MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Inside the Salvation Army’s Renewal Place, Tiffany Dean reads from a letter on a wall written to her by the young daughter of one of her neighbors here. That letter gives her life renewed hope.
“‘To Miss Tiffany, Take your time because you gotta to do better.’ She said leave out the men, drugs and money to start a new life, and that’s what I went
through. I started a new life and gave up everything to have a new life,” Tiffany said.
Tiffany’s life first began to spin out of control when she was just 15 years old and living in Millington, Tennessee.
“It was like being a normal teenager, and then I got raped at the age of 15, and that’s when life got miserable for me,” she said.
It was the beginning of a life she didn’t want to live.
“It was somebody close to the family and it turned my whole world around. I was devastated and I didn’t want to be a teenager anymore. I really thought about committing suicide,” Tiffany said.
She didn’t resort to attempting suicide, but as a teenager, she did become sexually active.
“I started having kid after kid after kid. I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” she said.
Tiffany said she felt the skies above her become even darker when she turned to drugs and drinking.
“I think it was because of my addiction of using cocaine at a young age and being around the wrong crowd,” she said.
Five year later and at 20 years old, Tiffany was working and had own place, but she was still doing drugs even though she was now the mother of several children.
“I lost my house because of my addiction and I wasn’t paying bills and somebody called Child Services on me and I got three of my kids taken away,” she said.
Three of her children were with her grandmother and her other children were with one of Tiffany’s sisters as she became homeless.
” I began to go from house to house still using and my friends didn’t want me to stay with them any because of my addiction,” she said.
Tiffany’s life was of out of control, and one day she realized what was missing in it: her children.
“One day it hit me that my kids were out of my life and by me seeing them every once in a while, they got big and loved to see me. That’s what really broke me down,” she said.
Her sister told Tiffany she needed to give her life to God, and her brother suggested a place that changed her life.
“He told me about this place, the Salvation Army, and he said it was like a shelter, but what it was was the program I was going in,” Tiffany said.
The program was the Salvation Army’s Renewal Place. It’s a transitional housing program for chemically addicted women and their children, and allows families to stay together during recovery.
“It helped me out with parenting. I had to start all the way over and became a better mom,” Tiffany said.
Tiffany and other addicted women can stay in Renewal Place for up to two years as they work toward sobriety, employment, and positive parenting.
“It saved me, and that God has saved me and He gave me a second chance in life,” Tiffany said.