Less Than Ten People, One Goddess, and Jollof That Changed My Life

Do It Scared.
On pastels, rooftops, found family, and the quiet miracle of showing up anyway, even when every nerve in your body is screaming at you not to. Also the sun was trying to kill us but that’s a whole other paragraph.

Three years of therapy and I’m finally, finally, starting to understand what all of this hard work is actually for. Not to become someone else entirely, not to wake up one morning a fully healed, extroverted social butterfly with a perfect work-life balance and a charcuterie board always at the ready. No. It’s to become more of myself. More present. More willing. More brave, in the quiet, ordinary ways that don’t make headlines but change everything.
So this year, my therapist gave me a goal that genuinely made me a little nauseous: be more outgoing. Make new friends. Nurture the ones I already have. Show up for people. Let people show up for me. Simple things that somehow feel enormous when your nervous system treats a group text like a potential crisis situation.
And then, out of my comfort zone, against my better judgement, with my heart doing that specific thing it does when I’m about to do something that terrifies me, I decided to host.
Not a big party. Just a small gathering of people I love, on the rooftop terrace of my apartment building. Very low-key. Very calm. Completely unhinged from start to finish. Perfect.

The Mood: Soft/Bright Everything (Mostly Bright, Let’s Be Honest)
The theme was pastels. Soft, dreamy, Pinterest-board pastels. And look, we tried. We really did. But between the neon-bright pink napkins, the technicolour paper cups, the paper plates doing the absolute most, and a sun that had clearly not received the soft-and-muted memo, “pastels” became more of a loose suggestion than an actual aesthetic. A vision board, if you will. A vision board that the sun took one look at and said: not today.
Speaking of the sun. It was generous and warm and beautiful and also genuinely trying to cook us alive. I could barely see at certain points because the light was so aggressively bright it was having a personal conversation with my corneas. Was I going to mention that in real time? Absolutely not. I was busy trying to look like a person who hosts things effortlessly. Did I nearly melt? Yes. Did I still have the best time of my life? Also yes.
The bright-pink and orange napkins were folded loosely like they weren’t trying. Little clusters of lavender and baby’s breath sat between the cups like someone had plucked them directly from a dream. And the food. The food deserves its own paragraph, its own chapter, possibly its own memoir: the best jollof, the best kelewele, the best chicken wings in the entire Milky Way. I’m not exaggerating. I would go back to that rooftop just for the food. The company was also great but the jollof? Undefeated.

The One Who Showed Up.
Let me tell you about her. Because this story is about her as much as it is about me.
I have known her from a distance for years. The kind of knowing that exists in the comfortable periphery. You admire someone, you root for them, you exchange warmth when your worlds briefly intersect, and then life continues. I always sensed she was good people. The really good kind. But I had never spent actual time with her. Never seen her in person.
And yet, when I was quietly panicking about how to pull this gathering together, she offered herself. Fully, completely, without hesitation. She did a five-hour journey to get to me. The first time we had ever been in the same physical space and she showed up like we had been friends for fifteen years: cooking, setting up, moving through my chaos like she had always lived in it. Like this was just what you do. Like crossing a whole country for someone you’ve mostly known online is a completely normal Tuesday activity.
The first time I had ever been in the same room as her, and she was already treating me like someone worth crossing a country for.
I genuinely don’t have the words. I still tear up a little thinking about it. She is a goddess among us mere humans and I mean that with every bone in my body. She didn’t just help me host a party. She helped me believe, in real and tangible terms, that I was worth showing up for.

We Were Less Than Ten. It Was Glorious Chaos.
I know. I’m making it sound like we were a whole production: twenty people, a DJ, a catering team. We were not. We were less than ten humans on a rooftop in the actual sun, surrounded by colours that were trying their best to be pastel, with jollof that needed no introduction and music and the kind of conversation that feels like it could go on forever.
And the people. Oh, the people. Work colleagues who had never met my friends. Friends who had never met each other. People I was meeting for the very first time that afternoon. By all logic, this should have been awkward. By all logic, there should have been at least one painful pause, one moment of “so, how do you two know each other” that goes on three seconds too long. There was none of that. None. They all just clicked, like they had been in the group chat for years and somehow I was the last to know.
And I laughed until I cried. Genuinely. The ugly, grateful, can’t-catch-your-breath kind of laughing that only happens when you’re completely at ease, completely present, completely safe and possibly slightly dehydrated from the heat. I don’t think I have laughed like that in a very long time. And I hosted it. I made that happen. Terrified, yes. Imperfect, absolutely. Slightly sunburnt, undeniably. But I did it.

The Lesson I’m Still Learning.
Nobody tells you that courage doesn’t feel like courage when you’re in it. It just feels like nausea and a rapidly composing text that says “actually maybe let’s reschedule.” Courage is choosing to send the invites anyway. It’s buying the bright-pink napkins even though you’re not sure anyone’s coming. It’s texting that person you’ve admired from afar and saying, quietly, terrifyingly: hey, I have a thing coming up, would you want to come?
There are people in your life right now sitting in the comfortable distance. Acquaintances who feel like they could be so much more if either of you just moved a little closer. People you keep meaning to reach out to, keep meaning to really see. And you’re waiting: for the right moment, for the fear to pass, for the version of yourself who does these things effortlessly and also somehow always has sunscreen.
That version isn’t coming. She doesn’t exist. What exists is you, right now, a little scared, a little uncertain, possibly mildly over-caffeinated and underprepared for how hot it was going to be up there, and that is enough. That is more than enough.

Do it scared. Do it in attempted pastels that end up being bright and chaotic and nothing like the mood board. Do it on a rooftop with less than ten people and rainbow cups and pink napkins and food that will make people emotional and someone who drove five hours just because you asked. Do it imperfectly, vulnerably, loudly, sweatily, however it looks for you. Do it! The laughter on the other side of the fear? It will make you cry. In the very best way.