Nigerian professional dancer, dance instructor and fitness coach Kafayat Oluwatoyin Shafau, popularly known as Kaffy, has shared a traumatic childhood experience on a recent podcast.
The dancer revealed that her mother accused her of having an affair with her (mother’s) boyfriend at 13.
Speaking in a recent episode of The Honest Bunch podcast, Kaffy claimed that her mother dated different men after she divorced her father and she and her siblings were close to the men and even called them “daddies.”
She explained that her mum, on the other hand, was insecure about their closeness to her boyfriends and was suspecting them of having affair with them behind her back.
Kaffy recalled that once her mother stripped her naked and flogged her in front of everyone in their parlour after she suspected her of having an affair with one of her boyfriends because she walked in on her trying to clean blood from his face after he cut himself while shaving.
She explained that the experience was traumatic for her and made her also develop a sense of insecurity. In Kaffy’s words:
“I was 13 when my mother started suspecting me with her own men. Because of the divorce she had kinds of people. She will have different men she is dating and we will see those men as daddies because we were also missing that father [figure].
“The closer you are to the men, the more she is insecure. And there was a day that I was stripped naked in front of that man in the living room and punished for just trying to help ‘daddy’ clean blood from his face because he was shaving and cut himself. My mother walked into the room when I was saying, ‘Daddy, see. And she misinterpreted what was happening and I was flogged naked in front of everyone.
“That has its own traumatising effect on the mind on its own. But then you are thinking, ‘But that’s my mother, would I do that to my mother? Why would my mother even think of that of me, the daughter?’ Are you seeing that transfer of insecurity from mother to child? It’s done subliminally but it’s going to have its own effect.”
The dance coach added that her experience made her determined to break free from the “emotional abuse and blackmail” of her parent to become who she is today.
