If you’ve followed me for a while, you probably think you know me.

You see the smile. The extrovert. The woman who seems to have a hundred ideas on the go at once. I’m building one business, launching another, attending Google events, creating content, networking, and generally making life look like one big adventure.

If you’ve crossed me, you’ve probably met a very different version of me. The woman with a firm blacklist who has learnt, often the hard way, that having boundaries doesn’t make you a bad person. Some people probably describe me as a bitch.

Both versions are real.

But neither tells the whole story.

What most people don’t see is the sadness that quietly sits behind both of them. The grief that doesn’t disappear just because you smile for a photo or crack a joke. The years of rebuilding that no one really sees because social media only captures a moment, not the journey.

I’ve thought about writing this for a long time. Partly because I wanted to tell my story, but mostly because I know there are other women sitting quietly in marriages, churches, or families, wondering if they’re the problem. I know that feeling because I lived it for years.

Taking a long time to leave

Getting divorced wasn’t a spontaneous decision. It wasn’t something I woke up one morning and decided to do because I was unhappy. In fact, staying would have been much easier in almost every way.

I was young,19 when we got married, and my ex was 26; naïve and deeply immersed in a church culture that preached purity above almost everything else. Friday youth meetings included exorcisms for things like lust and masturbation. Purity culture wasn’t something we discussed; it was simply the air we breathed.

I wanted to leave in 2014, but I stayed. I was told I was the problem, and I believed it. How dare I think of myself and want more for myself? So I stayed another eight years. I worked on myself, we renewed our wedding vows, and I tried everything not to leave. But in the end, I had to do what was best for me. That is a longer story to tell. It’s not black and white. My ex-husband is not a bad person, just as I am not a bad person for leaving. 

For me, the moment came when a deacon at church came after my son and tried to sue me for crimen injuria for standing up for him and myself… and NO ONE came to my defence! My ex-husband stayed in the same prayer group as the man. The pastors refused to speak to me because I was a woman; they would only speak through my husband. I came to my own defence. I realised that the only way to help my children was to help myself first. First was getting out of the oppressive religious cult I found myself in, and then leaving my marriage.

Leaving is terrifying

People often assume women leave because they think the grass is greener. For me, leaving meant walking away from certainty. I knew my family wouldn’t understand. I knew people at church would judge me. I knew there would be gossip, assumptions, and whispers. I knew it would affect my children, even though they were adults. What I didn’t realise was just how deep those consequences would run.

Financially, I wasn’t exactly in a position to start over either. I didn’t even have my own bank account until 2017. Looking back now, that still surprises me. I had spent almost my entire adult life without financial independence. My business didn’t really begin until 2019 during COVID, and even then it felt more like a hobby than something that could support me. I am very proud of how I have built that hobby into a well-established brand that is getting awards and recognition.

People often tell me I was brave for leaving, but it didn’t feel brave at the time. It felt terrifying. I knew exactly what I was risking, and there wasn’t a single part of me that believed life would suddenly become easier. I wasn’t leaving because I thought there was something better waiting for me on the other side. I simply reached a point where staying felt more damaging than leaving, even with all the uncertainty that came with it. Sometimes courage isn’t about being fearless; it’s about making the harder choice because you know, deep down, it’s the only one you can live with.

Broken relationships with my children

My kids stopped talking to me.I believe there are many reasons why we’ve ended up here. Narratives told by the church. Different perspectives. Hurt on all sides. Perhaps resentment over decisions we made together as parents that are now remembered differently.

One of my sons was assessed by a psychologist who believed mainstream schooling wasn’t suitable for him. We had very little money, so homeschooling felt like the best decision we could make with the resources we had. At the time, I also believed that qualifications and practical skills would serve them better than following the traditional matric route. Whether that was the right decision or not is something I’ve wrestled with many times.

That’s one of the hardest things about being a parent. We make decisions based on what we know at the time, with the resources we have and the belief that we’re doing what’s best for our children. Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we don’t. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and there are certainly decisions I would make differently today. But every choice I made came from a place of love. I wanted my boys to have opportunities despite our financial circumstances. I made sure they attended clubs, social activities, and pursued qualifications that matched their interests. I genuinely believed I was preparing them for a different kind of future. Parents don’t get a handbook, and sometimes our very best still isn’t enough. If I got things wrong, I would own that without hesitation if I were ever given the opportunity.

Dating after Divorce

Then there were the three or four years of being single: dating, Tinder, pubs, and some bad choices. ( This will need to be a whole book, ha ha, not enough time to tell you the stories) I have been in groups of married women who sit and talk about single women. I was accused of flirting with a husband at a braai because I had the audacity to wear a shoestring vest on a summer day by the pool and chat outside at the braai instead of making salads inside with the women. Honestly, I don’t want anyone’s husband, and secondly, he is a vile, disgusting misogynist. No one wants him, honey!  

I found friends who turned out to be using me. One friend outright said she was going to ‘steal my rich gay friends’ from me, and she did just that. I had one friend take advantage of my desperate situation to build up her sad musical career, but when I found out she had affairs with married men, and she asked me to buy her followers, I knew this chick was shady. Both exploited me, and I was too weak at the time to see it, but boy did they show their true colours.

I joined a social group that turned out to be run by an egotistical maniac who booted me off the group because I put her in her place a few times and called people out who behaved badly, like men just sliding into your DMs from the group like they’re entitled to access to you. Plus, I discovered the people in the group were faulty, doing cocaine, or just plain fake. So no thanks.

Support that saved me

I also found some people along the way who proved to be genuine, took me in, and helped me through, like my friend Ash and my sister and brother-in-law, Jacqui and John, in the UK. If it weren’t for them, I do not know where I would be today. The Support I did not expect but arrived anyway. I had visions of living on the streets but I got to live in the UK with my sister and in a beautiful castle in Assagay with my friend Ash. I had time to heal and grow.

Rebuilding takes time

Today, my life probably looks exciting from the outside. People see me building businesses, launching new projects, travelling to Google events, creating content, and playing the influencer. They see the smile, the confidence, and the woman who always seems to be onto the next big idea. And to be honest, I love that part of my life. I love creating something from nothing, meeting interesting people, and proving to myself that it’s never too late to reinvent your life.

What most people don’t see is that success doesn’t erase grief. The sadness of losing relationships, missing my children, and carrying the weight of the past doesn’t disappear because other parts of life are finally going well. I’ve learnt that happiness and sadness aren’t opposites; they often exist together. I’ve finally permitted myself to find love, and I have. The most wonderful man has come into my life. He adores me, hears me, sees me, understands me and believes in me, and I adore him, hear him, see him, understand him and believe in him.The purest real love I have ever known.

I can be genuinely excited about a new relationship and a new business venture while grieving the loss of my family. I can laugh until my stomach hurts with friends and still cry when I get home. I’ve spent plenty of money on psychologists; I’ve numbed things with more wine than I’d care to admit, and there are still days when anger bubbles to the surface. Healing isn’t neat or linear, and it certainly isn’t something you tick off a list.

For a long time, I thought healing meant becoming the person I was before everything fell apart. Now I think it’s something different. It’s learning to carry your story without letting it define every part of you. It’s accepting that you can be emotional, a little broken, occasionally messy, and fiercely independent, and still be successful. Those things aren’t contradictions; they’re simply what it means to be human.

So when you see the smile, know that it’s real. But so is everything that came before it. Both can exist at the same time, and perhaps that’s the greatest lesson this journey has taught me.