MIM Inspiring Series: How I Went From Having a Horrible Childhood to Becoming a Fulfilled Woman

I’m a woman who has never known what it is to be loved from childhood. I had a horrible childhood, but today, I have become a fulfilled women.

My father was a chronic womanizer who never cared about us. I grew up to see my mum complain daily under the weight and burden of feeding twelve hungry mouths.

We had to trade different goods to help our mum. I sold fresh pepper in a local fresh fish market ëverynight. Then two of my sisters became pregnant and dropped out of school. My father used the opportunity to totally stop contributing to our education and we were left on our own.

My mum decided to share us out as house helps to different people with the agreement that we must be sent to school. I was sent to go and live with an aunty who lived in the north. I went through hell because she beat, abused, and starved me. I had to do all the chores even when I was sick. Her husband on several occasions would try to sexually abuse me including other males in the house. She knew but did nothing.

In my final year in Secondary School, I met a young man whom I fell in love with and gave my virginity to. When my aunty discovered this, she used a knife to cut my wrists. I tried committing suicide but was rescued after being hospitalized. I got pregnant, she threw me out and I went to live with the boy and become a maid in his house. I saw and tasted various degrees of humiliation, from washing panties to hawking wares. I ran back to my home where if I don’t contribute to the feeding, I won’t be given food.

But I was resolute. I went back to the man who got me pregnant, endured and enrolled in a nursing school. We had four kids, yet it didn’t make him change his ways for the better. He also became a womanizer like my father and slept with anything in skirts. I hated him.

I graduated from nursing school and for the first time in my life, my voice was heard. I secretly learnt many skills. One day, he and his sisters beat me up as usual for returning home late and his older sister threw me out of my home at 12.30 a.m. I lived with a friend for a while and then returned to the North. They kept my kids away from me but I fought back and collected my kids.

For 14 years, I suffered to train and raise my kids. I worked from dust to dawn and God showed up. My daughter married a wealthy loving man who showed me love and carried me like an egg. My three kids are in the university and I am now a grandmother.

The best is, four years ago, I got married to a man who loves and cares for me. God gave me a man who has seen hell in his life too. He does everything for me while the father of my kids lives like a beggar. He is a miserable sight who is so ashamed to come near his kids.

I have forgiven my mum, my dad is dead and all my siblings are doing great and own a business of my own and I raise abandoned kids.

Let me encourage you never to give up. For the first time in my 48 years on earth, I am happy and fulfilled. I give God all the glory.