They say time heals.

But time didn't heal the silence, nor did it ease the pain that came with it.

My name is Tejire, but most people call me TJ. This is not a story I ever wanted to tell. But sometimes, stories choose you.

I was sixteen, coming back from church, puff-puff in one hand, Bible in the other. I took the shortcut behind our house, a road still under construction. That’s where they cornered me.

Four boys. Familiar faces. One of them used to fetch water from our compound. They laughed, like it was a game. But Emeka wasn’t laughing. He stepped forward, serious, quiet. Did the unspeakable. 

I struggled. The others just stood back. Watched. Did nothing.

It happened fast. My knees scraped the sand. My screams were swallowed in my throat. My childhood, gone, just like that. They left me bleeding in the dirt.

I didn’t tell anyone. I just folded the memory, shoved it deep. Out of sight. But never gone, never out of mind.

I moved on, or pretended to at least. I passed my exams. Got into university. Learned to breathe again.

Then I met Diran.

He was kind, steady. The opposite of everything that had broken me. 

We met in a bookstore in Abuja, reaching for the same memoir. Our fingers brushed. And so, our story began.

He loved me gently. Was patient with my silences, my small jolts at unexpected touches. When I finally told him about Emeka, he didn’t flinch or speak. He just held my hand.

We married two years later.

We wanted children. God, we wanted them.

We tried everything. Prayers, pills, injections. We had a positive test, once, then a chemical pregnancy.

There were a lot of pains. Sharp, constant. A scan revealed it was something called Asherman syndrome. Scarred tissue. Damage from an incomplete abortion. One I didn't even know remained.

I remembered the church elder’s wife, years ago. A quiet visit. No gloves. No anesthetic. Just a warning to never speak of it again.

The doctors said if I didn’t remove my womb, it might rupture. I could die. 

I cried in the car. Diran drove in silence, his hand steady on the wheel. 

I sat with it for days, hoping maybe the doctors were wrong. But they weren’t.

And so, the surgery was fixed for the following Tuesday.

I didn’t tell anyone. Not my friends, not my sisters. Just God. Or I tried to anyway.

I couldn’t pray. I opened my mouth, but nothing came. How do you talk to a God who formed you intricately in your mother’s womb, only to allow yours to be taken from you?

After surgery, I woke up to quiet. Diran sat beside me, reading. His thumb still wrapped around my fingers.

“It’s over, baby,” he said.

He kissed my forehead. “You’re still you. Still mine and I love you.”

I smiled, but I didn’t feel whole.

I stopped attending baby showers. Went off social media, avoided pregnant women like a plague. I grieved for months.

One Sunday, I heard a sermon on the woman with the issue of blood. Twelve years of isolation. She touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, and was healed instantly.

I didn’t cry because I expected healing. I cried because she was never named. Only known by her affliction.

But Jesus called her daughter.

That day, something divine reached me.

I realized I had let my womb define my worth. Let pain measure my womanhood. But womanhood was and should never be in the bleeding or the bearing. I was more than that. I had always been.

Diran and I still have hard days. There are moments when a laugh from a baby makes my throat ache. Times when I catch him staring out the window longer than usual. 

We’ve talked about adoption. Some days I’m ready. Others, I’m not.

But I no longer feel empty. That quiet warning to stay silent haunted me for years. Silence doesn’t heal. Sharing does.

I mother in other ways, my goddaughter, who calls me every night for bedtime stories. The interns I mentor. The lives I pour into.

I am TJ, I am a woman. A mother.

Womb or not, I am enough.