Nigerian comedian Helen Paul, popularly known as Tatafo, has revealed how she turned rejection into a power force that changed her life after being born out of rape.
She made this known in a post on her Instagram page on Friday, as she discussed the stigma of being born out of rape, which caused her aunts to repeatedly remind her that she was a bastard.
Helen further urged her supporters not to be discouraged by rejections, noting that she had progressed from a comedienne to a professor in the United States.
Her words: “Never feel rejected; believe it to be your power force.
From a comedian in Nigeria to a professor in the USA What a story! Please be alive to tell your story too.
All things will work out.” “Some of us cannot take rejection; some of us do not know that the words we say can make someone feel rejected forever, but in the way it worked for me, it was different from what Yoruba call akanda omo (a special child).
READ ALSO: Miss Nigeria Int’l Seeks Increased Investment in Entertainment Sector
“You must have heard before where I shared on a stage that I was born out of rape and grew up with my great-grandmother.
“When my aunties come to give grandma money for feeding, they will say ‘Don’t use this money to take care of one bastard child, use it to take care of yourself and buy your medicine’.
“Once they leave, mama would turn to me and speak in pidgin ‘you don hear wetin dem aunty dem dey talk, na so this world be o.
Na people wey suppose be your mama blood be that oh but dem don tell you who you be. If you like, grow up, forget yourself, say if person no do well, nobody they celebrate ham’.
“But I realize that anytime I offended Mama, she would not want to touch me because they have warned Mama not to beat me. So you think a child looking at different talk will grow up with love?
“But today, I am a comedian in Nigeria and a professor in the United States.”
