Say Their Names: A Lament for Our Fallen Sisters and Stolen Children.

Every single day we wake up to another case. Another headline. Another photograph of a smiling woman whose life has been reduced to a hashtag. Another little girl whose dreams have been buried before they even had the chance to breathe. Another child robbed of innocence by monsters they were taught to trust. Every single day, we wake up to loss.

And I cannot help but imagine their final moments.

“Please… please don’t.”

“Somebody help me.”

“Free me.”

Those are the words I hear in my mind when I read another story of a woman battered by the very hands that once held her tenderly. They are the words I imagine escaping trembling lips before she is slapped into silence, before she is pushed from a balcony, before she is strangled, before she is butchered by the man who once promised to love her. A partner. A boyfriend. A husband. A lover. How terrifying it is that the people women are taught to feel safest with can become the ones they fear most.

But it does not end there.

I hear children too.

I hear the desperate cry of a little boy calling out for his mother, not knowing she will never answer again. I hear the piercing scream of a little girl begging someone, anyone, to save her from the horror unfolding behind closed doors. I hear the silence after violence, that unnatural silence that follows brutality, where even walls seem too ashamed to speak. I think of children trapped in homes with fathers who become monsters, with rapists, with pedophiles, with predators who steal more than bodies, they steal innocence, safety, trust, and the right to grow up unafraid.

And I wonder, how much more must we endure before we stop calling these stories “normal”?

Say their names.

Krystabel Anyango.

Baby Sherry Gatumi.

Kezia Matuki.

Susan Achieng.

Anita Mugweru.

Tracy Nyariki.

Baby Amelia Wangari.

Connie Githinji.

Fidelis Chepchumba.

Peris Nyabonyi.

Ann Keya.

Rita Maina.

Sherlyn Njeri.

Say their names because they were not statistics.

They laughed. They dreamed. They loved. They had favorite songs, unfinished conversations, birthdays they would never see, families who still wait for them to walk through the door. They were somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s mother. Somebody’s sister. Somebody’s whole world.

And to all those whose names we do not know, we say your names too. You are not forgotten.

Women, girls, and children keep dying while perpetrators walk freely. They move among us unnoticed. They sit in our churches. They greet us in marketplaces. They smile in family photos. They attend weddings and funerals. They blend into society so easily while carrying violence in their hands and blood on their conscience.

And what breaks me most is knowing that femicide rarely begins with murder.

It begins with what we are told to ignore.

A slap excused as anger.

A controlling message mistaken for love.

A bruise hidden beneath makeup.

A woman isolated from her friends.

Her money taken.

Her confidence eroded.

Her laughter disappearing slowly until one day, she disappears too.

For those who survive, survival itself becomes a strange kind of miracle. They emerge bruised, broken, traumatized, carrying invisible scars that words cannot fully explain. Yet with time, something extraordinary happens. That trembling survival slowly transforms into freedom. Freedom from abuse. Freedom from fear. Freedom from the version of themselves that had learned to endure pain in silence.

But why must survival be the goal?

Why must women learn how to escape instead of simply learning how to live?

Why must children memorize fear before they memorize joy?

Why must another mother bury another daughter before we decide enough is enough?

We do not have to wait until violence knocks on our own doors to raise our voices.

We do not have to become victims before we care.

We do not have to know a name personally before we say it loudly.

This is not a women’s issue. This is a human issue.

And today, I refuse silence.

I refuse to scroll past another obituary and move on.

I refuse to let these lives dissolve into statistics.

I refuse to let the world become so accustomed to violence that we stop trembling at its cruelty.

Today I mourn. Deeply.

Today I rage.

Today I remember.

And today, I make a promise to every woman, every girl, every child whose life was stolen too soon: we will keep saying your names. We will keep telling your stories. We will keep demanding justice. We will keep fighting for a world where women do not wake up afraid to love and children do not go to sleep afraid to live.

Until that day comes, our grief will remain loud. Our love will remain louder. And our voices will not be silenced.