MOTHERHOOD: NO MANUAL, NO MERCY.

No soft landings. No step-by-step guides. Just a woman, a child, and years of absence crashing into each other. Motherhood didn’t wait for me to be ready; it threw me into the deep end and watched me sink or swim.

On the first day of 2024, my daughter walked into my house with a single suitcase and duffel bag and the kind of silence that isn't empty, but heavy. It was the silence of history of years that had passed without me, of a bond that should have been second nature but felt foreign.

She was almost twelve. But I had missed all the years that made her.

For most of her life, she lived with my sister. A choice I made because, when I had her, I was barely surviving myself. There was no room for diapers, for lullabies, for tiny hands gripping my fingers in the middle of the night. I convinced myself that the best thing I could do for her was to give her away, to let someone more stable, more ready, be her mother in every way.

I told myself I'd take her back when I was ready. When I had more money. When life stopped feeling like a fight. But the years slipped past, and with each one, the gap between us stretched wider. The longer I waited, the harder it became to claim her as mine. So, I let the lie comfort me - that she was fine, that I was making the responsible choice, that she wasn’t missing me because she didn’t know me to begin with.

But during the last months of 2023, something cracked. Maybe it was the weight of another Christmas spent watching my child not be "home" with me. Maybe it was the realization that readiness was a mirage - that if I kept waiting, I'd wait forever.

So, I took the leap. I called my sister and told her I was bringing my daughter home.

And just like that, on January 1st, I stood in my living room, staring at the twelve-year-old girl I had given life to but had never truly raised. She looked around, hesitant, like a guest. And that crushed me.

It didn’t take long to realize that I had brought home not just a child, but a world already built without me.

She had habits I didn’t understand. A way of arranging her things. A preference for a particular kind of toothpaste. A bedtime routine that had nothing to do with me. I tried making her tea the way I liked it - strong, with lemon, masala and orange slices - but she barely sipped it before pushing it aside. “Mom makes it different,” she said, not unkindly, just stating a fact.

She called my house “this place.” She hesitated before using the word Mom in reference to me. She kept asking if it was okay to have two moms.

Did someone ask about me? I fumbled. Badly. And this is a cute description.

I tried to enforce rules, only to find they clashed with the ones she had followed her entire life. I asked her about her friends, her school, her favorite TV shows, only to receive one-word answers. She was polite but distant, like someone tolerating a stranger. And maybe that’s exactly what I was. A stranger that wasn't to be trusted.

Some nights, after she had gone to bed, I’d sit in the dark and ask myself the questions I was too ashamed to say out loud. Did I make a mistake? Was she better off where she was? Was it too late for us?

The first real fight happened over something stupid - chores, I think. I asked her to do the dishes, and she ignored me, too lost in social media on her phone. I raised my voice. She raised hers back.

And then, the words I had feared, the ones that had lived in my nightmares for years, came flying out of her mouth.

"You’re not acting like my real mom!"

"This is child labor. I will tell Mom about it"

And tell on me she did. Every week she'd be on the phone about my parenting mishaps. 

I don’t remember what I said back. I just remember the way my chest caved in, like something had been ripped out of me. I turned away before she could see the tears threatening to break free.

But later that night, long after the fight had died down, I heard her crying. I stood outside the door, my hand hovering over the handle, debating. Should I go in? Would she even want me to?

In the end, I did. I sat on the edge of the bed, and when she didn’t push me away, I took a risk. I pulled her into my arms.

She stiffened at first, then broke.

And I held her as she sobbed into my shoulder, her small body shaking with all the things she hadn’t been able to say. I don’t know how long we stayed like that. But when she finally pulled away, her voice was barely a whisper.

"I don’t know how to do this."

I swallowed the lump in my throat and told her the truth.

"Neither do I."

I used to work late into the night, partly because I had to, but mostly because I was scared to go home and sit in that thick, unbearable silence. Instead, I’d call her as I drove, stretching our conversations as long as I could, trying to bridge the years with words.

“Did you eat?” I’d ask.

“Yes,” she’d say.

“What did you eat?”

She’d hesitate. “I don’t remember.”

Sometimes, though, we’d slip into real conversation, and for a few fleeting moments, I’d hear her laugh; soft, unguarded. And in those moments, she felt like mine.

But sometimes, she was just too tired to entertain me.

“Mom, I’m sleepy,” she’d mumble through half-closed lips.

“Just a little longer,” I’d beg, desperate for the comfort of her voice.

But exhaustion always won.

“Lock the door,” I’d remind her before she drifted off. “But make sure I can open it from outside.”

“Yes, Mom,” she’d say, and I’d listen to her breathing slow as sleep took her.

It was past midnight when I finally pulled up to the house one night. The streetlights flickered like tired sentries, and the cold Nairobi air bit through my jacket as I stepped out of the car. I reached for the door handle, expecting the quiet relief of home.

It didn’t budge.

I tried again.

Locked.

I exhaled sharply, pressing my forehead against the door. “Jesus.”

I knocked lightly at first. Then harder. Then with both fists.

No answer.

She had locked me out.

Panic clawed at my chest, not because of the inconvenience, but because I knew she was in there, small and sleeping and alone.

I called her phone. No answer.

I knocked again, this time with the desperation of a mother who suddenly realized she wasn’t just locked out of her house - she was locked out of her own child’s world.

Minutes turned into an hour. My hands burned from the cold, my breath came out in shivering bursts, and my thoughts turned bitter.

This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To be a mother? To reclaim something that was never truly yours to begin with?

I banged my fist against the door, the cold night pressing in around me.

I don’t know how long I stood there, pounding, calling her name, my breath fogging up the air in front of me. Ten minutes? Twenty? An hour?

At some point, my calls stopped going through. Her phone had died.

That’s when it hit me - she wasn’t waking up.

I was locked out. And she was locked in.

The air bit at my skin, the wind slicing through my clothes. My fingers were stiff, my feet aching from standing so long. I tried one last desperate shove against the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

There was nowhere to go.

At some point, exhaustion swallowed me whole, and I trudged back to the car. I curled up in the driver's seat, pulled nothing around me. That day, of all of God's days, I had forgotten to carry  my picnic blanket in the car. It typically had residence on the back seat. I tried to will myself to sleep. 

I thought of turning on the engine for warmth, but I didn't want to be a nuisance to the neighbors, what with the fumes, noise, and all. After a while, I let that thought go.

And the July cold swallowed me whole.

I curled into myself, rubbing my arms, tucking my hands under my thighs for warmth. My breath was shallow, my body shivering uncontrollably. Every muscle clenched in protest.

The irony wasn’t lost on me - this was my house, my daughter, my life. And yet, in this moment, I was an outsider. A stranger sleeping in the driveway of the home I was supposed to belong to.

I thought of waking the neighbors, but shame kept me still.

I had fought so hard to bring her home. To finally be her mother.

And yet here I was, outside in the cold, like an imposter.

At some point, exhaustion won. My shivers slowed, my thoughts blurred. A dangerous kind of stillness crept in.

But Nairobi nights don’t forgive.

The cold seeped into my bones, biting and relentless. My toes went numb first. Then my fingers. Then my face. My body trembled violently, but sleep never came; only the cruel realization that this, this bone-deep ache, was exactly what I had signed up for.

Motherhood, it turned out, wasn’t just late-night cuddles and whispered secrets. Sometimes, it was freezing in the dark, locked out and seemingly unwanted, with no one to blame but myself.

I don’t remember drifting off. But I remember waking up.

It was exactly 6:00 AM.

A soft rattling sound broke through the fog of my half-sleep. The car window.

I groggily reached for the control and rolled it down. And there she was, standing in the morning light, her small face twisted in confusion.

Her voice was groggy but firm.

"Where were you yesterday night?"

For a moment, I just stared at her, my mind too slow to register the absurdity of the question.

Then I laughed. A sharp, humorless sound that felt more like a sob.

She didn’t laugh back. She just stared at me, eyes filled with something I couldn’t quite place - worry? Guilt?

I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced out the words.

"You locked me out."

Her face fell. “I - I didn’t mean to.”

I nodded, rubbing warmth back into my frozen fingers. “I know.”

A long pause. Then, in the smallest voice:

"Why didn’t you wake me up?"

I wanted to tell her I had tried. I wanted to tell her about the knocking, the calling, the sheer helplessness of standing outside a house that was supposed to be mine but wasn’t.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I forced a smile, trying to spare her the weight of my loneliness. “Because you were sleeping,” I said simply.

She chewed her lip, her eyes darting between me and the house. Then, without another word, she reached out her small, warm hand and took mine.

And in that tiny, silent gesture, I felt something shift.

She didn’t say she was sorry. She didn’t promise it wouldn’t happen again. But she held my hand, and for the first time, I believed we had a chance.

People think the hardest part of parenting is the big things - the financial strain, the responsibility, the fear of failing.

But the hardest part?

It’s the small, quiet things.

It’s learning how to comfort a child who doesn’t yet trust your arms. It’s figuring out how to discipline without feeling like a stranger scolding someone else’s kid. It’s navigating the guilt, the doubts, the constant gnawing thought that maybe, just maybe, you were too late.

Some nights, I still find myself staring at her, wondering if she’ll ever truly see me as her mother.

But then, there are moments - small, fleeting moments - where I catch glimpses of something softer.

A shared joke. A sigh of relief when I fix something for her. The way she lingers just a second longer when I hug her.

And I know, deep in my bones, that even if I wasn’t there for her first 11 years, I’ll be damned if I miss the rest.

It didn’t get easier overnight. We stumbled. We argued. We had moments of silence so thick I thought we’d never break through it.

But then, the small things started to happen. She asked me to buy her a book she wanted. She let me help her with her homework. One day, unprompted, she made me tea - the way I liked it.

And slowly, painfully, beautifully, we began to stitch together something new.

Motherhood isn’t just birthing a child. It isn’t just providing. It’s showing up - even when it’s late. Even when you’re terrified. Even when you’ve failed before and have no idea how to make up for lost time.

I wasn’t there for her first steps. I wasn’t there for her first words.

But I was there when she took the hardest step of all - walking into my home and trusting that this time, I’d stay.

And I will.