Standing With Her: Stories of Survival

I grew up in a neighbourhood where women disappeared quietly, their absence shaped by an unjust system that turned small struggles into punishment. In Kenya’s justice system, poverty is never just a condition. It is often treated as a crime.

It is a system where justice bends under the weight of what one cannot afford, where freedom, more often than not, comes with a price tag. For those who have it, the law moves quickly, almost gently. For those who do not, it lingers, stretches, and confines.

Across courtrooms and crowded remand cells, a pattern quietly reveals itself. The line between crime and circumstance begins to blur. Minor offenses become grounds for detention, not because they are severe, but because they are easy to enforce. For some, it begins with something as small as an unpaid fine. A woman selling vegetables on a roadside is arrested for hawking without a license. In court, she is fined an amount she cannot afford. When she fails to pay, she is taken into custody. What was meant to be a minor penalty becomes days behind bars, her absence felt not just in the cell, but at home, where children wait and income disappears.

For others, it unfolds differently. A woman boards a matatu without enough fare. When she is unable to pay, the situation escalates, and she is handed over to authorities. What begins as a small moment of desperation quickly turns into a legal issue. Without the means to resolve the situation, she may end up in custody as the case drags on, hearing after hearing. What begins as a brief encounter with the law slowly stretches into weeks of waiting, his work interrupted, his income lost, and his life placed on hold, not by the weight of the offense, but by the limits of what he can afford.

But what stayed with me most was not what happened inside the system. It was what happened after.

I remember one woman in particular. When she came back, she was not welcomed home with relief. She returned to whispers, to distance, to a quiet kind of rejection. People spoke about her in lowered voices. Some avoided her entirely. Others reduced her to what had happened to her, as if those few days in detention had erased everything else she had ever been.

I saw the weight of it settle on her slowly.

The silence. The shame. The way she carried herself differently. The way her eyes no longer met others with the same ease. It was more than stigma, it was a kind of loneliness that turned inward, that slowly became something heavier, something closer to depression.

And yet, life didn't pause for her. There were children to feed. Rent to think about. Survival did not wait for healing. That is where I saw something else, something quieter, but far more powerful.

My mother.

She refused to look at these women the way others did. She did not reduce them to their worst moments. Instead, she showed up. She spoke to them. She encouraged them. She helped them find ways to start again, even when the world around them had already decided who they were. She understood something many people did not. That life is unpredictable. That today it may be another woman being judged, but tomorrow it could be you.

I would notice when mothers disappeared, their absence echoed through children at play, in the classrooms, and in quiet corners at school. I began to report what I saw to our mother, and she would follow up, checking on the women, offering help, and ensuring their children were cared for. Through these small acts of observation and her guidance, I began to understand the weight of injustice and the importance of support.

I saw this first-hand, how quickly circumstances can change, how easily someone can fall into a system that does not consider their reality. And because of that, my mother chose compassion over judgment, support over silence.

Through her, I learned what it truly means to give. The system does more than punish crime; it punishes vulnerability. Many inmates are never hardened criminals, but people trapped by circumstance,  poverty, lack of legal representation, or by minor infractions that would barely register if wealth or connections were involved. What begins as a minor offense for some becomes months of lost freedom for others, a quiet but devastating consequence of a system where economic disadvantage often determines who goes home and who stays behind bars.

For many, the cost of detention stretches far beyond the bars. Some are forced to hit the streets in search of their children, because by the time a single woman leaves custody, the family home is gone. Rent is unpaid, neighbors have evicted the children, and what should have been a brief punishment has become a rupture of family, security, and life itself. Days pass without contact, because many children have no mobile phones or means to reach their parents. Anxiety swells into despair; each missed meal or night spent alone weighs heavily. Some children whisper fears of death, imagining the worst for the parent they cannot reach, while parents themselves sink into depression, haunted by absence, helplessness, and the slow erosion of the family they cannot protect.

From my mother I learnt that, Sometimes, giving is never about having enough. Sometimes, it is about choosing to stand with someone when they have nothing left. It is about helping them rebuild when there is no time to break down. It is about reminding them that they are still worthy, still capable, still seen.

In communities where the system has already punished vulnerability, what we do next matters. I learnt that helping another woman is never just an act of kindness, it is an investment in community, resilience, and humanity itself.

When we support women instead of isolating them, we give them a chance to begin again. When we choose understanding over stigma, we create space for healing, even in the middle of survival.And in doing so, we gain something too. We gain stronger communities. We gain empathy. We gain a deeper understanding of each other’s humanity.

Because when women give to each other, especially in the hardest moments, something powerful happens. They rise, and they help others rise with them.

I #GiveToGain a world where women support each other through hardship, where compassion and solidarity help rebuild lives, and where no one is defined by the circumstances that temporarily take away their freedom.