Our mission is to walk with women beyond the boundaries of poverty and neglect and assist them in finding their purpose.

Social media posts about childhood trauma are the “Red Badge of Courage” for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Are you even really a part of those generations if you can’t articulate some trauma, how it stunted your progress, and how you have bravely overcome it?  Scores of videos on Tik Tok and Instagram recount the “abuse” experienced by teens and young adults as children. I put abuse in quotations, not to make light of it, but to underscore that the definition has broadened.

Too many of the stories are horrific, and the perpetrators are deserving of prison sentences. The survivors need love, support, counseling, and empathy to overcome the psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical wounds they have endured. However, for someone born a Baby Boomer, Gen Xer, or even a Millennial, some of the stories sound like character-building struggles we all must endure, rather than life-altering trauma.

To the credit of the younger generations, we talk about trauma these days, rather than ignoring it or sweeping it under the rug. Spend any significant time with a member of Gen Z, and it won’t be long until you’re hearing about a pop star, movie icon, or athlete whose trauma affected their lives and careers. This trauma-focused banter has normalized the topic and led to healing for countless people, but it is also important to keep our trauma in perspective.

There are some tragedies that we can all agree would be traumatic for anyone – the loss of a child, being robbed at gunpoint, etc. Aside from these grave instances, people tend to process the same difficult situations differently. What is traumatic for one may be only an unfortunate circumstance for another. However, chronic instances of struggle or difficulty can also be traumatizing, and this is what we see and have seen with many of the women in Orange Mound we served.

We have told you before about the exposure to violence, physical and sexual abuse, and the struggle with addiction, many of the My Cup of Tea ladies have endured. These are for sure trauma-inducing events. What is equally impacting, or perhaps more potent, are the ongoing, chaotic adversities that plague the lives of some of the ladies–one psyche-rattling incident after another for life.

One recent morning, Cheryl, one of our supervisors, received a phone call. On the other end of the line was a tiny voice saying, “My mom needs help. She can’t breathe!” The child was one of the daughters of an employee. Cheryl told the daughter to call 911, grabbed another one of the ladies, and headed out to help.

When they arrived, the paramedics were already there working on the mother. Somehow, in the midst of the crisis, the mother had contacted her nephew to come and pick up her daughters. The nephew was with another man and needed the mother’s vehicle to transport the girls to the mother’s friend’s house. This raised immediate red flags for Cheryl, but after some intense questioning, it was determined it was safe for the girls to leave with the nephew.

The ambulance transported the mother to Baptist Hospital East, several miles East of her Orange Mound home. After a battery of tests and without a clear diagnosis, they released her, but she had no transportation or keys to her house. Debbie, our Operations Manager, drove to retrieve her. Then they traveled to the North part of the city, an area called Frayser, to collect the daughters. However, the house keys were not there. The keys were in the Northeast part of the city, still miles away from her neighborhood.

Eventually, the daughters, the vehicle, and the house keys were secured.

All’s well that ends well, right?

Not exactly.

For the moment, things are calm-ish, but this is simply a single occurrence in the cycle. It likely won’t be long before chaos ensues again. Violence or death will be imminent. There will be minimal, if there is any, support from family or friends. Financial resources will not be available to mitigate the circumstance. Fear and uncertainty will be like a concrete slab laying on the backs of those involved, paralyzing forward movement. And these events will continue to hammer the spirit of the ladies and their children, sowing new trauma and exacerbating the old.

We are not experts at addressing trauma, but we now have a better sense of what it looks like. Here are some steps we have taken that help.

It starts with the environment at The House. Debbie can often be heard saying, “My God is a god of order.” And The House is always in order, without ambiguity, and a place of peace.

We’ve written about our Kintsugi sessions that used the ancient Japanese art form to help the ladies process trauma. The tangible results of that effort are displayed in the kitchen at The House.

More recently, Dr. Fred Gilliam, a licensed professional counselor, has joined us for lunch on Wednesdays to hear from the ladies about their challenges and to equip them with the emotional and spiritual tools to cope.

Some of the ladies have taken advantage of therapy offered by Christian Psychological Center through the Memphis Resilience Project.

And, of course, we pray – a lot.

By today’s definition, most of us have experienced some type of trauma in our lives, and perhaps it has some long-lasting negative effects. What is also true is that most of us have never and will never live the repeated trauma faced by Orange Mound women. That fact can cause us to minimize the struggles they face or fail to recognize them at all.

While most of us scratch our heads at how Gen Zs and Gen Alphas view the world, we can be grateful that they have seen the trauma we couldn’t see and refuse to shut up about it until we start addressing it.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. II Corinthians 1:3-5

Our gardens are out doing themselves this Summer.  The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, and the green bean stalks are rivaling Jack’s.

All of the ladies had been enthusiastic to begin the adventure of seeds-to-harvest once the garden beds were prepared.  We had embryonic seedlings residents of the greenhouse, and though we are still learning the complexities of organic gardening, we are quite confident of the Lord’s “green thumb” permanently in place in our yards and punctuating our greenhouse at the corner of Semmes and Carnes. All the ladies were prepped and exceeding all expectations for planting day, but one.

She is one of our newer employees who confessed she prefers the ice cream desserts, pies, and cakes our volunteers bring, and not so much the fresh vegetables offered daily. 

 We had noticed.

 She hasn’t been inclined to eat anything that is un-breaded or never frozen. I had considered her indifference and underexposure to gardening was the result of windowless apartment living and lack of time and curiosity about how things grow and seeds multiply. Back in February, I gave her a sprouted sweet potato with the simple instruction to keep it wet, hoping I might turn her thoughts toward self-health.

When the early spring day for planting our cultivated seeds arrived, her assignment was to plant bean seeds and seedlings in our new garden boxes filled with fresh, rich dirt and compost.  We have an irrigation system at last, and a steadily growing compost pile.  The summer of ‘25 has promised to be one of plenty, raising our bar to an impressive new height.

Once all used gloves were pulled from tired hands and the spades back on the shelf with everything secured, there were wire cages for beans and tomatoes remaining. We had plenty of bean seeds to share as well.  She had practiced in our garden so naturally, I encouraged her to take some seeds and bury them in dirt. She was insecure about her ability to master a patio patch and dubious that she could profit from something she didn’t fully comprehend. I also gave her a potato bag to house the potato vine, which she had been watching curl around her kitchen cabinets.

                In two clicks a new day dawned!  With incredulous breaking news, she initiated daily reports of the progress of the bean tendrils curling on the support on her patio.  They were flowering, to her shock, and pointed upward, and the potato vine was pointed downward in the potato bag.

Last Wednesday, she sent three pictures on our employee group text of her first bean clinging to the vine.  She claimed it as her baby and promptly named it “BEAN-oncé (like Beyoncé.) 

Birth of a bean and the birth of a potential vegetarian!  That may be a stretch - is ketchup a vegetable? She has considered freezing BEAN-oncè or leaving her on the vine to grow but is hopefully convinced with our prodding that she can dice her up for supper.  BEAN-oncé, we have hopes, is part of a family moving in.

We have been cultivating our gardens for 13 years, and all of us have reaped abundantly and been beneficiaries of the harvests. Only one other employee showed similar affection when she picked her first cucumber.   She cradled it in a paper towel and carried it to her family’s Fourth of July celebration.

The seed metaphors, replete in Scripture, are referenced often in our devotionals. Sowing the seed is so simple. One merely drops one seed in the dirt. If the soil is rich and welcoming, the Lord balances rain and sunshine to rouse from sleep a new creation. The rest is miraculous.  

So it is with the birth of faith, which is far more extraordinary and eternal than the beautiful lush green leaves and vines which are primping on our corner.  They will wither and fade at summer’s end. The future continues and the fruit multiplies for a believer in Christ. The Bible teaches that heaven rejoices when someone repents and turns to God. In Luke 15:7-10,  Jesus highlights that there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents and this joy extends to all of heaven, including angels, as they witness the salvation of a lost soul.

                It has been pure pleasure to witness joy overcome doubt in the eyes and the heart of our BEAN-oncé-growing employee. Her trepidation about gardening has transformed into conviction, and we are elated for her. If we so enthusiastically celebrate the birth of a patio gardener and her simple bean grown from a tiny seed, imagine the joy in heaven at the birth of a new believer.

I spoke too soon about our property being free from theft. Yesterday, we arrived at the House to find two of our porch rocking chairs had been pinched.

We have a combination lock and dense, steel cable threaded through the rungs of our chairs, so the gutsy thief or thieves came with intention, cable cutters, and cover of night.  We also have security cameras integrated with the Memphis Police Department through the Connect Memphis platform.  Our employee who maintains our property, and I   reviewed the images recorded by our six cameras. We marked the time of the heist, noted peculiarities in the images, and like modern-day Nancy Drews, identified the culprits.

             Emboldened, undaunted, and resolved to exact justice, we took our evidence to the Tillman Precinct, where we had an appointment with Sargeant Purdle, and filed our report.

Returning to the House, we detailed to all who were waiting for our scoop on the meeting with Sargeant Purdle and assured everyone that the wheels of justice were turning.  We were respected, heard, and assured that a detective had been assigned to our case.

                The two chairs taken were the broken ones we had intended to glue but easily replaced at Walmart – a blessing. We are also grateful that the “dastardly deed” happened at night when no employees or customers we present. There was no damage to The House, no product missing, and no need to file an insurance claim. For all these years, God has shielded our corner from the peril lurking all around us. After all, it was on the sidewalk next door that an innocent woman was gunned down by her partner in a fit of rage. It was just three blocks down at Orange Mound Park where a mass shooting extinguished the lives of two and injured seven. Seemingly more frequently than before, local news is reporting on a shooting or other violent event in the less than two square miles we know as Orange Mound. It’s not “Lady Luck” who has been on our side.

I know that all things work together for good for us because we love the Lord, and in time I thought I would see redemption.

What I did not anticipate was the collective fury and ownership from the ladies – a remarkable possessiveness of our property. They were indignant, even vitriolic, at the gall of anyone who would trespass on their sacred ground.  “This is ours, and a sanctified place” was the unanimous retort.  We are not taking justice into our own hands I am assured, and we are encouraged that the culprits will be apprehended. The police have their pictures.  I doubt that they read this blog, so hopefully they are temporarily rocking on a porch (as opposed to selling the chairs for drugs or guns,) if they have the glue that will keep the arms and runners attached.

After a few minutes of ranting, cooler heads prevailed. They formed a circle, held hands, and Debbie led the ladies in a prayer for the salvation of these two men. We are reminded that two criminals hung on crosses next to Jesus – one on the left and one on the right. One railed at Jesus for not saving himself and them. The other admitted his wrong and asked that Jesus remember him. Jesus responded to the second criminal,

“Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

                We’re praying that our thieves turn away from crime and to Him before Jesus comes like a thief in the night.