Dr Ava Eagle Brown grew up in poor rural Jamaica and was determined not to become what she saw around her. She wanted more and realised that education was her access to more. But the odds were against her, she failed English and Maths, she had dyslexia, she had no money, and she missed classes because she had to hawk mangoes. But against the odds, she attained her goals. She possessed an inner strength that carried her through adolescence and kept her moving toward her goal even after she experienced incest and sexual abuse. As a young adult, she was raped at gunpoint, which led her to flee Jamaica for the United Kingdom.
She could have settled for being a victim of her painful past, but Ava chose to turn her pain into purpose. She decided to be her own warrior and hero. Armed with determination and courage, she rose from the ashes to become a resilient, strong and self-reliant woman. She is reaching back to help others find their purpose, get unstuck from their limiting beliefs and live their best life. She has coached entrepreneurs, CEOs, business leaders, writers and people who have lost their way into greater significance. Two master’s degrees and one doctorate later, she is still going to school and says, one of the vehicles to change your life is an education.
As you read this interview, be inspired to soar!
Please tell us about your childhood, what were the good experiences, the bad experiences and the experiences that shaped you, and what dreams did you have?
Wow. That’s a very great, powerful question. My childhood was one that – it was a very mixed childhood if I’m honest. In retrospect, there were some beautiful moments, especially when I compare the childhood that my children have living in Europe. And as a woman of African descent and African extraction, both of us as women of African extraction, we can understand that when we go back to our countries, the way that we were brought up or even if you weren’t brought up in Africa or the Caribbean, the way we go back home and see children operate with freedom, and excitement, and the community spirit, you know. It took a village to grow a child, and that was in my experience, and I really relish and cherish that. My kids don’t have that. It was one laced with doing your chores, and your mum would make sure that you cleaned the house and in Jamaica, there is a saying that as a young woman you have to make sure that you can cook and you can clean because you’re going to get married one day. And those parts of my childhood, when I look back on them now, they were grooming me for something bigger and greater. We enjoyed playing outside, barefooted because we didn’t have many shoes. We would go to the river; we would climb trees. And after we finished our chores, we would leave the house, and we would be gone for the day like literally rummaging and foraging through the community, and you were safe, right? Nothing was going to come to harm you because persons were there to look after you because the community cared for children. But there was another side of my childhood that was dark and painful. I didn’t know my father, and I grew up with a lot of abuse and a lot of low self-esteem. I have a group on Facebook which you probably know about and I was talking in the group about how when I was growing up they would tell me that I’d soon breed, which means you’ll soon get pregnant, a man is going to do whatever to you and you’re going to come off to nothing. And I grew up in that environment where children were sexualised, and men did not seem to understand. And at the time, I wasn’t awakened to understand that that was sexual abuse even verbally. I remember one incidence when I was walking to get water from the pipe because we didn’t have pipes in our home, there’s a community pipe and I spoke about it in my book where the men would say and I was about twelve years old – that you were ready for men to start taking sexual advantage of you. And that was normalised. And I was speaking about that this week, that even today, if I have to walk past a group of men alone, I go back to that moment where I’m uncomfortable. So, my childhood was laced with a lot of abuse, verbal as well. My parents didn’t understand how to speak to their children, how to endow confidence into you. And it also was laced with sexual abuse and incest. So, it was a childhood that was very mixed, it was a childhood that was very confusing, it was a childhood where I felt small, it was a childhood where there was more sadness than there was joy, but through it all, I believe it was a childhood that prepared me for the woman I am today.
But what dreams did you have as a child?
You know what, initially growing up, I didn’t have any dreams. I just knew that I did not want to be like what I saw. Does that make sense? I grew up around marijuana, as a child. I picked marijuana; it was normal. My stepfather had a marijuana farm, most people did. And it was normal for us to pick marijuana. And we sat down and cleaned it and prepared it for sale. And I know that I didn’t like that life. And sex was recreation for young girls and young boys where I grew up, and I just knew that there was a fire in me that said my dream was I did not want to be this. I didn’t like what I saw. And so my dream grew as I got to school and got older, I wanted to be a barrister. I knew I wanted to do something talking because as I sold mangoes as a child, I started interacting and talking and I recognised that I have this gift of the gab. And I wanted to be a barrister as I got older and then as I got older, probably about 15, I knew I wanted to escape the adults around me, and I wanted to excel. It was my dream to escape them and go to another space where I could be different. I didn’t know what different would look like, but I wanted that different. And that was my dream. I didn’t have a big dream because, at the time, I didn’t have many role models.
Looking at how far you’ve come and how far removed you are from the circumstances you were born into, what would you say to the younger Ava who was trapped in those circumstances?
Do you know what? That’s a very great question. I think for me personally, and here’s the thing about me, I do not see any of those experiences as negative. Meaning that I can look at them now in retrospect and say that they have helped to shape me and helped to shape so many thousands of people through me as a conduit. Does that make sense? So, I look at the younger Ava, and there are some things that I wish she had done. I wish somebody had given her The Secret to read at 12 years old like I’ve given my eight-year-old now to start reading. I will tell the younger Ava that you are possible. I will tell the younger Ava that rise above your circumstances. I will tell the younger Ava that being a woman doesn’t mean that you cannot have it all. I will tell the younger Ava that this too shall pass. I will tell the younger Ava that sexual abuse is wrong, and that the younger Ava will tell somebody early. I will tell the younger Ava that yes you can, you will, and you must. If I were to go back to my younger self, I would tell my younger self from an early age, that rather than trying to get a job from somebody else, that I needed to become my own boss. I would tell the younger Ava that you know what? It’s okay to have gone through the things that you have gone through, but now start recycling the pain earlier. Those are some of the things that I wish I knew then because it would really change who I am today. But would I want to change that? Not necessarily. So I think in one sense, I would have loved to have some of those tools back then because I would have been able to start mobilising and impacting and influencing more people from then and my mindset then would have been different and I will probably be a zillionaire today. That’s what I’d tell the younger Ava.
What is the singular most powerful lesson that you take away from that season of your life, and how did you not become influenced by your environment and circumstances?
It wasn’t easy; I actually got bullied. I got bullied so hard that I literally was beaten by girls in the community. I was different because rather than playing with some of them, I would be reading a book. Once I discovered education, it became that tool for me. So, I escaped it by being a good girl. I was a good girl. My mother has ten children – one’s now deceased bless her soul. But I was the most obedient, right? I became very obedient. I was the first child; I was the firstborn, which meant that I had a lot of responsibilities and part of that meant that I had to go and sell mangoes on the train to support the family because my step-father lost his job when I was ten years old. And so, as young as ten, I was on the train selling mangoes. Of all the children, my mum would dress the mangoes and send me to go and sell them. And so, by interacting like that, I started meeting people, you know, on that journey who would encourage you and empower you. And so that escapism I loved. Although it is what they now call child slavery or labour, I loved that escapism because it sent me outside of my normal environment to interface with other people. And on that journey, I’d see people on the train in their suits and I’d think, oh, that’s nice, I wonder what they do. But to escape that meant I was obedient, to escape that meant I went to church, to escape that meant that I would sit outside on the stone because we didn’t have a dining room and chairs and whatever, we lived in a one-room shack, okay? All of us, mother, children and dad, in a one-room shack. And so, I would sit outside with a lamp like a kerosene lamp, and I would be reading, just trying to escape. It wasn’t an easy escape. I don’t know; I was just genetically different in a way because, in my community, girls were always on the road at night, I was never there. Girls were always wearing all the short-short. I didn’t. I didn’t partake. So, I kind of looked at what they did and tried to do the opposite of it because I felt that if I did what they did, I’d become pregnant because it was the norm. So, I kind of felt like well, if I wear the short-short, I’m going to get pregnant. So, I tried to do the opposite of what they did. But my mum, bless her soul, my mum is an amazing woman, and my mum was a very strict mother, in one sense. She was strict and I think my mum saw something in me because she was a little bit harder on me or maybe because I was the breadwinner, I don’t know. But I know I was able to escape it by just being different. And I used education as quickly as I learnt it. It was my passport. To answer the question about the powerful lessons that I learnt about that period of my life, I learnt that anything you want was possible. I probably didn’t understand that language then, but I understood the power of the mind as young as that age, and what I say by that is, did I understand it in that context? No. But, I was able to realise that determination, was powerful and you could get to where you wanted to go if you were determined. The biggest lesson I learnt about my childhood and my past is that where you are from did not determine who you could become, and that lesson stays with me today. And sometimes, when I, like everybody else, get a little bit of a downer, I really go back into my history. And I want to encourage everyone, that sometimes we’re going to get burdened, but all we need to do is go back over our track record. Look at that time when something similar faced you and remember that you came through it and then look at the tools you used. So, that would be my biggest lesson, that you don’t have to become what you’ve been through, or you don’t have to look like it. You can rise above any circumstances.
Let’s talk about how you are reaching back to pull forward. You have been to Jamaica several times to speak to young girls in secondary schools. How does it feel to be able to do this, and what have you been able to achieve with this project?
That’s a great question, and I’m going to just shift it a little bit. I don’t just go to Jamaica; I go to Africa; I go to the Caribbean. I go to the US. I really believe in giving back, it’s a big part of me, because, it was – I call it – charity, that helped me. Social capital is a big part of my journey. When I got into university, I remember everybody gave me something. If you read my book, The Mango Girl, I walked the community, somebody gave me a suitcase, somebody gave me a bedsheet, somebody gave me this, that, that. That’s social capital. So, everywhere I go to work, whenever you see me speak abroad, one of the things I always ask, is that I get a school or a vulnerable project to give back to. It’s my value-added. So, when I get paid to travel abroad as a speaker. Let’s say I got to go to Nigeria, for example, and I’m going to Ibadan or Lekki Island or wherever, Delta State. I always ask the organisers, yes, I know you’re paying me – and sometimes even the work that I give back does not even equate how much they’re paying me. But I always ask to go to a school, or someplace like that, where there are vulnerable persons, and try to instil something in them. And so, I’ve done that in Jamaica, I do that in Soweto, I do that in Barbados. I went to Atlanta to do a documentary that I’m featured in that’s coming out soon. And I went to Booker T Washington High School, which is a very problematic high school in Atlanta, Georgia, and I literally gave back into the school. I’ve been known to be in Addis Ababa rescuing women who are sold into sexual slavery in the middle east. I’ve always been able to do that. But one of my projects in Jamaica is I have a son that I’ve never met. He’s twenty-two years old, and he heard my story on the radio, and he was just about cleaning up a gun to go and do wrong. And he heard the radio interview, and somebody was talking about my book, so he went and read the book, and he reached out to me on Facebook, and he said, are you the mango girl? If this is you, let me know because I just picked up my tool to go and do wrong and I heard your story, and I read your book, and I want to know, how did you overcome these things? Because if you can, I can too. And since that day till today, I won’t go into his story too much, but he never knew his mum, so he calls me mummy. He’s never had a mum in his life; I’m his mum. And I went on social media and did an appeal, and we got some money together, and I sent him to a farmer’s market, and he then went and got supplies, and he became a farmer, and now people go and buy their farm supplies to go to the market from him. Those are projects I’m very keen on doing, working with young girls, but it doesn’t have to be girls just broken people. Sometimes, all people need is just somebody else to pass a ladder down or just somebody to say I understand you. Or just somebody to be a role model that is not far-fetched. Oprah Winfrey is great, but we can’t touch her or feel her, not all of us get that chance. But you and I and the ordinary persons like you and I who I think are some great superheroes without capes, and that is the kind of work that I want to do. How does it feel? It’s a work in progress, I really want to champion work like this, but even today, where I live in Northern Ireland, I do a lot of work here with women. So, I’m always about the social capital; I’m always about if I can do it, other people can do it too. So, it gives me pleasure to do this around the world. I just received an invitation to go to Africa, to do some work in Africa, and I jumped at it because I believe that if I can empower one person, you know, it’s like a domino effect, then we can keep paying it forward, and I’m big on that. Social capital is the word.
As a woman who has risen above her circumstances, what words of hope do you have for other women?
Wow. Women listen to me; you are powerful. We have this Facebook group called Self-Esteem and Forgiveness Mastery, and we’re just about to launch a programme in there called Amplify your 2020 and Create your Circle of Elevation. And one of the things that we’re going to do is to teach women that you’re powerful. No matter what size you are, what religion you are, what culture you are from, that as a woman, you are powerful. But also, that you are enough. I say to people all the time that one day I’m going to walk on stage with my pyjamas, barefooted, no makeup, nothing. And just embody that I have scars and I’m still beautiful. Because I’m at that place where I accept me in my fullness. So, I want you to understand that you are a powerful, strong enough human being. That there’s nothing that you need that is outside of yourself and that you don’t need to compete with each other, you must complement. And this is an old thing that we have heard for centuries, and we will hear for centuries to come – that we are better together than if we are apart. That if you are Nigerian, Jamaican, British, Northern Ireland, it doesn’t matter, that if we put hands together and form a stronger link in how we work and how we collaborate we can achieve mountains. But most importantly, woman, I want you to hear me, that you embody what greatness looks like. But if you cannot start seeing that from internally, then you cannot externally give that to anybody else. And the last thing I want to say to women is, let us stand together, like sisters. Like the brand I have, Sister Hold, My Hand. Let’s be sisters holding each other’s hands. Let us see other people’s children and speak positively over them, no matter what. Let us understand that if we as sisters get together and pray for each other and each other’s children, the magic that we can create. I think that when women from the womb go to God, He, hears us from a deep place because we carry that vessel that embodies life. So, women listen to me, you are strong, you are beautiful, no matter what, and even with your scars, as I have, because all of us have scars, whether externally, emotionally, whatever they are. Those scars, you can repurpose them and you can turn them into power, and that’s what I want to say to you women. That’s what I want to leave with you. Be enough, be emboldened and step up into your circle of elevation.
How can people contact you if they would like to know more about what you do?
I do so many things. I do a health and beauty brand called Chakai. So, it’s either www.chakai.co.uk you can find me there. Or you can email me at info@avabrown.org or my website, www.avaeaglebrown.com or just put in Dr Ava Eagle Brown, trust me I’m like on sixteen pages in Google and rising.
