For Stella

Who We Are

She was just 35.
A mother of four.
A recent widow.
A woman carrying the weight of her world on trembling shoulders, grieving, surviving, unravelling.

Her name was Stella Oludinanwa Ogbaegbe.
My mother.
My warrior.

The Awakening

Diabetes crept in like a thief in the night, unseen, unheard, unspoken of.
There were no warning bells. No pamphlets. No hotline.
Just a silent sentence pronounced by symptoms no one taught her to recognise.
There was no one to guide her through it.
No counsellor to say, “you are allowed to break down.”
No doctor who sat down long enough to explain.
No support group. No relief. Just echoes.

“Watch your sugar.”
“Take your drugs.”
“Try to rest.”
But how do you rest when you are newly widowed and four young children look to you for survival?
How do you think of insulin when the roof is barely holding and the bills are screaming louder than your body?

Finding my voice

She was fighting on every front.
And the world, our world, offered no shelter.
I watched her shrink before my eyes.
Weight loss that once felt like hope turned into a desperate red flag.
She drank water as if trying to fill an ocean-sized void.
Her eyes clouded. Her steps slowed. Her hands trembled.
Still, she kept going. Until she couldn’t.
She didn’t die because she gave up.
She died because the system gave her nothing to hold on to.
At 35, diabetes took my mother away.
Not just her health, her voice, her dreams, her life.

I was just a child.
But even then, I knew something was terribly wrong.
The pain settled in my chest like a stone. It never left.
It hardened into something that would one day become purpose.
That’s why I founded SOO-DAWI (The Stella Oludinanwa Ogbaegbe Diabetes Awareness and Wellness Initiative).
This isn’t just a tribute.
It’s a revolution.
It’s a vow.
It’s my way of screaming into a system that whispered my mother into silence.

SOO-DAWI is here to rewrite the script for every Stella still alive today

Because no woman should choose between insulin and feeding her children.
No man should die because he couldn’t afford a test strip.
No child should bury their parent because no one explained what “high blood sugar” really meant.

Here’s what SOO-DAWI is doing, and what your support can help us scale:

Teaching diabetes education in simple, accessible, local languages, so everyone can understand, not just the literate or privileged.
Providing real, human, emotional support, because prescriptions without compassion are not enough.
Delivering free and affordable screening and care to under-resourced communities, where hospitals are far and help is even farther.
Building tech that works offline, for those without smartphones or stable internet, because access should never be a luxury.
Creating a growing community of empathy, strength, and shared stories, so no one walks this road alone.

This is more than a health initiative.
This is my love letter to my mother, and a lifeline to the millions walking the path she once walked… alone.

But this time, they won’t be alone.

You’re reading this because you can still make a difference.
You’re still here. They’re still here.
There is still time.

Let’s change the narrative.
Let’s ensure no family suffers in silence again.
Let’s make sure that another 35-year-old mother of four doesn’t have to choose between survival and sacrifice.

We’ve started. We’ve seen hope.
Now we need you to help us go further, reach deeper, and save more lives.

Take action.
Donate.
Partner.
Spread the word.

Let’s do for them what Stella never had.

Let’s do it together.

This is for Stella.
And for every life we still have the power to save.