By WINNIE THUKU-CRAIG
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would end up being a writer. I was busy climbing the corporate ladder of success and was enjoying living the life I had worked so hard for in school. I trained as an accountant and a marketer and worked in the corporate world for about 10 years before a small accident turned my life upside down and I found myself pouring my heart out in the pages of what I never thought would become a book.
When I wrote my first book, Broken to be Made Whole, it was just a therapeutic journal of what I was going through at that time. It was my way of letting out the pain, anger and frustrations in me after going through a stillbirth that almost cost me my life.
I was angry at God for allowing my baby to die. I was angry at people for giving me advice that was so irrelevant and sometimes so hurting – even though they meant well. I was angry at my society for not recognising my pain.
I was angry that miscarriages and stillbirths are treated like taboos and no one wanted to address the issues. Almost everyone wanted me to ‘move on with life’, unaware that I was so dead on the inside and could not move on with life as though nothing had happened.
In my pain I asked myself how many women were going through the same pain in silence; how many were as suicidal as I was yet our society took this issue so lightly.
Was I too sensitive? Why did something that was not a big deal to people break my heart so much? Why were people not seeing my struggle to cope? Was I a cry baby?
If the baby I had lost had been 10 years old, would society have treated me differently? Would they have mourned and grieved with me for as long as it took instead of requiring me to get over with it and move on?
Because almost no one I talked to seemed to grasp the intensity of my pain, I voiced my pain on the pages of a book.
Surprisingly, the book became an instant hit and has so far become a medium of comfort, inspiration and encouragement not only to those who have gone through similar issues but to anyone in need of encouragement.
While writing the first book, I cried a lot as I had to transport myself back to the time of the loss in order to tell my story. I would start typing and a river of tears would just start flowing, forcing me to stop working on the book.
That is when I started working on my second book, Whispers from Heaven. Having heard what my friends, family, colleagues, spiritual authority and the society had to say about my situation and how to cope, I told God: “I have heard all these, now I want to know what heaven is saying about me, I want to hear a whisper from heaven.” That is how this six months devotion book was birthed.
In mid 2011, the day after we came back from our honeymoon, I was crossing the road when a crazy matatu driver who was driving on the wrong side of the road hit me.
I broke a few bones and had to be confined to my house for several months. This was the season when my third book, The View from Above, was birthed.
It was an answer to several e-mails from girls that I had received asking me where I met my mzungu husband, which joints I frequented and all manner of questions.
The book, therefore, reinforces the power of self esteem; that one must first see themselves the way God sees them. You do not have to stoop low to get a mzungu husband; good husbands – whether black or white – all come from God.
Having mentored and walked with women who have gone through miscarriages and stillbirths, I realised how casual we take pregnancies. Some women have no clue that a pregnancy attracts warfare.
That once heaven has announced that a soul has been released on earth, then even in hell it is announced that there is a destiny to kill and destroy.
That is what inspired me to write my fourth book, Praying for your Unborn Baby, which is a free ebook available for download from my blog http://winnie-thuku.blogspot.com/
I am about to release another book, The Stained Jewels, which reaches out to anyone who thinks they are too bad to be used by God.
In the book, I use five bad girls that make good girls go green with envy, the likes of Rahab, the famous prostitute who ended up in the genealogy of Jesus and in the Faiths Wall of Fame (Hebrews 11) amongst giants of faith like Abraham and Noah.
I also challenge society to give a second chance to those who look like they have gone too have to be of any use to society; to embrace them instead of pointing religious fingers at them.
I love writing, I am always writing; to inspire, to encourage, to fuel fires that are burning dangerously low, to put off fires that should not be burning, and to provoke the church back to its rightful place.
Online church
I use my writing to reach what some have called my ‘online church’ which is my Facebook page, ‘Winnie Thuku,’ a platform solely for the purpose of spreading hope and inspiration.
I write for therapeutic reasons and I believe that what I have not published will at some point be more than what is published. When I am not writing a book I am writing an article, a poem, a song, a simple paragraph; anything that will bring hope to a world that is so rich in so many things yet so lacking in hope.
I also ghost-write others peoples books. For long, we have failed to preserve wisdom, knowledge, insights and valuable life lessons simply because the ‘owners’ of that wisdom are/were not professional writers.
Today, many graves hold a lot of treasures that are not helping anyone because people who should have written books did not do so. I therefore work with people who have quality content, and I bring it to life in the pages of a book.
Just before American ambassador Michael Rannerberger’s term ended, he recognised me as one of the young women making impact in this generation and I was honoured to be among those invited for his International Women’s Dinner.
I may not have everything I would not to have, but I have a laptop and with inspiration, and God’s backing, I figure I am equipped to impact my generation positively.
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