Project 27: The Rise of the Forgotten – Season 1 Completed!

Dear Family, Friends, and Supporters,

I can hardly believe it—Season 1 of Project 27: The Rise of the Forgotten is now complete with 11 powerful episodes!

This has been one of the most vulnerable, emotional, and courageous journeys of my life. For the first time, I’ve opened the door to my hidden years—sharing stories of abandonment, survival, resilience, and the slow, fragile work of healing.

What began as a whisper in my spirit has now become a voice reaching the airwaves. And today, it’s not just my story—it’s a testimony for every person who has ever felt unseen, unheard, or forgotten.

This Season is Dedicated To:

• The women who carry silent wounds.
• The children who grew up with rejection and loneliness.
• The survivors who wonder if their voice matters.

You are not forgotten.

Season 1 is now live and streaming everywhere! Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Podbean | Amazon Music | Boomplay | and more.

Listen now, share with a friend, and join me in breaking barriers, birthing vision, and building legacy.

This is only the beginning. Season 2 is coming, and the journey continues.

With love and gratitude, Jeanette Founder & Host Triple Break Radio Podcast & Media

#Project27 #RiseOfTheForgotten #TripleBreakRadio #HealingThroughStories

Project 27 The Rise of The Forgotten Season 1 Episode 11: Grandfather’s Sacrifice

It reached a level where even my grandfather realized they were going to kill me. My step-grandmother and her children — I had become their target. Their plan was to end my life. My grandfather argued with his wife day and night, fighting because of me. I could hear their voices clashing, and I knew I was the reason. Finally, he made a decision I will never forget: he left his own house just to save my life. He gave up his home, his family, his comfort, to protect me. My grandfather and I went to live in the forest. He walked away from everything… for me.

I remember being in the forest with him, just the two of us, taking care of cows in the middle of the jungle. For the first time, I was safe. The danger and cruelty were behind me, at least for a while. One of the memories that has stayed with me all these years is of him carrying a cassava root in his pocket. At lunchtime, he would take it out, break off a small piece, and hand it to me. “Eat this,” he would say gently. “Then go drink water. You’ll be okay.”

As a child, I used to feel frustrated, even angry. Why wouldn’t he give me the whole thing? I thought he was being unfair. I didn’t understand. But now, as an adult, I see what he was doing: he was sacrificing his own portion so that I could eat. He wasn’t eating so that I could eat. He was going hungry for me. That is one of the most precious memories I carry with me.

Sadly, my grandfather passed away before I ever had the chance to see him again. But besides the life I lived in my dreams, which gave me strength to keep going, I always remember him. I believe his spirit is still with me. He was the only person who showed me love and mercy as a child. He was the one who stood up for me when no one else did. He gave up his home to save my life.

I will remember him forever. May he rest in peace. He was a good grandfather… and I wish I could have said thank you while he was still here. but I promise I will carry on your legacy by choosing compassion over bitterness.

The legacy of lifting my voice for the forgotten ones.

The legacy of creating spaces of safety where others can belong.

The legacy of humility shown through my service.

The legacy of love revealed in the way I give myself to my people

The legacy of kindness flowing through my words and shaping the healing mission for everyone.

The legacy of true strength not in power or revenge, but in mercy, gentleness, and hope.

The legacy of ambition that drives me to rise, to keep building, to keep believing.

The legacy of gratitude that fills me, knowing my grandfather inspired me to be who I am today.

The legacy of choosing life over death, forgiveness over revenge, love over hate, and kindness over disrespect.

This is the inheritance I carry, and this is the testimony I live: my grandfather’s spirit lives in me, and through me, his story continues.

Season 1 Episode 10: Life in the Shadows

Once I slipped on the way back and fell into a narrow hole on the way from the piped spring. The bottle broke, and I couldn’t climb out because it was too deep. I cried in that dark hole, but not because I was hurt I didn’t care that I was hurt. I was crying because I knew the beating that would come for breaking my step-grandmother’s water bottle. I was so scared to call for help, knowing she would kill me. Part of me wanted to stay in that hole forever.

To them I was always late, never fast enough, never strong enough, never good enough. They didn’t want to acknowledge that I was just a young child. When I finally made it home, they would pull my hair, spit on me, scream that I was too slow, and beat me again and again. “Why are you late? You took too long!” But they never saw what it took for a little girl to carry a full bottle of water up the mountain path.

My life in that house was dark. The only light came when my grandfather was home then I would get a little break during the day. At night, they didn’t want me sleeping inside with the family, but my grandpa would insist. My step-grandmother would tell him there weren’t enough blankets, so my grandfather would give me his shepherd’s jacket. I remember enjoying his big jacket, but even then the challenge was finding a safe place to lay down.

My shelter became the calf’s room in the cowshed. That was the only place I could find rest without someone hurting me in the middle of the night. But even there, I wasn’t truly safe. My mother’s siblings would wake up in the dark just to hunt for me. With no lights in the village, they would grab burning sticks and search silently through the night, walking around and hitting anything until they found me.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, they would pour a bucket of water over me while I slept. Not once, but many times. I would wake up soaked, shivering through the cold night. I couldn’t speak or complain. My step-grandmother made sure my grandfather never saw what they were doing to me. So I learned to stay silent. I learned to hide my pain at a very young age.

Every morning, I forced myself to wake before everyone else. I would quietly gather all the wet things I had been sleeping on and try to dry them before anyone saw. I would pretend I was just cleaning the cow shelter, removing the manure, tidying the space, but in reality, I was hiding my shame. I didn’t want them to see me with wet clothes or know that I had been crying, freezing, or suffering through the night.

My mother’s family took away the meaning of being a child. So I had to find a way to survive. I had to gain strength and develop my own strategies to carry that heavy pain. A spirit of anger entered me. I started to seek revenge.

It reached a level where even my grandfather realized they were going to kill me. I had become their target. Their plan was to end my life. My grandfather argued with his wife day and night, fighting because of me. Finally, he made a decision that saved my life and that I’ll never forget: he left his own house to protect me. He gave up his home, his family, his comfort, and took me with him to the forest. My grandfather walked away from everything… for me

Season 1 Episode 9 The Twisted Self-Image

After my mother abandoned me for the second time, my life in my grandfather’s house was full of suffering, worse than the first abandonment. This time I had already accepted pain. I was ready for it, but that didn’t make it easier. Some days were harder than other days when missing my mother would crush me so much I couldn’t even face the world. The longing for her distracted me from my daily routines and made me feel weaker, as if my survival had no meaning. I called these my bad days.

My mom’s absence in my life and her rejection made me start to feel like I had made a terrible choice. It was all my fault, I had chosen to be born a girl, and that choice had ruined my mom’s life. As a child, I thought, “Maybe all she wanted was a boy… but I entrapped her choice. I chose to become a girl against her will.” I blamed myself. I hated myself for being born and this was wrong. This feeling and thinking and wondering what I could do better to be accepted. Too much confusion made me hate my existence. I blamed myself for being the beginning of my mom’s heartbreak. I wasn’t allowed to be born as a girl but what kind of choices have I made? I regretted causing pain to my mom. “Maybe one day, I’ll figure out how to change and become a boy, then my mom will finally accept me.” That’s how deeply her words sank into me. So even when my mom’s step siblings kept beating me, punishing me, abusing me. This is what I deserved. Valiance becomes normal to me.

My mom and her family recreated me and shaped little Jeanette'to despair. When it rained, they kicked me outside into the storm. Even at night they didn’t care as long as it was raining, I had to leave the house. Eventually, it became a normal part of my life. When the other children prepared to eat, they would send me away “Go to the river, go find wood.” When I came back, they said, “You are late, no food left for you,” even though they planned it that way. If I managed to return before they finished eating, they forced me to wait outside until they were done. Then they called me in only to clean the plates. Whatever scraps were left, or food that fell on the ground, that was my dinner. I didn’t complain. Sometimes I was even glad, because leftovers meant I wouldn’t go another day or two with nothing to eat. And I was always hungry.

They gave me a big water bottle, heavier than my strength, and sent me to the piped spring. If I didn’t bring it back full, I would be beaten like a criminal. They showed me no mercy. I missed my mother so much, but she wasn’t there to hear me or see what was happening. In my heart, I thought: maybe I don’t deserve mercy, because the only person who could forgive me was my mother, and she had already left me.

Their demands were beyond what any child could handle. I was seven years old, carrying water up a mountain path for a family of six, on an empty stomach. The walk to the river took an hour each way. Some days I would fetch water from Monday to the next Monday without stopping or taking a break day and night unless my grandfather was around or I managed to hide myself where they couldn’t see me. And in all that I processed it and I mustered it but it was too much for what kid under 10 years old could handle..

Then slowly, slowly, that hope began to fade. And the moment I stopped believing that she would return, something in me shifted. Everything about me changed. I could feel my spirit responding, saying it was actually true the way they had been describing me, it was all true.

After losing my mom for the second time, that was the day I lost myself. I was around seven years old. Without my mom everything became meaningless. That was the time the little Jeanette died inside. Without my mom’s love I was lost inside my childhood. That was the moment my soul shut down, my personality went silent. After a long time of suffering because I refused to believe that my mom had abandoned me I finally gave up.

I stopped living, even though I was still breathing. I was no longer myself. I couldn’t feel my beauty or confidence. I couldn’t feel my movements. My smile was gone. My presence disappeared. I couldn’t cry anymore. I couldn’t feel joy or sadness. I felt nothing. It was like my existence disappeared. When I look back, I describe that version of me as a walking dead child, or a human robot.

I was empty. I wasn’t aware of anything. And from that point, the beatings, the hunger, the rain, the suffering it all stopped hurting. Pain wouldn’t affect me anymore. I was not feeling at all. I became numb.

I truly believed that anyone who wanted to hurt me had the right to do it. I believed that they were right to beat me, to starve me. To my step-grandmother and her kids, I became a tool that could be used by anyone who wanted to use me in my grandfather’s house. I couldn’t complain, because deep down I knew that I was born to suffer.

So I mustered it. I taught myself how to live.

Season 1 Episode 7: The Final Goodbye

My mom grabbed my hand, she pulled me. Then she said "Let's go. I will go with you halfway to your grandfather, when we reach closer I will let you go by yourself." In my mind I was like, "No, I don't want to go back. I want to stay with you," but because she was beating me up I had no other choice but to obey. On the way to my grandfather, in my own thoughts I said, "I will pretend. After she says goodbye, then I will follow her back, hiding on the side of the walking path. I will make sure wherever she is going I will follow her. As long as I can continue to see her, I will be okay, but I will make sure she will not see me."

Unfortunately, my plan didn't work as I planned. After we reached the place where she could say goodbye something changed within me when she told me, "Look, now you can see your grandfather's house. Go and behave, because from now on you have to be with your grandfather, they will be your parents for now." In less than one minute I remembered everything she told me. But I will never see her again. That was hard for me to take in, and at that moment I felt like I couldn't breathe properly. I continued to go forward to my grandfather and my mother turned around going back to her house to grab her things so she could go. In a few steps I made going forward, my brain reminded me, every single word her stepmother and young siblings told me, how they treated me, how they refused to feed me, all the struggle I went through when she was gone. Now I am going back again? I felt afraid mixed with different feelings. My heart started jumping. My mother is leaving me and I will not be able to see her again? With panicking, I turned around, then I ran after my mother, I held onto her feet, crying in deep pain. "Mom, don't leave me. Don't send me back. Please let me go with you," I cried. Looking around to see if there could be anyone, anybody to help me to speak to my mom, maybe to explain better how I love her, what she means to me, why I can't go back in a better way. But I found no one. As I was holding her leg, begging her not to leave me, I grieved. I got beaten, she beat me more than before. My nose was bleeding, my mouth, my head, this time my body was completely broken and even though I was in anguish, I thought, "Beat me as much as you want, but when you finish, take me with you please." Unfortunately, close to the place where I was getting destroyed there was a big hole, a place where they used to dig for dirt to make mud for bricks. And that time it was the rainy season. Deep down there in that hole was rainwater, then she lifted me up and dumped me in that hole, then she left me there.

It happened that someone was looking and my grandfather was on his way to my mom's house. My grandfather, along with people who heard me crying, came and took me out of that hole, but my mom left long ago. I remember telling my grandfather to take me to my mother. "Grandpa, take me to my mom. I want to keep my eyes on her. Don't take me to your house. Just take me to my mother. She is at home. Just take me there. I want my mother. She's at home. Take me to her." My grandfather tried to tell me that she is gone, but I felt like my mom would never leave me. My grandpa and I went to my mom's house, but when we got there the door was closed. I cried day and night calling her name, "Mom," morning and night until I became numb.

Even though my mom was gone, I kept waiting for her. My mom will come back for me. And while I was waiting, "my mother will remember that I was in pain, then she will come back to see if I am ok. My mom will remember that before she left me I was hungry, she will come back with food." I waited so long, but she didn't come back for me.

A few moments after eating and getting a bit warm, she called me to come to where she was, then she told me to listen carefully to what she was about to tell me. "Tomorrow, you're going back to your grandfather's house. I'm going to leave you, and you will never see me again. Never see me again," she said. I wanted to scream and cry like a child who had lost her beloved mother, but I couldn't. I wanted to explain why I can't go back to my grandfather's house. I tried to speak, but every time I opened my mouth, she hit me. She didn't even wait for my words. Before I could speak, she was beating me in the face, pulling my ears, hitting me wherever her hands landed. No care. No mercy. No chance to be heard. Just rage. And still, I tried. I thought maybe she was joking. Maybe she would change her mind. But the next day she was serious. She was really going to leave me again. And I couldn't stop it.

"Hey, wake up. It is time to go to your grandfather's house. I want you to go," she said. I cried, "Mom, don't leave me. Let me go with you, please." I did all I could to beg her so that wherever she was going we could go together, but the more I showed her that I was hesitating to go, the more angry she became.

I had been hoping that when my mother returned, she would give me a chance to speak, to tell her what had happened while she was gone. But before I could even open my heart, she was cursing me by repeating the same cruel things they used to say and beating me up. But not only that—look at her now, she is crying. What do I do now? And somehow, I felt like it was all my fault. She looked at me and said the words that shattered my soul: "It was a mistake to give birth to you. Did I even give birth to you? Am I your mother? No, I gave birth to nothing. If you could be a boy then I could understand you, but now you are a mistake, the forbidden kid. If it wasn't for you, my life could be better, but now you are a curse. A miserable child." She repeated the same words her siblings and her stepmother had spoken over me when she was not around, and hearing those words coming from my own mother, it hurt me so badly. It crushed me and inside I was like, "Yes, it is true. Then I am bad luck."

I wondered what I could do so I could not be who they said I was. I regretted that I was a mistake and I hated that I was the kind of kid who was not needed by my own people. What my mother told me brought me to my knees. At that moment, I knew: it was a mistake for me to be born. I knelt down in front of her feet after a night of being beaten. No kindness. Nothing. And I begged her for forgiveness, not for anything I had done wrong, but for simply existing as a girl. I said, "Mama, I'm sorry I was born. I am very sorry that I was a girl. I promise I will never be born again. And I'm sorry I was born as a girl. I didn't mean to be a girl. Please forgive me and take me with you. Don't send me to grandfather's place again." I thought maybe, just maybe, if I said sorry she would love me and let me go with her. Instead she said, "Get up, let's go."

As I was recording and writing some of the episodes for Project 27: The Rise of the Forgotten, I found myself humming and singing, “oh my own mother, oh my own mother, oh my own mother.” I sang it because I felt the deep pain she caused in my heart, but also because I felt sorrow for what she went through as a girl. I realized that many of the symptoms of my pain flow from the river of her pain, and in the end, I carried her suffering as my own. While she hurt me, I can also see that the pain runs through generations—she was hurt too.