By Veronica Kirigo

Two years ago, Pynnette Wanjiru viewed herself as unattractive. She regarded all those who exclaimed at her beauty as liars. Yet at the tender age of 16 years, she was a model who had graced many catwalks. 

Pynnette Wanjiru

Looking at her today, the 23-year-old international model would excel in any beauty contest. In fact it’s hard to believe that she, at any time, thought herself as unattractive.

Her story is quite riveting. At the age of 16, she suffered from low self-esteem, which led her to drug and alcohol abuse.

“I looked for answers in the wrong places and when this failed, I started doing drugs and alcohol in order to numb the bad feelings I had,” says Wanjiru.

She blamed her woes to family issues that saw her raised by a single, but loving mother.

The effect of her actions further saw her slide deeper into depression. “I would look at girls like me and see them happy, some were married and had beautiful families and, I would wonder why not me?”

Hospital admission

By age 21, Wanjiru could not take it anymore and she ran off to leave with her aunt. A few days later, her aunt noticed something was amiss and she called her mother who immediately came to her daughter’s aid.

The two women took Wanjiru to Nairobi West Hospital where she was diagnosed to have suffered a nervous breakdown.

“While there, I started looking at the white ceiling of the ward and reflecting on my life. I wondered if this is what I had wanted to be when I was four years old?”

A week later, Wanjiru was discharged but she had a new mission — to search for answers about her broken life.

“I began searching the Internet for any information regarding success and failure,” recalls Wanjiru.

Her effort bore fruit a week later when she stumbled upon an article entitled ‘Law of Attraction’.

 Prior to this, Wanjiru’s mentality was that every successful person was born that way.

“So if you were not born successful, you can do nothing about it,” she says.

“As I read through the article, I realised that my wrong perception had dictated the direction of my life and that is why my life was falling apart,” recalls Wanjiru.

Armed with this wisdom, she began to shift her mentality by thinking positively and within a year, she started feeling optimistic.

“I started working on my feelings as opposed to concentrating on negative thoughts,” says Wanjiru.

Soon, she was back doing her catwalk. But the eye opener had left an urge to transfer the knowledge she had found to others whether young or old.

This saw her start a company called Abundant Woman, which intertwines music, fashion and inspiration all under one roof.

Abundant woman

The company, which she heads, organises seminars every month with lessons on mind power and overcoming low self-esteem.

Although it’s barely six months old, it has already attracted a large number of people of different ages seeking to be members.

In the next one year she hopes to open a gym and spa.

In a year’s time, Wanjiru departs for Europe to pursue catwalk and hopes her effort will capture the hearts of Milan modelling agencies — the epitome of catwalk.

However, the Abundant Woman company will remain in Kenya, but she is confident to open branches around the world.