'Barren' tag riled me — Shiro Wa GP

Celebrated Kikuyu gospel artiste Shiru wa GP has poured her heart out on how she was humiliated by friends because she could not give birth for more than eight years after marriage.

Shiru said she tried to conceive with her husband for nine years with no luck, and people started mocking her and calling her barren.

"I almost gave up but God came after nine years. It was not easy being called barren," Shiro told Word on Wednesday.

She said she was always under pressure from her friends and even decided to isolate herself. "I decided to completely stay away from my friends because I felt incomplete and I did not want people to keep asking me about children," she said.

The best part, Shiro said, is that her husband had not given up, and he kept encouraging her. "It reached a time I felt like God did not love me any more. I was almost quitting my marriage because, you know, if I'm not married, no one will be asking me about getting children," she said.

Luckily, after nine years, she was elated when she finally got pregnant with twins. Unfortunately, she gave birth to a boy and girl prematurely after just seven months, which was another tough time for her.

"It was also one of the lowest moments of my life because we lost our son one and a half months later, while in the incubator," she said, adding that the surviving daughter is already five years old, and she is working hard to get another one.

Her advice to people going through what she went through is to pray hard and trust God because He is the one who understands every person better than anyone. "Don't sit down and think of hurting yourself," she said.

She recounts a day she held someone's child in church and the parents claimed she had done something wrong to the baby.

"They even decided to take her to the hospital to check with the doctor if there was something wrong with the baby. Since then, I decided to keep to myself not to carry my problems to people," she said.

She says most of her music is inspired by what she was going through at that particular time. "There is a time when God seems to be silent but there is something he is preparing you for," she said.

"If I did not go through that, I would not have been inspired to sing more because during that time I released my song 'There is God in Heaven', which I believe God wanted His people to listen to."