Betty Irabor Talks about Losing Her Sanity and Her Unbelievable Visit to Yaba Left!
My next guest is responsible for an entire industry. She looks back at her life in this interview and shared it all #WithChude. She talks about losing her father, losing her brother as well as getting support from her husband.
The other important side of the story is how she found herself in Yaba left (Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital
Yaba).
Betty Irabor says:
So that morning, I got into the car and told my my driver to take me to Yaba psychiatric hospital and he lost it. He said, Madam that place is for mad people, what are you going to do there.’ I lied, I said I need to go and interview a professor on mental health.”
“Growing up as a young child in Methodist girls high school Yaba, it was hilarious to describe people in that place as mad people and many years later, I’m one of those people.”
“Yaba left is full of broken hearts and broken dreams in a society that does not know anything about empathy and knows nothing about humanizing mental health. So, you go there and you’re further stigmatized.”
Telling her story in a book!
“When you get to a certain place in your life and a certain age, you’ve seen it all and you’re no longer afraid of taboo, you’re no longer afraid of stigma. I have my family and I said to them are you guys okay with this and I sent them the manuscript. As far as I was concerned, once they didn’t feel scandalized, I was okay to share my story and I’m really really happy about the effects it’s having on people.
“It’s okay to tell the world a lie, but to tell yourself a lie, that’s the biggest deception, because I’d you’re not in a good place you should be able to say I don’t know how I’m feeling today.”
“People are so afraid of living their best lives in all reality knowing that I don’t have it all together but I’m still here, I’m on a journey what I do not have now, I’ll work towards having it.”
What I learnt from this interview.
“I was very honoured when Aunty Betty as we call her in Nigeria, invited me to do a reading of this book at her launch in Lagos. It’s such a powerful book. It’s a memoir but it’s essentially a biography of her emotions. She looks back at her life as she does in this interview and talks about the threads of worry, fear, insecurity that brought her to this point in her life and how even though she’s highly accomplished, incredibly accomplished person, like I said she’s responsible for an entire industry of lifestyle magazine publishing.”
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Thank you Aunty Betty for this very candid conversation. ❤️
Head over to watch.withchude.com to watch the full interview.
You can also listen to the full podcast on listen.withchude.com
