Crystal Brown: Context & Connection

Story by Trista Havner
Photos by Trunetta Atwater

Long before there was a gallery to curate, babies to raise, classrooms full of students to inspire, courses to pass, miles on the pavement to log, or basketballs to bounce, for little Trista, there were books to read. As a little girl, I would lose myself in stories for hours, becoming a part of the world I was immersed in for the day. I sympathized with the plight of Ramona, solved mysteries with Nancy, languished over injustices in Maycomb, Alabama. So much of the timeline of my childhood revolves around what I was reading at the time. As a college student exploring what that meant for me (especially because I was determined to teach literature and inspire young minds to love a good story as much as I did), I assumed that escape from reality was a big part of the equation, but as an older adult, I have come to know better. Escape is a fleeting byproduct of a good story, but the part that sticks, what keeps drawing me in time and time again, is understanding context. Knowing a character from start to finish and watching them be absorbed into or resist their circumstances is what makes a story worth knowing.

As I have grown in my understanding of people and real-life characters, I have found just how important context is for understanding and for empathy and for community. And when people are willing to share their context and allow you the gift of understanding, that is where real connection happens. 

I got to experience one of those contextual connections last week with a woman I have admired from afar. I knew about Crystal Brown. I had read about her vegan offerings at Crystal’s Zen and Juice, I listened to her speak at the first Royal Reclamation, I picked up on the amount of respect that was associated with her person. She is one of those women whose presence is felt before she even says a word. Going into my interview with her, I knew I was going to be acquainted with a powerful woman. And I was absolutely right. But sitting with her in the beautiful space she has created at the depot on Royal Street, I was reminded of how much context matters. 

Crystal  is a West Tennessee product, raised by an aunt and her husband in Denmark, Tennessee. She grew up fairly isolated from community, and when she was brought to live with her mother as a sixteen-year-old she found herself feeling overwhelmed in social settings. She attended three different high schools before finally unenrolling and homeschooling herself, as school presented plentiful opportunities for anxiety. Crystal was in a relationship that she hoped would eventually lead to marriage and a family, but she found herself pregnant and single with few resources. After struggling as a single mother for a few years, and under the advisement of family and friends, she decided to join the Army and capitalize on the resources she could gain there. 

After serving a tour in Afghanistan, Crystal returned home to severe PTSD and crippling anxiety and panic attacks, which she believes triggered stored trauma from her early life. As we sat and talked about the extent of the effects on her mental health, the word “debilitating” kept cropping up. She could not hold down a job and even felt extremely anxious around her closest family and friends. Knowing she needed healing, she began attending therapy through Veterans Affairs with Karen Roberts, who Crystal highly regards as a godsend.

Crystal started with talk therapy and began to heal but was still struggling with crippling panic attacks and anxiety. Her therapist suggested medication to help dampen the toll of living in a constant state of worry, but Crystal, while fully understanding how beneficial medication can be for anxiety, refused because her “soul knew it (medication) was not my path.” But she needed to do something beyond talk therapy, so she began the journey of holistic healing, including breathwork and yoga and sketch journaling. She began to post some of her sketches on Snapchat, and because of her natural artistic abilities, people began asking her to sketch things for them and her commission work blew up. She decided to quit her corporate job and pursue art full time. She hosted art parties and shows and sold her art. In addition to journaling, Crystal began to research the impact of diet on mental health

And as I sat with Crystal, I started to connect the dots of her story. She is an intentional woman, and her healing journey has been thoughtful and deliberate. 

Holistic healing completely changed the course of Crystal’s journey. In a particularly impactful therapy session, Crystal was talking about a vision she had for a vegan cafe that offered a space for reflection and connection, where she could host sound meditations and art classes. As she laid out the vision, her therapist told her that she could see it being realized in the next five years. In 2023, nearly five years after that therapy session, Crystal made her way back to Jackson and launched Crystal’s Zen and Juice, a vegan cafe and art lounge that offers smoothies and cold-pressed juices and a place to just be. Listening to Crystal talk about how her healing journey led her to this place, I was overwhelmed by what a kindness this offering is to our community. She is offering the same healing that she has worked so hard to achieve. 

As I was wrapping up my interview with Crystal and she had so patiently and honestly answered my questions, I began to think about how important knowing Crystal’s context and past was to understanding her present. My last question centered around dreams, and I specifically wanted to hear her personal dreams and her dreams for our community. Crystal would love to have Crystal’s Zen and Juice operating in such a way that she can relieve herself of the tedious tasks of running the business day to day. Currently, Crystal prepares every single item from scratch, by herself, every day. Ideally, she would hand over those responsibilities, while maintaining the same quality, and take on more of a visionary role. 

As a small business owner myself, I know that is a dream that is no small feat. As far as her dreams for our community, Crystal gazed out the window of the depot and pointed to the mural on the building across the street, a mural she looks at every single day of people going about their lives, eating together and doing business together and sharing experiences. Connected and thriving because of each other and not in spite of each other. And in so many ways Crystal can see that connectivity happening now — small businesses cropping up downtown and all along Royal Street that complement each other, people being “consistent in their calling” to do the work of creating space for community and healing. What better woman to represent that dream than Crystal Brown.

Here’s the thing — dreams, healing. They are not free. Dreams cost us something, and we don’t get to a place of realization of a vision without hard work and sacrificing time and resources and vulnerability. That is why context is so critically important. It is easy to celebrate a win with someone who has created something that matters to us. But when we can see the timeline and the cost and the healing that has powered the successes that we enjoy, the appreciation is deep and rich. Sitting across from Crystal Brown in the beautiful space she has created without context of her past would have been enough to make me appreciate her realized dream, but having even a limited understanding of what this space cost her and the mental and emotional hard work of healing that led to the feeling in my chest just being in her presence and her space — that is the stuff that real connectivity is borne of. And that character development, from anxiety-riddled young mother to Army veteran to therapy-going young adult to a woman in search of healing to the dazzling woman sitting across from me on an unseasonably warm February Monday — that is a story worth knowing.