“Our past will always be a part of our present, but our future is unknown.” – Edafe Okporo
Goodbyes usually begin with a long-winded statement and at the end, “I am sorry, but I have to say goodbye.” I was hugging my mum goodbye in Accra. When she said to me, “I love you.” you don’t have to be somebody else to be loved. “Edafe the world will love you for you.”
I held my tears as I watched her walk through the gate to enter her flight to Lagos from Accra international airport. I do not know when next I would see her because it took me seven years to see her.
I realized I have changed myself to survive in America. Six years ago, I arrived in the United States. Since then, I have never stop telling the same stories of me, I have shown you the strong side of me, why I fled and all the trauma I endured to arrive in America, but I failed to let my guard down for all of you to see how fragile I am.
I want the Edafe Okporo, I have been working on privately to be seen by you and the rest of the world. I have avoided writing personal essays since I launched my memoir about my experience as a refugee, and I'm transitioning. This is not a goodbye but a temporary pause on activities that trigger the traumatic experience of fleeing my home to find a new home.
I have grown and I am more than the single-story people have written about me and I hope I can heal from the traumatic industry of telling people my deepest and most painful moments in return for an investment in the services we provide. I’m very proud to have founded Refuge America with the vision of “Strengthening America as a place of welcome for LGBTQ displaced people” and our work will continue with your support.
Updates:
I graduated with a master’s in human resource management from New York University and celebrated my graduation in May of 2022.
My book Asylum, A Memoir, and Manifesto was published by Simon and Schuster in June of 2022. This is the bulk of my activism going forward, I wrote a powerful manifesto that speaks on the issues I care about especially displaced LGBTQ people.
In July of 2022, I got married to my partner Nicholas now husband. It’s a dream come true, I never imagined getting married growing up in Warri Nigeria. The United States laws offered me the opportunity to be legally married to someone of the same sex.
In August 2022, I traveled to see my mother after seven years in Accra, we laughed and cried about good old times and spoke about the future.
What’s next:
Life isn’t about finding yourself; life is about creating yourself
xoxo