About Me — Yemeece

Beauty, Grace, Power, Complexity, Female: Her

I would have loved to begin my story by saying I started writing from my mother’s womb, but that is a lie. I would love to wow you by saying I started writing before the age of 10, but another lie.

Writing found me at the age of 21. At the time, l had just relocated from Nigeria to the United States. Life was unfair and brutal. I needed an escape. The noise in my mind had become unbearable, more like a hundred voices speaking in foreign languages. I needed an out, a balm to soothe my pain.

Sometimes in September 2015, I had just cried my eyes out in the restroom at my first official job, and as I wiped my tears and walked to my desk, I heard a whisper out of nowhere that said

“May you smile when you remember today a few years from now.”

I picked up a post-it-note, wrote the above on it, and attached it to my monitor. This quote that read itself to me like a poem gave me the strength to face my demons daily, and this was my invitation into the halls of writing.

Writing took me on a journey inwards into me. I began to explore the parts of me I never knew existed. I fell in love with reading, and the books I read showed me that whatever I was feeling had been felt before, and that stripped me of my…