We are all thieves—of joy, of pain, of narratives.
We are all planters too—of memory, of hurt, of fleeting kindnesses that root deep in the hearts of others.
Lately, I’ve begun to recognise a strange familiarity at the back of my tongue whenever I hear someone dismiss another person’s story. It tastes metallic, like lead, sharp and shameful, and comes with the realisation that I, too, have deflated others, sometimes without meaning to. The shame that follows feels physical; it travels from my throat to my chest, then lowers my head of its own accord, when I remember saying things like, “Oh, it’s not that deep,” or “You’re overthinking it,” or “Stop making a mountain out of a molehill.”
We shrink people that way.
We make them doubt their own stories, their lived experiences. We fictionalise their realities simply because they don’t fit the narrow contours of our worldviews. Thus, we drown out their voices and comfort ourselves with the illusion that understanding must come before empathy.
Lola Shoneyin captures this perfectly in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, when Bolanle’s mother dismisses Bolanle’s confession of rape with a violent shake of the head. No child of mine could be raped, she insists.
In her world, rape belongs to other people’s daughters—the way tragedy always happens elsewhere, to someone less careful, less dignified, less like us. Her denial is an act of survival, not just disbelief. But also theft—the theft of her daughter’s truth and the harrowing experience she had kept since her teenage years.
Before I became a woman, before I realised what it meant to be one, I didn’t know sex and gender could conspire to distort one’s sight—to make others blind to what you see clearly.
That evening, the evening I became a woman, began like any other. I had stepped out just before dusk, when the sky still held onto the last of its colour—soft purple, pale blue, kind orange. The sun spilled its light in gold ribbons, coating everything with warmth, so that everything glowed with the godlike radiance of love.
It had become my ritual to walk through the quiet suburbs to the hills, where I could climb the rocks, breathe in the green, and look out at Accra lying still on the horizon.
The slither came suddenly.
Quick, graceful, certain. A small snake, the colour of coffee without cream, gliding past my left foot and into the thicket. I froze, heart hammering. When I finally looked up, a man was standing nearby—a tall figure, broad-shouldered, his face carved in the gentle concern of someone accustomed to having all the answers.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded, though my voice betrayed me. “A snake just slithered past me.”
He chuckled, a short, knowing sound. “A snake? There are no snakes here.”
“But I just saw one,” I said.
He smiled indulgently, as if humouring a child. “There are no snakes in this area. Go home, my lady.”
Something in me bristled.
The easy certainty of the authority in his tone. He repeated his words, softer this time, but with the finality of one who has never had to question his truth. I looked down at the puddle where the snake had vanished, watching my reflection ripple in disbelief.
He noticed the goosebumps on my arms. “Oh,” he said, his smile widening. “I see why you think you saw a snake. You’re a woman!”
Then came his deep, hearty, dismissive laugh. “You saw a lizard, or maybe a frog. You women are always imagining things.”
Just. A. Woman.
The words rolled off his tongue like a verdict.
I thought of that evening again at a youth conference months later: plush hotel, polished accents, the faint clink of coffee cups. A young man asked a panelist—a successful woman entrepreneur—why his similar business wasn’t thriving.
Her sharp response was almost dismissive. “You people just copy anyone. The youth of today are not focused.”
She couldn’t imagine that he might be facing challenges she had never known — cushioned, perhaps, by help he could only dream of. Her worldview simply couldn’t stretch far enough to accommodate his struggle.
She would never imagine herself as the thief who tramples another’s dignity just to protect her own certainty.
But isn’t that what power so often does — mistaking its own comfort for truth?
