Three tales of forgiveness: I have forgiven my ex husband- Gloria muliro

 Anne Ngugi, Gloria Muliro and Bright Oywaya Photo:File

"My wife, please forgive me." These were the last words Victoria Mwelu heard from her husband.

That apology, she recalls, was her husband's first admission that he had infected her with HIV.

Victoria was hurting, not just because the man she had loved since childhood had infected her with HIV and kept it a secret, but because in his death, he was leaving her behind to face stigma, to battle the disease and to raise their four children – all by herself.

"How was I going to face life? What would happen to me? How soon will I die?" The flurry of thoughts that hovered in her head was depressing. But then she did something that baffled her: she forgave him.

She still remembers her exact words to him; "What happened has already happened. I forgive you. Go in peace and I wish you all the best."

The man died a few hours later.

His burial marked the end of his life and the beginning of an unpredictable life for Victoria. The year was 2004. Stigma, she says, was at its peak. She had no means for an income, something that forced the family to move back to Makueni from Nairobi.

The aftermath unravelled just like she had expected. "It could have been worse," she says.

The act of forgiving her husband, letting him know that she harboured no hard-feelings took off a huge chunk of the weight as the tragedy unravelled.

"I had accepted what happened. I was fine with villagers knowing my HIV status. I was ready to move on," Victoria says.

This lightness in her heart, she says, is what pushed her to start farming. She needed to sustain her family after all.

"Forgiveness is at the heart of every healing process," says Bright Oywaya, a counsellor.

"A normal human being has something to blame when tragedy happens. It is normal reaction when someone else is behind our pain, our troubles, our misery," she says.

At 31, Bright was involved in a road accident. She was with a group of friends when another car rammed into theirs head on while overtaking a trailer.

She blacked out and woke up in a hospital bed. She had injured her spine and raptured her intestines. As a result she lost her ability to walk and remained confined in a wheel chair.

“I was mad," she says, "at the person who deliberately decided to overtake where they shouldn't have been overtaking. Because of their careless action I couldn't walk; I couldn't wear my heels; and I couldn't be as independent as I had been."

She also blamed God. She then blamed herself for not listening to an inner voice that told her not to join the others for the journey.

"I kept asking myself why I didn't heed to my initial feelings. I was not supposed to be on that trip," she says.

It took Bright a year to start processing what had happened to her. Eventually, she arrived at a point of forgiveness when she realised that she had to let go of her anger.

"Forgiveness, people don't realise, is not for the person being forgiven. The benefits of forgiveness are reaped by the one doing the forgiving. Staying with the hurt inside you is like keeping the poison within you – it will harm you in the long run," Bright says.

Now, Bright is a well-adjusted woman living life to the fullest. She counsels the physically challenged into accepting their situation and moving on like she did.

Catherine Mbau, a counselling psychologist, shares similar observations on forgiveness.

 "Forgiving brings more relief for the person who is forgiving than to the one being forgiven. In some occasions, the person being forgiven is not aware that they wronged you. They may be doing just fine, unaware that because of them someone is hurting."

But beyond this, Catherine says, forgiving refocuses the victim's mind from the past into the present and the future – where it really matters.

She argues that in order for someone to think of great ideas, their mind has to be free from other engagements.

"Staying mad at someone or something is preoccupying your mind, albeit with the wrong things," she says. "The sooner you stop being mad the earlier you start thinking of solutions to the immediate challenges one faces in life."

Gloria Muliro is a gospel singer. In 2015, it was reported across all media that her marriage of five years had screeched to a halt. Gloria, through media interviews, confirmed that she was moving on. The marriage was not working.

"I didn't try my best. I did my best," she said on KTN's gospel show Tukuza. "But God offers answers the way he wants to provide those answers."

The break-up was not as hunky-dory as it seemed from the nonchalance the couple handled interviews from the media. "It was a difficult moment," she said.

Today, Gloria says, she has forgiven her husband for all indiscretion that he put her through leading up to the break up.

"I have no burden to carry around," she says. "I have nothing against him in my heart."

She admits though, being human, that forgiving was not easy. Her belief in God, made it easier for her to let go."

The difficult part, she says, is forgetting. In her case, she says, she has grown wiser. Being wise in this case means not falling for any more lies from the offending person.

And if you are like journalist Anne Ngugi, after being hurt, you walk around with extra caution, "because once bitten twice shy".

"I discovered that not everyone can be a friend. Some people I learnt, are colleagues and not friends. You talk, walk and do so much together but it is only because you work together or share a certain space," she says.

Anne had worked for KTN as an anchor for more than a decade when some 'friends' asked her to move to a different TV station. She was promised better conditions and a handsome salary.

However, six months down the line she was relieved of her duties.

"I received a text asking me not to report to my desk and instead show up somewhere else for a meeting," Ann says. "I could tell that what was in the offing was not good."

When the axe fell and she became a casualty, she took it in stride. But almost immediately she felt the impact. She had to move houses and tighten the belt to survive. She lost friends. The very same people who had made her leave her cushy job at KTN stopped picking her calls too.

"I was angry at them. I didn't understand why they didn't have my back now when my chips were bad.  I regretted leaving my good job," she says.

It took a long while for the resentment to ebb away, and when she finally decided to let it go and focus on her future, things started looking up.

After being out of a job for about three years, Anne found her footing. When she let the bitterness go, she is now a TV anchor at MBCI and his happy with her life.

"You can't live with that venom in you and look ahead. At some point, hard as it may be, you have to let it go."

For Victoria, forgiving her husband gave her the impetus to seek medical help; the drive to work hard and earn a living; the belief in a purposeful existence.

She uses ARVs to impede the virus from overpowering her immune system. She is a dairy farmer with three cows. She also keeps chicken for their nutritious eggs.