It was 2:43 a.m. when Akosua whispered, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Her room was quiet, lit only by the faint streetlight streaming through the torn curtain. The fan spun slowly above her head, echoing the same question that had haunted her for months:
What is the point of staying alive when you no longer feel like you are living?
Akosua had not always felt this way. There was a time when her laughter could fill a room. A time when she wore colour in her soul and danced barefoot in the rain. But that was before her mother died. Before her father stopped speaking. Before the dreams of university, the poetry club, and the NGO job she prayed for, all faded into thin air.
Grief came like a slow, rising tide—silent, heavy, and invisible to most people around her.
The Silence After the Storm
No one knew what to say at the funeral. “She’s in a better place,” they told her. “God gives and takes.” Akosua nodded politely, but inside, she screamed. If God was so close, why did He feel so far?
Every day after, Akosua wore her grief like a school uniform. Predictable. Pressed. Present. She woke up, cleaned, smiled when necessary, and lay in bed most nights staring at the ceiling with tears rolling sideways onto her pillow.
At church, she was praised for being strong. But strength, she realized, was not always a compliment. Sometimes it was the cage people put you in so they would not have to face your pain.
She prayed, at first. Desperately. Passionately. But when the weight did not lift, when the nightmares did not stop, she began to wonder if God had forgotten her name.
The Breaking Point
That night in July, after losing her job at the local library, Akosua reached a breaking point. She had skipped dinner again. Her phone was filled with unread messages from friends she no longer knew how to respond to. She felt numb.
“I can’t breathe anymore,” she whispered into the darkness. “I have prayed. I have fasted. I have begged. Are you even listening?”
Her eyes were swollen. Her voice cracked. And somewhere in that moment—between anguish and surrender—something shifted.
A song her mother used to sing floated into her memory:
“You are my strength when I am weak,
You are the treasure that I seek,
You are my all in all.”
She had not heard that hymn in years. It had been her mother’s favourite. Her comfort on hard days. Akosua remembered how her mother hummed it while cooking waakye and braiding her hair, even on the day she was diagnosed.
Suddenly, the silence in the room was not empty anymore.
A Gentle Turning
The next morning, Akosua did something different. She got out of bed.
Not because she felt strong. But because, somehow, she felt seen.
She walked to a nearby community centre where she had heard about a mental health peer group. It was not a grand decision. She almost turned back twice. But something about remembering that song gave her enough courage to whisper, “Maybe I’m not alone.”
The group was small—just five people in a circle. They spoke slowly like people learning to talk again after losing their voice. One girl had survived emotional abuse. A man in his forties spoke about battling depression after losing his business. There was no shouting. No judgment. No fake strength.
It was the first time Akosua shared that she had considered ending her life. No one flinched. No one quoted scripture to shame her. One woman reached out and held her hand.
Finding God Again
It was not quick, and it was not easy, but healing began to find her.
She started journaling, often writing letters to her mother or God—letters she never sent. She volunteered at a literacy program for children, something her mother had also done. And she went back to church, this time not to perform, but to simply sit and listen.
One Sunday, while the choir sang “You Are My All in All,” Akosua wept openly for the first time. Not out of despair, but from release. She realized that the same God she thought had abandoned her was there all along—in the hands of the peer counsellor, in the voices of the survivors, in the melody of her mother’s favourite hymn.
She did not need all the answers to keep going. She only needed one truth: she was not alone anymore.
When Hope Is a Whisper
Today, Akosua tells her story during mental health awareness programs and youth fellowships. She speaks with quiet courage, not pretending everything is perfect but showing that healing is possible.
“Sometimes,” she says, “hope does not come as a fire. It comes as a whisper. A song. A hand on your shoulder. And in that moment, when you have nothing left… You remember who your All in All truly is.”
In Conclusion
This is not just Akosua’s story. It is the story of countless young people across Ghana and beyond who suffer silently under the weight of grief, depression, or trauma by spiritualizing their pain because society tells them to stay strong or keep praying.
Yes, faith can carry us.
Yes, prayer has power.
But so does vulnerability.
So does seeking help.
So does the community.
When all hope is lost, we do not need to pretend. We need to reach out to others, for therapy, for God. And in that reaching, we just might find that we were held all along.
Maame Akua Kyerewah-Antwi