Woman from Sierra Leone unlocks childhood memories when she thought her mother a liar

Mom and Me in n our home on JImma Road in Old Airport in Addis Ababa, 1998.

When my mother told me I had a talent, I didn't believe her. I started writing poetry at the age of 11. My mother took it as a sign that I was going to be a writer, I thought she was a liar.

She would let me sit with her Secretary Saba in her office on Jimma Road in Addis Ababa, and dictate my handwritten poems.

Then Saba would print them.

When I turned 13, I left Ethiopia (not knowing I would never return while my mother was still a diplomat there) for the US.

And what did my mother do? She framed ALL my poems. I never got to see them, but every time I met someone who had been to her home in Addis, they would tell me they saw my poems. I would shrug with embarrassment.

Each time she visited Maryland, where I was sent to live with my father (to get the American education my mother herself had received), she would leave with the awards I got for making my school's honor roll.

These plaques I learned went up next to my poems on my mom's wall of fame. Knowing the poems were on her wall for all to see and that she would from time to time email them to friends to boast. Imagine?

I never believed I was any good. I never thought I had talent.

Mother also told me I was creative. I didn't believe her when she said that either. I used to look at my friend who, in my eyes, was creative, and I knew she was, and I wasn't.

When I was 15, my mom came to visit us in our cramped two-bedroom apartment in Adelphi. She told me I could be a model. I didn't believe her (what a stretch!). Eventually, I started to think that my mother was an unserious lying woman who had no eye or understanding of the world because if she did, she wouldn't wish talents on me that I didn't have.

My mother has always believed I was magic in ways I could never see, not until now.

Everything my mother ever told me I could be I have done. Every talent she ever said I possessed, I have manifested and demonstrated time without number.

I had forgotten about the poems I wrote as a child. This week, I thought of them in deep meditation of becoming a woman who now wishes she could spend the rest of her life writing children's books.

My best friend is in town, and she shared a cab with my mom. In the cab, she said they talked about me and all the ways I continue to manifest. I play with an idea, and the next time it's a tangible thing they can touch and feel.

My mother saw me when I couldn't see myself. She took my whims seriously. And even when I didn't believe her, she believed in me.

The only regret I have right now is that I didn't embrace my writing gift sooner to have taken creative writing classes in college and developed my talent even further.

I am a writer, a very talented writer, and I know it is so because na so me mama say.

Listen to the people who love you when they tell you, and you are made of magic. They know you; they see you.

Nasratha Bakie's daughter, who got her start writing poems in Ethiopia, is now a children's book author in Ghana. Tell the world! My first children's book Adama Loves Akara, is available on Amazon and here if you're in Sierra Leone.

Thank you mama!