My Stepmother Called Me Too Dark to Love — I Threw Away My Bleaching Creams and Reclaimed My Skin
I poured every skin-lightening cream I owned into a hotel bin in Osu and watched the tubes split open. The chemical smell climbed my throat, my hands trembled, and I still did not reach back. In the mirror, my face looked blotchy and sore, yet I felt relief, for once, at last, like I had stopped begging.
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Downstairs, my friend's wedding reception roared with highlife. After touching up my foundation, I saw my stepmother, Maame Esi, enter, her gele vivid enough to command attention. She spotted me near the buffet, scanned my body, and clicked her tongue.
"So you are still this dark," she said, loud enough for people to turn. "All this schooling, and you could not even improve yourself."
The old shame rose fast. My chest tightened the way it did when I was ten, and she called me "unlovable." For a second, I wanted to laugh it off and disappear.
Instead, I walked back upstairs, opened my bag, and gathered every jar and soap I carried like a secret. I came down with the items in both hands.
I met her eyes on the edge of the dance floor and dropped the pile into the bin beside the DJ. Plastic clattered. A few women gasped. Someone stopped dancing.
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"I am not too dark to love," I said. My voice did not shake. "I will not punish my skin again to earn approval that never came."
My mother died when I was six. One afternoon in Madina, she kissed my forehead, told me to stay close, and climbed into a taxi. She never came back. People said malaria, then they said "complications," and adults spoke in soft voices that made grief feel like a secret.
After the funeral, my father, Kweku Mensah, moved me to his house in Taifa, on the edge of Accra, where the dust sits on your ankles. He had remarried. His new wife, Maame Esi Quarshie, ran the home with the confidence of a woman who believed she had earned every right in it.
At first, I tried to be good. I swept the compound until my palms burned. I washed bowls until they squeaked. I brought Maame's water without being asked.
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I wanted her to look at me the way she looked at her own daughter, Efua, whose skin glowed like she carried sunlight inside.
Maame Esi loved light skin openly, as if it were a family heirloom. She praised Efua's "nice colour" in front of visitors. She rubbed cocoa butter into her cheeks with a tenderness I longed for. When she spoke about me, her voice changed.
"This girl is too dark," she would say. "How can someone love a child like this?"
When I cried, she said I behaved like a village child. When I smiled, she said I showed teeth like a goat. She told me I would only ever cook, clean, and make babies for some desperate man.
In JHS, she relaxed my hair too early, forcing a perm onto soft, kinky curls that had always sprung back like laughter. The chemicals burnt my scalp. My hair broke in uneven chunks, and she laughed when I covered my head with a scarf.
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I tried desperate things for her approval. I scrubbed my knees hard. I soaked in harsh soaps, hiding it in secret. I prayed for morning to deliver a different shade.
I started to believe her words. I measured my worth by compliments, by who called me "fine," by whether strangers treated Efua better than me. Every day, I chased affection that moved further away the closer I ran.
By the time I entered SHS in Achimota, Maame Esi treated my body like a public noticeboard. If I gained weight, she pinched my waist and hissed, "Ei, you want to block the road?" If I lost weight, she shook her head. "Too thin. Who will marry this?"
When I wore braids, she said my scalp looked "hard." When I cut my hair after the relaxer damaged it, she said I looked like a boy. When I wore a dress, she stared at my hips and laughed.
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"Your bust is too small," she said one morning while I ironed uniforms. "Your bum's too flat. And this colour, hmm. You people are unlucky."
I learnt to smile on the outside and fold on the inside. I stopped joining photos because the flash made me look darker beside Efua.
At home, I started chasing "improvement" in secret. I bought creams that promised "radiance" and "tone correction." I used them until my skin burned with tingling, then used them again, mistaking pain for progress. When patches peeled, I hid them under sleeves, even as the heat swelled.
My father noticed little. He worked long hours at the port and came home exhausted. When I tried to tell him, he waved his hand.
"Adjoa, do not insult your mother," he said. "She is only trying to help you."
His silence taught me a dangerous lesson. If he would not defend my skin, then maybe Maame Esi spoke the truth.
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At nineteen, I entered the University of Ghana, Legon, convinced I would finally breathe easy. Instead, campus exposed how hungry I had become for validation. I spent too long under hostel mirrors, tugging at my face as if fingers could change my fate.
That was when I met Mr Owusu, an older man who acted like a rescuer.
He found me near the banking block and smiled. "Let me take you to eat," he said.
I should have walked away. I did not. Mr Owusu's attention felt like warm water. He took me to East Legon, bought me a phone, and began dropping cash into my hand.
"You can take care of yourself," he said one night. "Do small upgrade. You deserve it."
I heard Maame Esi's voice inside his. Improve yourself. Fix yourself. Become lovable.
I spent his money on stronger products and body-altering treatments that promised a new life. I did not ask the hard questions. I only chased the day someone would look at me and say, "finally, you are enough."
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The day never came.
My face reacted. Sunlight made my cheeks flare. My knuckles darkened while my arms lightened. People started asking, "Adjoa, what are you using?" Their curiosity sounded like judgment.
During a vacation home, Maame Esi touched my arm and smiled as if she had won.
"Aha," she said. "Now you look like someone's daughter."
Her praise did not comfort me. It exposed her cruelty. She had not wanted my confidence. She had wanted my compliance.
Still, I kept going, because stopping felt like losing. I wore wigs to hide broken hair. I avoided swimming because water exposed my uneven tone. I dated men who preferred me silent, because silence still seemed like the safest place.
Then my body forced me to stop pretending.
One morning, a rash spread across my neck, burning hot. At the clinic, the nurse looked closely and asked, her voice low, 'Sister, what have you been applying?'
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I could not answer without shame, so I whispered, "Please, I want to heal."
The wedding in Osu should have been a simple joy. My friend Nana Ama had found love, and we came to celebrate in lace and kente. Yet I stood there sweating under makeup, afraid my real skin would show.
When Maame Esi mocked me, I expected the room to side with her, the way home always did. Instead, something surprising happened.
A woman I barely knew, tall and dark with a low cut and gold earrings, stepped closer. She looked at me, then at Maame Esi.
"Auntie, that is a grown woman you are insulting," she said calmly. "If you do not like her colour, close your eyes."
Another woman nodded. "Her skin is beautiful," she added. "Leave her alone."
Their words hit me harder than any insult. Nobody had ever defended me like that. I dumped the creams and returned to the dance floor with my bare face under the lights. I expected whispers. I received smiles.
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Later that night, my father called. He had heard Maame Esi came to the wedding and caused trouble. His voice sounded tired, older than I remembered.
"Adjoa," he said, "I failed you."
I went to Taifa the next day. In the sitting room, he opened a small metal trunk and pulled out photographs from before my mother died. In one, she held me on her lap, her skin dark and glowing, her hair thick in twists, her eyes proud. I stared at the proof that darkness could look like love.
Then my father showed me another photo. A younger Maame Esi stood beside her sisters, and she was as dark as I was. Someone had scribbled a cruel note on the back, mocking her skin.
"She bleached for years," my father admitted. "Her own mother shamed her. She brought that sickness into this house, and I let it grow."
I sat there shaking, not with pity, but with clarity. Maame Esi's words carried not prophecy but inheritance. She had passed her wounds to me like debt.
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For the first time, I understood I could refuse to pay.
Healing did not happen in one brave night. The morning after the wedding, my skin still itched. My scalp still held scars from years of forcing it to behave. My mind still carried Maame Esi's voice like a radio that refused to switch off.
I started small and serious. I booked an appointment with a dermatologist in Accra and told the truth without decoration. I threw away the unlabelled jars. I stopped buying "miracle" products from Instagram sellers. I learnt to read ingredients the way I used to read exam questions, slowly and with caution.
When my skin began to settle, I met my own face again. Not the patched version I hid, but the one I had carried since childhood. I took photos in natural light, without filters, and I kept them. The first time I posted one, my finger hovered over the screen for a long time. Then I pressed "share."
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Compliments came from unexpected places. Colleagues at Ridge said, "Adjoa, you look fresh." The words felt different because they did not require me to disappear first.
I also let my hair return. I trimmed the damaged ends, wore my kinks in twists, and learnt my texture like a language. On days I felt exposed, I wrapped my head in scarves and reminded myself that softness does not mean weakness.
Maame Esi did not suddenly become kind. When she saw me without makeup at a family gathering in Teshie, she frowned.
"You will go back to black like charcoal," she warned.
"I am already black," I replied, steady. "And I am not your project."
The room went quiet. My father looked down, ashamed. That silence, for once, protected me instead of swallowing me.
I kept my boundaries firm. I visited my father and my half-siblings, not her, and I ended phone calls when she started her old chants. Over time, she stopped performing for my reaction because I stopped feeding it.
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In my forties, I began speaking openly about colourism. I joined a women's group in Dansoman and mentored teenage girls who whispered the same fears I once carried. I told them, "Your skin is not a mistake. Do not let anyone sell you pain as beauty."
Each time I said it, I believed it more. By the time I turned forty-five, I realised the real revenge was not shouting back. It was living free.
For years, I thought my problem was skin. I believed I needed a new shade, new hair, new shape, and new approval to qualify for love. Now I see the truth. Colourism trained me to distrust my own body, and one woman's bitterness hardened into a family law I had to follow.
Maame Esi's words hurt because a child believes what their home repeats. My father's silence hurt because it made the insults sound official. The creams and treatments were not only products. They were prayers I rubbed into my skin, begging the world to treat me gently.
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When I threw them away, I did not magically become confident. I chose a different direction. I picked honesty over performance. I chose health over praise. I opted to stop renting my self-worth from people who charged interest.
I still meet colourism in small places. A shop attendant suggests a "brightening" soap. A stranger says, "You are pretty for a dark girl," as if beauty needs permission. When that happens, I breathe and remind myself that my skin does not need defence. It requires respect, starting from me.
If you grew up like me, you may carry someone's voice inside your head, still calling you ugly, still calling you unlovable. I will not pretend it is easy to silence it. But you can challenge it, one brave choice at a time, until it becomes background noise.
Here is the lesson I hold close: nobody should bleed, burn, or break themselves to be worthy of love. Your body is not a problem to solve. It is a home to honour. And when you honour it, you break the chain for the girls watching you.
So I ask you, gently, what would your life look like if you stopped apologising for the skin you were born in?
This story is inspired by the real experiences of our readers. We believe that every story carries a lesson that can bring light to others. To protect everyone's privacy, our editors may change names, locations, and certain details while keeping the heart of the story true. Images are for illustration only. If you'd like to share your own experience, please contact us via email.
Source: YEN.com.gh
