MIND SPACE

In Uganda, over 700,000 young people enter the labor market every year, yet only about 90,000 secure formal employment. That leaves 610,000 people wondering exactly where they fit. I recently met a woman in this exact position. Despite being highly educated, she had been unemployed for sometime. After a long streak of bad luck in the workforce, her desperation was heartbreaking. "I’m ready for any manual task," she told me, "just to have an income." She had moved from building to building with the sole hope of hearing a "yes," but all she ever received was: "We will contact you." It made me reflect: At what cost? I have been that woman. I remember the exhaustion of sending out over 100 CVs, only to be met with rejection. And let’s not even get into the endless, repetitive frustration of drafting cover letters that no one seems to read. Even worse was the sting of being invited for interviews, only to realize the position was already fille...

  My teenage daughter is a talented athlete, yet she recently approached me with a surprising request: she wanted to quit her team. When I asked why, she claimed she needed to focus more on her studies. Knowing her as I do, I decided to look a little deeper. I attend most of her games, and I began to notice a pattern: she takes her losses incredibly hard. She doesn’t just dislike losing; she feels defeated by it. This made me wonder: Do we actually teach our children how to be "good losers"? Our world is so obsessed with winning that we often forget a winner is frequently just a loser who refused to quit. We have stigmatized the word "lose" to the point where our children view failure as a dead end rather than a stepping stone. We see this everywhere. On the news, reporters ask losing political candidates how they feel, as if the loss itself is a source of shame. When national exam results are released, we celebrate the top scorers, but what of the students w...

They say love comes when you least expect it, but in my 30s, I realized the real secret: Love arrives when you finally stop panicking and start being present. It shows up when you start loving yourself and truly knowing your value. Imagine running into the love of your life out of the blue. My husband and I came from opposite sides of the world, but we clicked instantly, like old friends from back in the day, even though we had never met. If I hadn’t been right there, mentally and spiritually "tuned in," I would have missed him completely. As ladies, we often exhaust ourselves trekking to every corner of the earth looking for that God-given partner. We "slay" for every wedding, every office party, and every church service. You’ve seen them, those sisters where you can just tell they are on a mission. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being intentional, as long as you aren’t hunting out of hunger. When you're hungry, you’ll eat anything, even the...

  Recently, I was sitting with my five-year-old daughter, practicing her reading. We opened a new book, and as she hesitated over some of the longer words, I could see the tension building up in her small shoulders. Finally, out of frustration, she looked at me and said, "I can't do it. The words are too hard." In that moment, I didn’t push. I didn’t tell her to "just try harder." Instead, I encouraged her to take her time. I told her she didn’t need to be perfect and that we could go at her own pace. This simple moment was a powerful reminder: parents are a child’s first and most important encouragers. When we support our children in the small things, like sounding out a difficult word, we aren’t just helping them read. We are building a foundation of possibility for the "big things" they will face later in life. Encouragement is so much more than just a pat on the back; it is the heartbeat of a child’s confidence. When we consistently show up w...