At 22 Shelly (not her real name) has had to face many difficulties, but even after becoming a teenage mother, being disowned by her own mother, and losing a child under tragic circumstances, she has never given up.
At 17 Shelly was already a mother of two and a school drop-out with little hope of a bright future. She lost what she thought was her only support when her grandmother died nine days after her first child was born, and just over a year later she bore another son.
This saw her being condemned by no less a person than her mother who told her that she only had one child ‒ her son, who lives overseas ‒ and that she never had a daughter. She has also been cursed and condemned by relatives from her extended family, and she
