I didn’t meet my Mum face to face until I was 17 years old. When I was 2, she left to go to the US so that she could support us, as there were no jobs in Zimbabwe. As she and my father had already separated, my sisters and I lived with my aunt. Then, when I was...
Between the ages of 8 and 13, I was sexually abused by a family member. It happened many times and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I had all this guilt. As a result, when I was 11, I got into metal music, and my parents didn’t like that at all. They were...
When I was a baby, we had to flee Ethiopia because the regime started making threats against my father and his family. We are from the Oromo ethnic group, which have been persecuted for a long time, and my father was a political activist. Life in Djibouti, the...
(2/3) My dad came here by boat in 1999 as an asylum seeker. He was detained on Christmas Island for a few months, but back then the policies were much better for people seeking asylum, so he was able to file for a Family Reunion visa four years later, and my mother,...
My marriage unraveled when I was seven months pregnant. I think I had a nervous breakdown at that time. It’s hard for someone to go through a betrayal, but for a pregnant woman, it’s devastating. That was the defining moment in my life which led me to who I am now,...
