A reflective lifestyle column argues that heartbreak, comparison and lost battles are part of growing up — and that women should not shrink themselves to keep anyone.
A first-person essay published by The Ghana Report sets out what its writer says she has learned about getting through her twenties as a woman — a decade she frames as messy, instructive and ultimately worth embracing.
This is an opinion piece rather than a news report, but the themes it raises — heartbreak, body image, confidence and the pressure to perform for other people — are familiar to many young Ghanaian women, whether they are in Accra, Kumasi or studying and working in cities across the United States.
On heartbreak
The writer's central message on relationships is blunt: if a partner wants to go, let him go. She describes begging a man who no longer loved her to stay as the thing she most regrets, saying it hurt more in the end because she had not recognised her own worth at the time.
She rejects the popular line that all men behave the same way, arguing instead that lowering your expectations is the surest way to settle for less than you want. Genuine love is possible, she writes, and young women should not give up on wanting it.
On comparison
The essay turns next to the habit of measuring yourself against other women — envying someone's hair, eyes, body or lifestyle. The writer's point is that the woman you admire may well be looking back at you with the same envy.
She does not reject grooming or self-improvement outright. Small changes that make you feel good are fine, she says. The line she draws is at the point where you no longer recognise the person in the mirror. Confidence, in her view, is the most attractive thing a person can wear.
On losing
Another section deals with failure. Fight for the things that matter to you, she advises, but accept that some battles will be lost. Those losses, she argues, teach three things: passion for what you believe in, acceptance that you cannot win everything, and the patience to tell the difference between what you can change and what you simply have to live with.
On living
The closing advice is lighter. Travel. See new places. Make friends. Dance in the street and sing loudly. Speak your mind without fear. She also warns against being unkind to others simply because it is fashionable, noting that the way you treat people determines the kind of people you attract.
The writer is careful not to position herself as an authority. She says plainly that she is still learning and has not figured life out. Her final note is a short list of affirmations she offers to the reader as much as to herself: that she is beautiful, strong, independent and better than she thinks — and that the same is true of whoever is reading.
