Review of ‘Things I Never Said Out Loud’ by Michael Olatunbosun |

“Things I Never Said Out Loud: The Quiet Truths that Made Me” is a memoir written by Stella Olayinka and published in 2025 by Prestige Publishers Ibadan. Stella is a writer, storyteller, podcasts and social media manager. She holds a bachelors degree in Banking and Finance from Lead City University.

In this book, the author plays on the theme of silence and its tendency to multiply the pain of not speaking out. The preface gives us a peep into this and the whole essence of finding freedom in speaking out.

In this book, the author recalls the disappearance of her mother when she was barely four years old. She would never understand why a mother would abandon her children and husband and just leave the country. She writes about the void that experience created in her heart. She recalls that even though her father did everything to fill that void, including wounding himself in order to care, the place of a mother is unmatchable in the life of a child.

In this work, Stella, through her perpetual withdrawal and unending bouts of silence, shows how her self-esteem became seriously crushed. Pains, instead of being expressed, become the solace, and the fear of sounding awkward gives way to whispers.

In Things I Never Said Out Loud, Stella discusses the pain of deceit and betrayal. She tells us how deep and ghastly the sting of deceit cut. She tells us how a friend who was never a friend but an imposter slept with someone she was dating – right in her own bed. She tells the story of how this friend had broadcast all the secrets she had shared with her. She discusses how she had taken the betrayal, not as punishment, but as preparation. For the author, the lesson is that “not anyone who smiles at you wishes you well” and that some friends are “lessons” which “do not arrive with warning signs.”

In this book, the author philosophises about love, what it ought to be and how her generation interprets it to mean. She quips (p25) about why her contemporaries “tend to place what should come at the beginning at the very end” and blames it for the failure of relationships today. She queries her generation’s misinterpretation of love for attraction and excitement and gets bitten because of that. She loudly blares the horns for whomever would hear that neither money nor sex is love, but that they are mere blinding lights whose flicker dies out before long. Therefore for her, real love takes time, requires patience and understanding, and willingness to keep choosing each other even when things get rough.

The author in this book gives strong indications of how to attain self-redemption from people and memories that hurt but still decide to track back and possess one’s mind again. For the author, healing from such hurt is understanding human nature and deciding to let go, and not stay captive to their subtle designs. Healing stems from learning to stop reopening wounds just to check if they still hurt. (P30)

This 20-chapter work discusses the dark experience children have to endure in the hands of a pretentious step-mother. And it even gets worse if the children are moved around like packages that miss their destination. So in the book, the author recalls that she and her brother later moved from her father’s house in the village back to Lagos, and from her eldest brother’s place to another place. This time, a street sister to their mother provided a place. But this one treats them like visitors who have already overstayed, and exploits their vulnerability, even to their faces.

In the work, the author writes about family, and how having family still looks like living among strangers, being careful and watching your steps like you are walking through a path laden with landmines. She writes however about her father who provided love and made her feel human. And she writes about the void that is death occasioned in her life.

The work is splashed with large moments of introspection in hindsight. The author loads the work with a huge dose of self counsel and calm assurance for her reader as well. She writes that she has been hurt repeatedly by people who never felt the need to say any apology, or who never accepted that they were wrong. She has accepted her lot in that even those who say sorry said so in order to crawl back into the heart that they broke in the first instance. Now she has come to the conclusion that waiting for an apology before closure is fruitless. For her closure is “something you give yourself.” (P46) In a similar vein, and still playing on her theme of silence, Stella writes that she stopped convincing people about her perspective and perception. And “silence started to feel like peace instead of punishment,” (P49) therefore she stopped defending herself “in conversations built on bad faith.” Also letting go is also desirable in order to heal. And it can also be done quietly, without being dramatic, for it does not mean forgetting, but “accepting that some chapters are meant to end, … in peace.” (P72)

In 102 pages and 20 chapters, the author serves the reader large doses of counsel on self-discovery and healing after unsavoury experiences of pain, betrayal and deceit. It is a call to young women especially to be encouraged to raise their voices and speak up and speak their hearts out. It is a beautifully written story.

. Olatunbosun can be reached via 0802-351-7565 (SMS and WhatsApp only) and [email protected].

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