, and marriage. In Second-Class Citizen, her semi-autobiographical protagonist Adah Obi struggles to find dignity in a world that devalues her as a Black woman, a mother, and an immigrant. In The Joys of Motherhood, she questions the cultural myth that a woman’s worth lies in how much she can endure.
Emecheta famously said, "I work toward the liberation of women, but I’m not a feminist. I’m an African woman." Yet her work remains one of the most feminist bodies of literature to come out of postcolonial Africa. She understood that the Western feminist lens didn’t always fit African women’s realities and that African patriarchy often masked itself as culture or religion. So she built her own language of resistance: one that challenged bride price, questioned polygamy, and exposed the violence hidden in obedience.
Her women were not flawless heroines. They were overworked mothers, abused wives, hungry students, and young girls trapped by tradition. They wanted more: education, agency, softness, and self-worth, and Emecheta gave them permission to want it. She peeled back the layers of “African womanhood” and asked difficult questions: What does it cost to be a “good woman”? Who decides what a woman should endure? Why must joy always come after pain?
In a time when feminism is increasingly global and intersectional, Emecheta’s legacy feels more urgent than ever. She was doing the work long before there were hashtags or theory courses. Her words still crack open conversations about the roles African women are expected to play and what it takes to step off the stage entirely.
Today, her name may not trend on Twitter, but her impact is everywhere: in the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Lola Shoneyin, and the many African women who write, speak, and live boldly because she first did.
Buchi Emecheta didn’t just write stories. She wrote a revolution in paperback.
Opportunity Corner
Article Feature of the Month
Each month, we spotlight a powerful story or article that challenges norms and sparks important conversations. Check out this month’s feature below.
The Stories We Must Tell: Reflecting on the IWD 2025 GBV Walk by Wisdom Olobayo
As part of Her Story’s commitment to changing prejudiced social perspectives and violent infringements involving women through social dialogue, we hit the streets on the 8th of March, 2025 on a campaign against Gender-Based Violence (GBV), enlightening the public on the ills of physical and verbal abuse, economic abuse, discriminatory inheritance rights, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), child marriage, and all other forms of violence under the umbrella of GBV. Read more.
Thank you for rocking with us.
Thank you for speaking up.
Thank you for caring.
Whether you're reading, walking, mentoring, ranting or applying to work with us, you’re part of Her Story too.
Till next time!
Written by TamaraTari Alakiri and Praise Vandeh. Edited by Oreoluwa Ojo
