I remember many years ago sitting at a bus stop with some friends having the worst phase of De Ja Vu…every second for about two hours my brain kept screaming “de ja vu, de ja vu” over and over again, and so I did the only thing I could do.
I laughed until I cried, because it was the weirdest strangest sensation, my friend Andrew at the time kept saying “you’re going to die if you don’t stop that” and my friend Roach “you’re freaking me out stop it.”
They just kept repeating themselves over and over again, until a cop came over to ask if I was okay. I couldn’t explain what was going through my head, but Andrew’s words stuck with me.
When I was gang raped, in a very real way I felt like a part of me – a big whole piece of me – died off.
I continued to hang out with my friends at the time, my grip on reality however was completely and utterly broken. I was in such a state of shock that I convinced myself, and everyone else, that I had forgotten what happened.
What ended up happening was that slowly but surely I stopped hanging out with those people…I started to realize that there wasn’t going to be any answers to what whatever was wrong with me, at the bottom of the strip club I was hanging out in.
So I moved on, I tried to forget what happened, I tried to pretend that it was over and done with and I did my best to move on with my life. We already know what happened after that..I had a complete and total psychotic break down in downtown Vancouver with no safety rope to hold onto.
It was climbing out from the holes I had dug to hide my secret shame, that came Loud Mouth Brown Girl. I built this after one of the worst experiences of my life. I am building this brand with my own two hands, with my mind and with work that matters to me. I am doing something here that no one else in the entire world is doing.
That’s why I feel confident, that’s why I feel pride in myself and in who I am as a person, so why would I put that aside so that someone else can pay my way for the rest of my life?
I learned a lot from the Punks, Thugs, Gangsters, Geeks, Artists and Freaks that I hung out with, but more than anything I learned how important it is to stand on your own two feet, knowing that you can survive anything the world has to throw at you. I learned that especially from my mom, who sacrificed everything about herself to take care of two children.
She did it without a man by her side, because as she says, she decided that taking care of us was more important to her than having a relationship with a man that might hurt us, or walk away, and they always walked away.
The one thing that I’ve learned about myself is that I need to have value in my life, I need to believe that I deserve to be here, and the way to do that is to put something into the world that is of value to others. I believe that what I do here has value. I believe that the projects I am working on have value, I believe that I inspire other people through sharing my journey.
That gives me hope that one day my daughters will want to stand on their own two feet, that they will feel the same sense of pride that comes from building something with their own two hands.
I am a Business Owner, an Entrepreneur, A Content Creator, A Fashion Designer, A Blogger and a Writer. I wear a lot of different hats these days, and each one fits me better than the one before it, most of all that of writer.
I am proud to say that I am building something no one can take away from me, no one can ever say “okay changed my mind, leaving now and taking this with me,” because it belongs to me myself and I.
On good days and on bad days I am still a Business Owner, an Entrepreneur, a Content Creator, Fashion Designer, Blogger and Writer, no matter what no one can ever tell me otherwise.
I am exactly the person my childhood self wanted me to be, building my business from the ground up with my own two hands. And while it might not look like much right now, one day it’s going to be one of the biggest companies in the world.
No man on earth, no partner can give me that sense of self satisfaction and pride, and it shouldn’t be expected that they do.
A Partner should be there to live with you, share your life with you, be there to cheer you on and support you, but to expect that they spend all their time working their fingers to the bone so that you can have the life you think you deserve without you lifting a hand to earn it yourself is grossly negligent of how they might feel.
I want and need for my future partner to know that they are a valued part of my life, that what they offer me brings me happiness and joy, and I want to be able to stand beside them on equal footing.
I never want anyone to be able to pull the wool out from my eyes and leave me standing penniless and distraught over a bad relationship.
I want someone that I can share my life with, who feels like what they bring to the table matters more to me than the amount of money in their wallet.
There are plenty of relationships that are based on money that work beautifully and while that’s wonderful, it’s just not the kind of relationship that I want.
I’ve been powerless too many times in my life, to ever want to go back to that. I need to know that I can stand on my own two feet, I need to be independent, in order to survive whatever comes next. Just in case.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 