Nollywood actress, Mo Bimpe has described how, before she became a mother, some people stopped inviting her to baby showers, naming ceremonies and children’s birthdays because she had no child of her own.

The reflection came after she attended a child’s celebration and found herself unexpectedly emotional on the way home. The party itself was joyful. What it stirred was an older wound: a stretch of years when invitations to anything involving children simply dried up.

Those gaps, she said, were not always accidental. Some of the people who left her out were not distant acquaintances. They were colleagues and friends she laughed with, worked with and cared about. For a time she wondered what she had done wrong. Only later did she learn that childlessness itself was the reason.

She has been clear that she did not want pity. She wanted to be present. She loved children and wanted to share other people’s milestones. Trying to conceive was already heavy — the waiting, the questions, the insults, the private prayers. Being cut out of ordinary celebrations made that load harder to carry.

Bimpe used the post to speak to women still on that path and to those around them. A woman without a child, she wrote, is not less deserving of love, friendship or a seat at the table. Invite her. Include her. You rarely know what someone is holding behind a smile.

She is now a mother, including to triplets, which gives the story its aftertaste: the exclusion happened in a season that later changed. The point she is making is not only personal. In a culture that often treats motherhood as the measure of a woman’s place in social life, the people who withdraw invitations can deepen a pain they never see.