Zoleka Mandela Reveals Painful Details About Her Life

Zoleka Madela has this thing called life rapped all around her finger. Sharing her life journey, Zoleka Mandela took to Social Media recently to share her emotional journey of childhood, motherhood and healing process of losing two kids and living with breast cancer. Zoleka’s story is unlike others that we have heard before, she has gone from suicidal to survival.

Have a read below:

“I was four years old when I was first physically abused, nine years old when I remember being sexually abused and when I had my first drink – thirteen when I used drugs and alcohol to escape the self blame. I thought because all these women and men physically and sexually abused me as a child and teenager, I had only myself to blame.”

“Ten days prior to the early morning my daughter was killed by a drunken driver, I had a drug induced psychotic episode that had me setting my bedroom alight in an attempt to burn myself alive. I was suicidal and depressed throughout my teenage years and late twenties. I chose sex with men, drugs and alcohol for thirteen years, over my own children, my oldest son and daughter – to make me feel anything but myself.”

“Albeit the use of drugs for ten years, alcohol for seventeen years I celebrated six years of sobriety this year after laying my daughter to rest. A year after her passing, my third born child took his last dying breath in my arms just two days after his premature birth.”

“I was then diagnosed with Breast Cancer at the age of thirty-two, nine months after that, and birthed my fourth child following a Bilateral Mastectomy and sixteen cycles of Chemotherapy. After three years in remission, I was diagnosed with Luminal B Cancer three days before my 36th birthday in April this year.”

“A few days before an appointment at a fertility clinic to try for another baby. After surgery to remove the tumour in my chest and recently completing seven Chemotherapy treatments to treat an aggressive Breast Cancer, I await thirty three sessions of Radiation in a few days.”

“In retrospect … Perhaps there are no acceptable answers as to why I was subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of loved ones for so many years, why Cancer has invaded my body for the second time in my life or why I suffered the unimaginable and excruciating pain of burying both my children but this is all my life, all its ebbs and it’s many flow”

“I’m Zoleka and I’m proud of the woman I am today, imperfect but unapologetically me!

In 2013, the 36 year old has released a book titled ‘When hope whispers’ where she tells it all about her life and battle with drug, alcohol, sex addiction and living with breast cancer.”