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#IAmMother: Thokozani’s Story

Thokozani What is it like to be married to someone with a disability, and also be raising children?

I would say it’s so much challenging, it challenged me up to the point where I was mentally affected as well. It is so difficult because I have to become a psychiatric to my husband because he was brain damaged. I had to be a… psychologist to him and to my kids, I had to be a counsellor to my children, to make them understand what is going on with their dad, you see? Because it was very, very much depressing… the doctors told me [name] he would… come out with something like… he would like… hating 1 or 2 people of us in the house. So I noticed that it was my daughter and myself at first, later on it was my son and I had to figure it out, what’s really is that is going on? I figured it out that [name] that he sees… himself as… an outcast he thought that the boys taking the roll of being a man in the house because when he left, my son wasn’t driving but when he came back, my son was driving so, it was like he was rid of his manhood, so then the boy is in charge, so he would treat him otherwise, he would be aggressive towards him and towards myself and I know to myself everything will be okay and I was in charge of everything. So his manhood was ripped off so it was so much challenging with the kids as well but I thank God that He managed to pull it off. He got us this far.