Blessing Timidi Digha World Came Crashing Down After Suffering The Loss Of Two Of Her Youngest Children In A Fire

Blessing Timidi Digha identifies as a fearless Feminist. She is Community Based Researcher with over twenty years of experience working on issues concerning African girls and women. She specialises on Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights and the intersections between Culture, Religion and the perpetuation of Gender Based Violence. She has recently started sharing her experience with grief through her platform #DealingWithGrief

TRIGGER WARNING – This episode touches on the issues of suicide, mental health and the loss of young children. There are also some swear language used during our conversation so you may want to put on your headpiece if there are young children about.

Earlier in the year when I first started recording episodes of this podcast, I reached out to a social media friend who is now basically a sister to me and ask her if she would be happy to share the circumstances of a major and incredibly traumatic loss she had suffered a couple years back. I held off on releasing it earlier in the series as I felt that it would be an important issue to discuss as part of mental health awareness week which takes place from 18 – 24 May here in the U.K.

In this episode, Blessing Timidi Digha shares how her lifelong role as an advocate for girls and women started during her childhood and the impact growing up a girl child living in Nigeria led her to becoming the steadfast feminist she now is. She also discuss the highly traumatic experience of losing her two youngest children to a fire whilst on a work trip. Though Blessing did receive immediate support from her community and friends from all over the world, her pain and trauma was further compounded by the nature of living in a highly insensitive culture where people including those she thought were her friends imposed blame of this loss on her. The grief and guilt Blessing continued to feel even after she had left Nigeria led her to becoming suicidal. Since her last attempt back in November 2019, she has continued to receive psychiatric support to help her deal with this trauma and is learning to let go of the guilt.

I am honoured that Blessing was happy to share her story not only as part of her recovery but to help break down the degree of stigma that is attached to mental health, death and suicide. If you are affected by any of the issues discussed in this conversation, you can contact The Samaritans UK on 116 123.

CONNECT WITH BLESSING:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blessingtimidi

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperGirlTimidi