We were lucky to catch up with Yasmine Charles recently and have shared our conversation below.
Yasmine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?
Unfortunately raising children doesn’t come with a manual. There are lots of lessons to be learned from ill-equipped parents. My foundation was built on abuse, dysfunction, and chaos. By the time I was 5, my parents had separated. Shortly after, my father moved from Haiti to America and 7 years later, I joined him and his new family in New York City. My father did do one thing right; he gave me a green card. While I’m forever grateful for it, it cost me growing up without the love and the affection of a traditional family. I never fit in with the new family. In my teenage years, I was always on the alert anticipating the next family fight, constantly in a fight or flight mode. I was outspoken and I had no one to value me. To escape, I developed an obsession with food as a mechanism for managing rejection, displacement, and humiliation. I loved watching cooking shows on PBS, especially Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. The hosts looked happy, and their on-air chemistry felt like a wonderful magical world I could escape to, and I desperately wanted to be a part of it. Everything about the show was comforting to me; the plates, the pots, the music, the overcrowded countertops, Jacques’ French accent, and Julia’s husky voice gave me joy in a house filled with fear and chaos. I wanted to be like those two chefs, and that’s exactly what I’ve done.
Yasmine, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
What led me to where I am today is my resilient, persevering, kind spirit, and a strong belief that I would make it. I experienced veteran homelessness during my senior year at Norfolk State University in 2015 and I dedicated an entire chapter about it in my memoir, The Cost of the American Dream. As painful and numbing as homelessness was, it’s nothing in comparison to being deported to Haiti at age 16 by the adults who were responsible for me. Haiti is a country known for kidnapping and raping young girls and the experience did significant damage to my psyche. I wondered what happened to my father growing up to think that putting his own daughter in harm’s way was a great way to teach me a lesson. I was a good kid, and I loathed his wife for her silence in the matter. Thanks to Prince Harry’s mentioning of EMDR during the pandemic, prior to exploring with this form of psychotherapy, I marinated in anger, rage, and resentment for years. Like a rotisserie chicken in a roaster, my brain constantly orbited around the trauma, and I found it impossible to shake off the immense anger my 16-year-old brain nursed towards my father and stepmother. Abandonment and rejection served as a springboard upon which I made decisions concerning my worth, how I showed up in the world, how I felt about my family of origin, and the decision to join the military. I felt if I could just put on a military uniform and join the ranks of the brave, I would finally feel worthy, and others would like and respect me. Ultimately, deportation, family scapegoat abuse, and homelessness became my superpower. They reinforced my compassion for others and added depth and meaning to my life.
Have you ever had to pivot?
During my experience with homelessness, I had a difficult time with organic chemistry and failing the class made me realize that becoming a dietitian would not be the career choice for me. I ended up changing my major and extended for one more year in school. I was able to use my culinary experience and nutrition education to teach at a culinary school instead of becoming a registered dietitian as I originally planned. What initially seemed like a failure became the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Author John C. Maxwell says, “Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.” I failed forward to success. Today, I make regular culinary appearances on television and every time I stand in front of those cameras, I’m auditioning for my own cooking show one day with a major network. It’s a dream come true.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-cost-of-the-american-dream-yasmine-charles/1140871559
- Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasmine-charles-53b10912a/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yasmine.charles
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasmine-charles-53b10912a/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Yasminescookingshow/videos
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Look-Cute-Diary-Homeless/dp/1630502294
Image Credits
Yasmine Charles