Some children are not born with warm welcomes. They are born into homes where their first cries echo into dysfunction, not celebration. Where they are seen not as blessings but burdens. These are the children who grow up being wrong even before they speak. The ones who are always at fault when something goes missing. The ones branded “thief” because poverty has made their clothes different, their shoes worn, and their silence misunderstood.
At family gatherings, they sit quietly in the corners. Their cousins wear matching clothes, laugh without shame, and ask cruel questions like, “Koore le ja eng kwa lona? Motogo wa tsabana?” And everyone laughs, because poverty, when worn like skin, becomes a joke. You’re the one asked to help the helper while others play. You are useful, but not valued.
In the neighborhood, you walk with your eyes low. You are the one they point at, the girl with uncombed hair, the boy with dust-stained shoes. Elders don’t bless you, they curse you. “You’ll never amount to anything,” they say, spitting bitterness your young mind doesn’t yet understand. But you feel it. It sinks in.
So you become silent. You don’t raise your hand in class. You doubt every step you take. You hide when photos are taken. You grow up with social anxiety, low self-worth, self-doubt, and a soul that is bruised before it even had the chance to bloom.
But here’s the thing they didn’t know: you were being refined.
The fire they threw you into was not meant to destroy you. It was meant to forge you. To sharpen your ear to the voice of God in the midst of noise. To help you recognize what love isn’t, so you can give what you never received. To teach you resilience through rejection. Empathy through pain. Strength through abandonment.
You were set apart.
But there comes a point, a sacred crossroad, where you must choose. Will you become what they said you’d be? Or will you become what God whispered to your spirit in secret moments? Will you continue the cycle, or will you break it?
Because you, child of the forgotten, are not a mistake. You are not ugly. You are not worthless. You are the seed planted in the dry ground, hidden so deep no one saw your roots growing. And when you rise. because you will. you will rise differently. Your scars will be your proof. Your voice will heal others. Your presence will break chains.
You were not born wrong.
You were born for this.
