The Power of Support
When we sat down to talk to Ms M.N, one of our beneficiaries, we were not prepared for the wealth of wisdom and strength we would be met with. A woman who has experienced the darkest of this world, who wishes only to see a kinder one.
“I am out there, and I survived.”
One of the defining things about Ms M.N is that she has a heart almost big enough to heal the world. And if she could, she would. Her story drives home our mission in a fundamental way; a little support, access to resources, and a personalized approach to lifting someone into a new space go a very, very long way.
This is the first thing she wanted to make known: “I am out there, and I survived.” It’s not hard to understand why ‘survived’ is the word she chose. Little about her life was as anyone would have chosen. But she is here, and her story is just beginning. All it took for Ms M.N to open her heart and pour from it was a simple, “So, tell us.”
What she shared was hard to hear, and it’s a story that will sound familiar to too many people in South Africa. But luckily, in this case, support came in time.
When she was born, her father had already passed away, and her mother died before she reached her teenage years. Her extended family took her into their care, where an older male family member began sexually abusing her.
“No one believed me, no one stood by me. They said I was a naughty child. In my community, we hide things because we are afraid of what the neighbors will say. He was an older man, well respected, a churchgoer. It would destroy his reputation. When that happened, it changed my whole world. How can somebody I trust be the one to hurt me like this?”
She survived the ordeal, and after he died, she moved to Cape Town, where she planned to go back to school. It was then that she found out she was pregnant.
“I wanted to go back to school, but life didn’t happen that way. When I found out I was pregnant, it was like a bomb to me. Nobody was there to tell me that you have to take care of yourself as a girl,” her voice breaks. “I just had to figure things out, and I did. I did.”
Ms. M.N speaks with what sounds like a broken heart as she talks about the decision to put the child up for adoption.
“I wasn’t ready to be a mother, I didn’t know what love was like, I didn’t know where to begin with looking after somebody. I had the child, and he was adopted in Norway. I made peace with that.”
“I wasn’t ready to be a mother, I didn’t know what love was like, I didn’t know where to begin with looking after somebody“.
After the adoption of her first child, Ms. M.N met her now ex-husband. He was 10 years older and offered a kind of stability. They began to build what she hoped would be a life together, and their first son was born. Not long after this, the abuse began.
“Time passed. He changed. He drank a lot. He was abusive. He was jealous. He beat me. I stayed because I loved him, and I felt I had nowhere to go.”
She stayed with him long enough to have their daughter, but the abuse soon became too much for her to manage. She was forced to take her children and seek safety in shelters, where she struggled against her mental and physical health.
“I got depression to a point where I wanted to end my life. But every time I looked at my children, I thought no, God will come through.”
At one of the shelters, she earned her security qualification but struggled to maintain employment. She could not provide a roof for herself and her children to live under. They had to return to their father, where they are still living now, and she was left with nowhere to go.
“And then you guys came along. Before you came along, things were not okay.”
Two months on, with the support of the foundation, transport money, and a phone, Ms. M.N has a job in security, where she has already received further training for control room work. With this in place, she is looking toward the future with astounding strength and optimism. When asked what’s next for her, she had a very clear goal in mind:
“Now that I’ve got a job, I want to buy myself a shack so that I can bring my children to stay with me. The only thing I need is a place for the three of us.”
“Someday, I would like to open an NGO for women and young girls who grew up like me.”
Beyond that, Ms. M.N dreams of being able to pass forward what she has learned and reach out to others who are struggling.
“I have a dream. I’ve never shared it with anyone, but I think I’m going to share it with you today. Someday, I would like to open an NGO for women and young girls who grew up like me. Some of them don’t even know shelters exist. They don’t know where to go, or they can’t reach out because they are afraid to talk. So, I want to be there for them.”
After the life Ms. M.N has lived, her generous spirit and wisdom are evidence of a great inner strength. She is ready to share that with the world:
“The support I’ve received has taught me love, taught me how to be strong, how to accept without judgment. I want to be that woman; if you go to Ms. M.N, you know you’re going to get help. I always say, it’s not about money, it’s about support. Just by saying it’s okay, it’s going to be fine, you can change someone’s life. That’s what you did with me. Something like that has never happened in my world.”
This is where we leave Ms. M.N for now, with her dream of creating a home for her and her children just up ahead, but our conversations do not end here.
If you would like to be part of securing that home, please follow the link below to donate. Any amount will help. Your support today could change the course of not just Ms. M.N’s life, but the lives of her children and the many women she hopes to help in the future.
We will be following her journey closely in the coming weeks, stay tuned to witness her progress and see how your support makes a difference. Together, we can help turn resilience into opportunity, and dreams into reality.
And in Ms. M.N’s own words:
“All in time.”
This interview with Ms. M.N was conducted by Jose and written by Moss, capturing the depth of her journey and resilience.
