The things said in laughter didn’t feel like jokes to us, they became the voices we grew into.
Not all wounds are loud. Some are spoken softly, and repeated often.
Njeri wasn’t always quiet.
There was a time she filled rooms with her voice, carefree, curious, alive. She was the child who spoke before thinking, who laughed loudly, who always had something to say.But somewhere along the way, her voice became a problem.
Her grandmother would call her noisy in their native language, laughing as she said it in front of visitors as if Njeri were entertainment. People would chuckle, and she would too, not yet understanding that she was being reduced to a joke.
At home, it wasn’t any different. Her mother didn’t like her chatter.
“Peleka kelele huko,” she would say, take your noise elsewhere.And so Njeri learned something early:
Her voice was only welcome… somewhere else. Just not here.She was sent to boarding school in Class 4. A new environment, new faces and she carried her same loud, expressive self with her. But children can be cruel in ways adults often overlook.
There was a girl who made sure Njeri understood where she stood. She mocked her, controlled her, and convinced her that acceptance had a price. Njeri believed her. She thought if she brought her things, if she tried hard enough, she could belong.
During the holidays, Njeri went home hoping for something she didn’t yet have the words for, comfort. Safety. Reassurance.She told her mother she was being bullied.Her mother dismissed her.Njeri remembers running to her more than once, needing her to see her, to hold her. At one point, she tried to hug her. Her mother shrugged her off. She tried again. The same response.
And somehow, the embarrassment stayed longer than the rejection.Because she had seen her mother hug her friends.
And so Njeri learned something else:Affection was not for her.
Today, they don’t hug. They barely greet each other. “Good morning,” “goodnight,” even “bye” those small, simple words feel foreign between them.
People now say Njeri has “cooled down.” That she simply grew up and became quiet.They don’t know she didn’t grow into silence,she was shaped into it.They call her secretive. Proud. Distant.But they are the same people who once laughed when she spoke.Maybe they forgot.But Njeri didn’t.Because those moments didn’t just pass,they stayed. They echo.
The Aftermath of “Small” Words
What happened to Njeri is not rare. It is familiar, so familiar that many people don’t even recognize it as harm.
Because it didn’t come as shouting.
It came as laughter.
As sarcasm.
As “just a joke.”
But children don’t interpret tone the way adults do.
They don’t separate humor from meaning.
They absorb. They internalize. They become.
And over time, those small comments don’t stay small.
They settle.
Mentally: The Inner Voice Was Rewritten
The adults who spoke over us, laughed at us, or dismissed us never really left.
They became internal. That casual sarcasm slowly turned into a permanent inner narrator:
- Don’t say too much.
- You’ll embarrass yourself.
- You’re being annoying.
So we edit ourselves in real time.We shrink our thoughts before they fully form.
We doubt what comes naturally.Some of us are still trying to separate our own voicefrom the one that raised us.
Socially: We Learned to Adjust, Not Express
Children don’t stop being expressive for no reason.They adapt.Some of us became quiet, choosing silence as protection.Others became overly expressive,performing, overcompensating, trying to be accepted.
Some learned to people-please, constantly reading the room before speaking.But in all these versions, one thing remained true:We were no longer just being.
We were adjusting ourselves to be tolerated.
Emotionally: Affection Became Conditional
For many, love was confusing.It laughed at us in public,dismissed us in private,
and showed up easily for others.So we learned not to reach for it.
Not to ask.
Not to expect.
Not to need.
And now, as adults, simple things like hugs, greetings, or soft conversations, feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable.Yet the same absence we adapted to is now labeled as coldness.
When Silence Is Misunderstood
Now we are older. And the same voices that once corrected, mocked, or dismissed us begin to question who we’ve become:
- “You’ve changed.”
- “You’re too quiet.”
- “Why are you so secretive?”
- “You think you’re better than people?”
But what they are seeing is not pride. It is protection. Not distance, but self-preservation. Because silence, for many of us, was not a personality.
It was a response.
Breaking the Cycle
There comes a point where we begin to notice the pattern. To question it.
To ask ourselves difficult but necessary things:
Was I really “too much”?
Or was I simply expressive in a space that didn’t know how to hold me?
Was I difficult?
Or was I unheard?
This is where the shift begins.We start to unlearn the voice that limited us.
We begin, slowly, to speak again, without apology.
We allow softness back into spaces that once rejected it.
And for those raising children now, the responsibility becomes undeniable: The way you speak to a child does not disappear.
It becomes their inner voice.
It shapes how they see themselves.
It follows them into every room they enter.
We are not difficult children
We were expressive, curious, and alive,
until the laughter taught us to shrink.
Sure Media Magazine 
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