Empowerment, Identity & 20 Years of the Mosunmola Journey (2005–2025)

In 2005, I started writing because I had nowhere to speak. My voice, even in private, came out as a whisper. What began as scattered diary entries on the margins of school notebooks became something else entirely: a quiet archive of survival. I wasn’t planning a memoir. I was just trying to breathe.

Two decades later, I’m still writing—but the voice is no longer a whisper. It has become a claim, a space, a return.

2005: The First Trace

I was a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl growing up in a small town in Northern Italy. At school, I was silent and watchful. At home, I carried the weight of being the eldest daughter—translator, caretaker, peacekeeper. No one asked how I was feeling. Even if they had, I wouldn’t have known what to say.

My mother worked long shifts. My father worked and ruled with silence and discipline. I learned quickly that being good meant being quiet.

So I started writing.

I didn’t call it writing then. It was more like documenting. Tracing pain I couldn’t name. Keeping records of moments no one else would remember, because they didn’t seem important to anyone else. But they were. They still are.

Short sentences. Sharp images. Half-truths I didn’t yet know how to challenge. Pages that felt like breathing.

2010–2018: Hiding & Translating

I moved cities. I got into two universities. I studied hard. I translated myself constantly. I code-switched without knowing the word for it. I laughed at jokes I didn’t understand, learned how to apologize in three languages, and became an expert at smiling through discomfort.

My notebooks became sharper. I started asking questions about culture, gender, race, faith, and justice. I began to see how my story wasn’t just personal—it was political.

But I still wasn’t sharing it.

2019–2022: Breaking the Silence

In 2019, I attended my first writing workshop. I still remember the fear of reading my words out loud. I was shaking. But something happened when others nodded. When they said, “Me too.”

In 2022, I self-published Arroganza, Identità, Emancipazione, the first public version of my memoir in Italian. I chose the word arroganza because I had spent years wondering if I was being arrogant for telling this story. Because the society I lived in seemed arrogant in its assumptions, silences, and expectations.

It was raw, unedited, and full of urgency. I printed fewer than 100 copies. It wasn’t perfect. But it was mine. It was a rupture—a decision to stop waiting for permission.

2023–2025: Reclaiming & Refining

Since then, I’ve gone deeper. I’ve written essays, hosted conversations, spoken on stages, and started building the bilingual platform that would become this blog. I rewrote the memoir in English, this time with more clarity and with courage.

My book—What I couldn’t Say —is no longer just a collection of trauma. It’s a testimony of survival, language, and the unlearning of silence.

Why I Call It Empowerment

Empowerment, for me, is not about perfection. It’s not about being loud or fearless. It’s about telling the truth even when it shakes your voice. It’s about learning to stay with yourself when others leave. It’s about disappointing people who benefit from your silence—and doing it anyway.

I used to think I needed to become someone else to be worthy of being heard. Now I know I just had to stop hiding.

Where We’re Going

This blog isn’t just a collection of articles. It’s a continuation of the story I started at fourteen. A space to talk about identity, migration, mental health, womanhood, and what it means to grow up being everyone’s keeper but your own.

This platform exists because I’m finally ready to write in public. Because I believe in honest writing, messy truth-telling, and the radical act of showing up as you are. Because there’s power in naming what happened—and power in building community around that naming.

It’s for the eldest daughters. The mixed kids. The cultural translators. The people navigating too many expectations and too little understanding.

You’ll find stories here. Essays. Resources. Reflections. Honest writing.

And maybe, in the echoes of these entries, you’ll hear your own voice coming back to you—a little louder each time.

Sign up for the newsletter to follow the journey, receive new posts, and be part of a growing community reclaiming space—in language, in identity, in life.

Connect with me on Instagram, where I share moments behind the scenes, poetic reflections, and the soft (but strong) truths I often kept to myself.

Welcome to the journey.
Welcome to Mosunmola.