Meet Our Founder
Valerie Lolomari is the founder of Women of Grace UK and a passionate campaigner against the harmful practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). As a survivor of FGM/C, she struggled in silence for so long with feelings of shame and loneliness surrounding the experience she went through. By founding Women of Grace, I want to fill a gap and support minoritized women going through what I went through. Women of Grace is a grassroots organization with services covering mental health awareness, resilience building, and support and wellness services. We are ready to support women who may be dealing with trauma and we have no restrictions when it comes to this – as long as they are in our region and within our reach, we want to support women regardless of their background, religion, or race.
THE UNWANTED; FROM REJECTION TO GLORY
Imagine an object. Any object... Good. Now hold it in your mind and imagine for a minute. If that thing is hard pressed, but not crushed or broken; If it is struck but not destroyed, then what will it become? Will it be weaker for that experience, or stronger? If it could choose for itself, would it choose to be always whole, or to pass through the crushing and striking?
Choice is a funny old thing. It is the freedom to choose one thing over another, and our most fundamental human right. I sometimes wonder what paths I would have chosen for myself, given the chance… long before I was born. What choices would you have made if you could? What difference do you think those choices would have made?
I didn’t have a say in most of the things that happened. Or maybe I did. Perhaps we all, at one point or other, had a say in our destinies. As you journey through these pages, ask yourself at every turn – “what would I have chosen?”
Set in Nigeria, The Unwanted is the story of a girl whose learns that love is greater than hate, stronger than rejection, more powerful than fear.
