Tabitha Brown on spreading joy through vegan TikTok tutorials: 'We gotta love each other'
Who knew that carrot bacon would be the way to TikTokkers’ hearts? Tabitha Brown did, for one. Or she had faith, at least, in her unique brand — a blend of Southern charm, simple vegan recipes and a knack for wearing her heart on her sleeve. Now the actress-influencer-mom has 3 million followers and counting. It’s made her a media darling, lauded for spreading lots of what everyone could use more of right now: joy and love.
“I think that's what we, as a people, are lacking and need the most — to be loved and feel loved and spread love,” Brown tells Yahoo Life via Skype. “It's important for all of us, especially during this time. You know, we’re living in a pandemic, child, something none of us thought we'd ever see. But we are. So, we need each other right now. All of us. We gotta love each other, be kind to each other, see each other, and hear each other.”
That stance has made Brown a beloved cruelty-free guru, with fans glomming on to her every detail, from her orange-slice earrings and family catchphrases to her beautifully coiffed Afro, which she’s lovingly named Donna (after boxing promoter Don King, of all people, when she discovered one patch of hair growing straight up to the sky and made a joke, which stuck).
Brown, an actress and former hairstylist by trade, found her way into this role through a combination of kismet and what she calls divine intervention, and it was nothing if not hard-won — starting in 2016 when she woke up with head and neck pain. It was a familiar feeling, as surviving a car accident in high school had left her with frequent aches. But this pain was different, more intense, and it stayed for one year and seven months.
“Nothing could make it better,” Brown, 41, recalls. “And then that headache turned into chronic fatigue, chronic pain throughout my body. I would fall when I would walk. I just started having all these female problems. It felt like my body was attacking itself and it was just not normal anymore.” Frequent doctor checkups and MRIs revealed nothing, and she became depressed and anxious. “I really thought I was going to die,” she says. “I never imagined seeing 40.”
Then one day her teenage daughter Choyce came home from school, talking up a documentary, What the Health, that she thought could be helpful, and they watched it together, along with her husband and their young son. “And the thing that got me is when they said, ‘all diseases are not hereditary,’ that we eat the same thing causing the same disease,” she recalls. “Well, my mom died at 51 of ALS. My dad is 68 and he's the oldest male to ever live in our family. My aunts and my uncles and grandparents, they die young of heart attacks or strokes or they have these conditions.”
In that moment, she says, “I thought, well, meat was the common denominator. And I had tried everything else — all the steroids, all the drugs, everything that doctors would give me as a Guinea pig to see if my body would react to anything, and nothing had helped.” She told her husband, “‘Let’s try it for 30 days and just see. I mean, I ain’t got nothing to lose at this point.’”
They all did the challenge together, as a family, and that’s when something remarkable happened, she says. “In the first 10 days, my headache went away. After one year and seven months of every single day, my headache went away,” she recalls, adding that she was “blown away.” Then, on day 29, as she felt her old energy returning, she recalls saying to her husband, “I think this is my path. I think I’m going to go vegan.”
The rest of her family eventually joined her (except for her son, 8, who is vegan at home by default but can make his own choice if and when he’s ready) — and she didn’t pressure them before they were ready, she says, “because it's so important sometimes when you figure out what works for you, and something that's personal for you.”
For Brown, veganism — meaning that you do not eat or use any animal or animal byproduct — “is a way of life,” she explains. “For me, personally, when I first started, it was to save my life. It was for my health. And now, as I have ventured into it for almost three years now, I've learned so many amazing things: It's not just about my life anymore, it's about…millions of other lives.”
She believes that veganism is seeing a turnaround, after years of getting a bad rap. “There was, like, a stigma behind it and a nasty name attached to it, ‘judgmental’ and things like that, and people just kind of shied away from it,” she says. “Even myself, when I used to hear a ‘veganism,’ it scared me a little bit. I thought, Oh, everybody’s pushy and forcing you to do something… And that's just not who I am. And I never wanted to be that. And so, when I decided to be on this journey and make this a way of life for me, I was determined to help try to change the way people looked at it. And I always want people to feel loved when they come to my page.”
Her approach seems to be working.
“I get messages and people are like, ‘I went vegan because of you.’ Or ‘now I eat vegan twice a month,’ ‘I try to make sure I eat vegan for one meal a day. I'm really trying to do my part.’ So, I know that being loving with it, giving it a little humor but still educating and not hitting somebody over the head with it… literally changes the way people look at it.”
The best way to wade in, she says, “is one day at a time — whatever works for you. Don't be hard on yourself. If it's something you do want to do, know your why. Why do you want to even start?” Because if it truly means something to you, she says, “you’ll stick with it.”
As Brown’s dedication grew, she started making Facebook videos about her journey, after she says she had a dream in which she saw herself on a show — which she took as a sign. But, she says, “I was very hesitant at first.”
But a video (below) would soon change her life — her first of many food reviews, made in the Uber she was driving to make money at the time, in which she raves about a Whole Foods TTLA (tempeh bacon, tomato, lettuce and avocado) sandwich, declaring, “Lord have mercy!” over its deliciousness. Later that day, she says, “My phone was buzzing like an amber alert, girl! I was like, what in the world?”
The video had quickly racked up 50,000 views and she told her husband, “‘I think I’m going viral.’ And he was like, ‘well, what does that mean?’ I said, ‘I don't know.’ He said, ‘are you going to make any money?’ I was like, ‘I don't know.’” She had her answer four days later when Whole Foods reached out and asked her to become their brand ambassador. She was a hit.
Her daughter suggested she branch out into TikTok.
“I was like, ‘What in the world is this TikTok? Why? Why would I get on TikTok?’” To test the waters, she had her daughter teach her the Renegade dance, and it became her first video. “And then after that, I was like, OK, let me try to figure out one of my recipes and how it works.”
As anyone who has glimpsed a second of Brown’s cooking videos, her mouth-watering how-to’s are delivered with a bubbly positivity and refreshing authenticity.
“When people watch me, I want them to see freedom,” she says. “And then I want them to look at themselves and say, ‘Am I living free? Am I being my authentic self?’ Because that's what it's all about. It's why we were placed here — not to try to fit into whatever else is going on. Cause I did that for years, and let me tell you, it did not work. [Instead, it’s about] being free, and knowing that we are enough, just how we are.”
She’s also creative, making all the recipes up herself, and has this advice for cooks afraid to do so: “A lot of times when we have to have a recipe every time we cook, it means we don't trust ourselves… Don't take it so serious.” You know what tastes good to you, she adds, so “put a little extra if you like. I always throw a little extra in there,” she says, before adding her signature, “because that's my business,” a catchphrase she says she owes to her “granddaddy.”
Something her fans know she always uses extra of? Garlic powder, which she discovered as a great alternative to salt, something she used to pile on before learning it could kill a good recipe.
“When I discovered garlic powder, I realized I could put as much on it as I want. It ain't gonna make it salty. It heightens the flavor, right? It brings value to the meal. People think you give them something real fancy, and all you did was put a little garlic powder in it.” Now she sees the seasoning as a metaphor for her life.
“Garlic powder, as a person, it adds value. That's the type of person I want to be. I'll never want to make nobody's life salty. And I always want to heighten or bring up people, lift them, which I feel like garlic powder does,” she says, and then declares, laughing, “I am garlic powder and garlic powder is me!”
— Video produced by Nurys Castillo
Read more from Yahoo Life:
Kim Kardashian’s epic kitchen tour revealed her ‘plant-based’ diet. Here’s what that means.
Shuttered LGBTQ community centers feel shutdown fallout: ‘It’s been really hard’
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