My Mother Abandoned Me At Four Months and Kept Me as a Secret From her New Husband

I was only four months old when my life was marked with rejection. My mother, a young woman chasing new love and a better life, abandoned me at my grandmother’s rural homestead. She went ahead to marry another man, pretending I never existed. To her new husband, I was a shameful secret, a stain she worked hard to erase.

Growing up, I never knew the warmth of a mother’s hug. Instead, my wrinkled grandmother became my whole world. She was old and frail, but she tried her best to raise me on meager earnings from her small shamba in the reserve. The other children at school mocked me for wearing torn uniforms and for not having parents who attended school meetings. Teachers would ask me why my mother never came around, and each time, it felt like a fresh wound reopening… Keep Readings