GRACE EKIRAPA OPENS UP ON GRIEVING END OF MARRIAGE TO ACTOR PASCAL TOKODI

Kenyan television host Grace Ekirapa has opened up about the end of her marriage to actor Pascal Tokodi, describing the experience as a loss that stripped away the identity she had built around the relationship.

In a raw account, Ekirapa revealed that grieving the marriage itself, she had to confront the grief of losing herself. “Another kind of grief is losing yourself, losing a relationship, our marriage, and to some extent, looking back and saying, ‘This is not where I thought I would be at this point,’” she shared.

She noted that she was the last person in her family to get married but the first to leave a marriage. “That, in itself, was the greatest loss I had ever encountered. This threw me into a spiral,“ Ekirapa admitted. “It did not take away what I believed in, but it also gave me a different identity, a loser. And for some reason, I didn’t know how to rise above until I searched within and looked on the other side.“

The TV host described how she had built her life around the person she thought she would be at this stage. Yet, with the support of those around her and her faith, she eventually found the strength to rise.

“I grieved. I looked at loss. I built my life around this person that I thought I would be at this point. But then again, I rose up one day with the help of people around me and the reality of the word and how God helped me get up and I realised there’s so much more away from what I thought I wanted to have achieved by now. And I could still achieve it, if only I looked on the other side.”

For Ekirapa, that other side of grief has become a place of opportunity. “That’s the other side of grief the rising up part, the doing the work part, the seeing the opportunities part, and believing that the opportunities are real and they’re available for you. Not because the world will see it, but because you have to make them see it. The other side of grief for me feels like an opportunity.“

She acknowledged that grief is messy and painful. “Yes, close the curtains. Yes, cry yourself a river, have swollen eyes, walk in public looking like you couldn’t even comb your hair. But after all that is done, sit down, reevaluate, call yourself for a meeting and say, ‘I can do more than this for me.’”

Her daughter has been her anchor throughout the journey. “My daughter has been that anchor. She’s been that wake-up call. Every time I look at her, I’m like, ‘I can do more because I have her.’ God would not have given me an opportunity to take care of someone if He knew I could not.“