Ashes

Dear Jessica - Part 7

Dear Jessica,

I know you've always wondered where you'll be when you celebrate your milestone birthday in 2025.

It's nothing like you imagined, not your family or your career, it's flawed but beautiful.

Yunis pulls out all the stops for your birthday photoshoot, and you have your dream glam team and they deliver, @icolsglam_ and @melve_designs.

Your photos are pretty, you share your story on @hergreenroom thanks to the lovely 'Dinma for putting the questions together.

It's a celebration of grace & grit, because you really shouldn't have survived the last 7 years but you did!

Not only that, you're blooming.

In 2025, you transition fully into being a communications and programmes specialist for nonprofits and you learn that doing good has real costs.

It's a learning curve for you being responsible for a team of people.

Ethical storytelling becomes a part of your vocabulary and building programmes from the ground up becomes routine.

It's challenging work but it's impactful, it stretches you but you become.

Children smile at your donations but your heart aches when you get to see the deplorable state of some classrooms.

You land your second media feature, it's divine PR for you, in a year where you sit in rooms you could only imagine. You get to meet your faves from PL to the people behind the amazing stories you love and new friends. You even win an award!

You go on fully funded trips from spending three days in Lagos to five days in Abuja.

2025 is proof that your storytelling is not a hobby, it can be a profitable, so you create #TheCareerCloset teaching others to do the same

It's taken you almost seven years to learn this but you're here now.

But in between telling stories, building programmes, and travelling you'll make a spontaneous decision walking the hospital corridors to start a newsletter on Substack, it will change your life.

#JustJessica will become your catharsis, your readers' emails will make you smile, and bi-weekly letters will be the vulnerability you needed but didn't know how to find.

Life happens in 2025.

I need to hold you for this one Jessica.

On a rainy day in September, you don't just lose your belongings, you lose friendships, and you lose your freedom for the longest minutes of your life.

This moment changes relationships but it also changes you.

This experience is why #BringBackOurChildren is not just another hashtag to you even as you battle with keeping your mental health intact with the draining headlines from the country.

You learn that you are deeply loved as your sister cooks pepper soup for you, your friends from church visit, and you make it home physically unharmed by the mercies of God.

This experience will send you spiralling into a season that mirrors 2022 because grief begins after a burial but this time you don't just bury the dead as you struggle to come to terms with the fact that you're uninvited to birthdays, the shame of realising you were chasing unrequited love and the weight of a Father's love that feels like discipline when you want comfort.

In 2026, you wake up one day and decide to forgive people without waiting for their apology as permission, you learn not to speak ill of those who chose silence when you needed to hear their voice, and you go back to church and sit in your favourite chair because community is God's reminder that He's always here.

I know you worry if you'll ever go out again in a public vehicle, if you'll ever turn on your WhatsApp again or believe in Nigeria again 5 years after #EndSars but you do even if you're sad and angry for a really long time.

You're polishing your PVC currently and encouraging others to vote in 2027 because Nigeria will always be home no matter where you live because your heart is here.

It's challenging most days as you're late to evangelism but you show up.

God restores, maybe not by giving you back what you lost, maybe not better but different because it's hard to compare unique experiences.

You have a new phone now, your new friends visit after church and you finally have someone to discuss your writing with.

You dream new dreams in 2025.

You join a screenwriting class, I know, how did we get here?

You also get into film school on a full ride (God did!) and you learn that making a film is more than the director shouting "cut".

You hope to tell your stories on screen but you're exploring other mediums like writing your first fiction story.

In 2026, it's become an entire series you're nervous to share with the world, you've fallen in love with your characters and protect them fiercely!

Here's a sneak peek of your forthcoming fiction story.

As I write this, it's a couple of hours from your birthday in 2026.

This year we didn't make grand plans, no photoshoots or special requests but you've felt God in the details from the most thoughtful gifts, to worship meetings, and random check-ins, your love tank is full before the day arrives.

I don't know what's next Jessica, but always remember to tell your stories, in your own way with authenticity and audacity!

I love you always,

Jessica

P.S. I'll write back again in seven years, let's see where the journey takes me and if we still have a home on Substack.

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Please like this newsletter, leave a comment and share with someone. Don’t forget to subscribe here.

My birthday is on Monday.

If you’d like to gift me something, please say a prayer for those abducted in Nigeria to be free and also for me that I’ll continually live a life of purpose until my time on Earth is over.

Today’s worship song is Gratitude by Brandon Lake. You can listen to it on HER Green Room Worship Playlist on Spotify. See you tomorrow.

This is the last in the #DearJessica series, thank you so much for reading and rocking out this series with me. Till we meet again on pages or screen I hope this series reminds you to live on purpose in every season of your life. Live, love, and laugh!

Ps I might have a surprise or two coming for you, keep an eye on your inbox!