Kenyan musician and entrepreneur Esther Akoth Kokeye, alias Akothee, has opened up about the emotional toll of co-parenting and single motherhood, describing the journey as nothing short of devastating.
Speaking on Thursday, April 9 in an interview with Dr. Ofweneke, Akothee painted a picture of a woman who carried the weight of raising her children largely alone, while navigating betrayal, poverty, and desperation.
“The journey of single mother or co-parenting is suicidal. You are dealing with somebody who came with expectations in this relationship that never worked. They can never forgive you,” she said.
The mother of five revealed that following a painful episode involving her children’s father, she has had a change of heart regarding advice she previously gave to single mothers.
“I will allow me to ask single mothers that I ever advised to allow them access their children, that kindly do what you think is good for you, because you are the one who knows the father of your children, how far they can go, how deep they can go,” she said.
What hurt her most, she confessed, was watching her daughters, whom she had nurtured from girls into women, now being broken by the very man who had abandoned them.
“What did break me most is that I fixed those girls into women now and breaking them right now is very easy,” she said.
Akothee made clear that her daughters’ father lost his place in her life long ago, having walked out when her children were still toddlers.
“The only men that I might sit down with to negotiate why they are breaking my children are the ones they are falling in love with, but not their father who dumped us when Vesha was hardly nine, Rue baby was hardly seven, and Prudence was hardly five,” she stated.
She acknowledged that despite everything, she had never denied him access to the children and had never tried to turn them against him.
“I’d never denied him a chance to see the kids. I’d never built bridges. However, he moved on, we didn’t, and he didn’t move on with us,” she said.
Akothee also revisited some of the darkest moments of her past, recalling how she once entered a transactional relationship with a doctor simply to ensure her sick daughter Prudence could receive medical attention.
“I had to become a girlfriend to a medical doctor who had a clinic. It was a transactional relationship where every time my daughter was sick, the doctor had airtime,” she revealed.
She described being arrested by police without her identification documents, which her ex had withheld, while her sick daughter lay at home alone with a fever.
She had arranged to meet the doctor for help and waited for hours, unaware that he had simply forgotten about her.
“I left my daughter at home with fever, shivering, vomiting. I started waiting for him at two, until it was about 10. He forgot me,” she recalled.
Reflecting on that period, Akothee used it as a cautionary tale.
“That’s why dating a married man, that’s something I’m not advocating for. Whenyou are desperate, you don’t even find out how time has gone,” she concluded.
