Marin hears a story of freedom from a life of sexual oppression and crime from a Puna, Hawaii, girl who moved to Oakland and never gave up

Editor’s Note: This speech was given recently in Marin County.)

Hello my name is Shani Shay. I am honored to be here today for the 2023 graduation ceremony of the Marin County Career Exploration Program.  

When I was asked to be a part of this program I was excited to help guide young people in our community towards their dreams and goals.  I remember being unsure of what I wanted to do. I remember being affected by things beyond my control and how it affected me throughout all stages of my life.  Even as I stand here today I have barriers and challenges. Hurdles I was not only born into but that are exacerbated by my own actions and many of the actions of the systems around me.   

I am just like so many of our youth.  I was molested by a close family member at the age of 4.  I started to remember the molestation when I was 12 years old.  By the time I was 13 years old I was being regularly raped by a 26 year old man. I started using drugs and alcohol within that same year.  I began to act out, yelling matches with my mother, truancy, self-mutilation, sibling fights, and failing grades. All because I was unaware of how to ask for help or that I even needed protection. Some of you may think that I am using trauma as a scapegoat or trying to absolve myself from responsibility.  For those of you that believe that I implore to listen even closer, to stay around until the end of this speech because accountability and integrity are pillars of my success.

I moved from Hawaii to Emeryville, California with my father when I was 15 years old, infatuated with the image of gangsters and drug dealers I had seen flaunted and romanticized on MTV and VH1.  I remember boasting to my cousins “I am going to find the biggest drug dealer in Oakland and be his ride or die girl.” Like so many of our youth I had no idea that the streets would literally eat you up and spit you out, dead or alive. And those who truly came from poverty were trying to escape by almost any means necessary. 

I met the man who would eventually become my abuser when I was 16 years old.  He was a 26 year old male who most likely saw my youthful vulnerability as an opportunity to dominate and capitalize. The first time I was ever physically attacked by him was one day before my 17^th birthday, I was barely out of high school and had already lost sight of any of the dreams I held. My abuser punched me in my face because I couldn’t steal money from my father’s credit card. I remember looking at him for some resemblance of regret or empathy. There was none.  He simply demanded that I get out and left me standing outside. Lost to myself and my family I thought I was in love. After being a star student in elementary and middle school, I barely graduated high school. I didn’t want to go to college but my mother pushed me to apply.  I declined an invitation to UC Davis to attend Cal State East Bay wanting to be closer to my abuser. 

Within my first semester I was expelled for fighting on campus.  I lost my housing, my education, my future all in one swoop.  In a last ditch attempt to escape homelessness I went back to Hawaii to live at home.  I got two jobs, one at Pizza Hut and one at Office Depot.  I was determined to save enough money to go back to California and live with my abuser.  

My parents and family had lost any meaningful influence over me. And although I was not yet 18 my parents’ desire to let me forge my own path was beginning to resemble my own destruction.  

A few months before my 18th birthday I bought an airplane ticket back to California and told my abuser to pick me up from the airport.  For a month or so I lived in a hotel until my savings ran out.  I had nowhere to go once again but I refused to go home. 

In hindsight I can see that my abuser knew I was vulnerable and in need of the fundamentals: food and a roof over my head.  My abuser took me to what I now know as a trap house and gave me a bed and a room to sleep in. He took my picture, got me a fake ID and before I was 18 years old I was using a fake ID to work as a stripper in San Francisco. I remember talking to the owner of the club.  He said “You’re 25?”, I knew my frail 118 pound body looked closer to 15 and that he could tell I was underage.  But instead of crying out for help, I nodded yes.  I was working as a child sex worker that night. 

The abuse intensified and I was beaten with hangers, irons, and fists on a nightly basis.  Afraid to even leave my room to get something to eat.  Everything I did revolved around the permission of my abuser.  The constant abuse did not gel with being a stripper.  I lacked the confidence and gaw needed to succeed in that field. I was also still a child.  A few months into bouncing from strip club to strip club I was initiated into a crime gang. The people around me realized that if I was willing to sacrifice my body and dignity for money that I was a likely candidate to commit other crimes.  I wanted to please my abuser no matter what it took. 

I escaped sex work throough becoming a criminal.  

Within that same year my father died and my mother moved to Ethiopia to pursue a lifelong job of teaching beyond borders. Whether or not I was truly alone, I felt that way.  Abuse, drugs, self-mutilation, and crime consumed me.

I spent the next 12 years of my life on felony probation, doing drugs, experiencing severe domestic violence, in and out of jail, and essentially fighting simply to survive. Within that time I became  a mother.  As beautiful as my child was, I was still suffering everyday. Like many of us discover, motherhood did not change me.  I loved my daughter but I lacked the tools to show healthy love to myself.  Somehow I managed to do my best for her, provide for her, and keep her with me.  I am grateful because seeing myself in her, wanting to protect and provide a better life for her saved me.   When I could not do the right thing for myself I did it for my daughter.  When I was too weak to stand for myself I stood for my daughter. 

When I was 28 I went to jail for the last time in my life.  When I was released from jail I made a promise to myself to never return to a negative lifestyle again.  I went back to school, I started working out, I went to church, and I got a job. A year later I left my abuser.  I was scared but I was safe. 

At the time I didn’t know where any of it would lead me. 

I just knew I didn’t want to lose my ability to be a good mother or be in misery for the rest of my life.  It was not easy and there were many people who motivated me along the way.  In 2019 I was accepted to university of Berkeley, CA.  I immediately became an Underground Scholar.  The Underground Scholars is an organization of every UC campus that aims to support the needs of formerly incarcerated and system impacted UC students. I started doing outreach in the juvenile halls and adult prisons.  On one occasion Ms. Danielle from Mt, McKinley Court School invited a few Underground Scholar members to come speak to youth about our personal stories back to education.  

I left  John A. Davis Juvenile Hall  that day feeling grateful, motivated, and indebted. How could I get all these youth, who were just like me, into college?  It wasn’t just college but the gaining of new skills and perspectives that had finally given me a pathway, a future, a space to see myself thriving not just surviving. I had shown them the light at the end of the tunnel, but I hadn’t given them any tools to get there.  This is why, and how I started the Incarceration to College, Pathways to College program, and why I do the work I do.  This is why I am here with you today.  Because I intrinsically understand why programs like The Career Explorers program are so important.  

Programs that provide relevant information and guidance towards opportunities.  

Programs that aim to inspire and expose beyond what is around us.  

It doesn’t matter if you come from a situation of mine or if you have been provided all the makings of a successful life, there is always something you can reach for, someone you can inspire, something more you can do. 

So many of us forget how valuable we are.  We wake up in the morning and put on our work face, or survival face, our sullen or happy face and we think that is all we can do.  We forget that not only is there no one like us but that anything is possible.  We forget that if we try we do not fail, that there are people who will never get this opportunity, never get this chance and most importantly that people need us.  

Think of who inspires you, they are human too, they are unsure of themselves too but they continue to try, to not give up. There were many times when I wanted to give up, many times when it seemed easier to stop believing in myself.  I, like many of you, convinced myself it simply was not possible and it was foolish to dream. In my last year of UC Berkeley when applying to graduate school I faced a challenge again.  Berkeley denied my admission to Graduate School of Education, I was certain I would get in. It almost broke my spirit to get denied.  But I kept pushing, relying on rote memory at the time, one foot in front of the other, sludging along.  

The race is not over until you stop.  I remember coming out of the juvenile hall after a full day of instructing the Incarceration to College and Pathways to College students in court and continuation schools.  I took my phone out of the locker and began checking notifications and emails.  The sender read “Harvard Admissions”.  I had applied as a shot in the dark attempt, assuming it would never happen.  As the confetti appeared on the screen and re-read the lines “we want to welcome you to Harvard,”  tears rolled down my face.  

I thought of my mother and all she had been through, how my father’s spirit had carried me through,  I couldn’t believe it. A little black girl from Puna Hawaii, one of the poorest cities in the country, a felon, a have not, at Harvard.  I almost couldn’t believe it.  

But it was and is true. 

To many of our graduates today, there are things coming in your future that you will only get by trudging along, one foot in front of the other, by trying even when you don’t know why, by showing up when you don’t want to, by giving your best when you only have your worst, by asking for help when you don’t have the words, and by never giving up.  

When I had the opportunity to meet you on the first day of this program and try to inspire you it was with this in mind.  I knew then, and know, now that you are capable of amazing things and I look forward to being a part of those stories. Please keep going!!

Congratulations, and God’s speed!