Still Here, Still Becoming…
In a few minutes, I turn thirty-two. A graceful 32…In the quiet moments before the sun rises on this new chapter, I find myself looking back at the map of my life. It’s a map marked by the jagged peaks of the Akuapem mountains, the dusty corners of classrooms and school campuses, the busy streets of Kumasi…and now the bustling, grey streets of London and the constant response of exhaustion. It is a map defined not just by where I have been, but by the miraculous fact that I am still here and still standing. To look at my life is to see a radical testament to the grace of God and His mercies, which have been new each and every single morning, even the mornings when I didn’t want to wake up.
I am, at my core, a Guan girl. I carry the humility of my upbringing like a badge of honor. I was born into a home where resources were thin but expectations were high. We had our needs and my parents did their very best for us when it came to our education. My father, a teacher, steady and principled, instilled in me the value of the mind. My mother, a woman of many trades, hairdresser at one point, trader at another, taught me the necessity of the hustle. I am the fourth of five children: two older sisters, an older brother, and a younger brother. From the outside, it looked like a full house. On the inside, I was often lonely especially when my older siblings left our home and ended up in various places due to lots of factors….
The cordial mother-daughter relationship that many take for granted was a foreign concept to me. My childhood was shadowed by physical abuse that left scars far deeper than the skin. Her hand was heavy and her words were heavier…still are. There were days I was punished so severely that I lay awake wondering if she was truly my mother. I prayed a dangerous prayer as a child: God, do not let me be bitter towards her because I was so afraid of her that my fear started to turn to hate. I didn’t know then that bitterness is often the armor we wear when love has been withheld.
When my parents divorced when I was about twelve, the world as I knew it fractured. They had no idea the amount of harm they did me taking me to their settlement meetings and fighting in my presence…i stayed broken for so long and it’s been a constant battle to heal.
I stayed with my father, but the void left by a mother’s love became a physical ache, a hunger that would define much of my trajectory.
My father did his best to raise me by himself. And oh he was great at it…those were my best years…the 2 of us having each other’s backs. I’d cook if I got home earlier. He would,big he got home earlier. He taught me how to cook, clean, wash, everything that had the surname of « chores », I learnt from my dad.
Then he remarried. Unfortunately for me, my stepmother was not so pleased with my presence in my own father’s house and was very vocal about her stance . Gradually, my father started to find reasons to send me elsewhere. Even when I was in secondary school and I had to go home on holidays, suddenly, home was no longer a place but a question.
Secondary school holidays became my biggest dread. Where would I live? My stepmother’s hostility made my father’s house unbearable. My mother did not want me with her either. So I became a “holiday nomad,” a teenage girl carrying her life in a bag, moving between my grandmother’s house, whose age, warmth and silence held me, and the homes of relatives, always wondering: Who wants me? Where do I belong?
It was during this wilderness that God sent an angel in the form of my father’s cousin, my auntie who has always loved me and doted on me since I was a baby till she left to go and seek greener pastures in Accra. She was the first person to offer me a love that didn’t feel like a transaction. She loved me as her own. She saw me. She chose me. For the first time, I understood that love could be a decision, not just a bloodline.
But the ache of being unwanted does not leave quietly. I craved parental love and affection. I craved someone to look at me and say, You are worth loving. You are worth keeping. When a child does not get that at home, she will look for it in the world. I looked for it in men. I believed words that were not true because they sounded like the acceptance I had been denied.
In my teenage years, I was wounded in ways I do not speak of directly. Trust was broken by someone who should have protected me. The consequences of that season were heavy. I was withdrawn from school about 7 months before my final exams. My dream of reading law, of standing in courtrooms and speaking for the voiceless, felt like it was being taken from me. But this is where God’s mercy took the pen. Despite the shame, the heartbreak, and the circumstances no child should endure, I maneuvered. I found ways to study. I sat those exams. I didn’t get the “lawyer” grades I dreamed of, but I survived. I passed. I proved that the girl from the mountains could not be easily broken.
But I still lived life craving for what had been missing in my life – love, acceptance, belongingness. For a long time, my survival strategy was compliance. If I couldn’t be loved for who I was, I would be loved for what I could do for others. I became a professional people-pleaser even without realizing it.
I studied the courses my father and everyone else chose for me. I shaped myself into what a partner needed, what the church expected, what pastors affirmed. I became the “reliable” friend who always answered the call. I became the wife who poured into a vessel that often felt empty in return. If someone cared for me even a little, I gave them everything and this was done with a genuine smile that came from within…because I just loved people and genuinely cared about other people and guessed they would do same…for me.
In the process of becoming everything to everyone, I forgot to be something to myself. I forgot to live for myself. I forgot that I was also someone worth pleasing. I lived for the approval of a mother who still antagonizes me till date and a world that seems to take my kindness for granted many a time.
And yet, here I am. A little Guan girl from the Akuapem mountains, now a teacher of French to students who roll their r’s and complain about irregular verbs, and I think: How did I get here? The answer is grace. Unmerited, unending grace.
But I would be lying if I said that turning 32 feels like a victory parade. Most days, I still don’t feel loved. Not by the partner who should by virtue of who he is and whose distance sometimes feels like another empty room in a house I keep cleaning. Not by my mother, who still antagonizes me with words that reopen old wounds every day she has the chance to speak to me. I am there for my friends, for everyone and will always be to the best of my ability by the grace of God.. I show up. I give. I pray. But I sometimes think I cannot boast of people who would rise to my beck and call if I called, even if my life was on the line at midnight and I needed rescuing just to get me to the hospital.
Maybe I am just not worth anyone’s attention, their sacrifice, their time, no matter the cost… but that’s absolutely fine because I’ve decided this year to live for myself and myself only. I have accepted maybe I’m simply created to be the giver and to stop expecting anything in return.
Being married for nine years has also not been easy….especially with the fact that I am still waiting on God to help me become a mom… That has its own quiet grief. The kind that shows up in the silence of a nursery that does not exist.
Nearly six weeks ago, the woman who has been my North Star, my auntie, passed away. Her death felt like the final thread of unconditional love being snipped from my life. I feel like I’ve being orphaned.
So why am I writing this on the eve of 32? Not to perform pain. Nor to ask for pity. Far from it.
It is to simply reflect and to say: I am still here. Through it all.
Being here is not small. To be here after physical abuse, after rejection, after divorce, after cruelty, after teenage trauma, after derailed dreams, after nine years of marriage without a child, after losing the one woman who mothered me like no one else did, to be here is its own miracle.
God’s grace has not been abstract for me. It has been the hand that pulled me out of bed when I wanted to stay under the covers. It has been the money that showed up in my father’s hands whenever school fees were due. It has been the strength to teach a French class when my heart was breaking. His mercies have been new every morning, even on the mornings I did not want them to be.
My life is a story of how God takes broken pieces and makes a mosaic. It isn’t perfect, but it is art.
So as I enter my thirty-second year, I am making a few promises to myself and to the God who saved me:
To Reclaim My Voice: I will no longer live as a shadow of other people’s expectations. I will be the teacher, the linguist, and the woman I want to be. I spent so many years pleasing everyone that I forgot to ask what pleases me. At 32, I want to start answering those questions. I started when I was 30 and started going on solo trips to see other places because this girl loves to travel and see places even if its just a walk through a beach town of Nerja or a solo Christmas dinner on Christmas Day in a restaurant in Brussels or a solo trip to Berat to see old Greek and ottoman historical sites…or a walk through the red light district of Amsterdam with my friend and her boo or a walk along the Seine river on New Year’s Eve and wishing herself a happy new year standing next to the Eiffel Tower…or walking through the peaceful streets of Luxembourg city…
To Redefine Love: I am learning, slowly, that my worth is not measured by who wants me. My mother’s inability to love me well was not a verdict on my value. My stepmother’s rejection was not a reflection of my place in this world. No one has the final word on deciding whether I am lovable or not. Babies even don’t determine my worth or otherwise. My worth was settled on the Cross. I am worth the time, worth the effort, because I am a daughter of the King.
To Choose Joy: waiting for a child and deep grief are heavy burdens, but they do not have the final say. This year, I want to laugh loudly without apologizing. I want to travel to places that are not attached to anyone else’s dream. I want to wear the dress because I like it, not because it makes me acceptable. I want to be a teacher who is whole, not just a teacher who is useful. I choose to find beauty in the French verbs I teach and the friendships I nurture, even if I am the one doing most of the nurturing for now.
Thirty-two is not just an age; it is a milestone of resilience. I may not have the law degree, and I may not have finished the French masters I started 9 years ago, and I may still be waiting for the cry of a child in my home, but I have something many never find: a soul that refuses to be bitter.
I do not know what 32 will hold. Maybe there will be more grief. Maybe there will be joy I cannot yet imagine. Maybe the child I have prayed for will come, or maybe I will learn to mother in other ways, through my students, through my friends, through the stories I tell. Maybe my mother and I will find peace, or maybe I will learn to grieve the mother I never had while still honoring the woman she is.
But I do know this: I am not done. The girl from the Akuapem mountains who taught herself to conjugate être while her world was falling apart is still in me. The teenager who studied for finals with a broken heart is still in me. The woman who stood in front of a classroom in London and taught students who were preparing for their final exams when her favourite human being had just been declared dead is still in me.
In a few minutes, I turn 32. I will light a candle. I will thank God for His grace that carried me when I had no strength. I will remember my auntie and smile through the ache. I will look in the mirror and tell that little Guan girl: You made it. You are not what happened to you. You are what you chose to do after. And you are still becoming.
So here’s to 32. To grief and to grace. To absence and to presence. To the God who has kept me. To the woman I am, and to the woman I am learning to be.
I celebrate the fact that I am that Guan girl who conquered her mountains. I celebrate the grace that kept me, the mercy that found me, and the future that, for the first time in a long time, I admit, belongs entirely to me.
I am still here. And that is enough for today.
Happy Birthday to me. The journey has been long, but the view from here is starting to look like hope.
Always with love,
Rosario💜🩷
The Rosario Woman 
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