Grace Ekirapa shares painful journey of losing her mother at 8 and learning to heal years later
By Steve Ireri, May 10, 2026Minister of the Gospel and media personality Grace Ekirapa has opened up about her deeply emotional journey of loss, revealing how losing her mother at the age of eight shaped her childhood and took years of healing and self-discovery to fully process.
Speaking in a video shared on her TikTok page on Saturday, May 9, 2026, Grace described her mother’s passing as one of the most defining moments of her life, noting that the news was broken to her in a way that softened the reality.
She was told her mother had travelled to a faraway country and would one day return.
“This is the grief that nobody talks about. Another kind of grief is losing yourself. It also gave me a different identity, a loser. On today’s perspective, I want to look at the topic of loss and grief. You know, I know you ask about loss and grief. This is the grief that nobody talks about. When I was 8 years old, I lost my mum, and the way it was broken to me was that she went to a very far country and that she was going to come back one day,” Grace narrated.
She explained that, although the intention was to protect her innocence as a child, the story left her holding on to hope for years, constantly looking over her shoulder and waiting for her mother to come back.
According to Grace, this prolonged expectation slowly turned into emotional confusion and resentment, as she began to feel like her mother had chosen another side over her and her family. She admitted that this emotional burden stayed with her for a long time before she was eventually able to confront and process it in adulthood.
“I understand that I was little, so they needed the best angle to share with me the news, but what they did not know is that for many years I kept looking over my shoulder to wait and see if my mum would show up. At some point, it made me feel like she chose the other side more than she chose us. So I carried a lot of anger and resentment towards her,” she shared.
Grace further revealed that part of her healing came when she accepted the reality that her mother was never coming back, a painful truth that forced her to reflect on how much time she had spent imagining a different life instead of learning to move forward.
She noted that grief is often misunderstood, saying that many people remain stuck in “what could have been” instead of focusing on how to rise above their pain and rebuild their lives.
“But then, when I was able to grieve and process it when I was older, I realised she was never going to come back. But what I did and realised I had done is that I had wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what would be if she were still here. I took time to think about what could have happened and how things would have turned out instead of how I can rise above it, and I feel like that’s a place where many of us have gotten to,” she added.
Another form of grief
The media personality also opened up about another form of grief she experienced later in life, which is the loss of self.
She described how marriage and life expectations at one point placed her in an emotional spiral, leaving her questioning her identity and self-worth.
Grace said she once felt like a “loser” due to personal challenges and life transitions, especially being the last in her family to get married, which added pressure to her emotional experience.
“When I grieved and processed the grief, we are not ready to rise above it and look on the other side. Now, another kind of grief is losing yourself, losing a relationship, a marriage. I was the last person to get married in my family, and that in itself was the greatest loss I had ever encountered. This threw me into a spiral. It not only took away what I believed in, it also gave me a different identity, a loser, and for some reason, I did not know how to rise above it until I searched within and I looked on the other side,” Grace shared.
However, she shared that through reflection, support systems and faith, she gradually began rebuilding herself, learning that life does not end with loss but often opens the door to new beginnings.
She emphasised that healing is a process that requires honesty, acceptance and the courage to look beyond pain, adding that she has since chosen to focus on growth, purpose and faith as she continues her journey forward.
“I grieved, I looked at loss, I built my life around this person, I thought I would be at this point, but then again I rose one day and of course with the help of people around me and the reality of the world and how God helped me get up from it, and I realised there is so much more away from what I thought I wanted to have achieved by now, and I could still achieve it if I only looked on the other side,” Grace shared.