F E E D I N G
M Y
S O U L
Dr. Cheryl Jackson
HOW HUNGRY ARE YOU TO SUCCEED?
D
r. Cheryl Jackson knows what it feels to be like to be hungry personally and professionally. After getting married at the age of seventeen and having two sons she experienced hunger trying to feed her own family and was declined food stamps. She managed to bounce back and secure work in the corporate world. She also became a red-carpet correspondent for Entertainment Tonight and other award shows. In 2014, life for Dr. Jackson would suddenly change. Her father died at the age of 58 years old.
It was that moment that a different hunger pain kicked in. Jackson did her soul searching and after two years of major anxiety and depression, through her pain she found her purpose. Jackson was hungry to let the world know who her only living parent was, so she founded Minnie’s Food Pantry, an award-winning charity headquartered in Plano, Texas named after her mother, the late Dr. Minnie Hawthorne Ewing. With two cans of corns and only the first and last month’s rent, on April Fools Day Jackson began feeding the hungry. She was intentional about choosing that day because so many people thought that it was a joke. They laughed at Jackson and said that nobody was hungry in their community, but she knew that was wrong because she was once hungry herself.
Well you know? I remember being hungry, growing up with my mother on welfare in Milwaukee. 28
WOW Magazine
