IWD 2022: Tonette Shaw’s metamorphosis

THE summer of her 15th year was a defining moment for Tonette Shaw — her mom discovered that the ninth-grade St Catherine High School student was pregnant, setting in place a series of events, bad and good, that would change her life forever.

Now a counsellor at the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation (WCJF) Spanish Town Centre, and months away from graduating with a master’s in social work, Shaw is back at the place where as a child she showed up with her mom, scared, overwhelmed and unsure. And she’s teaching the adolescent mothers under her care how they can also overcome the seemingly insurmountable challenge of teen pregnancy to excel.

“I was pregnant at 15, I was a student, and I discovered I was pregnant for a boy in my class. Mom took me to the centre, and you know the centre is a safe place where you feel comfortable. You have girls in a similar situation, counsellors are there. They’re understanding…,” she shared.

She relates that she had a difficult home life, under the headship of her strict stepfather, who even now, 25 years after her pregnancy, has not forgiven her.

“I’m an only child and my stepfather was very, very  — extremely upset,” she said. “He and I still don’t have a good relationship because of what happened. I’ve proven  myself and still there’s [an issue].”

So big was the problem of her pregnancy that she says she was thrown out of the house, and homeless and pregnant, began staying at a friend’s house.

“That was back in the day, and sometimes the women aren’t independent so whatever the man says they have to go with it,” she said, explaining her mother’s inability to protest. “Mom was a good mother but she didn’t know how to stand up to the situation.”

It was her grandmother who intervened and petitioned her stepfather on her behalf, and Shaw was allowed to return home, give birth, and was then placed at Holy Childhood High in St Andrew in grade 10.

The WCJF programme not only offers continuing education for adolescent mothers 17 years and under who drop out of school due to pregnancy, but also has as part of it mandate, reintegrating all school-age mothers into the formal school system, either in their original school or in another school at the same level. That’s how Shaw ended up at Holy Childhood.

There, she would experience bullying from people who found out she had a baby, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. And then there was the issue of her finances.

“I used to be absent from school so much because I never had the support. My mother wasn’t working and my stepfather wasn’t there any at all,” she said.

The first angel came in the form of the vice-principal at the time, Sister James Marie.

“She was very good to me. She cared about me so much. And as a result she put me on a lunch [stipend] programme that they had, and the money also helped me with my bus fare.”

Going to school, given a second chance, the young mother was feeling positive and optimistic, “but then my stepfather…I don’t know what was the situation, but he decided to start acting up again, and he threw me out”.

“So I’m homeless again, sleeping on people’s floor again,” she said, explaining that she left her friend’s house when she wore out her welcome.

Reprieve came from her father — who had a house in Montego Bay, St James — and her mother tried to enrol her in one of the schools in the parish, but none would accept the teen mom.

“So I was there, up and down with my cousins, being careless, no future, nothing in place. I looked at my life one day and wondered what would happen. I knew I couldn’t continue like that,” she said.

“At the time I had a lot of ambitions for myself, so I was thinking I could have done more. I thought there was more for me, so I decided to go back home [to St Catherine].”

She said her stepdad saw her at the house, and after an argument with her mother, who defended her daughter visiting her, she was allowed to stay.

“I was there, taking care of the baby, seeing everybody living their best life, looking like their future was being shaped, and [there was] none for me…,” she related.

And then entered angel number two.

“There was a pastor, Pastor Everett Brown — now president of the Jamaica Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (SDA) — he saw me at church and asked someone if I had finished school. He reached out to me and said he wanted to help, and would send me to Willowdene (Group of Schools).”

Some of the greatest blessings come with patience, because at this time Shaw had two options for school —  she had reached out to Sister James Marie who was now principal of Holy Childhood, and she was willing to take her back, but the youngster opted for Willowdene, the SDA co-educational institution, where she did two years, with her tuition paid by the Union, and where she was embraced by the faculty and began thriving.

Transportation would be a sore issue though — she didn’t want to reach out to Brown again, and so she would sometimes walk the one hour and 15 minutes journey it took from home to school.

“I wanted the education, I was hungry for it. I said to God, this is the only way I was going to make it, for something to happen for me,” she expressed.

“I was on the honour roll, doing good… they were very good to me. I was a peer counsellor, prefect, vice-president for the student body, I went to Willowdene and proved myself.”

Another angel would come in the form of friend-for-life Nania Byfield, who she also met at Willowdene.

“She would help me. Once I reached school, I was good. She would buy one bun and cheese and two box drinks and share with me, and then she would give me $20 — the fare she would have paid from Willowdene to Spanish Town.

“Sometimes she would walk with me to Spanish Town, because she knew I didn’t have the two fares, and then she would take her taxi home. She was really there for  me.”

But life is like the ocean, it goes up and down, and when it’s down, it takes grit and a strong character to not get buried. Shaw was always late on Mondays because she had to take her son to school on Old Harbour Road before going to Willowdene, and a teacher reported her, making her fear that Brown would think she wasn’t interested in her education. The young girl would cry from the sheer frustration.

She also had another altercation with her stepdad, over a shirt of his she’d worn to a field trip. During the brawl, her belongings were thrown out of the house and she was told to leave.

“But I was determined that day that I was not going to leave,” she stressed. “I said everytime my life looked like it was having a little shape, you come to interrupt it. And I said I wasn’t going anywhere, and he left me alone.”

When she finished Willowdene, with five grade ones and four grade twos in Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), she felt that she had finally come into her own. But the race is not given to the swift but to those who endure to the end, and having enrolled at Northern Caribbean University (NCU) in Mandeville with her friend Nania, she soon realised that her financial constraints were too much to continue, after all, Nania had family support for her studies, but she did not.

Shaw had started working at NCU and living on the dorms, but all the money she earned would go back into school-related costs, so she decided to leave.

“I started working with the Western Union call centre, and found out about a phlebotomy course at the University of Technology, which I did,” she said.

As fate would have it, she started working with the Ministry of Health on the National HIV/STI Programme in the correctional facilities, and that’s where she discovered that social work would be the job for her, even though the programme would end prematurely.

“I started my degree in social work, trouble erupted in the prison, and we never got back the contract, so I was out of work,” she shared, explaining that she also started doing lab jobs, but couldn’t afford the degree, so she had to stop.

After three years she reapplied to NCU, and was able to graduate with honours. She returned to WCJF’s Spanish Town Centre to do her practicum under the leadership of current Centre Manager Sheron Williams, who she said was very instrumental in her development.

“She helped me so much, she has a heart of gold,” Shaw said.

Williams wasn’t the only woman at WCJF to help — “While at NCU, Beryl Weir (former executive director) gave me two grants for $25,000 each. I was struggling and went to her and she gave me two grants. That was able to help me with my education.

“When I was in Mandeville and wanted counselling, I would go to the Mandeville office where Dr Zoe Simpson was, at the time, the director of field services. I used to talk to her because I used to have issues and problems and she used to help me.”

Shaw also started her second degree, and went back to the Spanish Town Centre for her internship hours and they had a position vacant where she was asked to act.

Now completing her master’s in social work at Andrews University in Michigan, USA, and a counsellor, she guides, enrols, does placements, counselling sessions and recruitments for the programme for adolescent mothers, and teaches the young ladies enrolled the lessons that she wishes she had learnt years ago.

As a teen single mother from the ghetto, she said for a long time she linked her self-worth to her being a teen mother and the mistakes she had made.

“I didn’t have that self love. I had a lot of self condemning thoughts that were flooding my mind daily. I never had anything positive about myself. I used to be seeking relationships to help me and that was where the mistake was also. Because one thing I know about people, once they sense that you don’t love yourself, you won’t be getting love from them,” she said.

“I wish I loved myself more, I wish I accepted my mistakes and embraced them. I wish  I had forgiven myself of my past.

“Now when I see the girls come in to me in distress, and their parents in distress, I assure them that I know what they’re feeling, I know what they’re going through. I tell them that I sat in that chair and my mother sat there when I was 15 years old. I know the uncertainty. I know what they’re feeling. But guess what? It’s going to be challenging, it’s not an easy road. There will be a lot of times when you’re going to want to give up, but you have to have the determination. Prayer helps a lot. Start to pray, start to forgive, start to love yourself. Once you start that positivity, that self love, that acceptance, the universe starts to come in and starts to work in your favour.”

Shaw says she uses a lot of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) — teaching the techniques to focus on changing the automatic negative thoughts that can contribute to and worsen emotional difficulties, depression, and anxiety.

She’s also living her life’s purpose — “So happy to be able to”, she gushes, and says she connects with the girls and their parents on a different level.

“It’s always been my wish to work at the WCJF,” she said. “Because I open up to the girls and they know that I was a Women’s Centre girl, it’s such a different level — they talk to me, rap with me on a different level. They feel comfortable with me and I’m able to encourage them. I tell them to concentrate on their futures, and not to lose focus.”

For the short term, after graduation in August, she hopes to proceed to the next level of her education, to be named Dr Tonette Shaw.

“I am going for a doctorate, definitely,” she said. “That is one place I see myself. Even if I’m not working for the Women’s Centre, I’ll always be supportive of them. They’ve been so supportive of me over the years that I’ll be eternally grateful.”

Social work, she says, is her life’s work, and she also wants to do some clinical counselling, which is her master’s emphasis.

Nowadays, her four year old daughter motivates her to do better, and be better, as well as her mom, whom she said has put her life on hold several times to help her.

“My mother Princess Richards was very supportive — with moral support. She was very encouraging but she didn’t have the finances, the independence, the education, so that caused me to have a little delay.  When I see girls come in to me now and they’re distressed, despondent, persons in their communities are down on them, their family members, I encourage them and say where you are, I was there, but it gets better. It’s a journey, but it gets better.

“I want to give my mother [a good] life. I’m still not able to afford that life that I want to give her — I  want to build her a house, I want to buy the biggest, most comfortable bed for her to sleep in. My biggest motivation is that I want to give my mother that life, and I’ve been praying. I want to give back to her for everything she’s given to me. She never had it financially, I remember days when I used to go to the Women’s Centre and my stepdad used to give her $100 during the days, and she would give me $50 out of it, and when he realised he started leaving $50 and she would give me the $50 just the same. My mother is that person. And she’s a very good grandmother, and she deserves to have that life.”