Legally Clueless

In this powerful episode of For Mannerless Women, Adelle Onyango sits down with Waceke Nduati, founder of Centonomy, to unpack the real reasons many women struggle with money and how to reclaim financial agency without shame. This conversation goes far beyond budgeting. Together, they explore: How money trauma shapes women’s financial decisions - The limiting beliefs women are socialised to hold a...

Some days we forget. We forget how loved we are. We forget the moments that made us proud. We forget the days we laughed until our stomach hurt. And it’s not because those moments didn’t happen. Psychology shows that our brains have a negativity bias, meaning painful experiences stick longer than joyful ones. Over time, our minds can begin to tell us a story that life has mostly been difficult, ev...

In Episode 368 of the Legally Clueless Podcast, we share Part 2 of Nkirote’s remarkable story. In Part 1, we heard about her unstable childhood in Meru, the loss of her grandmother who raised her, and the gradual deterioration of her eyesight due to glaucoma. Teachers stepped in when family could not, raising funds for surgery and eventually helping her join Saint Lucy’s School for the Blind. Part...

In this week’s episode of The Midweek Tease, Adelle reflects on a powerful idea from the final episode of Difference She Makes with South African human rights lawyer Sibongile Ndashe. While Sibongile spends her career challenging institutions and pushing legal systems to protect women, one line from the conversation stayed with Adelle long after the interview ended: “We must be gentle with each ot...

In Episode 367 of the Legally Clueless Podcast, we share Part 1 of Nkirote’s powerful story. Born fully sighted in Meru County, Nkirote’s childhood was marked by instability, moving from one household to another, losing her primary caregiver, and navigating neglect and emotional hardship at a young age. At just 12–13 years old, her eyesight began deteriorating. What started as subtle vision proble...

What if your job disappeared tomorrow? Who would you be? In this week’s Midweek Tease, we unpack a powerful idea inspired by my recent conversation with Odunoluwa Longe on Difference She Makes: Your purpose should be your life, not your job. For many high-achieving women, identity and productivity have become intertwined. We are praised for being exceptional, indispensable, reliable. But what happ...

In Part 2 of Keziah Mumbi’s story, we move from suspicion… to diagnosis. After nine years of severe period pain, fainting, vomiting, job loss, and being dismissed by multiple doctors, Keziah finally meets a gynaecologist who believes her. The diagnosis? Stage 4 endometriosis. What doctors initially thought was “just a cyst” turned out to be far more serious. During laparoscopic surgery, surgeons d...

What happens when a woman steps into a leadership position that has only ever been held by men? And what happens when she decides to run… just two weeks before elections? In this episode of Difference She Makes, we sit down with Natasha Ali Erry, Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and Chairperson of the Mombasa Law Society, to unpack mentorship, audacity, leadership, and the quiet pressure women...

What if you’re not unrealistic… What if you’re remembering what’s possible? In this week’s Mid Week Tease, I unpack something that stopped me in my tracks during my conversation with Natasha Ali on Difference She Makes. She said, almost laughing, “I think I’m a little delusional.” But what if that “delusion” is actually optimism bias? What if it’s self-efficacy? What if it’s the power of possible...

For years, Keziah Mumbi was told her pain was “normal.” At 12 years old, she began experiencing extremely heavy periods, severe cramps, vomiting, fainting, and anemia. She was going through an entire pack of pads a day. She stained her school uniform. She was sedated from pain. She missed classes. She lost jobs. And still doctors told her: “You’re too young to have endometriosis.” “It’s just hormo...

Are you shrinking yourself to feel safer, more lovable, less intimidating? In this episode of The Mid Week Tease, Adelle reflects on the quiet ways women, especially African women, make themselves smaller in their careers, relationships, and ambitions. Inspired by her recent conversation with Ruth Tanui on Difference She Makes, this episode explores: The psychology behind the confidence gap Why wo...

In Episode 364 of the Legally Clueless Podcast, Kenyan stand-up comedian Rahab Kihuha shares Part 2 of her story, a powerful continuation that explores sobriety, motherhood, womanhood in male-dominated spaces, and what it truly means to heal holistically. In this episode, Rahab reflects on navigating the comedy industry as a woman, performing while pregnant, confronting patriarchy on and off stage...

In this episode of Difference She Makes, we explore how professional excellence becomes a quiet but powerful form of resistance inside deeply gendered institutions. Our guest, Ruth Tanui, is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and the Founder and Managing Partner of Tanui & Company Advocates. Through her journey, from navigating hostile work environments to building her own law firm, Ruth s...

What if “treating yourself” isn’t indulgence but a psychological necessity? In this week’s Mid Week Tease, Adelle reflects on how she’s learned to intentionally place joy into her life, especially around birthdays. From solo stays by the pool with poetry and silence, to beach days and bicycle tours, this episode explores why joy deserves to be planned, not postponed. Drawing from personal ritual a...

In Episode 363 of the Legally Clueless Podcast, Kenyan stand-up comedian Rahab Kihuha shares Part 1 of her powerful story, a deeply honest journey through grief, addiction, mental health struggles, and the unexpected role comedy played in her survival. Rahab opens up about losing her father, using alcohol to cope with pain, feeling emotionally unseen, and how stepping onto a comedy stage for the f...

In this episode of Difference She Makes, we turn our focus to policies, the internal rules that determine whether institutions protect people in practice or only on paper. Adelle Onyango is joined by Zikhona Ndlebe, a South Africa–based judicial governance expert who has worked at the heart of policy reform within the legal system. Zikhona helps us understand why policies are not just administrati...

Pregnancy and postpartum don’t just change a woman’s body they change her mind, her strength, and her sense of self. In this episode of For Mannerless Women, Adelle Onyango is joined by Winnie Okoth, elite CrossFit and Olympic weightlifting athlete and coach, for an honest conversation about postpartum realities we rarely prepare women for. Winnie shares her personal experience navigating: Postpar...

Many women don’t struggle because they’re “too emotional.” They struggle because they’ve learned to abandon their emotional needs to keep connection. In this episode of Mid Week Tease, we explore the quiet, often invisible ways women self-silence in romantic relationships, friendships, and family not because they lack needs, but because expressing them once felt unsafe. This conversation unpacks e...

In Episode 362 of the Legally Clueless Podcast, we share Part 2 of William Genga’s story, a Kenyan man who chose to be childfree and eventually underwent a vasectomy at 27, after years of being dismissed, questioned, and denied autonomy over his own body. In Part 1, William spoke about realising early in life that he did not want children, being parentified as a firstborn, navigating pregnancy sca...

Kindly take this short survey, your responses help shape future episodes of Difference She Makes and track how these stories are landing: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/diffshemakes   Kenya’s 2010 Constitution is often praised as one of the most progressive in the world, but a constitution alone does not create justice. People do. In this opening episode of Difference She Makes, host Adelle Onyang...

What happens when shame quietly teaches you to perform instead of be? In this episode of For Mannerless Women, Adelle Onyango sits down with Kenyan comedian, activist, and writer Justine Wanda for a deeply honest conversation about shame, identity, adoption, grief, and unlearning survival modes. Justine shares how growing up adopted shaped her sense of belonging, why humour became a shield, and ho...

Setting boundaries is often framed as empowering and it is. But what we don’t talk about enough is what comes after. The quiet. The emotional exhaustion. The loneliness that settles in when you stop over-giving, over-explaining, and abandoning yourself for the comfort of others. In this Mid Week Tease episode, Adelle Onyango explores the rarely discussed emotional aftermath of boundaries, especial...

In Episode 361 of the Legally Clueless Podcast, we share Part 1 of William Genga’s story, a Kenyan man who made the decision to be childfree at a very young age and spent years defending that choice in a society that insists everyone must eventually become a parent. Born and raised in Kericho, William reflects on growing up parentified as the firstborn, constantly caring for younger relatives, and...

In this episode of For Mannerless Women, Adelle Onyango sits down with writer, filmmaker, and cultural commentator Abigail Arunga for an expansive, deeply honest conversation about shame, desire, pleasure, and what it truly means to arrive as a liberated woman. Together, they explore how women are socialised to shrink themselves, emotionally, physically, sensually and what it takes to begin unlear...

What does it mean to choose a life that doesn’t come with a ready-made script? In this episode of Mid Week Tease, we sit with the quiet, complex reality of being childfree, not as a debate, not as a defence, but as a lived truth. Inspired by Part Two of Hekaya’s story in Episode 360 of Legally Clueless, this conversation explores what it really means to opt out of motherhood in a world that assume...