Hermes Iyele, a notable personality from Big Brother Naija, recently shared the profound effect of his mother’s absence in his adult life. During a recent episode of The Nancy Isime Show, he discussed this topic alongside his colleague, Phyna.
Hermes recounted his upbringing, highlighting that his father single-handedly raised him and his brothers. Despite the challenging circumstances, his father consistently emphasized that they should harbor no ill will towards their mother.
The reality star candidly expressed his disappointment at witnessing other children being accompanied by their mothers at Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) meetings, while his own mother was absent. This absence had a significant impact on Hermes, shaping his perspective and evoking a sense of longing for a maternal figure in his life.
He said “One significant thing I think affected me a lot was not having my mum around. A lot of people really think that me looking for my mum [when she went missing from a psychiatric center], with all the love that I did, she was so present in my life. No. She was absent my entire life.
My entire life was just longing to.. I will be in school. I will see people’s mums come for PTAs and what not, and I will just feel like, Oh! My God, my mum is so pretty, if she came here now, I would probably have like so many more friends. It never happened.
The silver lining for me, why I really still have love to give, is my dad. And I think something happened in the Big Brother show, I think we were sitting in the dining room, it was an argument about how men could not.
Someone said men could not take care of children as much as women would love and take care of them. I felt really attacked by that because my dad raised me. He did an absolutely great job. He took care of really young kids. Got a bus to hustle and train us through school. It was a lot.”