Wuraola Abulatan

Self-Love is Being your True Self.

My journey has been shaped by equal parts conviction, stubbornness, and hope. Professionally, I’ve spent more than a decade working in communications and marketing across different industries. Personally, much of my life has been about questioning the things I was told to accept, especially as a woman growing up in Nigeria. Every stage of my journey has been a balance between building a career and trying, in my own way, to leave the world a little better than I found it.

there are many childhood experiences that have formed who i am but i would say the ones that cemented my stance to be a feminist and activist for gender equality is witnessing and experiencing the normalisation of violence and subjugation of women and girls. I never accepted it and always knew there was more to a woman being alive as a human being beyond what society had said they should be right from girlhood. Some of that stemmed from my father (bless his soul) who instilled in me the need to do good and believed that our lives should matter beyond ourselves.

When I was young, my brother and I caught a chameleon and sold it to a herbalist for 40 naira (full story here: https://medium.com/@Goldenwura/a-chameleon-the-herbalist-and-disappearing-notes-194c796a4381). The money disappeared; literally vanished from our pockets. We never knew if it was the herbalist’s magic or our own carelessness. Looking back, that experience gave me curiosity. I grew up asking questions, chasing stories, climbing trees I probably shouldn’t have climbed, and looking at things twice. That curiosity has stayed with me throughout my life. It is the reason I love learning languages, question social norms, why I chose communications as a career and care deeply about understanding people and the world around me. The chameleon may have disappeared into a herbalist’s pot, and the money may or may not have disappeared into thin air, but the habit of wondering never left me.

I feel most alive when I am listening to music and singing out loud. Some people find it funny that I am a BTS army at my age (whatever that means) but stanning them and enjoying their music has made me a much happier woman. Their message of self-love and social consciousness aligns with my values. I feel alive when I am fighting gender injustice, having conversations, shouting at a protest, bringing together people to stand for something bigger than us all. 

What’s invisible but essential to me is to live my life authentically and freely. This is my most radical act of self-love and feminism, especially coming from a society where women are expected to conform to be chosen by a man or to be acceptable. Living this way doesn’t mean I have to be a totally different person from everyone else. It means doing everything I genuinely want to do without being tied down by how I want to be seen by people or society and not hurting anyone in the process. Fully enjoying what i love without holding back, being myself all the time and being a kind person who tries to make the world a better place in her own little way, invisible or not, these are essential to me.