Forgiving is not an easy thing to do. But it is probably the most powerful thing that one can do. It has the power to heal and to free. And here is a powerful story by Living that shows just that: Eleanor Roosevelt once said that a woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water. Jane Katuga could very well be this woman – she has overcome sexual abuse, a broken relationship and financial ruin to become a woman who inspires hope and courage.
Today, Jane, a life coach and trainer, draws from her heart-rending experiences to help others grow and overcome their painful pasts.
Being the third born in a family of six children meant she always had a playmate, and someone to watch her back. One day though, her idyllic childhood was cut short by sexual abuse at an early age. Ashamed and afraid of how people would react if she disclosed what had happened to her, she kept the incident to herself, and convinced the young girl in her that the only way she could protect herself was learn how to fight back.
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“Soon, I became known as ‘Jane Boxer’ because of my fighting prowess. To draw less attention from men, I shaved my hair and began to dress in baggy T-shirts and trousers to look like a boy– I even changed my walking style,” she adds.
By the time she was 14 and in high school, she had studied martial arts. And so good was she that she began to train her fellow students. After high school, she studied information technology but realized that her passion was in marketing.
“I gravitated towards people and enjoyed talking to them. I seemed to have a natural flair for getting people to listen to me. At the peak of my career, I was the sales and marketing manager for an international company, and was immensely enjoying my job – I was, therefore, devastated when one day, just like that, I lost my job.”
But this was not all, that same month, a relationship she valued dearly also came to a heart-breaking end.
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“Those two outcomes nearly broke me; I sank into a depression and started falling sick. I was diagnosed with ulcers, arthritis of the neck, migraines, low blood pressure, an eating disorder, a skin disorder – name it. I was seeing a different doctor for each of those diseases, never letting any of them know that I was taking medication for something else already,” she says.
After almost two years of taking a concoction of drugs, one day she woke up and flushed them all down the toilet, ready to die.
“Every day, I would dress up, comb my hair, wear make-up, put on my favorite high heels and lie on my bed, waiting to die. I wanted to make it easy for the person who found my body,” she says.
She did this for a couple of days, but the angel of death was nowhere to be seen.
“One day, while lying there, I remembered a woman I had met at a self-awareness forum, who had told me that the reason I was constantly ill was that I had too much pent-up anger. I was upset with her then, since she did not know me, yet dared to give a ridiculous cause for my poor health, instead of sympathizing with me. Looking at the person I had become, though, it occurred to me that she could have been right.”
The two of them had exchanged contacts, and Jane immediately got up and called her. The woman invited her to visit, and the next day, she made her way to the rendezvous, unsure of what awaited her.
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“She asked me to list all the people I was angry with, starting right from childhood – I started with the man who had sexually abused me, to someone I had been angry with for 18 years. She also asked me to write down everyone I had wronged, and urged me to not only seek their forgiveness but also forgive them,” she says.
Jane was conflicted. Why would she seek forgiveness from people who had wronged her? Though skeptical and reluctant, she decided to do it, anyway.
“I started off with the person I had been angry with for 18 years. We met at a shopping mall in Westlands and talked for more than an hour, even though he had told me that he had only 30 minutes to spare. After he left, I couldn’t believe how much weight I had shed through that discussion. I felt so light-hearted and delirious, that I started screaming at the top of my voice, drawing the attention of the people around,” she recalls.
“Madam, what is going on?” one of the watchmen guarding the premises had cautiously asked as he approached her.
She ended up giving him her life story. He was quiet for a while, and then he unexpectedly told her, eyes clouded with tears, “Madam when I get back home, I need to seek my wife’s forgiveness.”
“That day, I discovered not only the power of forgiveness, but also the power of sharing,” Jane Katuga adds.
Encouraged, she moved down the list, asking for forgiveness and forgiving everyone she had listed. Three months after she began doing this, she realized that her body no longer hurt.
“Except for a twitch in my neck, I was fine. I even went to see one of my doctors, to tell him I had been healed. He was taken aback because all his patients only went to see him when they were sick!” she recalls, amused at the memory.
Burning with a desire to help people who had given up on life like she once had, she decided to train to become a life coach. Once she completed the training, she set up a “healing center” in Runda, on the outskirts of Nairobi.
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“Besides inspiring people in crisis, I also reached out to girls who, like me, had been sexually abused. I was raring to go, and had even got several corporate bookings.”
And then all hell broke loose in 2008, following the December 2007 elections. Around the same time, an old friend called her with a “wonderful” business idea. He wanted to partner with her to set up a supplies business that he assured her would guarantee good returns.
“I entered into the deal with him, a deal that cost me millions of shillings, only for him to disappear with every cent I had put in,” Jane Katuga says.
Frustrated and desperate, she went to the police, but he did not return her money.
With five months’ rent in arrears and coaching bookings canceled because of the post-election violence, she could no longer afford to sustain the centre, leave alone pay for her day-to-day needs.
“My landlord sought the services of auctioneers, who came to my house every day for three weeks to look for me, but found the house locked because I would leave at 4.30 every morning and drive off to a park, where I would stay and then drive back home at 10.30pm when sure nobody would be waiting for me,” she says.
One day, tired of running, she called the auctioneers herself.
“I invited them to my house and even made them breakfast. I then asked them to take everything they needed, but begged them to leave me my books, which I cherished. They started off with the kitchen, leaving me standing alone in an empty house with a pile of books by the time they were done. That is when the tears came.”
After sweeping her house clean, the auctioneers moved to her centre in Runda and took everything.
“I should have broken down then, but I told myself that I still had my willpower. With this new conviction, and remembering what forgiveness can achieve, I called the friend who had conned me and told him I had forgiven him, and that I no longer hoped he would pay me. After that phone call, I went to the police station and withdrew the case. I then took all the documents related to the case, put them in a box and headed to Lang’ata Cemetery to “bury” them,” she says.
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“The ‘burial’ was my way of letting go, of closing that chapter. I put the box on the ground, left it there and walked away,” Jane Katuga explains.
Jane Katuga cried for hours after that, then eventually decided to let go of the past and focus on the future. She and like-minded individuals formed the Concerned Citizens for Peace, one of the groups that counselled Kenyans following the post-election violence.
“I also went to Kibera and Dagoretti areas, offering an ear and a shoulder to cry on to anyone who felt the need to talk about what they had been through.”
Even though she still questioned where her life was heading and whether she would ever stand on her feet once again, the charity work was fulfilling.
By 2009, her financial situation had not improved much, so she decided to give herself a fresh start by traveling to South Africa after she learnt from an online forum she had subscribed to that a certain organization was looking for trainers.
“The opportunity wasn’t as promising as it had sounded. I slept hungry sometimes – on most days I had just one meal a day.”
One day, out of frustration and desperation, Jane Katuga promised God that she would transform as many lives as possible if he plucked her from her desolation and enabled her to live a meaningful life once again. Less than a week later, she got a call from an old friend back in Kenya, a call that changed her life.
“I have no idea where she got my number – I could not believe it when she asked me to be the lead trainer in a programme she had initiated. I had been at my lowest financial point at the time, and I saw that phone call as God’s way of responding to my prayers.”
Using what she was paid to head this training, and other subsequent trainings, Jane revived her training company, Growth Solutions, a coaching outfit whose main aim, she says, is to inspire people to go beyond their known limits.
“I integrate my life’s journey and how I dealt with the many challenges I have been through in my trainings” she explains.
Jane Katuga is now in a good place, emotionally and financially, and says she would not trade her experiences for anything, because they have shaped the resilient person she is today.
“What I have been through has taught me that there is no calamity that you cannot overcome – what greater lesson is there than this?”