Tabitha Brown Opens Up About How She Hid Her Rape for Years: ‘My Secrets Were Making Me Sick’ [Video]

Tabitha Brown is opening up even more about her past trauma.

via People:

Late last month, the vegan food star, 44 — who is known for her uplifting videos — shared a TikTok in which she spoke about how she was raped at 15 years old. In the clip, she detailed the heartbreaking event and shared how she’s learning to heal.

“I don’t know why this is so heavy on my heart, but I wanted to share this now. And I talk about this a bit in my first book Feeding the Soul, so it’s not new to many people, but whatever reason, God has placed it on my heart tonight,” she began.

Brown then explained how when she was 15, she snuck out of her mother’s house and took her car to drive her two friends to a party at a hotel.

“‘Let’s go – let’s go meet boys,’ and we went to this party,” she recalled. “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 added: “That night, I ended up being raped by him, and it wasn’t like a brutal rape…Sometimes people hear ‘rape,’ they think that it has to be one way. It simply means I said ‘no’ and he wouldn’t stop.”

Brown then got candid about how her past trauma made her believe she did something wrong.

“For years I blamed myself because I had snuck out my mama’s house, I had taken her car and I went to this party. And I knew better. And in my mind I convinced myself, ‘That’s what you get. You deserve that. Like that was your punishment.'”

After a reflective healing journey, she says she understands she was not at fault.

“In my adult life, I realize — and in this healing journey that I’m on — that there is absolutely never any reason to be raped. It is never your fault. Okay?” she told viewers. “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.”

The cookbook author then went on to share more wisdom with her followers.

“I don’t know who needs that, but it was heavy on my heart that you’re holding yourself hostage,” she said. “You’re carrying this guilt. You feel like you deserved it. But you did not. You did not deserve that. Okay? No one deserves to be raped.”

Brown revealed that she “kept it a secret for a very long time.”

“Up until five years ago, nobody knew. Only the two friends who were with me that night,” she noted.

Her faith inspired her to no longer hold it in.

“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.”

Brown — a North Carolina native and mother of two — found her way into vegan cooking back in 2016, when she switched to a plant-based diet. She had been experiencing chronic autoimmune pain and fatigue, and despite seeing a variety of doctors over the course of a year and a half, couldn’t get a diagnosis to understand what was going on.

She had a persistent ache in the back of her head, would sometimes fall when trying to walk, lost her vision for a day and developed severe panic attacks and depression as her illness went on and on.

“I was so scared,” she told PEOPLE in September of 2021. “I felt like I was going to die because I didn’t know what was wrong. And it put me in a really dark place. I lost a little bit of faith during that time.”

Food helped her heal, opening her up to pursue more work. But fame came in an unexpected place in 2017, when a Facebook video of her giving a review of Whole Foods’ TTLA sandwich (tempeh bacon, tomato, lettuce, avocado) made her a viral star.

In November, Brown spoke on The Jennifer Hudson Show about how she manages to always stay so positive. She opened up about how she was in a “real dark place” when she suffered health issues. But she prayed that once she got better, she would “always choose joy and always choose light.”

Watch the video below.

@iamtabithabrown It wasnt my fault and it wasn’t your fault! You didn’t deserve that… I love you?? #tabithabrown #spreadlove #victim #survivor ? original sound – Tabitha Brown

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