I HAD TO LET GO OF HATRED

She was three when she was separated from her mom in a Thai jail – now they’re slowly rebuilding their relationship

- JACO HOUGH-COETZEE

EVERY day she takes calls from young people desperately in need of help – those battling depression, anxiety and low self-esteem or struggling with suicidal thoughts and feelings of hopelessness.

And Felicia Goosen (27), a qualified wellness counsellor, is in a good position to help them. She too faced a gamut of mental health issues as a teenager and knows only too well where her patients are coming from.

Felicia hasn’t had an easy life. She was born in a Thai jail and separated from her mom, former beauty queen Vanessa Goosen, when she was three years old. She was 16 when she saw her mother again and by the time she was 19 her life had unravelled. She was drinking heavily and filled with all-consuming hatred.

But today Felicia is in a far better place. She and Vanessa (49) have had to work hard to build their mother-daughter relationship but the two are now friends and live in the same town near Johannesburg.

She’s finally in a good place, Felicia says. “Every person has a choice in their life. You must choose to be happy.”

VANESSA was a semifinalist in the Miss South Africa pageant in 1992 and went on to run a successful clothing business in Cape Town with her boyfriend at the time.

In April 1994, when she was six weeks pregnant, Vanessa went to Thailand to buy clothing for the business. An acquaintance asked her to make contact with his brother there and to bring some technical textbooks back to SA.