By Utitofon Idara
As a promising child, Lara Kudayisi finished secondary school before turning 15 but, while planning on furthering her education to the university level, she got pregnant and had a daughter at 19. Ashamed of stigmatization, she refused to discuss her single motherhood with anyone she had to hide her from people because according to her and the dictates of society being a single mom will deter her from marrying.
The person that triggered this stigmatization was her father who consistently told her “You will never see a husband, he will abuse me, will tell me that virgins are all over the place with no husbands, who will marry you with a child out of wedlock?” Not knowing all the abuses was sapping away her self-esteem, and this led to her search for a man to marry. She vowed to prove her father wrong, “I am going to make sure he swallows his words” that was when she started “Operation get married to prove daddy wrong”
In her quest to get married and save herself the shame, she ended up with 14 heartbreaks, and 15 abortions. Her case was once one relationship breaks, she moves to the next, and kept moving. Low self-esteem made her matter worst as she was never bothered if any man she was involved with actually had true feelings for her. Her goal was to get married, so whatever the man tells her, she was willing to do in full submission, just to get married and become a Mrs.
Unfortunately, after all the illusions, lusts, empty promises, heartbreaks, and abortions, marriage never came. One could only imagine the nightmares, feelings of guilt and trauma that surrounded Lara, she could not come to terms with the pains of keeping this secrets forever, put in her words, “I was broken and pained, days became years, I have always known that the best was to share my story to ease my pains but I did not know how to come out with that deepest part, especially in this part of the world we live where a person with this sort of story is considered a plague to the society”.
Lara said she started getting instruction from God to share her story, she didn’t know it was that deep part of the things she did that God wanted her to share, according to her “The instruction kept coming to me, go and share my story so I can prevent people from going through what I went through and help people that are going through it heal, during this period, I had a media and a marketing company that was doing pretty well but in 6 months everything crumbled”
Hence, when her daughter that she has been keeping from the public eye to enable her get married turned 10, Lara did the unexpected, She did a photo shoot with her, shared pictures and posts about her for the very first time on Facebook with the caption, “Ten years ago I had her while I was preparing for my University Education, in the city of Abeokuta, because the society hated a woman with a child out of wedlock, I had to hide her from the world” She summed up courage, started sharing the story bit by bit.
“I just wanted to share the story and move on with my life and what I was doing. I didn’t know that was the beginning of a career, a purpose, a calling, I was surprised when people started entering my inbox, they were like, “oh my goodness I went through the same thing, I need your help” people became amazed as to how she could come out to mention the number of heartbreaks and abortions she has had, they wanted to know how she managed to summon courage to tell the world what has happened in her life, they wanted to know how the overcame her pains and how she intends to cope with the stigma. She had a lot of questions waiting for her in her inbox.
Her full inbox came possibly because people felt she must have had a wealth of knowledge which enabled her to be bold enough to speak and must have been healed from her past irrespective of what the society says, unknown to them, Lara started with what she called “head knowledge”, she was just giving advice out of nothing she knew, and not long she realized that more skills and tools were needed to help these people. Individuals and NGOs started inviting her to come and talk to people and school children about sexual abstinence as a “motivational speaker” you may say.
There and then she knew a certain qualification was inevitable. She took up some courses on cognitive behavioral therapy. She founded a Facebook group called ‘The Complete Singles’. She had over four the thousand members where she was coaching on family life, help people heal from trauma, emotional pains, and childhood dysfunction.
Lara got her wish, despite the fact that she was openly sharing how she committed those abortions because she was desperately looking for a life partner, someone could listen to such story and still came out to marry her. She was beside herself with joy. “I got married a year after I started sharing my story, I married somebody I had known, we met in church and got married, we have a son together and this made me become a relationship and marriage coach, through these avenues I got clients whom I have been able to help out heal their pains and trauma”. “I used to speak in church because my story was interesting “14 heartbreaks, 15 abortions and now she is married, Glory be to God, I started also doing matchmaking, I used to bear the matchmaking mistress, I wrote books, and I made a lot of money from it”.
The big question was despite the fact that she was helping people come out of emotional pains, Did Lara actually heal from her past? Can a person with such past be a better counselor? If yes, what happened to her marriage and why did she write a book titled “How the Marriage of a Matchmaker failed”? Please stay with us as we will bring to you the second part of Lara’s story.
