Dr Kesha Christie: The Currency of Grit
DR Kesha Christie isn’t just a woman of grit, but a woman born of grit.
“I am the girl who walked barefoot through Stony Hill with hungry dreams and a belly to match,” she tells All Woman. “I mothered my sisters when no one else would. I dodged the hands of predators and carried the weight of poverty and shame on my back. Today, I’m a mother, mentor, author, and businesswoman, but more than that, I am proof that strength is earned. I don’t come with filters. And I show up to remind others that what they’ve been through doesn’t get to define them.“
The author of the book, The Currency of Grit, says choosing this specific niche came from the realisation that grit was all she ever truly had.
”[As children] we didn’t have furniture or finished floors, sometimes not even food, but I had fight,“ she shares. ”Grit paid my way into rooms long before degrees or titles did. Grit is the currency that bought me my second chance, and now I teach others how to spend theirs wisely.“
She said grit also came from surviving what should have destroyed her, ”and choosing to become better, not bitter“.
“The book is proof that strength isn’t born, it’s earned,“ she said.
The Currency of Grit tells the story of a little girl who lived a ”stony life“ growing up in Stony Hill, St Andrew. Abandoned by her father, subjected to merciless and frequent beatings from her mother who eventually also left to seek a better life overseas, disregarded by relatives, she set off on a mission to make education her vehicle to success.
”I grew up in a home filled with silence and screaming, you never knew which was worse. My mother sat on my stomach during beatings. She never said ‘I love you’. We slept in unfinished rooms and walked miles for june plums to eat,“ Dr Christie shared about her childhood.
”I was sexually targeted by someone in our family circle, and I couldn’t tell a soul, not even my mother, because I knew I’d be blamed. That pain hardened me, but it also humbled me. It taught me to fight, but also to forgive.“
Dr Christie says she hopes those reading the book will feel seen – to feel like someone understands the silent battles they fight.
”I want them to walk away with tools: how to shift their mindset, how to stand again, how to speak life back into their own story…“
It’s also important to her that the book is more than just a good read.
“I don’t want people to just clap and close the book. I want them to cry, pause, re-read, reflect. I want them to face their truths. I want to give them something real, not sugar-coated. Because my life wasn’t sweet,“ she said.
”This book was written by the woman who once had to choose which bill to pay with a sugar daddy’s hush money. Who had to learn to smile on the outside while unravelling inside. So yes, I needed this book to do something. To cut, to cleanse, to call people higher.“
Dr Christie, an alumna of The Queen’s School, Florida International University, and University of Sunderland, has a doctorate in business administration, and is a trailblazing entrepreneur, business strategist and financial expert, whose career spans over two decades of leadership, innovation, and transformative impact.
She says what sets her apart is her vulnerability, and the fact that she doesn’t lie about her scars.
“And because of that, women feel free to take their masks off around me,” she said. “I’ve helped women walk out of toxic relationships, start businesses, go back to school, tell their stories. Not because I had it all figured out, but because I told them, ‘I’ve been where you are… and I’m still standing’.”
She says her book isn’t a “7 Steps to Joy” kind of book, nor is it about manifesting millions or pretending the pain didn’t happen. “This book meets you in the mud. It holds space for the broken girl, the bitter woman, the tired mother, the dreamer who’s stopped dreaming. It says, ‘Yes, life was unfair, and you still get to choose healing’.”
The book was born from the things she never said out loud – ”like the day I found a woman hiding in my man’s closet, or the weekend I slept on a cold floor in a jail cell because I refused to go back to the man who broke me“.
“I needed to turn those moments into something redemptive,” she explained. “Writing The Currency of Grit was my rebellion against shame. And yes, there will be more. I still have stories to tell and truths to hand over.”
For the little girl who lived in the cracks, who heard her name over the school’s public announcement system, not for awards, but because her school fees were unpaid, whose transformation was born in school uniforms donated by nurses and bounced cheques from a father who disappeared, who gave pieces of herself to men who saw her as a means, not a miracle, Dr Christie knows too well that too many women are stuck in cycles they were never meant to stay in.
“I write and speak to that woman, the one who’s holding it together with prayer, pins, and pain. I chose this space because I know it by heart,“ she said.
She’s motivated by her sons Gio and Joel – the young men who saw her rebuild herself from rock bottom, after love left, after church people whispered, after she walked out with nothing but purpose.
“And also, the little Kesha, the girl who hid in corners and used her body to bargain with men twice her age just so she could buy school books. I owe her everything. I write for her, too….”
In her downtime she spends time with her small circle – ”My boys are my reason. My sisters too, they are my ride-or-die. They don’t love me because I’m strong, they love me when I’m not. They remind me I don’t have to be a hero to be held“.
And family goes beyond blood – as founder and managing director of KCLH Full Business Solutions Limited, she says her team is part of her chosen family.
”They’ve stood beside me through highs and lows, building something meaningful with me. KCLH isn’t just a company, it’s proof that grit and grace can build more than just businesses,“ she said.
