Sunday Morning Thoughts: Den Haag, April 12, 2026

It’s Sunday, and I’m having a lazy morning in bed before heading to my book club in Amsterdam.

I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across a reel that sent my mind in a dozen directions. In the clip, a 92-year-old woman is asked about her regrets. Watching her speak took me back to a defining conversation I had with my ex right before we ended things, specifically when he asked whether, when I am old and frail, I would regret a certain choice.

Interestingly, the same life-defining decision he asked me about was exactly what this woman, looking back at age 92, cited as one of the things she regretted most. It was an admission that provided an unexpected mirror to my own convictions, proving that the regret we are often scared with can just as easily exist on the other side of the choices we are told to make.

The video, in general, made me reflect on what it means to be a woman—specifically an African woman—living in a Western country and building a life on my own terms. So much of the autonomy I enjoy today, from living alone and deciding whether I want marriage or children to pursuing my own ambitions and shaping my life as I see fit, would have been functionally impossible in the past. It also made me realize that, more often than not, the limits I feel come from within myself rather than from the external barriers that once defined a woman’s existence.

That reflection also came with gratitude for the women and everyone who came before me who fought, sacrificed, and challenged systems just so I could have the right to vote, move across the world, and use my free will as I deem fit. Lives like mine only exist because of what they did, and while we certainly haven’t achieved perfection—far from it, for women everywhere and for me—we are certainly not where we used to be.

When I think about what my life might have looked like 50 or 60 years ago, I choose to see today as worth celebrating and to recognize that we have all come a long way, even if the road ahead remains long. I am also mindful that, as a woman of color, my experience is shaped by specific racial constraints, yet hearing this woman’s perspective made me realize that, while our histories are distinct, our shared human experiences are perhaps not as far apart as we all tend to think.

…as I wrap up this “rant” or whatever this meditative state has turned into, I find myself asking what I am doing to contribute to this ongoing progress, both as a woman and as a woman of color.

Aside: It has been a privilege to be born and even to be a woman in the 21st century. Now, if we could just collectively agree as humans not to start another world war and end the world in the next hundred years, that would be great.