Chiamaka: The Woman Who Stopped Folding
There are some women who walk through the world like a breeze, soft and unassuming, always rearranging themselves so others can be comfortable. Chiamaka used to be one of them.
She was the kind of sister who made space before she was asked. The kind who would silence her excitement so someone else's voice could echo louder. The one who would fold her hunger into the smallest corner of her heart just to be seen as "easy to love."
I didn't notice it at first, because she wore her stillness so elegantly. But I remember the day I began to see the sadness behind her quiet.
It was in the kitchen, on a Thursday morning. Rain tapped on the windows like it was trying to remind us of something we'd forgotten. Chiamaka stood at the stove, stirring honey into a pot of tea with fingers that looked tired of being gentle.
"Have you ever wanted someone to love you without asking?" she asked, out of nowhere.
I looked up from my toast. "What do you mean?"
She didn't turn around. "I mean… have you ever wanted someone to choose you on their own? Without you shrinking, or softening, or adjusting the pitch of your laugh to fit into their idea of what a 'wife' should be?"
I swallowed. "Yes."
She finally turned. Her eyes were warm, but weary. "Then let me tell you something I learned the hard way."
She sat beside me, wrapping her fingers around her cup. "There was a man I once loved. His name was Olamide."
The name alone made her eyes glisten, like the taste of something too sweet and too bitter at once.
"I was twenty-three, full of hope and half-dreams. He was older, charming, the kind of man who always knew what to say, but never what to do. I thought love would shape him. That my softness would soften him."
She let out a low laugh, one with more sorrow than humor.
"I became smaller around him without realizing. I stopped wearing red because he said it made me look 'too bold.' I stopped dancing in public because he liked his women 'quiet and respectable.' I even stopped correcting people when they mispronounced my name."
"Why?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Because I wanted to be loved," she whispered. "Because somewhere along the line, I was taught that a woman who bends is easier to keep than one who stands tall."
There was a silence between us. Not awkward, but reverent. As if her truth deserved space.
"And did he love you?" I finally asked.
She looked me dead in the eye. "He loved how easy I was to manage. Not how much I had to offer."
The words slapped the air.
Chiamaka took a sip of her tea, then smiled—not bitterly, not even sadly. Just like someone who had finally stopped carrying something heavy.
"I left the day I realized I hadn't heard myself laugh in months. Real laughter, Haneefa. The belly kind. The kind that reminds you you're still alive."
I rested my head on her shoulder. "You don't seem angry."
"I was," she admitted. "But I'm not anymore. Because I finally understand that love should never ask you to make yourself less."
I looked up at her. "What would you tell a woman like the one you used to be?"
She tilted her head and said:
"Don't let him take your shine just because he can't stand in your light. Don't fold for a love that won't stretch. If you have to dim, shrink, or vanish to be loved… that's not love. That's erasure dressed in attention."
And just like that, I knew Chiamaka was no longer the breeze.
She was the wind.
The kind that doesn't ask permission before it arrives.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I lay in my bed, watching the ceiling like it held a map of womanhood I hadn't learned how to read yet. The words Chiamaka had spoken looped over and over again in my head.
"If you have to dim, shrink, or vanish to be loved… that's not love."
I thought about how many women I'd seen vanish — not physically, but quietly. In slow, aching inches. Women who used to laugh loud and take up space until love, or the illusion of it, made them quieter, smaller, more tolerable. Women like Auntie Fadekemi, whose eyes never smiled anymore. Women like that girl from down the road, the one who used to be a poet before marriage made her voice tremble with permission.
And I realized then that shrinking isn't always obvious. Sometimes it looks like "compromise." Sometimes it hides behind "sacrifice." Sometimes we call it wisdom or patience, but really… it's silence.
Chiamaka didn't stop being soft. She just stopped bleeding for people who didn't bring bandages.
The next morning, I found her in the garden, speaking with Efe — our fifth sister, the calm one with eyes that see too much. Their voices were low, their hands busy repotting aloe vera and basil. I stood at the edge of the walkway, unnoticed for a moment, just listening.
"She still blames herself, you know," Efe was saying, gently shaking soil from her fingers.
"I know," Chiamaka replied. "But we can't keep carrying guilt that was never ours."
"Maami did," Efe added. "Every time a man failed her, she folded herself smaller. Hoping the next one wouldn't need so much fixing."
Chiamaka paused, then whispered, "I wonder what she could've become if someone had told her she didn't need to bleed for love to matter."
Efe looked up. "Maybe that's what we're doing now. Bleeding a little less. So Haneefa won't have to at all."
My breath caught.
They didn't know I was listening, but their words wrapped around my heart like a prayer. I walked away quietly, trying to hold them all inside me.
That afternoon, I sat in the courtyard, notebook open, thoughts tumbling.
Chiamaka joined me without a word. She sat, pulled her scarf tighter around her shoulders, and stared into the distance like she was reading something only she could see.
"Do you still think of him?" I asked.
She didn't flinch. "Sometimes. Not with love, though. With… relief. Relief that I escaped before I disappeared completely."
I nodded. "You ever worry it'll happen again?"
She smiled. "No. Because now I know how I'm supposed to feel in love. Seen. Not edited."
She took my pen, scribbled a sentence in my journal, then passed it back.
I looked down:
"May you never love so blindly that you forget what your eyes were made for."
It hit me so deeply I couldn't speak.
And in that silence, she stood. "Chiamaka means 'God is beautiful,'" she said softly. "It took me too long to remember that I am too."
She walked away after that, her back straight, her steps unhurried. And just before she disappeared into the hallway, she turned and added:
"Next time you feel yourself folding, Haneefa, ask who you're shrinking for—and whether they'd ever grow for you."