Hello, This Is Me (Again)

Hello, This Is Me (Again)

Something is different about me.

I started feeling it when I turned 30. At first I couldn’t name it. It felt like a quiet shift happening somewhere deep inside me. Looking back now, I think I’ve spent the last year moving through the stages of grief. Grieving versions of myself, expectations I had about life, and stories I once believed about how things were supposed to unfold.

I think I have finally arrived at acceptance.

When I look back at the past year, it doesn’t look dramatic from the outside. I’ve mostly been writing down my vision, resting, and intentionally building relationships that feel aligned with who I am becoming. It has been quieter work than I imagined growth would look like. But also building a meaningful life workwise in an economy like Uganda ‘’colleagues” That's a topic for another day.

But quiet work can be sacred work.

There was a moment where I came dangerously close to compromising my relationship with God. Close enough that it shook me. But I am grateful that didn’t happen. If anything, the experience reminded me how dependent I truly am on the Holy Spirit. Not as a concept, but as a daily guide.

So what exactly has changed?

I have accepted that, for this season of my life, I am a career single mum. Three concepts “career, single mum, mum” that struggle to co-exist. 

I have also accepted something that feels both obvious and heavy: no one is coming to save me. 

I don’t mean that in a cynical way. I have always known this intellectually. But knowing something and accepting it are two very different things. Acceptance has weight. It changes how you move through life.

When I say “no one is coming to save me,” I don’t mean that I am alone in the world or that people don’t care about me. What I mean is that I cannot expect life to move forward for me if I am unwilling to take responsibility for my own growth.

It means recognizing the ways I might hold myself back.

If I refuse to ask for help because pride gets in the way, then I cannot blame the world for feeling unsupported. If I don’t invest in relationships, nurturing friendships, building community, and showing up for others I cannot expect deep connections to magically appear in my life.

If I stay safely inside my comfort zone, avoiding the discomfort that often comes with growth, then the opportunities I hope for may never find me.

The truth is, good things rarely happen by accident. They are often the result of intention, courage, and effort. They require us to show up, to try, to risk, and sometimes even to fail.

For me, the realization that no one is coming to save me is actually empowering. It means that I have agency. It means I have a role to play in creating the life I want.

I have to put in the work.

I have to make myself available to the possibilities around me.

I have to reach out, step forward, and sometimes take the first step before I feel ready.

Because the life I want will not simply arrive at my door.

I have to meet it halfway

 I have to do the work of becoming everything the Lord intends for me to be in this season. Understanding also means accepting that God is no magician.

It also means facing some uncomfortable realities.

For example, I may never be a passenger princess or “just a girl”. I have to buy my own electrical appliances and gadgets. I feel the pain in my liver. 

And it’s not that I don’t believe love, partnership, or support can exist in my life. It’s just that I can no longer use the hope of those things as my primary motivation. Somewhere deep inside, I think I imagined that eventually someone would take care of me.

Realizing that I have to take care of myself? Accepting it.

Hooo.

That part is not easy.

But I’m learning to build habits, one small decision at a time. One disciplined step after another. My biggest struggle right now is financial discipline, and that journey is still very much a work in progress. But at least now I am aware of it, and awareness is a beginning. Financial freedom solves a lot of problems and it can't be ignored. 

In the middle of all this, I’m also working on my second book. And anyone who has ever written anything meaningful knows that writing a book is really writing yourself again and again until the truth becomes clear. The truth is not sweet. 

Another visible change happened recently on 28th Feb 2026 because I wanted to enter March as a new creature.

I cut my hair.

I cut the dreadlocks I had been growing for three years.

Most of the community around me now met me during the season when I had my dreads, so many of them have never known me any other way. But for me, hair has always been deeply symbolic. It marks seasons in my life.

I’ve done the big chop three times.

The first time was when I finished university.
The second time was when I realized I was going to be a mother.
The third time was when I locked my hair to mark the beginning of becoming who I believed I was meant to be.

I often called my dreads my struggle hair.

Not because they were negative, but because they represented a season of deep internal conflict. There was a tension between who I used to be and who I felt called to become.

Before that season, I was very nonchalant. Quiet. Introverted. I didn’t really think about legacy.

Now something has shifted.

I care. Deeply. I always did, but I’m learning to show it more. It’s still uncomfortable sometimes, but it’s growing. I think more about impact now. I think about what I will leave behind, especially for my daughter.

Legacy has become a real question in my life.

I have also come to accept several truths about myself.

I am a first-born daughter.
I am a single mother.
I deeply love brand and marketing communications. I like building other peoples' visions.
And I love to  share my stories first for myself, but also for others, so that someone out there might feel seen, encouraged, or even released from systems and expectations that don’t serve them.

Something else has changed too.

I feel more confident in my craft. As an artist, as a writer, as a creative.

And so I cut my dreads and coloured my hair a ginger brown. 

To everyone who was emotionally attached to the dreads, I want to say sorry. I have seen some of you mourn them a little bit. I appreciate that love more than you know, and I’m grateful that most of you have embraced this new version of me.

But I also understand the grief.

When I finally sat down in the salon chair, everything suddenly felt very real. The moment the scissors touched my hair and made the first cut, my heart sunk. I watched as the first dread fell away, and with it came a wave of emotion I wasn’t fully prepared for.

Those locks had witnessed three years of my becoming.

They held my prayers, my confusion, my growth, my quiet battles between who I used to be and who I believed I was meant to become.

And now they were falling to the floor.

I cried.

Not because the decision was wrong, but because letting go of a version of yourself, even one you’ve outgrown still feels like a loss. Growth often looks like release, but release still carries grief.

How did I come to the decision finally?

Because every major decision in my life has usually started with a conversation. This one did too.

On 25th Feb 2026 I had a conversation with someone influential in my life. It began with the most random topic, the kind of conversation you think will stay light and ordinary.

Until it didn’t.

By the time I was heading home, something inside me had shifted. The fire in me that had slowly been dimming suddenly felt reignited.

It was like someone had reminded me of something I already knew but had not fully accepted:

I am responsible for the change I want to see in my life and I say this a lot.

That truth has been ringing in my head ever since.

No one is coming to rescue me.

And maybe it’s time to stop whining about it.

Maybe it’s time to build.

Maybe it’s time to become the person I already know I can be.

So I stopped thinking about it.

And I cut my hair and the weight of an old season has been lifted. 

So Hello, This Is Me

My name is Tikia with Grace. (still)

I am bolder.

I am fearless.

I am sexy. (very- been feeling this way since the cut)

I am learning discipline. (never ending cycle)

I am building a legacy.

Yours truly,

Tikia with Grace 

Mother

Brand & Marketing Communications Consultant  (linkedin.com/in/tikiaaludriaj)

Baby Feminist