This column documents Celine Njoki’s healing journey. If you haven’t read her story, we encourage you read it here. Her story is remarkable. You can also read the previous entries she has made to this column.
This week, Celine discusses the role forgiveness has played in her healing journey.
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I have been a victim of violations so many times over. At 7 or 8 years old, I was molested by my uncles. And as an adult I was gang-raped three times. It’s had a very bad effect on me. I grew up thinking that I wasn’t beautiful. I had this big body and the people I stayed with were not helping because they used to make remarks about my body. It was hard, it was painful, and there was no one to share with.
I always thought I was a problem – that I deserved this. So, I hated my body, too.
When I became a teenager and started experiencing body changes, I remember I used to hide my body. I would put on layers and layers of clothes so people wouldn’t notice my breasts growing. I had very low self-esteem.
There was no one to find me sanitary towels when my period started. So, I would cut some cloth and use them. It was so hard on me and I didn’t care about my body anymore. I started to pick up weight in my teenage years and I didn’t care. Every time somebody made a remark about how I looked and that I should lose weight, I kept saying that I didn’t know how to lose weight and that I was fine.
I remember one person directly making a comment that I was an ugly girl with a big body. Another person said something negative about my teeth. It affected me greatly. I stopped associating with friends and every time I would go somewhere, I would try to please people by putting on things that I shouldn’t have been wearing. I always felt bad around people because I felt that I wasn’t enough.
There was a time when I wanted to get a tattoo because I thought people would accept me then. But I didn’t have it done because I was a coward.
But when I started my journey of healing myself and healing by body after the gang rapes, I decided that I wanted to love myself more. It was hard for me to look at myself in the mirror. Every time I came across a mirror and happened to look at it, I would just look away.
Every time I came across a person who would tell me that I was beautiful, I would think that they were just saying that because they don’t have anything else to say to me. I put on so much weight and I would eat anything. I think I developed a habit of justifying myself to people. Anytime someone would say something I was defensive. Recently, I decided to start loving myself. So, here I am loving myself.
This past December I weighed 115 kgs but I knew I had gained that weight because I was listening to (negative) people. Those traumatic events are so hard to let go of. When you’re abused it’s so easy to focus on things you cannot control. So many times I thought I wasn’t strong enough. I thought maybe I wasn’t smart enough, and this got to me so badly.
I became quiet and very introverted. I didn’t think that I was good enough to be around people. This affected my decision-making as well. I viewed myself as somebody who was not worthy. I wasn’t even able to buy nice clothes for myself. I would wear just anything just so I would be clothed. Life passed me by. Even as a teenager, I didn’t enjoy life. I just let things happen, but sometimes I think it wasn’t my fault.
Even now, it’s so hard sometimes when I go to the supermarket to buy sanitary pads. Sometimes I just cry. Tears just stream down my face because it’s a big thing to me because in my younger days, I could not see myself buying those things. When I buy myself a nice dress I just thank God because there was a time I could never see myself doing something like that.
I started doing my hair recently. I was always cutting my hair because I didn’t see the point of keeping my hair. And then my ex would come and say things to make me feel unworthy and ugly. He would say things like:
“No man will want you…”
“You are not worthy…”
“If you leave my place, you’re just going to go die out there because nobody wants you…”
It was years and years of this piled on me until I started seeing the results of eating and gaining weights. I’m now on a journey of weight loss.
I started losing weight physically after I lost weight emotionally. Since January I’ve lost 18 kgs. I feel so good and I feel so beautiful. I’ve also started a journey of loving myself and I can now look in the mirror.
It has not been easy at all, but God has held my hand through this and every time I kneel down to pray, I ask for the grace to carry on. I ask him for the grace to just let go of things and he has been faithful. Sometimes the things that hurt us affect us so much and we stop looking at ourselves the way God sees us. He sees us as beautiful and created in his own image. Imagine breathed His breath into us and He called us his own.
I changed my outlook on how I saw myself. I began to see my body as the Temple of the Holy Spirit – something created with greatness and in the likeness of God.
If it weren’t for God, I would not be here. So many times I contemplated suicide because I hated myself and wondered what I was doing in this world. But God has given me the strength to go on. God has been faithful throughout, and I now love my body. I love my teeth and everything about my body.
