A memoir is a deeply personal journey into memory, an intimate telling of a life, not in its entirety, but in fragments: those moments that cling to the heart and shape the soul. It is a selective reflection, offering the author’s emotional truth rather than a full historical account. It is written in the first person, allowing the writer to step forward not just as narrator but as witness. It does not aim to document everything; it seeks instead to reveal something essential.
While Dr. Oluwatomiloba Ademokun’s Wellness Wahala fits some of these descriptions, it defies one or two. This memoir pulses with purpose. It reads like a bridge between memoir and motivational book, unashamedly drawing strength from spirituality and urging readers to do the same. Her story becomes a platform, not just for telling but for teaching.
This makes Wellness Wahala a genre-bending work. It leans into personal narrative but refuses to stay there; it turns life lessons into calls to action and testimony into teaching. It is a memoir, yes, but it is also something more: a hybrid of healing and hope, a story that insists its reader not just listen, but rise.
The book begins with Ademokun telling us about her roots in Chicago, United States and Nigeria.
Her parents, we soon learn, came to America as immigrants. Her father had won a Federal Government scholarship to study in the U.S. But after completing his studies, securing permanent residency proved to be a long, bitter battle that ultimately ended in his deportation. Before he was deported, he was dehumanised. Even the family matriarch’s attempts to file for him after she gained citizenship were thwarted, forcing her parents to be separated but not divorced.
Her father’s forced absence left her mother to care for three children alone. She was forced to take multiple jobs just to make ends meet.
Despite these hardships, the author excelled academically. In time, she secured a position with a top U.S. government health agency, a remarkable achievement that made her the first and youngest Nigerian-American diplomat deployed to her ancestral home. Notably, her résumé was not the most impressive among the many candidates for the role, underscoring the role of grace and favour in our lives.
Before joining the top U.S. Government Public Health Agency, she faced rejections from programmes she thought were the “right fit.” She would later realise that if she had been accepted into those spaces, she would not have been available when God’s door opened.
Her principled stand against unethical practices within the agency brought her significant wahala. She was denied her rights and made to feel like she did not belong. It was her faith that sustained her through those challenges.
During one particularly difficult period, she and her sister had a heated argument that ended with her sister calling the police. She was arrested and spent time in detention. There, she placed her trust in no one but God. Years later, she returned to the same detention facility, this time to be honoured for her charitable work with its inmates.
The fallout with her sister, now settled, also pushed her to accept a job overseas. She simply wanted space to be alone with her daughter, the product of a short-lived marriage to a man she described as a “Yoruba demon.” She had seen red flags in the marriage, but because of a generational pattern, she wanted it to work and she prayed for the man she had trusted, who stood with her at the altar, to turn away from willful cheating.
“How do you process betrayal when your womb is still healing? How do you hold a newborn with one arm and wipe tears with the other?” she wondered.
She also remembers when her mother and sisters helped her to take care of her daughter when she moved her daughter back to the U.S., while she went back to Nigeria to finish her tour of duty.
The memoir is not a tell-it-all. Ademokun exercises her right to decide what to share and for this reason, certain details are glossed over.
If you are averse to God being acknowledged again and again for favours and accomplishments, this is not a book for you. Ademokun is unashamedly pro-God and she sees His hands in her breakthroughs and even in some doors that are slammed in her face.
This is a book that is on a mission to uplift, encourage and redirect.
***Olukorede S Yishau is the author of In The Name of Our Father, Vaults of Secrets, United Countries of America and Other Travel Tales and After The End. He is concluding work on his third novel. He lives in Houston-Texas.
