Restful magazine
(Out in 2025)
Photo: Ujah Godwin, 2024
Letter from the Editor
(excerpt)
Making this magazine was a fulfilling labour of love. What you’re holding is a piece of my heart. I made it to serve you as a sleep aid, as an invitation for you to sit with the contributors and with yourself, and as a beautiful place to rest your gaze on.
Inside this issue, you’ll find a prayer from Ujah that I’ve called upon in times of pressure throughout this year: All we can do is do what we can. Hauwa’s essay shows how, with chronic illnesses such as Long Covid, sometimes what we can do now is only an empty shell of what we once were able to. The first time I read Daniel’s poem, I almost said no to it, because of how devastating its last two lines are: Yet here we were thinking, God, surely,/had something better planned for you.
But isn’t that real life?
Sometimes, we find ourselves in states of rot, freeze, and bewildering silence, just as in Ozoz’s story where she lost her voice during a quarter-life crisis in 2008. And when we do, there is grace in giving in to relief, in hibernating to recover, even if in the moment the last thing we want to do is think of getting back up.
There really is a time for everything, and Pamela’s essay on the joys of what she calls ‘unearned’ sleep celebrates the companion she has found in sleep: “Awake, I tortured myself constantly with thoughts of now what? and what if? and if only…, but sleep wicked away the sting from my sourest thoughts.” Her essay recalled these lines in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care/ The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath/Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.”
We see another chief nourisher in Gbope’s story of being nursed back to health by the noodles that her mother, possibly Indomie’s number 1 hater, made for her when chronic stress ground her to a halt. And just like Gbope’s, Grace’s story is one where food was both a biological lifeline and a psychological one as well, connecting her to the redemptive power of familial love and community. Oyindamola’s ‘Who Natural Hair Help’ shows how a mother’s path to taking away her daughter’s pain became a light that showed a generation of Nigerian women more ways to love and care for themselves too. Stella’s essay, the most popular essay published in the digital magazine, is a quiet and touching letter to her late father. There, you meet a woman, a family, figuring out where to put all the love still left to give to a man who is no longer here.
Alongside these essays are three conversations. In one, I interview Rachel Seidu, a photographer of the moment, on her career journey and eight key photographs in her portfolio. In the second, the designer and researcher Kemi Agbato interviews a retired designer of the Nigerian bank notes, Mr Olayiwola Ojo. This was a serendipitous contribution that surprised and delighted me at every turn. In the third, the poet and multidisciplinary artist Wana Udobang, the documentarian Etinosa Yvonne and I discuss healing as our individual and collective responsibility, something nobody else can do for us, though they may model examples for us.
In episode 16 of Abiola Babarinde’s podcast, ‘Take What You Need’, someone asked her, “How do you find rest and wellness in a busy life, either as a business owner or as someone who’s really ambitious in your corporate career, whatever that may be?” I’ve included her full response in this issue too, as well as so much more: images, illustrations, book reviews, puzzles, journaling pages and colouring pages. There is something here for you.
- Immaculata
October 22, 2024
October 22, 2024