Media personality Grace Ekirapa has shared her personal reflection on grief, opening up about painful experiences that shaped her life and how she eventually learned to see loss from a different perspective.
In a candid conversation centered on grief and healing, Grace spoke about losing her mother at a young age, navigating heartbreak, losing her identity through marriage and career struggles, and eventually finding hope on what she repeatedly called “the other side” of pain.
One of the most emotional moments in her story involved memories of losing her mother.
Grace recalled carrying pain and resentment for years as a child because she struggled to understand the reality of what had happened.
“The way it happened was that she went to a very far country and was one day to come back,” she said while reflecting on how her family had explained her mother’s absence.
She admitted that as a child, she interpreted the situation differently.
“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, a lot of resentment toward her.”
“I kept looking over my shoulder to wait and see if my mom would show up,” she shared.
The emotional burden stayed with her for years until she reached a point where she consciously allowed herself to process the pain.
“But then when I was able to grieve it… I was able to figure out what would be if she was still here.”
Instead of repeatedly asking why painful events had happened, she said she began shifting her focus toward another question: what could come after pain?
Grace explained that grief later returned in a completely different form when she experienced the loss of a marriage and the collapse of expectations she had built around her future.
“Another kind of grief is losing yourself, losing what I was doing, a relationship, a marriage,” she explained.
She admitted that the experience deeply shook her because it disrupted not only her plans but also how she saw herself. Looking back, she said she felt an overwhelming sense of failure.
“I was the last person to get married in my family, the first one to get out. And that in itself was the greatest loss I had ever encountered.”
“This threw me into a spiral. It just did not take away what I believed in, it also gave me a different identity — a loser.”
Grace explained that during that difficult season she struggled to imagine herself beyond the disappointment and public narrative surrounding her life.
“I lost my identity in work. I lost my career. So much was said, so much was done.”
The pressure, she explained, forced her into a difficult but necessary decision.
“I had to make a decision to rise from that narrative.”
According to Grace, healing was not a sudden breakthrough but rather a gradual process that involved support from people around her, faith and intentional self-reflection.
One major source of strength became her daughter.
For Grace, motherhood shifted her perspective and gave her renewed purpose.
“My daughter has been that anchor. She’s been that pickup holder.”
She explained that becoming responsible for another human being reminded her that she still had value and purpose beyond her pain.
“There are better things on the other side. There’s more on the other side of healing,” she concluded.
