One of the proudest moments of my life was buying my first flat just before my 25th birthday. My dad helped me load my stuff into his car and we set off on our hour or so drive from my mother’s house in north London to my new home in the north-west.
“You know, you’ve done well. You did a good course” he began.
I turned to him in shock as he listed off my achievements since graduating as a Speech and Language Therapist- a “good job,” “promotion” and now “[buying] a house”- while some of his friend’s children continued to struggle for various reasons.
Now when I say I was shocked, I mean I was shocked. My dad had been completely against me studying speech and language therapy as, in true Nigerian fashion, he had wanted me to be a doctor.
“Thank you!” I finally mustered.
“Yes,” Dad continued. “All you need now is a car and a husband!”
Once again I turned to him in shock.
“A car and a husband?!” I said laughing. “Could I kill two birds with one stone and marry a guy with a car?!”
But the more I reflected on my dad’s words, the less funny they became. They niggled at me for the rest of the car journey and for days even after that.
I was frustrated because I had literally just achieved this house goal; yet I wasn’t even getting a chance to savour it properly before I was being pushed to achieve something else. I was also frustrated because I could feel myself being pushed towards something that I didn’t see as my next natural step.
Up till then, I had always towed the line that my parents set out for me. Medicine or not, the fact remains that I went to university and graduated. Everything that followed, that my dad had praised me for in the car, was also a part of the masterplan. This was the first time that I felt a deviation between my parent’s wishes and my own. This was the first time that I questioned their expectations of me and simultaneously felt the weight of potentially disappointing them, and robbing them of their dreams.
What made my resistance even more confusing is that I knew that my parents, and those of the same mindset, wanted the best for me. Marriage and motherhood are not bad things in and of themselves. It’s quite natural to want them for your child. Also, from what I was taught and could see from those around me, it was something that I was supposed to want too. Yet, as I’ve already stated, I didn’t.
Looking back, I see that this was a trauma response to seeing most of my female role models sell themselves short or stay in abusive situations due to factors such as tradition, control and low self-worth. Yet rejecting those societal norms helped me to realise that my measure of success is the freedom to live life on my terms.
In interviewing other black women about their measures of success, for my most recent Black Ballad article, it was interesting to see how these themes were echoed many times over. It’s also very interesting that, as I reflect on my journey from that part of my life up till now, I see how important having measures of success is, not just in life, but also for PR.
