In The Name of Love: The Men Who Broke Her and The Woman She Became

The path of a dreamer is rarely straight, but for Wanjiru Kamau, the road she took was paved with heartbreak and lessons. Starting university with only a dream, Wanjiru’s life was derailed by devastating romantic choices.

Her journey is a raw look at the cost of naivety, emotional dependence, and seeking external validation. From a naive student hiding a secret pregnancy to a woman battling crippling anxiety and self-doubt, Wanjiru’s story is a powerful, cautionary tale.

It exposes the danger of prioritizing fleeting love over a concrete future and how, through sheer willpower, one woman finally chose to reclaim her own spark.

It Began…

When young and naive Wanjiru Kamau joined the campus, all she had was a dream, one that she would strive to actualize with everything in her. However, everything changed when she went home for the long holidays during her second year of university.

Coming from a humble background, she had to hustle during the holidays to at least add to the small allowance that her single mother managed to give her. While working in a cyber cafe, she met a charming young doctor, the love of her life, or so she thought. Having been schooled in a secondary school that was run by nuns, Wanjiru was innocent and naive on matters of sex, protection, contraceptives, and everything else.

She got pregnant, and she knew terminating the pregnancy was not an option. Wanjiru knew in her heart that she would never bring herself to do it. Scared, confused, and afraid of what her mum would think or do to her, she decided to hide the pregnancy, informing only the father of her child.

The Reality of Isolation

First forward, school resumes, and she goes back to school. Her first trimester was so hard on her, she had to work to fend for herself. She had to prepare for when her baby arrived while still attending those long university lectures every day. She had wanted to inform her mother of her pregnancy, because no matter how old one is, you’ll still need your mom.

However, she had fought with her before going back to school, and now she had no one for emotional support. This included when she developed hyperemesis gravidarum (extreme morning sickness) and was vomiting blood. At this point, she was not sure if the father of her unborn baby was married or not, because he visited her very late at night.

One day, he came home with wounds on his private parts, and pregnant Wanjiru, who just wanted a two-parent household for her baby, asked no questions. Days later, she got diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. Still, she asked no questions.

During one of his visits, Wanjiru noticed that the guy was protective of his laptop; she decided to take it. She opened the recycle bin and found explicit photos of him and another lady. A series of apologies and nice romantic gestures followed; she forgave him, and instead of things getting better, he left her, never to call or come back.

After giving birth, she returned home to care for her baby because she could not support herself in Nairobi. She deferred from university for two years to focus on raising her son. During that time that she met another man who promised her the world. By then, she had an established shoe business that her boyfriend gave her money to expand.

Chasing Greener Pastures

In pursuit of greener pastures, she returned to the city and left her boyfriend for another man she met on Tinder. Did it get better? No. Her experience with men got worse. The Tinder beau made her reckon that she should have stayed single.

He cheated on her more times than he said the words “I love you.” Not only that, he was hooked on marijuana; the only thing he cared about was where and how he could get his next joint for the day.

Emotional Bankruptcy

While trying to find the gold in a city full of glittering stones, raising her son, and getting a degree, Wanjiru met another man. An IT specialist who showered her with love and promises, but like the rest, he delivered nothing but pain.

After supporting him financially, the man finally gets stable, and just like that, decides to show Wanjiru his true colours, from the cheating, to the emotional and verbal abuse, and neglect. Having learnt from her own experience, Wanjiru decided to leave the guy and focus on herself and raising her son.

Depression hit her hard, that she became suicidal, started doing drugs, and even wrote several suicidal notes to her sister.

The Final Break and Reawakening

It is then that the IT specialist crawled back, begging for a second chance and promising change. Wanjiru, who just wanted to be loved, took him back. She moved in with him, and she provided for both of them. After three months, she lost her job.

The guy supported her for a while, but later dropped the support. Just like her previous relationships, it got worse: cheating, insults, emotional abuse, and neglect. It even got to a point where the man used her family trauma, which she had opened up to him about, against her. He would apologise and later go back to hurting her in every way possible.

Her mental health got bad, she almost went mad with crippling anxiety. It was then that Wanjiru decided that she had had enough of him and of trying so hard to be loved.

After self-reflection, she realised that she was so emotionally dependent on male validation. She decided to find herself and restore her spark and self-worth, which she had lost in the pursuit of love and validation.

The Rebuilding

Today, Wanjiru tells her story on TikTok to educate, inspire, and warn young women who, like her, might be seeking love from outside instead of from within. She advises young girls to follow their dreams and not to abandon them in the name of love, to prioritize themselves, and to heal their traumas.

Unlike her, she advises, they should end up in better places than she is at her age.

She has moved back to the village to heal, raise her son, who is now grown and already in school. She is also restrategizing, reinventing, and restarting her life.