When Regret Becomes Recruitment: A Dangerous Message to Caribbean Girls by Brent Simon
There is a part of this conversation we keep dodging, and it’s time to stop pretending it doesn’t exist.
Across the Caribbean, there are women who know—deep down—that their health has declined beyond easy repair. They live with chronic pain, limited mobility, medication dependency, and silent fear about the future. Many will admit privately that if they could rewind time, they would make different choices.
But instead of warning the next generation, too many are doing the opposite, because misery loves company.
They are encouraging younger women to follow the same path—to eat recklessly, reject discipline, dismiss movement, and frame concern as hatred. Not out of confidence, but out of something far more troubling: unresolved regret.
This isn’t empowerment.
It’s recruitment.
When someone reaches a point where change feels overwhelming—or impossible—there’s a psychological temptation to normalize the damage. If everyone joins you, then the consequences feel less personal. If the lifestyle becomes a “movement,” then the mistake becomes a statement.
And that’s where the real danger lies.
You can see it not only in the messaging, but in the attitude: hostility toward health conversations, aggression toward fitness, mockery of effort, and outright contempt for anyone who chooses differently. Exercise becomes “self-hate.” Nutrition becomes “selling out.” Personal responsibility becomes “colonial thinking.”
That’s not cultural pride.
That’s defensiveness wearing a costume.
Young Caribbean girls are absorbing this—watching women who are clearly unwell tell them, with absolute certainty, “This is fine. This is freedom. This is power.” Meanwhile, the same women struggle to walk long distances, depend on daily medication, and quietly fear what the next medical visit will reveal.
Let’s call it what it is: misguided mentorship.
There is a moral line between loving yourself where you are and encouraging others to damage themselves so you don’t feel alone. One is healing. The other is selfish.
And no—this isn’t about blaming women. It’s about stopping the cycle.
Because when older generations pass down unhealthy habits as identity, they’re not preserving culture—they’re exporting illness. They’re turning preventable suffering into inheritance.
The Caribbean already carries a heavy health burden. We don’t need elders—intentionally or not—training the next generation to repeat it.
Wisdom is not pretending your scars are trophies.
Wisdom is warning others where the road collapses.
If you are struggling with your health, you deserve compassion.
But compassion does not require silence.
And it certainly does not require recruiting young women into the same struggle.
Our girls deserve honesty, not ideology.
They deserve examples of strength, not rationalized decline.
They deserve futures that are longer, freer, and healthier than the present we are normalizing.
This editorial will offend some people. That’s fine.
Truth usually does—right before it forces growth.
Because the real betrayal of Caribbean women is not telling them they’re beautiful.
It’s telling them that health no longer matters.
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