The Joy of Defying Convention and Actually LIVING!

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Saturday mornings usually have a typical routine for me. As mothers, we all have some sort of routine we all fall into over the weekends especially when you are a working mother. Special breakfast for the kids, market runs, cooking for the week, going through homework, the occasional wedding to attend, looking after mai Gida, making the kid’s hair for the week and the list goes on.

 

I found myself slowly slipping away from me and losing myself to the routine of life. Life was slowly becoming a monotony of events and was losing its luster. I had become the conventional woman, the conventional mother, the conventional wife and the conventional dutiful employee.

Do not get me wrong, conventional is good if you are a conventional type of person. However, for those of us who are not conventional, who yearn for the extraordinary, who think outside the box, who cannot for all that is Holy understand what all the lip sinking in Mexican and Indian soap operas are about and who feel trapped in the monotony of conventional living, we seek more out of life.

So back to my Saturdays. I came to realise that I was existing and not living my life. As Nigerian women, we are so bound by duties to our homes, that we loose that adventurous girl we used to be, that bright eyed girl ready to take on the world. So I summoned up the courage and made a giant request from my husband. My request was answered with the typical “I have heard you” from him and that was that.

Fast forward 13 Saturdays.

I woke up to a day filled with routine. Made the special breakfast for the kids (pancakes and sausages), picked up my list of groceries, took a shower, put on my jeans, tee shirts, socks, boots, knee pads, picked up my helmet, gloves and jacket, kissed my kids and headed for the door.

 

As I walk towards my ride, my heart beats loud and fast. I start the ignition and feel the metal underneath my fingers, my heart skips another beat. Then I say  a small prayer as I fully gear up, and mount my 650cc engine. As I head out the gate, I say to myself,

“Keep calm and twist that trottle!”

The next 30 minutes brought with it a renewal to my monotonous week.

Now, why am I saying all this?

I believe that a little lifestyle change can bring about a renewal to our lives. A spark for flames that are dying out. As women, we should not be held back from achieving what we had set out to achieve because we became mothers or wives.

We have been given the gift of being able to multitask and we do it so beautifully yet we get sucked into what I call the negative energy of the African woman, where we are consumed by what others are not doing right, the imperfections in our lives, the tearing down of fellow women who we feel live better lives than we do and the unhealthy un-African values we insist on transferring to our children.

There is so much to achieve and live for out there if we focus on filling our lives with the little things that bring us joy.

 

For me, it’s the laughter of my children, the touch of my husband and the roar of my exhaust. For you, it might be turning that your passion of dressing up your kids into a profitable business or writing into short animated books, all the African folk stories you were told as kids growing up . Whatever it is, it is time to wake up and achieve it. It might seem daunting, but help is just a few emails away.

 

Through my journey of self-discovery and self-actualization, I have come across women doing extraordinary things and carving a niche for themselves and through this, they have found fulfillment in life and reawakened their passion and zest for life. There is something about being an African woman that makes me feel I can achieve more, I strongly believe I am endowed with more capabilities than I show and I am only scratching the surface.

I believe this is true for most of us unconventional women out there. You know who you are. You can all reach me via email through  or leaving your comments at the end of this article.