'It gets confusing': Zephany dedicates new book to her two mothers

The woman known to the world as Zephany Nurse has dedicated the book about her incredible life to her two mothers.

But Miché Solomon, as she can now be called after a Pretoria high court ruling on Tuesday, names Lavona Solomon before Celeste Nurse.

She says in the book that Lavona - who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for kidnapping Solomon from a Cape Town maternity ward when she was just three days old - is the woman she will always see as her mother.

“My parents are Lavona and Michael Solomon. They are my mom and dad,” said Solomon in an interview with Joanne Jowell, author of Zephany.

The book was hurriedly shipped to bookshops by NB Publishers immediately after the high court lifted an interdict preventing Solomon’s identity being known.

“Celeste and Morne Nurse are my biological parents. They are not my mom and dad; they are the second parties,” said Solomon.

The 22-year-old was reunited with the Nurses when she was 18, but in the book she speaks about “Zephany Nurse” in the third person.

“If I hear the name Zephany, there is a part of me that recognises it, that gives a reaction, but it is not me,” she told Jowell.

“I accept that part of me that is Zephany, but it’s a part. So yes, I’m Miché. But I’m not the girl I used to be. I miss that girl. She’s not there any more.

“Through Zephany, she realised the truth of her life, and now she’s figuring herself out. She is - I am - two people in that way, and they’re trying to share space. It gets confusing. Miché is a reminder of who she was; Zephany is who she might have been.”

In the acknowledgments at the end of the book, Solomon included messages to both of her "mothers".

To Lavona, who is behind bars in Worcester, she wrote: "You're paying a price for the cost of loving me. I forgive you, Mommy, and I can't help but love you more and more."

To Celeste and her former husband, Miché's message is just as poignant: "We don't have the relationship we should be having. We might never have the relationship we were entitled to have.

"Thank you for keeping Zephany in your hearts, but maybe one day you can learn to love Miché too."