She asked for an easy path and got a refining fire. Now, she raises her daughter with open hands, steady boundaries, and a faith big enough to turn old pain into new love. She grew up in a small farming community in Manchester, Jamaica, where she was the third of seven kids. She lived in a home with little money and little room for feelings. Her parents were committed but strict; beatings were the rule, opinions weren’t invited. She learned early to keep things inside. Books and the quiet of nature became her safe places.
In high school, she chased romance on the page, looking for a love story to cover the ache. When she found faith near graduation, the longing didn’t vanish; it just met a new language. She was “saved,” but old habits tugged, and she learned slowly that change is a lifetime practice.
She did what was expected: finished school, avoided the local patterns of teen pregnancy and common-law starts. Then, at thirty, living her dream, managing a high school in Turks and Caicos, and working on an MBA, she fell into a situationship that turned into a pregnancy. Abortion crossed her mind. He insisted they’d marry. She left her job, went to the Dominican Republic to start a family, and delivered a beautiful daughter, without a wedding or him. When he resurfaced, he chose someone else. She was wrecked and ashamed, but she put her child in God’s hands and chose to parent with intention.
A kind Christian family took her in for the last months of pregnancy and after the birth, wrapping her in the support she’d always craved. Money was tight. She returned to work sooner than she hoped, took a call-center job to keep them afloat, then moved back to Jamaica in 2012. She worked full-time at a university, transferred MBA credits, and relied on trusted caregivers while hustling: work Monday to Friday, church Saturday, and Sunday classes. It looked smooth from the outside. Inside, she was running on guilt and grit.
In 2017, paperwork pulled her daughter back to the DR and then to the United States for residency. Co-parenting from afar was a crash course. Her child tasted different rules, and friction filled the house when she returned to Jamaica the following year. The girl wanted gentler boundaries; Mom defaulted to the only model she’d known, hard lines and raised voices. By 2019, fear crept in: she felt herself losing her daughter while her career soared. Promotion after promotion didn’t fix the hollowness at home.
So she stepped off the ladder. Six months without full-time work. She called it a hiatus; really, it was a reboot. She wrestled with the old baggage, parenting wounds, misplaced affection, selfishness, regrets, and let faith do what hustle couldn’t. She asked God to change her, then learned change rarely comes wrapped like you expect. When she prayed for patience, life got harder. When she asked for self-control, her daughter pushed boundaries. When she begged for wisdom, stories and messes arrived. Tough gifts, precisely the kind she needed.
The pandemic locked them in the same rooms long enough to listen. She shifted from authoritarian to authoritative, firm, warm, structured, and kind. She learned her daughter’s love languages were touch and affirmation, not just “acts of service.” She swapped punishment for discipline, remembering that hurt people hurt people. She took responsibility for teaching values at home instead of outsourcing identity to school. And she started detoxing from her own childhood patterns, diet, prayer, reflection, practical tools, to stop handing forward what had harmed her.
Slowly, the home softened. Routine and consistency replaced chaos. Apologies appeared where the lectures used to live. She held the line and had her child, too. She found a new purpose beyond the walls of her house, partnering with local groups to deliver food to single-parent families and elders living alone, using a portion of her work to keep that lifeline going. She began to see parenting as a sacred partnership: her hands and God’s guidance, shaping a human in love rather than fear.
The lessons she carries now are complex and straightforward. Kids need stability as much as food. Love has a language, learn theirs. Discipline heals; punishment harms. Identity is taught at home before the world gets a turn. Parents must clean their closets if they don’t want to stuff their children with the same old hurts. She calls herself a work in progress with pride. She tends body, mind, and spirit and teaches her daughter to do the same. She trusts that the “new thing” promised in Scripture can start in a kitchen, not a boardroom. She still believes in big dreams; she measures success by peace at home and wholeness in the heart. The girl who once hid in romance stories now writes a truer one: a mother learning to love well, a daughter learning she is loved, a family learning to choose healing on purpose.
