Clichés can function as the foundation of philosophy. Sometimes, the most meaningful perspectives that have the potential to change our lives indelibly are ones which we have heard forever but pay no mind to. The saying “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is one which we have heard on countless occasions. Whether you saw value in that perspective before or you wrote it off as cliché, 2020 was a ‘lemon basket’ of a year. We were all forced to dig deeper into our minds and hearts; to find ‘fruitfulness’ and a greater proclivity towards purpose in these trying times. This is exactly why Leah Marville’s Life and Lemonade TV is such pertinent content.
The former Miss Barbados 2009, TV Host and published model is no stranger to being revered for her beauty but insists that her holistic worth as a woman will not be defined superficially. She started our conversation by saying, “I didn’t want the emphasis of this conversation to be about beauty and the privileges that come with it. I don’t focus too much on that side of things! It’s my profession but not my lifestyle, so it hasn’t been the things that’s been leading my life.” The combination of eloquence and wisdom is not celebrated enough in western media, and oftentimes beautiful women are automatically classified as superficial without being a given a chance to share their ideologies on life – so today we celebrate Leah Marville and Life and Lemonade TV.
She articulated her reasons for starting Life and Lemonade TV by stating: “There is a lot of history behind ‘Life and Lemonade’. It’s life history but not just history related to my career as a model, and I’m not just a model. I’ve overlapped careers between being a lawyer and a model for over 15 years. That saw me living in different countries. So in my early 20’s I moved to Jamaica, then to South Africa, then to New York. I moved back to Trinidad to finish my law degree and I was practicing there for a number of years. Then three years ago I moved back to LA to go into television and modelling. ‘Life and Lemonade’ is something that was on my heart for years because I would meet girls along the way who thought my journey was out of reach for them. There was a truth or a reality behind that because I didn’t have a silver spoon. I was just saying yes to opportunities and finding a way to make it work. I have always been involved in trying to inspire people through my own life. Living in five countries, you start learning things about the world that change your perspective forever.”
The pristine aesthetics of Barbados does lend itself to a fair bit of introspection. Being from the idyllic island, the time Leah spent in nature influences her ability to quietly look within. Leah thoughtfully reflected on her time growing up in Barbados, and how she mentally adjusted to living in so many different countries. “I grew up on the west cost of Barbados in the parish of St. James, but I left Bim when I was 19 years old. I was raised in a single parent household with limited financial backing and I decided, I wanted to go out into the world to be a model. I had very little knowledge of what that even meant (to be a model) and there weren’t many international models from Barbados at the time. People though it was crazy to leave studying law to go out into the world and ‘wear no clothes’ which is what people thought of modeling back then.”
Life and Lemonade TV has given Leah a unique opportunity to use some of her most endearing skill sets on one platform. Another aspect of Leah’s diverse professional journey which inspired her decision to start Life and Lemonade was the time she spent working at the Independent Jamaica Council For Human Rights. She stated that, “My life was always overlapped so while living in Jamaica and modelling I worked at the Independent Jamaica Council For Human Rights and that sensitized me to the value of humanity. I was working in the prison of Jamaica so I would go the prisons and meet with the inmates. You get a glimpse behind the veil into reality and you realize that we really are just human. I sat with people who had committed the most atrocious crimes and years after they committed the crime you realized they were not the same person.”
She furthered her assertions on the value of reformation and humanity: “For me, it’s about the story! It’s about what you overcome in this life and how you respond to the hardships you face. I’m intrigued by the qualities people exhibit and how I can see transformation in people. When I meet someone who has been through something, I can feel their transformation. My legal career along with traveling all over the world has given me a deeper sense of humanity as you can start to see commonalities between people from all walks of life. You see how we are pretty much all alike and looking for basic things such as love, understanding and approval and forgiveness.”
The unending diversity of Leah Marville’s giftings and passion have already led her to begin to diversify the Life and Lemonade brand. She is extremely excited about the launch of her new book and expressed this by stating that: “There is a narrative of inspiration, of motivation that is now emerging in Caribbean culture that wasn’t there before. Life and Lemonade is about sharing the resources and access to opportunities I have been granted on a platform and presenting it back to the Caribbean and to contribute to that we are now about to launch a visual book called ‘The Yearly Vision Book’. At the end of each year, people do vision boards for the new year. I designed a vision booklet that will help you explore yourself, so it provides you with prompting questions that challenge us to think beyond the surface – within your heart. This is the level of introspection that I want to help to promote amongst Caribbean people”
