Author: Koya Nkrumah
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Choosing Myself: Navigating Identity Between Two Worlds.
When I first moved to the UK, every outing felt like a doorway to something new. I said yes to almost every invitation, eager to learn, to belong. So when I got invited to my first party, I pictured a big meal, laughter around a table—the kind of gathering I’d known all my life. The…
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Beyond Dress Sizes: An African Woman’s Journey to Body Freedom.
Coming Home to My Body—how I broke up with diet culture and learned to love my Afrocentric self. I was in college when I overheard two boys talking about me. “She’s alright,” one said, “but she has bad skin.” How rude! I didn’t even have acne in my early teens, but I struggled in my…
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You Are Not Late: Redefining Milestones on My Own Terms
By 28, I was “supposed” to be married with 2.5 children, a family home, a dog, and a fulfilling career. But those were never my dreams. I wasn’t the little girl planning a wedding in her head. My parents and guardians had their blueprint, and they repeated it so often that I stopped myself from…
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Why “I’m Okay” Was the Biggest Lie I Told Myself
I bet you’ve forgotten lockdown by now. For me, it’s a time I’ll never shake off. The first few months were brutal. No office. No routine. No distractions. Just me, my thoughts, and the uncomfortable truth that I couldn’t escape my own company. One afternoon, after a frustrating call with my father, I was ranting…
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From Ranting on Paper to Journaling With Purpose
Do you have a way to process your thoughts and feelings at the end of each day? I do! For years, journaling has been my outlet. My notebooks were full of rants, dreams, raw emotions, and half-finished thoughts. It was cathartic — but it often left me stuck. I could pour everything onto the page,…
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When Doing Everything Right Still Feels Wrong: Learning to Deal with Disappointment
Have you ever done everything “right” — updated your CV, reached out to people, sent countless emails — and still, nothing changed? How did that feel? This week, while scrolling through social media, I came across a video of a young man sharing his frustrations. He had done it all: rewritten his CV, contacted recruiters,…
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Finding Joy in the Middle of the Grind
Why do we act like happiness is something we have to earn? For years, I believed joy was something you celebrated after the work was done. I was wrong. Recently, I was telling a friend about all the things I had planned — the goals, the deadlines, the next big steps. She listened patiently as…
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When the Lens is Cracked, Even the Sun Looks Dangerous!
“When the lens is cracked, even the sun looks dangerous.” I said this to a friend earlier this week after she shared a frustrating experience with someone we both know. On the surface, this person’s reaction to a simple disagreement seemed extreme—but as we peeled back the layers, something became clear. I told my friend,…
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When Perfection Silences You: Choosing Progress Instead.
For too long, I let perfection silence me. Today, I choose progress. I choose to tell the stories that have lived inside me—raw, unfinished, and real. There Are Stories I’ve Never Told Not because I didn’t believe in them, but because I was waiting for them to be perfect. As a child, I was an…
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Coming Home to Yourself
It was a quiet Friday morning. The breeze softly moved the linen-and-cotton blend curtains—cream, taupe, and gold—at my bedroom window. Through the cracks, I watched the sunrise painting the sky in layers of orange and yellow. My Echo Dot played gentle rain sounds beside me as I read a romance novel I’d downloaded during a…
Koya Nkrumah 