Tennessee Bloggers Combine Efforts

Several bloggers are talking about Thistle Farms today in a concentrated effort to talk of a new book that has hit the market about a two-year rehabilitation program for women who have been mired in a world of drugs, abuse and prostitution and who are now finding a different way. Sharon Cobb (who has several videos with the women there), Mack and David Oatney all are talking about the endeavor as GingerSnaps will have later in the week.

The women there have written a book called Find Your Way Home. Sharon Cobb explains.

Written by the women of Magdalene, some who had been drinking since age 5, prostituting since age 8, living on the streets all of their lives until coming to Magdalene, I have to wonder if their almost supernatural courage an strength is their gift to “the normal people” to show them just how much we all have to learn and how much we all have to forgive, and most of all, how much we all have to love.

The group is faith-based and I don’t know much about them although several of Tennessee’s blogosphere have gone out to check it out with the permission of the women here. Having worked with domestic violence victims in the past, I wanted to focus on what they are saying about Thistle Farms.

I may have the message wrong, but to me, the women in the book have decided that forgiveness is immediate, and that you must extend that forgiveness to yourself first. Experience forgiveness, become forgiveness. Experience love, become love.

from Mack

When I worked with battered women and sexually abused children (of course there are more factors here to contend with) it was not faith-based but government-based through grant programs from the United Way, private donors and Community Action Agencies. At Thistle Farms, it appears the ministry of what their leaders are doing is exactly what the women need and are utilizing to impact positive change in their lives. I made some calls to some of my former peers in Nashville who worked in this field to get their impression as I wanted to be sure before I wrote about this sight unseen and they pretty much seem to think that Thistle Farms has created a faith-based community that is helping a lot of people that lost their way.

Oatney focuses on Thistle Farms and Magdalene from the aspect of the ministry perspective.

It is easy in our own day and age for even the most well-meaning and pious of Christians to forget that there are places in our cities and towns, and even in our countryside where those who society has cast aside live in darkness and fear, and often in violence and and even abuse. We often choose to block these places from our mind and our prayer and devotional life-but when Christ walked the earth, it was to those people and in those places that he first went to minister.

I spoke to GingerSnaps about the farm as well, who also went to visit and she will also have a review up later in the week about the organization as she had prior commitments for today’s blog release.

I did a little research and found this article from Publisher’s Weekly about the book which speaks about founder Becca Stevens.

Today, however, Stevens has channeled that pain into a compassionate and unique ministry to women from the streets. In 1997, she founded Magdalene, a Nashville-based program for women with a history of prostitution and substance abuse. Most of those women, Stevens says, were physically and sexually abused as children. “Because women don’t get to the streets by themselves—it takes all kinds of failed systems to get them there—they’re not going to get off the streets by themselves. It takes a community to bring them back.” Magdalene is that community, a two-year residential program that gives women job training, drug rehabilitation and a house of their own to live in. It has been so successful that there are now five houses in Nashville, two in Charleston, one in Chattanooga, and even one in Rwanda. Another is planned for Ecuador.

As I said, for me this organization is something I’m only familiar with on the innertubes.

Several of the bloggers asked me to focus on what they’ve seen and I wished to comply in the spirit of community in our state. Go to their blogs and read their perspectives on this organization, what they are doing and what’s next as they have seen what’s happening first hand.

UPDATED: More from Rachel at Women Health’s News.

SECOND UPDATE: Beth from Design Drama points us to photographs of the women taken by Kristina Krug.

THIRD UPDATE: Jim Voorhies also weighs in with a thoughtful post at his blog.

FOURTH UPDATE: Gingersnaps writes a moving review of the book “Find Your Way Home “