Meet Elaine Douglas-Harrison

We recently connected with Elaine Douglas-Harrison and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Elaine with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

I’ve never been asked this question before, but I chose it over the others because my children have a wonderful work ethic and I believe they would say they got it from me. My work ethic could originate from my Jamaican parents. My father was the headmaster of a primary school in the country, and my mother was his second. He also planted bananas and yams and sold them to the higglers who took them to market – at one time we even had a boxing plant for exporting the bananas. However, he did not care for Kingston or for much travel, so my mother would make the necessary trips to the Ministry of Education and to summer teachers’ conferences. I also have to credit my boarding school, the Servite Convent of the Assumption, in Brown’s Town, St. Ann, JA – now closed, it was reincarnated as the Brown’s Town Community College, where the British nuns, especially Sister Mary Christine, Order of the Servites of Mary, set a stellar example for us girls to follow. Lastly, since becoming a student of Christian Science, I consider God to be my only employer, so my standard of work has to be high!

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I just published my first book, “Marriage Jamaican Style,” which is the offshoot of my PhD sociology dissertation. Having spent part of my life as a teacher and part as an employee of international organizations, I am now retired. However, I still teach a free weekly Spanish class to District of Columbia employees, which I greatly enjoy. I am very excited about my book, and my goal is to be able to discuss it extensively, especially on Jamaican television, if possible, because I want to get a REAL conversation started about Jamaican – and by extension Caribbean – marriage, a topic which to date is largely unstudied. My book speaks of migration – the subtitle is “When wives migrate and leave husbands behind” – which has been, and continues to be studied, but more in relation to matters of identity or differences in the experiences of the different generations. I choose to focus instead on the marriages that this type of migration affects – this has not previously been studied.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1) Optimism: I always see the glass half full, never half empty.
2) Resilience: It’s not how often you fall, but how quickly you get up.
3) Faith in the goodness of God: everything will be all right, if you live with principles, integrity, and consistency.

My advice would be to get to know yourself as soon as possible. I believe it is Shakespeare who said, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” I learned this at school! This helps you to live a life consistent with your beliefs and goals.

Worship a power that is bigger than yourself, and that inspires you to live a good life – for me, that is God.

Do not be unduly disturbed by the curve balls that life will throw at you – life is a great adventure, live it!

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

The most impactful thing my parents did for me was to provide me with a strong foundational education. I always knew the emphasis they both placed on education, but it was not until I was much older that I realized that my father was way ahead of his time when he insisted that “the girl (I had two brothers) MUST be educated, so that no man will take advantage of her.” Yet my first husband did “take advantage of” me, but I was able, after 18 years and four children, to walk away and take care of them singlehandedly, without any financial support from him. All four of them have first degrees, and two have graduate degrees; all four of them turned out to be wonderful people.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: Elaine Douglas-Harrison
• Other: Email: [email protected]