Thistle Farms founder is proving ‘love heals’
Anika Rogers had been arrested 87 times. • Her life story was typical of other women in her shoes: She was sexually abused from ages 5 to 12, a runaway at 15, eventually homeless, and she carried a heavy load of drug, prostitution and related convictions. • But after she walked out of jail and through the doors of Thistle Farms in Nashville, she learned that she was much more than just a statistic. • She was a strong, vital part of a community. And she had a voice.
“They believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself,” Rogers said. “And they were able to love on me when I couldn’t love myself.”
The Rev. Becca Stevens, founder of Thistle Farms, will visit Columbus next week to share the story of Rogers and other remarkable survivors.
Her motto, “Love Heals,” also is the name of the Downtown conference being hosted at Trinity Episcopal Church, 125 E. Broad St.
Three years after finding Thistle Farms, Rogers is a homeowner in Tennessee, she has a job in marketing, she’s clean of drugs and she’s building a new relationship with her three children.
The key, Stevens said, is that each woman is provided two years of free housing with five or so others through
Thistle Farms’ Magdalene program.
“It’s not a halfway house, it’s not a treatment program,” she said. “It’s a community of women coming together who are survivors.”
It also is replicable. Throughout the United States, Thistle Farms has 22 sister communities, all committed to a housing-first model for survivors. Each is an independent nonprofit that forms part of the Thistle Farms network.
“A group can truly help heal a community and give people hope,” Stevens said.
Thistle Farms gives women more than free rent. They undergo treatment for trauma, learn life skills and receive job training — and often jobs — through Thistle Farms’ social-enter-
prise arm. It manufactures bath-and-body care and other home products, partners with other groups that help women, and operates a cafe and craft workshop.
It’s all funded through private grants and donations and the socialenterprise sales, which reached $1 million last year.
Trinity Episcopal member Karen Peeler said a small group of people calling themselves Thistle Farmers meet about once a month in the Columbus area. They all have been to lectures or conferences presented by Stevens and wanted to bring her message here.
“It helps you to realize that one person can make a difference if you decide you’re going to,” Peeler said.
“There’s not much I can do about Syria, and there’s not much I can do about Sudan, but there’s something I can do in Columbus.”
Stevens began her work about 20 years ago, feeling as though she had something in common with the women she served. She had been sexually abused as a child, by a man who led her church after her father, an Episcopal priest, was killed by a drunken driver.
“It gave me enough sense of how it affects your whole life, to have compassion for women on the street,” she said. “I believed that a community could welcome women home.”
Of the women who