Women’s Resilience Circle: Healing Hearts, Transforming Families

Nareiyo was thirteen when she was told she was going for a visit. The visit did not end. It was a marriage arrangement. Nareyio entered a polygamous household as the youngest wife among older women
who already understood the structure she had just been placed into. She did not. There had been no preparation. No conversation about rights. No income of her own. No education that would allow her options. She became a wife before she understood what adulthood meant. Children came in close succession. Pregnancy, recovery, pregnancy again. Within the household, conflicts were common. Favoritism shaped daily life. When tensions rose, she was often the one blamed. She reports repeated physical assaults. Long periods of neglect. Especially during pregnancy and after childbirth. There was also economic control. When she tried small-scale farming, the income did not remain in her hands. When she began selling potatoes, the earnings were taken. Saving became impossible. Independence remained out of reach. Returning to her parental home was not a viable option. Community support was limited. So she endured. More than three decades passed this way. Over time, through informal labor and disciplined saving in small amounts, she began rebuilding something. Not freedom yet — but capital. Eventually she relocated to Narok town. There, she started selling Maasai beadwork and traditional fabrics. For the first time in her adult life, she controlled her own income. She describes that period as the first time she experienced relative stability and peace. Today her beadwork and textile business is operating. Some of her children have completed school. Younger children remain in school. The years of abuse, however, did not disappear with relocation. Emotional trauma carried forward. Isolation leaves marks that income alone does not erase. In 2026, Nareyio joined the Women’s Resilience Circle.

The Women's Resilience Circle provides a one year, non-residential, cohort-based program of spiritual nurture, mental health services, financial education and resilience training for women who have experienced significant abuse, trauma or loss affecting their lives and families. They desire to see circles of women in Narok, equipped with resilience building skills, living out their God-given potential in a holistically healthy way, helping others to find hope, while thriving within their community. 

We help a circle of women experience healing, renewal and restoration from trauma. While interacting with sisters who are in a similar situation, they are empowered to embrace their God given identity, discover purpose and hope for the future. The women receive group and individual counseling, financial training which leads to increased income while helping others in their network and church. The women also learn how to appropriately respond to crises and develop coping strategies leading to a resilient and sustainable life. 

During the cohort year a woman receives more than 90 hours of one-on-one meetings in addition to three one-week seminars. Each woman receives at least 12 hours of group counseling and up to 10 hours of individual counseling from a mental health professional. Experts in local income production provide insight, ideas and planning. Start up or scaling funds are often made available. Core values of Empathy, Community, Empowerment and Transformation push them towards Healing Hearts and Transforming Families. 

Eunice cried as she shared about being raped while in 4 th grade and her first attempt at suicide shortly after that attack. She had never shared about the rape with anyone – not her grandmother who she was living with, not her mother who had abused and sent her to the grandmother, not any teachers at school, not even any friend. She said this was the first time in her life she felt safe. There is a long path ahead to emotional and spiritual health, and to creating a sustainable life for her and her children. Eunice is resilient and wanting out of the trap she finds herself. The Women’s Resilience Circle provides that safe space to begin the journey. There is a lot of hard work ahead needing much prayer and support because Eunice’s young life includes feelings of worthlessness, further rejection, acting out destructively, abortion, 5 children, and seeking hope from the wrong people and places. Women’s Resilience Circle was created to minister and change the trajectory of lives for women like Eunice. Our one-week seminar for this cohort of 8 women, was emotionally transformative for each participant and impactful for our 2 staff and 3 volunteers. There was one group counseling session and 5 of the women also had a 1 1/2 hour counseling session with a loving, professional trauma counselor. (we ran out of time so the remaining three will begin this month). On the last day of the seminar, Eunice shared that she cleared her contact list of all those who have been part of her trauma induced destructive behavior. Please pray for us as we are creating the structure and curriculum as we go, working within a tight budget. The WRC has monthly meetings with the cohort and a weekly visit with each woman plus two more week-long seminars in the year long program.

Story and photos shared with permission.

She thought losing her husband would be the hardest thing she would ever survive. Within weeks of burying him, the house they had built together was no longer hers. The land she had farmed for years was no longer hers either. It did not go to strangers. It went to his brother. For seventeen years, she has watched the rains fall on land she is not allowed to touch. She went to the elders. She waited. Nothing changed. Every two weeks she still walks in and out of court corridors with the same file in her hands. Her son was a small boy when this began. He is now in university. Seventeen years have passed. Josephine did not step away. On 5th March, for the first time in seventeen years, her case will be heard in court. Pray for her as that day approaches.