Follow the Thistles - Thistle Farms (2024)

"Over tea is where we share stories...

It's where you share connection, it's where you share ideas.

And back in 2013 when we sat in community circle with our founder BeccaStevens and graduates and other community members, Beccaannounced wanting to open a café and she wanted the focus to be around tea because of the healing process of the tea.

Through that conversation she said: “we are going to start collecting teacups.”

We had no idea what we were going to do with these teacups, but it was a starting point. And Becca would announce everywhere she spoke for people to mail in teacups and boxes ofchinateacups were mailed in.

At this time, we were pouring candles onsite and just starting our meaningful employment program. What had started as just a housing program had quickly grown to meet the needs of women survivors in our program and the café was a way to not only support women in our program but to invite
our community in with radical hospitality.

And I was working in the café trying to figure out what to do with teacups.

And these teacups had beautiful, powerful stories: likea grandmother's weddingchinathat her family took when they fled Nazi Germany, a teacup from a Japanese internment camp, and a teacup from a woman who experienced a home burglary and assault, and the teacup fell off a shelf but did not break.

We kept receiving all these stories of women's resilience that were just beautiful.

Meanwhile, we started to do the first round of design aspects of the café, with only $275,000 dollars to transform a molding hair school into a café. It felt like an impossible task.

But we had a designer reach out to use who did window displays for Anthropologie and I said to him:

“I want to do something different.”

We came up with a "granny chic" café design and we used teacups as small pendant lights with the rest of them incorporated into our afternoon tea service. It was here we found the phrase: a story in every cup.

But around Christmas Eve of 2016, our roof collapsed in the café.I can still remember getting the call from Daniel, the Café Manager at the time, that he could see the sky from the inside of the café. And it took a huge capital campaign to renovate the entire Charlotte building – we had to close to gut the whole place.

And our community showed up. We even recycled the original floors into the banquettes that are in the new café design.

And this new space became a symbol of hospitality and meeting people where they are and there is healing that comes from that.

And so, for the teacups in the new design, we met with another artist that did drawing for one big statement piece instead of small teacup lights. We wanted to continue the theme of volunteers contributing to the building of the café since they were an integral part of building the first café and we came together as volunteers and staff to tie teacups and attach them to chicken wire and then the artist adjusted the levelsto give it it’s shape.

And the way I interpret this fixture isthat thechandelier really represents the strength and resilience of women.

Teacups are fragile and women are talked about as fragile – but we are anything but fragile. And these teacups are a symbol of the strength of resilience of women. And there is light coming through when we come together.

Today, we still use donated teacups in our tea service reminding us that there is a story in every cup.

The café started as a place where we can welcome our community.Originally when Becca pitched the idea of a tea shop, the board told her: “this is a horrible idea: we are good at candles, not food, we don't
know anything about restaurant.”

But because it was such a community effort, we said : “hey this doesn't make business sense but we are going to do it anyways.”

This is our Thistle Farms way. The café did not make sense to outside people, but it made sense to us.

Today we employ 22 people from Thistle Farms and other recovery communities inNashville. We made over $1 million in sales last year which makes it possible for us to continue opening our doors for our community to join us in this community work. And it’s because of donations that we can continue our safe housing program with over 32 beds in Nashville providing two years of free housing and wrap around services so a woman survivor can write her own story.

Our community made this space: we had hundreds of people that painted the walls, tied teacups, donated teacups, sanded the floors - they are a part of the story.

This space is made by our community, for our community.

Welcome to Thistle Farms.