Super single mother

As Samoa celebrates Mother’s Day today, Kaisarina Salesa will be spending the day with her son, Lutiaipuava Situfu Salesa. Her story is a moving tribute about purpose, courage and a mother’s determination. Sophie Budvietas tells her story:

Going to university is all about having new life experiences. And although getting pregnant may not be on the list for many students, but for Kaisarina Salesa, this experience was one that refocussed her life – giving it a different purpose.

Seven years on, she lives with her parents and her brother, all of whom help to raise her child, Lutiaipuava Situfu Salesa.

A Principal Legal Analyst with the Samoa Law Reform Commission by day and a mum by night, it is her aiga who have given strength to this single mother to make a difference to the world her son is growing up in.

“It was my second or third year at university and being a student enjoying life experiences,” she said.

“One of them was pregnancy. It was an unplanned pregnancy but not unwanted.”

She said initially when she fell pregnant, her biggest challenge was telling her family about it.

“About the fact that I am pregnant and that I didn’t have a partner and that I had no intentions of getting married at all,” she said.

“And I was unsure about keeping the pregnancy as well. So those were some of my first challenges.

“And then throughout my pregnancy, I think the other challenges were coming face to face with peoples’ opinions of my pregnancy.

“Some of them were very cool about the pregnancy others not so much.

“Very typical Samoan mentality that if you are pregnant without a husband or outside of marriage you are just basically a cheeky little girl and obviously your parents didn’t do right by you.

“All those types of judgmental mentality.”

Ms. Salesa said it was her family and her work that helped to meet and overcome these challenges.

“My dad, he is the type of person who is very outgoing and very open minded and he passed on that mindset,” she said.

“He is always telling his children ‘if something doesn’t work out for you it is not the end of the world’, that was his favourite saying that he would tell all of us.

“So when I got pregnant that was the first thing he told me ‘well it is not the end of the world you know’ and when my mum told him ‘yes, but she doesn’t have a boyfriend’ he said ‘well it is not the end of the world’.

“So having supportive parents, my brothers and my sister were very, very supportive, so my family were there for me.

“They just gave me a pat on the head and told me well you have to finish your schooling now.

“That kept me very strong throughout my pregnancy.”

While her family gave her the support she needed, it was her legal studies that gave her the backbone to meet the challenges she would face as a single mother.

“What I found interesting is that when people asked me about my son and I would tell them ‘oh I am a single mother’ they would get this really uncomfortable look on their face, and I am thinking ‘why are you uncomfortable?’,” she said.

“And so when they ask about the father I tell them straight up ‘he denied responsibility, he is not in our lives and that is how I prefer it, I can take care of him’ the usual message I give them, it makes them uncomfortable and I don’t know why.

“I am not sure if it is being a single mother, or if it is because I am actually open about how I got pregnant and how it was unplanned and how I am single.

“It wasn’t easy. The hardest thing for me was that I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that I was pregnant.

“I had big dreams, the law career I have got now is not what I initially wanted to be.

“So trying to adjust my ambitions and my dreams was also something that made it really hard to just accept my pregnancy from the beginning.

“It was why I was also very aggressive about people who didn’t want to understand, towards people who just judged me simply by the fact that I am on scholarship and my parents sent me away to get educated and this is what happens I come home with a big stomach.

“But in studying law I have been introduced to what human rights are and I had a fair understanding of what I am entitled to as a person, as a human being.

“So that sort of gave me a stronger backbone to really face these challenges head on.

“It was a very interesting time of my life and I wouldn’t change it for the world because it made me very tough and I have learnt a lot of life lessons from that time of my life.

“That is how I got through those challenges.” However, despite the challenges she faced in the beginning, Kaisa said her son focussed her life and gave her a renewed hope.

“When I got pregnant I was on the verge of either quitting U.S.P. or being terminated, or having my scholarship terminated,” she said.

“So being pregnant with Lutia at that time it really just bought home my reality.

“It was a reality check for me because I was feeling very despondent about school.

“I was second guessing whether I wanted a law career, whether I had made the right career choice.

“So when I got pregnant with him, for some reason he gave me this new hope and this new direction and really motivated me to get my life on track, rethink a few things and prioritise a few things as well.

“I think if it wasn’t for my pregnancy I would end up in a much, much different place right now.

“I don’t know if I would have finished law school.

“Because seven, eight years ago I had one of those tunnel vision mindsets and I didn’t have a Plan B or a Plan C if my Plan A didn’t work out.

“So I am a much more open minded and flexible person because of my son.”

She said it was because of her son that she discovered advocacy work.

“The other interesting thing that happened to my life because of my son is I got into advocacy work,” she said.

“Basically I got introduced to what it is like to be a social activist.

“Because of the discrimination I faced at the hospital, and seeing other young women in the same situation as me being discriminated against, all because they had no husband, or if they had partners they were not married.

“So it opened up my mind to what I wanted to do with my ambition, with my law career.

“And I thought to myself ‘actually being discriminated against is something that I don’t want to ever go through again’.

“So after that, I thought to myself I want to change this. I want to change the situation for young women who get pregnant.

“Women who know what it is like to be in my situation to have like better choices, better options for them available.

“And definitely when they access those services they can use those services with confidence and with the full knowledge that no one is judging them on how they got to this stage of their life.

“So I think those are the two most important rewards I have gotten from making that life changing decision to keep him.”

In regards to her work-life balance Miss Salesa said it was doable.

“It is doable because I have a support system in place,” she said.

“My parents and my brother who live with me here in Smaoa they help me in raising my son.

“Because my mom had him for the first two years of his life he is very, very attached to his grandparents and its something that I don’t want to change because my parents are quite mature and I don’t know how long they will be here.

“I let them parent him as much as they want within reason, as long as they don’t spoil him too badly.”

Miss Salesa said as Lutia grew, she again had to refocuss her career goals.

“I had to change careers,” she said.

“I initially started with the Attorney General’s office as a Law Clerk and my ambition then was to be a Civil Litigator.

“But because of the long hours of a civil litigator it got to the point where I rarely went home at 5pm so my son was being raised more or less by my parents and his uncle.

“I had to give something up so I sacrificed my ambition to be a civil litigator.

“I gave it up and I decided to join the Law reform Commission because it was just the right choice to make.

“With Law Reform they are much more flexible around their staff personal lives unlike the AGs office it was just too – there was no breathing space, there was no breathing space to be had at the AGs office.”

“So I moved to law reform and I have never looked back.”

She said it was this move that truly shaped the career she wants for herself now.

“Through my career as a legal analyst I am able to introduce social issues into our reviews where appropriate and when relevant.

“So it’s satisfying, the work I do now is satisfying but I never thought I would enjoy being a legal analyst.”

She said there was much she wanted to say to young women who may find themselves walking the same path she did.

“Well there is a lot of things I want to say to young women out there who have walked in my shoes or who are going through what I went through,” she said.

“I am pro-choice, so I don’t think there is anything wrong with actually thinking about getting an abortion. I thought about it.

“But believe it or not, when I thought about it the fact that I was thinking about having an abortion and going through the motions of asking my sister ‘what is it like, how much is it to get an abortion’, the more I was researching it the more it felt like I didn’t want to get one.

“I just wanted to see if I had that choice you know whether I would be able to access this service.

“So after talking to my mum I was like ok, but I just wanted to know, you want to have that option and prochoice is just that, a choice – it does not mean abort all the babies, it is just about having that choice available.

“However, in saying that if you do seek out this option, please make sure it is legal. Go and see a doctor, don’t go to a backyard abortionist that is just dangerous.”

For the young single mothers out there – “do do what is right for you and don’t back down from it,” Miss Salesa said.

“It is one thing to listen to your family’s opinion they matter to you but everyone else who do they think they are?

“You can define what being a mother is you don’t have to listed to what other people tell you the ‘this is how you should raise your son, this is how you should be as a mother’.

“You don’t have to listen, you can take on board the usual ‘when you son is crying this is how you hold them’ but the world is a very, very big place and it can be your oyster.

“Even now I still struggle with how people try to tell me how to raise my son and how people tell me how to think about being a mom and what a mom should be.

“But it is really up to you what kind of mum you want to be and just stick to it.”

She said for her Mother’s Day was really about her mum, her sister and her sister in law.

“It is not so much about me it is about them. They are mum’s too but all three of them have in their own way shaped the woman I am today,” she said.

“My mum is a very gentle soul so she is the reason my son is here.

“My sister is just as tough and aggressive as me but she does it with grace, and she taught me not to back down from a fight.

“And my sister in law she is the epitome of what I think a perfect mom is, I try and emulate her sometimes.

“When I was in school Tia was admitted to the hospital because of his belly button, it was wasn’t healing and it got infected.

“The doctor advised my mom the best thing for babies at that age is breast milk and because I was not there my sister in law just sort of took on mothering him. “She and my brother have five kids and her youngest my niece is just a few months older than him.

“So she was breastfeeding these two babies and that to me that was just awesome.

“It was like who does that, because it is a very sensitive thing to do when you breastfeed somebody else’s child.

“I don’t think men and people quite realise like how personal breastfeeding is.

“So when I was told my sister in law was breastfeeding him because he needed it I felt so warm and just grateful that this woman is taking care of my son when I couldn’t.”

Ms Salesa ended the conversation with her best memory of Lutia.

“His feet – I don’t know why but when he was born I couldn’t get his tiny feet out of my head.

“And I have photos of them and I don’t know why but his feet were so cute.”

As the youngest member of her immediate aiga, perhaps it was these feet that gave her the strength to stand strong on her own and make a difference.