Comfort through writing
Tellruths.com is a website where users are encouraged to tell their stories and to speak in real and honest terms
Charles Aondo is a survivor. Following the death of his mother two years ago, Aondo struggled to cope with his loss. He found comfort through writing and sharing his story, and created a website he hopes will help others.
Named after his mother, tellruths.com is a website where users are encouraged to tell their stories about everything from success and love, to mental health issues and personal struggles, and to speak in real and honest terms. Aondo said mental health awareness campaigns like Bell’s Let’s Talk are good, but seem to only be popular once a year. With his new website, Aondo hopes to encourage people to talk about mental health issues year-round.
In a world where social media is king, Aondo is concerned sites like Facebook and Instagram present a false reality about many of the users.
“They want the world to see they’re always happy and never sad, but that’s not reality,” he said. “Being human is being fully who you are, not half of who you are – not half happy and half sad.”
The 26-year-old Holland College student currently lives in Charlottetown, but Aondo’s story began as the eldest of three sons in Nigeria. Aondo’s mother was a nurse and his father, Joseph, was a major general in the Nigerian army.
After he retired, Joseph was asked to help with a friend’s political campaign.
“He was a man of the community, so his friend asked him if he could use his influence and help campaign.”
Politics can be a dangerous game in west Africa, and people were upset when Aondo’s father offered his assistance in the campaign.
One day, his parents were followed to their estate and confronted by men with guns. Being a military man, Joseph knew what was about to happen, so he stood in front of his wife and spoke to the armed men.
“Leave the woman out of this, I know you’re here for me,” Aondo said his father told the gunmen before he was kidnapped.
Aondo’s mother, who watched as her husband was taken away, sprinted after the car for five kilometers, arriving only two minutes after the assailants fled, and found her husband.
“He’s in there in the backseat, bullet wounds to his chest,” Aondo said of the injuries that killed his father.
“That scarred her. She had to deal with that.”
To ensure his safety, Ruth paid for her eldest to live and study in Canada, and continued to be a beacon of strength and support in his life.
In March of 2016, however, she went into cardiac arrest and died. As he struggled to keep going, Aondo began writing about his life and his story, and slowly started to see light at the end of the tunnel.
“It’s a healing process for me.” Aondo said his experiences have made him more sensitive to how others are feeling, whether that’s what their words are saying or not.
“I can detect when someone is being insincere or is in pain,” he said.
“All of that is just because I‘ve been able to accept my own pain. I don’t hide from it. It’s my life and it’s literally what you see is what you get.”