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Vegan food star Tabitha Brown opened up about the pain she carried for years after a rape incident changed her life at the age of 15.
On March 29, the 44-year-old author and actress went into detail on TikTok about the scary experience and offered a few words of advice for other rape victims searching for the courage to heal.
“I don’t know why this is so heavy on my heart, but I wanted to share this now,” the star began. “And I talk about this a bit in my first book Feeding the Soul, so it’s not new to many people, but for whatever reason, God has placed it on my heart tonight.”
When Brown was 15, she snuck out of her mother’s house to attend a hotel party with two friends. The Chi alum said she was so excited to be out and about and wanted to meet a few boys.
“And there was a guy there who I thought liked me. I thought was cute, and I had known him, but didn’t really know him,” she recounted.
However, later on in the evening, things took a scary turn when she “ended up being raped” by the man she was interested in.
“It wasn’t like a brutal rape…Sometimes people hear ‘rape,’ [and] they think that it has to be one way. It simply means I said ‘no’ and he wouldn’t stop,” the vegan food entrepreneur continued.
Brown didn’t tell anyone about the incident for years
Brown told fellow TikTok users that it took her a long time to understand that the startling experience wasn’t her fault.
“Up until five years ago, nobody knew,” she confessed. “Only the two friends who were with me that night.”
With the help of God, the vegan chef she was able to grow and let go of those negative thoughts. The uplifting social media star said she was literally making herself “sick” by holding on to the weight of her trauma.
“God gave me a word five years ago and He told me my secrets were making me sick, and so I had to release it,” she explained. “So I say to you — if you’ve been holding it in for so many different reasons, whether you think you’re guilty or that you deserved it: embarrassment, shame, whatever the case may be, it’s time to release it. Because your secret is making you sick. It wasn’t your fault.”
Before ending the video, the vegan cookbook author offered a few words of love and compassion to fans struggling to heal from their past trauma.
“There is absolutely never any reason to be raped. It is never your fault. Okay?” she told her 5 million followers on TikTok. “Doesn’t matter what you wore. Doesn’t matter where you went. Doesn’t matter what you did wrong, but under no circumstance is it ever your fault for getting raped.”
Brown detailed her rape incident in her New York Times best-selling book Feeding The Soul. Released in 2021, the inspiring memoir documents the star’s journey with veganism and how going plant-based helped her to heal from unresolved trauma and chronic autoimmune pain.
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