Perhaps a Third Space will save us from Insanity

I would prove it scientifically had I paid a little more attention in my Quantitative Analysis 

class at Kenya School of Professional studies but I was too distracted by the lecturer's

 sweater. Aari na kiburana kiari gicuhu na thutha. na moko mari onamo macuhu, he had this 

knitted sweater, the kind that you know was knitted on a sherahani (cardigan knitting 

machines)

sherahani

He also made me think of this boy in grade school who liked to chew on his cardigan cuffs until they were frayed ta kindu kiri magigi. The lecture's sweater was green and I imagined his mother must have gotten it for him when he was in highschool.

So I failed that module and didn't get my certificate because when I went back to do the test I was accused of vanishing with someone's katululu (Tecno Touch Key Mobile) and I got so pissed I never went back.

 I may not be able to use Math to tell you what I mean to say but since I have the language for it, let's give it a shot.

I decided to go to the gym today and on the way I entered a bookstore, where I discovered that the owner is an actual book lover. I bought Gail Tskiyama's Women of Silk, I have been looking for it but didn't want her to see my excitement in case she hiked the cost. She asked if I was going to the gym or coming from it. We talked about 2026 goals. She took my number and told me she was planning to create a reading space. I told her I would appreciate that very much.

I have been feeling a certain sort of way.

You know when you lack the proper mental stimulation? I asked chat gpt and this what he said.

Intellectual and Creative Undernourishment.

What you’re describing is the kind of environment that can make a thoughtful person start doubting themselves. Not because anything is obviously wrong, but because day after day you’re offered interactions that don’t quite reach the depth your mind expects. After enough of that, you can start adapting downward without noticing — talking less precisely, thinking less expansively, editing out the parts of yourself that won’t land.

For a writer, that’s especially costly.

Writers need contact with difference. Not just busyness — difference. Unexpected angles, contradiction, people who challenge your assumptions, conversations that sharpen thought instead of smoothing it flat.

And that line — “a subtle pressure to shrink complexity because the environment rewards sameness or predictability” — that’s the one I’d pay attention to.

Because if you stay in an environment where your complexity feels inconvenient, one of two things usually happens:

• You become restless, irritable, quietly lonely.
• Or you get very good at becoming smaller there.

The second one is more dangerous because it can feel like “adjustment” when it’s actually self-erasure.

SElf Erasure

That hit hard because, I  have a deja vu of two times when I moved from the village into the city and had to shrink to fit in size, and later on when I moved into a small town where English was not the common lingua franca, I offended quite  a number of people when I was sarcastic or played with some dark humour. I was constantly apologising. 

I am at that point again.

 When I find myself explaining obvious statements. Or when something I say is met with ' as in?' It's so long since I heard that phrase used and it makes me gritt my teeth. 

In high school, 2000 years ago, we used the phrase to rebuff something a person we didn't like said, often intended to be a rude remark, asserting the other person to be spewing nonsense, thus demanding the brush off.

I guess it's a constant occurence when you move from your comfort zone.

Speaking at the Skip the Rope to skip the Rope event. April.2026

So I met this woman and we had a nice chat and I thought, oh, there might be hope for this place.

And she was speaking in english, so we understood one another pretty well.

You know, I once heard Cess Mutungi, when she would present Jazz Tuesday on Capital FM say that if she was to date any guy, guy had to be able to communicate in English. And I was like, oh yeah, I agree. And we chuckled about it with some friends saying 'imagine someone telling you they are in love with you in Kikuyu.' It was funny. But never in my life did I think a time would  come when someone would tell me. ' Natamani kuwa na mahusiano pamoja na wewe.' 

Just shoot me, okay?

So in case I am still around when she opens her proposed library, I hope it becomes a third space for people. women like me who are looking for mental engagement. Perhaps it will become a centre for Book Readings and Open Mic evenings. maybe there will be evening cards, and lectures.

Older Women Don't Owe us Nought

 Older women don't owe us a dime.

I understood this fact this year, at 41. I confess that in the past relied on my older friends, aunts and women acquintances for advice and even comfort.

Sometimes, I just acted mumu and let the older women in the family take care of things. But most of them have passed on and we, their children are now they adults and I don't feel like I can be relied on.

Not that I won't chip in and assist when required, but not in the way I have observed the younger generation desiring to.

Again, I admit that I am guilty of leaning heavily on an older friend in the past, like the time I was renting a room in an older woman's flat. She was 45, I was 22 and without a written code, I somehow expected her to do the cooking, or decide what products we needed for cleaning up. Like she was my mother or something. 

Not that we should lean in heavily on our mothers, no. They need our support, especially when we are young and strong and can earn an income.

 I don't mean just financially, but the expectations that we have.

For example, and  I have experienced this. Maybe you have a party, and you need a big pot to cook your pilau in, and since you are 29 and haven't really stocked your kitchen, you think, ah let me call Cecilia, she will lend me hers. And you do that the next time you need a hammer, or a big white sheet you just call her and she send a rider with the next item that you need.

 Nothing wrong with that at all. Just that in all these instances, Cecilia has never been a guest in your house. You have been to her house several times for parties and tea and just dropping by but she doesn't even know which gate belongs to you.

Aje sasa?

Or people might make big asks of you, and you being the Msamaria mwema you are you do all the heavy lifting, even when it's not expected. But them you discover a pattern. The same people will have their own ' lunches and get togethers' in their homes but never invite you.'  While you thought that providing venue was  the  ' least you could do' to help the young ones enjoy some music and food, you find out that, even without the venue they still got together and you were invited. You only get a call int he evening requesting if  you  could  host one of their guests who came from a different city.

So you learn to mind your own business. If someone wants to meet you suggest a tea house. If someone needs an item you forward them a Jumia Black November sales link and move on with your life.

 My friend told me ' anytime I get the urge to invite people over for coffee or lunch, I head straight to the wine shop and buy myself an expensive wine.' 

When?

Ultimately, that thing we are chasing might not even be real.

It could be just an imagined state that will keep alluding us.

To put a rein on the eternal groping for nothingness, we must clearly define what living a life that is enough for a 63.2 Year life expectancy means.

Life as I see it

One time my cousin was asked to pray and he asked the Lord to please come back when he was in Form Two so he wouldn't have to sit for the KCSE.

He also asked for blessings on Mr Kenyatta and Mr Moi. At which point we all burst out laughing. He must have been in Standard 4 and I was in Standard 6. We had learned in Sunday school that we must pray for kings and rulers, they just didn't specify whether dead or alive.

My other cousin smugly said, " We wanted Jesus to come back so much, but did we realize we would have to die to go to heaven?:"

We started to talk about death. And wondered who among us would die first. My cousin said he hoped his mother would die before him so she wouldn't have to cry about him dying.

Well, she did die, and so did many more people we would have wanted to have around a little much longer.

I may have laughed at the prayer but I honestly  didn't see my life beyond 18 years old. I somehow thought I would combust and pew ewwww. Disappear like a deflating balloon at 18 years old. 

But for the time I was alive, I wanted it to be a happy one.

We had a pictorial New Testament at home and I read it through. Then I started to read the Kikuyu version of it and got stuck at rūnyanjara. I asked cūcū what Jesus meant  by building a house on a rūnyanjara. In the pictorial Bible, It showed a rock but it didn't make sense.

We asked the pastor's wife and she just laughed it off and said 'Gathoni gakoragwo ta gatarī kīongo kīega ( Gathoni is somehow cracked in the head ). She could have just said she also didn't know. She was the same one who called us Defoworshipper when we caught tadpoles from the river, thinking they were fish. We had put them in soda bottles and were feeding them ugali everyday until cūcū said we had to throw them out. They didn't belong in a bottle. So we poured them out in the shamba and hoped they would survive somehow.

I got my answer one day when an aunt from Mūrang'a presented a song in church, she said Jesus was the rūnyanjara, and our faith must be built on him. It made sense. " Aka igūrū rīa mwathani Jesū nīwe rūnyanjara. Your faith should not be in the things of this world."

It was also important for me to believe because she was a beautiful aunt and Mūrang'a sounded like a very exotic place.

It set me free in a way. I had read about storing up treasures in heaven, and I didn't want to store my treasure on earth ( the picture in the picture Bible was quite graphic)

And somehow I started to try to find the meaning of things.

I wanted a life purpose.

If we were only gonna be on earth for a short while, why waste the time on things that don't last? Why sustain conflicts with people, why accumulate things, why try to attain everything.

Then I learned that actually, we had a chance to live again, a better life. An ordered life.

And this promise has kept me going particularly in the last 15 years.

When you are in your twenties, the adults around you seem too detached from your reality, na mtu hatakangi advise.

Then you get to your 30s and it hits you that ohhh boy, I need advice. I need someone to hold my hand. I need a mentor. 

Then you get to late 30s and eventually 40 and realise that they exited your life too soon. 

You would have like to ask them  how did you deal with this life at 40?

But 'wako kwa kaburi wanakulwa na mchwa alafu wakuwe mchanga' the words of a dear girl  called Rose, whose mother died when she was six and she came to give me the news and my heart broke and broke.

Skip the Rope to Skip the Rope Challenge

Every day I meet interesting people. I meet boring people too, a boring person is also important.

I met MD Njiru the artist at a writers workshop and promptly thought his jokes were off-colour, though I had a mouth infection and wasn't feeling funny. But something about his plan to create worldwide awareness on the topic of Suicide quite noteworthy. We exchanged numbers and I had no idea how big the incentive was going to be.

 In the few weeks that followed I was added to a group on WhatsApp that totally blew my mind, seeing the proposed topics, seeing the experts that were listed as speakers, he was onto something.

Among the topics  to tackle are:
1) How to deal with loneliness 
2) How to deal with romantic rejections 
3) How to deal with a cheating  partner and betrayal (we don't  want to hear more acid,and boiling water cases or worse  people  unaliving themselves)
4)Dealing with chronic  pain and terminal illness 
5) Dealing  with unemployment 
6) Dealing  with a toxic work place ( Last year  we saw several medical interns losing their lives)
7) Dealing with life frustrations and disappointments  ( Kuna time tu Mambo huwa haisongi no matter how much you try)
8) A guide on the healing journey for someone who was sexuallly abuser 
A) As a child 
B) As an adult 
To state the obvious, boys are sexually abused....though it's rarely talked about
9)Overcoming body shaming 
10)Healing from childhood and teen bullying 
11)Dealing with Shame, Guilt, and feelings of worthlessness 
12)Dealing with learned hopelessness 
13) Alcohol and substance abuse
14)Managing and learning to live with underlying mental health conditions  like Bipolar, schizophrenia, etc
15) Increased suicidality and LGBTQ link
16) Hopelessness and how to resuscitate hope 
17)Family history  link for people  who have lost sibling(s) or parent(s) and what they can do to reduce the  likelihood of them unaliving themselves 
18)Financial distress 
19) Academic  pressure ( How many university kids shall we lose because of missing marks😭😭🙆🏿‍♂️🙆🏿‍♂️)
20) Also someone to tackle why mental health advocates are  more prone to taking their lives and what should be done to avert that
21)Another  person  to talk to our men and women in uniform

And so I chose number seven. Number seven, because I have lived that life, you know that life when you are pushing in every direction but nothing is happening?

And in fact, that is the main theme in my first book, Going to buy a plot in Maaī Mahiū and other stories is all about. But with a positive outlook towards everything.

I recorded the video, and also read pages from my latest book- Conversations into Adulthood.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXtYZm3DPDH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

 In this book, I have opened up the hard conversations, the tough ones, the ones that break us up inside. By having the courage to talk about them, we begin to heal.

https://nuriakenya.com/product/conversations-into-adulthood-by-cecilia-gathoni/

I am looking forward to this event. Md- Moshua is a crazy man. He hopes to make a 24 hour rope skipping record and get into the Guinness Book. I wish him all the best. 

It's better to be crazy than boring.

 The challenge is not easy, but all in all, I think it will accomplish more than he even intended. Imagine 24 hours of free counselling, free therapy. These videos will be available on YouTube even after the event so he has unknowingly created a huge resource that can be used for research, training, education, and as a comfort for anyone that ever felt like giving up.

The event will be live on these channels: copy and paste to  your browser

YouTube

Skip the rope - YouTube https://m.youtube.com/@Skiptherope100 

Joshua Resource Center - YouTube https://m.youtube.com/@JoshuaResourceCenter-o6d

TikTok

https://www.tiktok.com/@skip.the.rope?_r=1&_t=ZS-95oJHh0vTOh

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/skiptherope100?igsh=OHAwMmxvbjAzdnJv

https://www.instagram.com/joshua_resource?igsh=MXI5OXlkZnF5aTdzbw==

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570763973971&mibextid=ZbWKwL

Twitter

https://twitter.com/Josh_ResourceKE?s=09

SKIP THE ROPE- It takes courage to live.

My small town experience

 The thing about here, is that most people are just starting to explore life. So, to a person like me who has lived and experienced and decided on a certain path, it's difficult for them to grasp that someone can live like I do. they question, they suspect, they judge and then they disapprove.

And to me, I don't just get it, why are they thinking like this, why are they slow, why all the groupthink, the comparisons.

Then there is the elite part who have managed to  maintain their positions and do not like anyone who does not curtsy and bow in their presence. 

And everyone else has accepted their place at the feet of the table. Like little elves, they shuttle every eager to please.

 Woe to you if you if you cannot tow in line.

3 Lessons in Three Months

 

I wasn't looking for lessons, but the past three months taught me skills I didn't have before.

Here are three after three.

January: Postpone the Problems

In the classic Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara in one of the chapters says :

 

There were times I would sleep at 2.00 a.m trying to solve a problem, but it never worked because I would be too tired the next morning, and my problem would still be quite active. 

Now, I set aside time to think about a problem and the solution. When I have done everything in my power to solve it, I set it aside and use my energy for other things.

Feb is for Fewer words 

I am not the guest of Honour.

As such, I am not required to say something. Whether it's an opinion, a suggestion or an idea, I  don't have to say what I think at this moment.

 There are other people here; let them talk. I have tried this one, and I like the peace it brings.

March Away.

I learned the term 'chasing energy' from Chat gpt and I was kinda embarrassed. I have often found myself chasing energy.

 I gave chat this situation where I felt like I was oversharing with a friend ( I do that often  )

Sometimes it's not even about oversharing.

 It's when you expect feedback from  a source but they are taking their time so as you wait you keep in contact hoping they will remember they owe you an answer.

In March, I learned to redirect that energy to something productive.

IMG CREDIT: LUKE CHEN VIA Pintrest