How We Wear Ourselves – Final Chapter
Nobody tells you how much you’ll have to wear just to be seen.
Before you even dress, before the shoes or the scarf or the crisp agbada, there are other things you’re already wearing.
Like posture.
Like pride.
Like that smile that says “I’m doing well” even when you’re not.
Like the way your voice deepens slightly in a room full of oyibo colleagues.
Like how you laugh too loud to deflect the question you don’t want to answer.
For many Nigerians at home and in the diaspora we have mastered the art of performance.
And we don’t mean theatre. We mean survival.
When Did You Learn to Wear “Strong”?
You probably don’t remember when it started. Maybe it was when your mum called you “man of the house” at 11.
Maybe it was when you cried in public and someone said, “Stop that, are you not a big girl?”
Maybe it was when the visa officer treated you like a suspect and you still said, “Thank you, sir.”
We learned to wear strength early.
Not just strength the type of strength that doesn’t bend. The type that knows how to “manage.” The type that can carry shame, hunger, ambition, and silence all in one breath.
You go abroad and that strength becomes your uniform. You learn to hide softness in sarcasm, tenderness in competence. You wear packaging like cologne.
You are always… composed.
Always… achieving.
Always… “fine.”
But are you?
Wearing Softness Shouldn’t Feel Like Rebellion
Something shifts as you grow when you’re tired of proving, tired of pretending, tired of twisting yourself into something more “acceptable.”
You begin to ask: What if I showed up as me not the strong, sorted, safe version? Just me?
What if softness isn’t shameful?
What if vulnerability is a type of heritage too?
What if joy isn’t just owambe-fuelled hype but the quiet kind found in resting, in crying freely, in not needing to “package” everything?
For so long, we wore resilience like fashion.
Now, more of us are learning to wear peace.
The Cultural Weight of Looking Composed
In Nigeria, you can’t “fall your hand.” Even grief must be neatly folded.
You hear things like:
“Hold yourself.”
“Don’t let them see you weak.”
“Just smile and move on.”
So you do.
In Canada, in Ajah, in Kentish Town, in Enugu Nigerians show up. Even when tired. Even when broken.
Because somewhere deep inside is that voice saying: “You better not slack. People are watching.”
But sometimes, the most powerful thing you can wear is ease.
Not the forced kind. The true kind.
Ease in being enough. In not explaining. In unlearning shame.
The Soft Things We Carry
We wear memory.
We wear prayer whispered in Yoruba or Hausa or Igbo before the Zoom call starts.
We wear love the kind that’s quiet and ancestral, woven through our mother’s voice notes and the stew we still cook even when we can’t taste home.
We wear friendships that hold us up.
We wear laughter that saves us daily.
We wear healing like a wrapper tied loosely, but always there.
So What’s the Softest Thing You Wear?
Maybe it’s the voice you’re finally using.
Maybe it’s the tears you no longer hide.
Maybe it’s your full laugh. Or your honest no. Or your decision to rest before breaking.
This is the final piece in How We Wear Ourselves, but the story doesn’t end here.
We are still wearing our identity. Not just in gele and agbada, not just in names and hairlines but in how we show up for ourselves.
So share it.
What’s the softest thing you wear these days?
The habit? The truth? The peace?
Post, reflect, and tag us using #HowWeWearOurselves.
Because sometimes, the boldest thing a Nigerian can do is be soft.
And that? That’s heritage too.
