Fay­ola Fras­er

Em­ma Love Lyons was just two years old when she lost her moth­er and fa­ther in quick suc­ces­sion and end­ed up at St. Do­minic’s Chil­dren’s Home.

Both her par­ents died from AIDS, and her three old­er sib­lings al­so passed away from the dis­ease. Lyons, born HIV-neg­a­tive de­spite her par­ents’ sta­tus, was deemed a mir­a­cle ba­by and even af­ter un­der­go­ing test­ing for HIV from the time she was put in­to the home un­til she was 10 years old, she re­port­ed neg­a­tive for HIV af­ter every test.

Grow­ing up with­out par­ents to guide and care for her, Lyons re­mem­bers grap­pling with her loss and emo­tions, es­pe­cial­ly through her teenage years when she was con­sid­ered “mis­er­able” and “dif­fi­cult” while at­tend­ing Cor­pus Christi as a sec­ondary school stu­dent.

In the care of an­oth­er chil­dren’s home, she was pun­ished for her “bad” be­hav­iour by be­ing barred from at­tend­ing school. Be­cause of these dis­rup­tions to her school­ing, Lyons was not able to fin­ish sec­ondary school and left Cor­pus Christi af­ter Form Three.

In­stead of con­tin­u­ing her aca­d­e­m­ic ed­u­ca­tion, she went to Ser­vol and learned geri­atric nurs­ing, lat­er train­ing at Liv­ing Wa­ter Hos­pice, to be able to take care of the el­der­ly.

Lyons joined the NI­NA Young Women’s Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme which of­fered her skills de­vel­op­ment, train­ing and hous­ing but at 20 years old, she left the pro­gramme as she got preg­nant with her daugh­ter.

“Since I’ve known my­self,” she said, “I al­ways want­ed a ba­by. I didn’t have any­one to live for be­fore, but I knew hav­ing a ba­by would give me pur­pose to live.”

How­ev­er, di­rect­ly jux­ta­posed to the hap­pi­ness she felt to be with child, was fear. Her daugh­ter’s fa­ther was phys­i­cal­ly abu­sive and dur­ing her preg­nan­cy, “he chased me down with a knife and used to beat me so much I thought I would die.” Fear­ing for her life, she fled one day and called the po­lice, who took her to the hos­pi­tal where she wait­ed to see a so­cial work­er.

She was con­nect­ed to a women’s shel­ter, and lived there, even­tu­al­ly giv­ing birth to her daugh­ter, El­lie-Love.

“It was a bless­ing,” she re­called.

“When I was in the shel­ter they spread the word among the com­mu­ni­ty that I had a ba­by and peo­ple do­nat­ed so much, I didn’t lack any­thing.”

Dur­ing those first few months af­ter her daugh­ter’s birth, Lyons strug­gled sig­nif­i­cant­ly with post­par­tum de­pres­sion.

“I was in a room by my­self with her, I didn’t know what to do, had no phone, and I was breast­feed­ing and sleep de­prived,” she said, “but I had to pre­tend to be func­tion­al be­cause I was scared they would think I was an un­fit moth­er and take away my ba­by.”

She stayed at the shel­ter for sev­en months and even­tu­al­ly start­ed work­ing in her cur­rent job as an in-home geri­atric nurse to an el­der­ly per­son and used her first salary to rent an apart­ment.

Aside from these tan­gi­ble tran­si­tions, Lyons was si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly un­der­go­ing a rad­i­cal spir­i­tu­al and emo­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion, where she was born again as a Chris­t­ian and gave her life to Je­sus.

She said: “Be­fore I used to par­ty reck­less­ly, have bad re­la­tion­ships and wear all types of clothes, but I couldn’t pic­ture my daugh­ter grow­ing up the way I did, and I knew be­fore she got old­er I had to change my life around.”

Lyons used her new­found faith as the cen­tring force in rais­ing her daugh­ter and guid­ing her as a moth­er.

“Be­ing a moth­er is a new love un­locked,” she said.

At present, her daugh­ter is three years old and Lyons is in awe as she watch­es her grow.

“Be­ing a sin­gle moth­er is not the eas­i­est but hav­ing her is so re­ward­ing and she’s so smart,” she said.

Re­mem­ber­ing her dif­fi­cult child­hood, Lyons wants the op­po­site for El­lie-Love and does all she can to give her every­thing.

With her daugh­ter as her in­spi­ra­tion, Lyons is cur­rent­ly work­ing to ob­tain CXC pass­es and is step­ping out bold­ly in­to en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

Her small busi­ness, Pret­ty Girls Love Je­sus, is grow­ing quick­ly, with more than 3,000 fol­low­ers on In­sta­gram in just a few months. She us­es an on­line plat­form to sell cus­tomized Bibles, jour­nals, key­chains, and Bible study kits.

Lyons does her own ad­ver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing, and start­ed with just five Bibles but steadi­ly grew her in­ven­to­ry based on con­sis­tent de­mand.

“I’m re­al­ly proud of my­self,” she mused. “I didn’t know any­thing about busi­ness but I feel like I’ve come so far. This is all fu­eled by El­lie, I want to teach her that she can be in­de­pen­dent and have her own thing.”

Hav­ing faced aban­don­ment, do­mes­tic abuse, and ne­glect, Lyons has al­ready shift­ed the nar­ra­tive in her own life and pours in­to rais­ing her daugh­ter in a lov­ing, Christ-cen­tered home.

For oth­er young women, she en­cour­ages get­ting mar­ried first or hav­ing a steady part­ner to raise a child with, but in the ab­sence of that, “trust God and do the best for your ba­by. Love them un­til you be­gin to love your­self.”

Specif­i­cal­ly to­wards women in sit­u­a­tions of do­mes­tic abuse, she calls for them to not be afraid to walk away from an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship, say­ing: “If you die, your child won’t have a moth­er and will grow up with an abu­sive fa­ther.”

For Lyons, moth­er­hood is both a learn­ing and an un­learn­ing.

“Every day is a les­son in moth­er­hood,” she said and as­sures par­ents that even dif­fi­cult stages will al­ways come to an end.

Her fo­cus is en­sur­ing that El­lie-Love is al­ways in­volved in every as­pect of life - cook­ing with her, wa­ter­ing the plants - and said keep­ing her en­gaged not on­ly dif­fus­es tod­dler tantrums, but al­lows her to de­vel­op re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and in­de­pen­dence from an ear­ly age.

A main piece of ad­vice for oth­er par­ents is to not pass on their trau­ma to their chil­dren, un­learn neg­a­tive be­hav­iours that they were taught grow­ing up and be care­ful what they say to their chil­dren.

“My daugh­ter saved me,” she said.

At 24 years old, moth­er­hood has de­liv­ered Em­ma Love Lyons and

giv­en her a new pur­pose. Hav­ing a daugh­ter helped her de­vel­op a strong re­la­tion­ship with her God, pur­sue her ed­u­ca­tion, build a bloom­ing busi­ness and heal her­self. De­ter­mined to give her daugh­ter every­thing, she has found her path and chart­ed a beau­ti­ful jour­ney for­ward.