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She is a flight risk.

Did you see her tattoos?

Somebody owns that girl.

There's her light again.

Hey Jessie, what do you need?

My head hurts. I ache all over.

Have you ever had withdrawals before?

No, not like this.

What you're going through is normal.

I can reach out to the doctor

and see if I can get something to help with that.

I don't wanna be like this.

I know, I know.

I think I need to call my aunt,

she'll come and get me.

I really don't think you need to do that.

Your heart rate is really elevated.

You're demonstrating some real signs of infection.

We have your tests planned for today.

You don't need to leave the hospital.

I need to make a call.

Well, I can't stop you.

Where's my phone?

But I really advise against it.

I need to make a call.

Jessie.

Hey, you don't have to go.

I'll come back.

I just have to check in with my aunt.

I hear you saying that.

But you need to understand that the infection that you have

around your heart, if we don't treat it, you will die.

I'll come back. I promise.

There can be a tomorrow for people like us.

I have to go.

Statistically speaking, I'll never see her again.

Most people who live in that lifestyle

die in that lifestyle.

But for the grace of God, that would be my story.

I always knew there was a God.

I just didn't think he knew there was a me.

My earliest memories were good memories.

There was this big tree in the front yard,

a very mature tree.

And I would just look at that tree

and I just would think about that there's a God

and that he made all of these things.

We used to go to the Fannie Mae Dees Park,

but we called it the Dragon Park

because it had a huge ceramic dragon

that kind of weaved in and out of the ground

and it was made of these ceramic tiles.

And each of the tiles was different.

It had a little piece of something on it, a picture,

you know, like a mosaic.

And I just had this picture in my mind that

that's how God was.

'Cause everything was in God and God was everything.

And he was this big giant mosaic

of all of these little pieces of things.

And it was always a positive picture.

I was born in Nashville to a single mom

living with her father and family.

I remember sitting on the front porch with my granddaddy.

I remember eating watermelon in the backyard and running

and fighting with my brother and playing.

And those are probably the some of the safest,

happiest memories of my childhood.

I was safe, I was loved. All my needs were met.

Life was pretty good until I was about six.

So my dad was in jail,

but we maintained a relationship with my granny.

Granny didn't approve of my mom and her lifestyle.

So she, for reasons I don't really understand,

had us taken away from my mom.

We were placed in her custody temporarily

until a court date.

We essentially felt kidnapped

and kept out in the woods on this farm.

We would get whipping daily.

We didn't even know what we were doing wrong.

It felt very evil.

We had a court date and the judge would, in those days,

take the children to his chambers

and he would ask them, "Who do you wanna live with?"

Alright, kids, do you wanna stay with granny

or go home and be with mama?

I wanted nothing more

than to be back with my mama, but...

- Granny. - My granny had told me

"He's gonna ask you who you wanna live with

and you need to tell him that you wanna live with me."

And so the fear of that woman

reached into the judge's chamber.

And when he asked me that question, I said,

"I wanna live with granny."

We were placed in her custody

and eventually ended up in foster care.

And the foster homes they placed us in weren't better

than the life that we had lived

up to that point with my mom,

that was probably the first trauma in my life.

It's hard to overstate the impact.

My name's Christopher Bobbitt.

I am Amy Ellison's older brother.

Our grandmother felt, I guess, something was wrong,

I don't know the exacts of that.

But that started our stints in and out of foster systems.

We went into foster care on two different occasions.

The first time I was six, we got out when I was eight.

The second time we went into foster care, I was 12.

And my mom got us back again when I was 14.

My name is Victoria Roybal

and I am a licensed clinical social worker.

Families being together is now their priority,

much more than it was, especially in the late '80s

and early '90s.

All the way through the '80s into the '90s,

there was a huge increase in kids who needed services.

The lack of understanding of childhood trauma

and mental health, as well as the rise in crack cocaine.

And at the time, the child welfare system

was basically a culmination

of these six very fragmented agencies.

They didn't have the resources. They were underfunded.

They were under staffed.

And so the results of all of those factors

was a very reactive approach to helping kids who were

in situations that they felt were dangerous.

Everybody around felt like an enemy.

And the hero was my mama.

And everything in the world

was just trying to keep me from her.

We have to look at not just physical safety,

we have to look at attachment.

We have to look at emotional, mental wellbeing, stability.

There's something to be said,

especially for child development

in the sense of a stable environment.

We had had this really traumatic time

where Chris and I had been removed from her custody

and she fought and got us back.

And that lasted about two years.

So we had already had this sort of bond together,

like the whole world was against us.

So we all were very, very close.

My brother, my mom, and me.

I always knew that my mother loved me and my sister.

Was never a doubt, never doubted that.

She just had her own demons, man.

And you know, she tried to quiet it the best she could

with drugs and fast living everything else that addicts do

to try to quiet the underlying issues.

I remember me and Amy and her living in motel rooms,

and she would go out and turn tricks and come back

and feed us and then leave again.

So like we were entertaining ourself in a hotel room.

And I don't mean like a good motel,

I mean like a crack house motel.

That's where we were living at though.

So it's like that was our house at the time

and we didn't have no food there.

So it just, whenever mama pops in and fed us,

didn't help with our school or nothing.

So, I mean, there was times

where I wasn't even going to school.

When I was about 10,

we rented this one room in this very dilapidated house.

The guy that was renting the house was like a slumlord.

So he took a one story, super tiny house

that was meant for maybe two people to live in,

he gutted the house

and turned it into like a little mini motel.

I wanna say there was five or six rooms in it.

There's no telling who was living there with us.

It was just drifters coming in and out.

Whoever could afford a room.

But we did have a roof and she did work.

She did make money.

And one of her regulars at the job became friendly

and his name was Tab.

They started dating

and it seemed like things were gonna work out.

He moved us out of that really crappy boarding house

into this duplex.

We had our own room.

So I mean, our needs were being met to that extent.

But it turns out that he was a very violent alcoholic.

And he would abuse my mom nightly.

If I ever seen the devil in somebody, I've seen in him.

He would say horrible things to us.

Talk about our mother horribly,

beat her with an inch of her life.

I'm telling you, just very, very traumatic.

Some probably the most heavy traumatic stuff

I went through was with him.

It was just a cycle where he would start drinking,

they would start fighting

and I would take off out of the house

and run to the, pick 'em up grocery

and dial 911 on the payphone.

And the police would come and then they would make him leave

or they would take him to jail.

Eventually they quit taking him to jail

because my mom would never post charges.

I think mom just dealt with it because he took care of us.

And then my dad gets out of jail.

He shows up in my life when I'm about 10 years old

and he starts giving me a lot of attention.

And so this is my dad, like this is the dad,

the mystery figure that other people have that I don't.

So I'm super excited.

He's treating me like a princess.

Very affectionate to me.

And Tab had an ex-wife and a teenage daughter,

and so he was big on father's rights.

And my mom looking for opportunity

to leave him.

She asked if me and my brother could move in with my dad.

He got a trailer in Dickson

out in the country that direction.

And when he would get home from work,

he would have usually a fifth of whiskey and he would sit

and drink and watch porn.

Chris and I were allowed to watch it.

At the same time,

he was very strict and stern, especially with my brother.

I never, never really liked him.

And I don't think he really ever liked me.

I think his whole game was trying to keep Amy around.

I was his princess. I was his daughter.

Like he was making up for lost time.

He would buy me things, he would treat me really well.

And then that sort of affection

turned to inappropriate touching.

And I was like, I asked him, I said,

"Stop, why are you doing that to me?"

And he said, "I'm just cuddling with you."

I didn't really know what was going on,

but I didn't wanna be there.

It was a confusing, difficult time

because this was my introduction to men and affection

and how I would go about getting attention

or getting my needs met.

I guess I just received the message very clearly

that this was an asset.

This was something that meant something

that was valuable to people.

This part of my body was something

that was valuable to people.

And so I think that's where I really began to understand,

like see myself as

an object.

Our ideal attachment is this secure attachment that says,

when I need something, this person responds.

When I don't feel safe, I know I can go to this person.

That's the ideal.

But when I have an experience

that sometimes this person responds

or sometimes they respond, but it's not loving.

Or sometimes they respond,

but also sometimes they're the reason that I feel unsafe.

That creates anxious attachments.

That creates avoidant attachments.

And that can create also,

which often happens with complex trauma,

this disorganized attachment.

So our idea of love and danger become very intertwined

and almost confused.

The person who's supposed to love me

is the one who's hurting me.

And so what happens with that

is that carries over

into our intimate partner relationships.

That carries over into how we do

any sort of interpersonal relationships.

The first time we were allowed to visit my mom,

Chris told Mama, "I don't want to go back.

He whips me with a belt and sticks

and I don't want to go back."

And she was interested,

she seemed concerned about that.

And then I said, "There's also more."

I asked her to come into the bathroom

so I could talk to her by herself.

So we went in the bathroom

and I told her about him letting us watch pornography

and the things that he was doing with me at night.

We never had to go back with my dad.

So we moved in with my mom on George Avenue

in her little duplex apartment.

My dad died In a motorcycle accident.

There was some lack of closure in that for me

because he never apologized.

He never affirmed.

He never acknowledged what he did to me.

To understand my mom, you would have to understand

how she came up.

So she was raised by a single alcoholic father

and she never really knew her mom.

And by the time I knew my granddaddy,

he was in recovery and he was sober.

But he had raised them in his addiction and his alcoholism.

She was dealt a real bad hand, man.

And you know, she could have done something

with it probably.

But you know, some people never get that.

She did the best that she could

having the limited resources she had.

She found herself in and out of bad relationships.

She had no marketable skills.

She waited tables to provide for us.

And I know that it was hard. Things were expensive.

And raising two kids by herself

and living in crappy slums,

always feeling like you're not giving your kids

what they deserve.

And she would say that all the time.

"Like, you deserve so much better than this.

You know, I don't know, like how I got so lucky

to have such wonderful kids."

Like those were the messages she always like gave us.

And I respect her for that.

My relationship with my mother was always a good one.

And you know, I was a momma's boy, you know what I'm saying?

I loved my mama.

You couldn't tell me nothing about my mama

that would waver that.

She gave us an understanding that life is gonna be hard.

That sometimes you have to make hard choices,

that you're strong and that you can do hard things

and that you're loved.

If the whole rest of the world seems against you,

there is one person on this whole planet

that loves you more than life itself.

She did drink and she did smoke weed.

Those were the things that she allowed herself,

but they weren't out of control until they were.

So we were in foster care from 12 to 14.

And my mom, amazingly, was at every court appointment,

every phone call visitation, every in-person visitation

she showed up and she was able to get us back

when I was 14, my brother was 15.

During the time that we were in foster care,

she had really nurtured

and developed a full on IV drug habit.

And so it was all consuming for her.

She was cleaning apartments for money, which really,

she was prostituting.

But she told us she was cleaning apartments

and she was spending all of her money on drugs.

We ended up on the street again,

Mama, with this all consuming drug habit.

There was a major theme that ran through my childhood

of Mama getting it together, getting back on her feet,

and us being together again.

It was always the same narrative.

You know, I'm gonna get stuff back together.

I've got this about to happen and this going on,

and stuff like that.

And you know, and those are the lies

we tell ourself as addicts.

You convince yourself of your own lies.

And that's when things become dangerous

'cause you think it's the truth.

And it's really just a bunch of lies you made up.

She seemed to always find a way,

but that way was oftentimes fraught with, you know,

lots of dysfunction, lots of instability,

unsure about how things were gonna go this time.

Just a lot of that.

Addiction's a trip, man.

You'll give everything you love away

and then realize you're holding nothing.

You think that you've given it away for something.

I mean, if you've ever been an addict,

and then you know, if you're honest with yourself

and you're honest with other people, I mean,

that's just the absolute truth.

When we didn't have any place to go,

my brother had a friend named Josh.

We were kind of high school friends or whatever.

He'd come pick me up for school, take me to school.

My mom essentially went to the streets

and Chris and I went to live with Josh and his parents.

They opened up their home and let us come.

It seemed, from the outside looking in,

that it was all up and up and everything was good,

but it wasn't.

A place where we partied.

Lots of teenagers were always in and out.

They dealt drugs out of the house.

And that's where I really first started to get exposed

to recreational drug use.

Josh was really my first serious boyfriend.

So I had had other boyfriends before him,

but he really was my first serious boyfriend.

I was 14, he was 16, he had a car.

I had put all of my hope into this relationship

with this boy.

So while we were living with Josh,

my mom was living on the streets

and was completely consumed in her drug habit.

Every so often I would have the opportunity to see her.

She lived here and there, you know, floating around.

Sometimes in places, sometimes under bridges.

But I had made the best efforts to try to find her

and spend time with her as much as I could whenever I could.

I went and found her

and brought her to my graduation

because I wanted her to see it.

So we got the call one day

that she had overdosed in a hotel room

and she was currently at the hospital.

So Chris and I came to see her.

- Hey Mama. - There's my baby.

Are you okay? - Yes ma'am.

The Foots have been very good to us.

The Foots, huh?

When two of them stand together, are they feet?

Look, I'm gonna get back on my feet

and figure this out.

We'll be together soon.

Mamma

We are okay.

We're in a good place

and you don't have to worry about us anymore.

I just had found this new relationship.

I was really in love with this boy, I thought,

and all my needs were being met every day.

I was living more comfortably than I can remember

having lived up to that point.

And so I just made the decision to tell her

she didn't have to keep trying.

That we would be okay.

I would live my life and she could live her life.

And I loved her

and I appreciated all that she had done for me.

But clearly she had made her choice

and it was okay that she was doing what she was doing.

She didn't have to try anymore.

I think that that was devastating for her

because I think Chris and I were the reason,

the only reason she would ever try to be better.

And so for a lot of years I had a lot of guilt

around that decision because I thought that

that conversation that day made her give up.

And the next time we got a phone call, it was the police.

And they were telling us that my mom had been murdered

by her using partner in the park.

Hello. - This is

the Metro Nashville Police Department.

I need to speak to Amy Bobbitt.

This is her.

I regret to inform you that we found your mother's body

in Centennial Park.

She died. She died in her addiction.

She was living with a guy

and he ended up beating her death with a vodka bottle.

When Mama OD'ed,

Josh's mom and dad got custody of us.

I knew basically that they were taking our money,

they were spending it on drugs.

I didn't feel loved or wanted or accepted there.

So I got sick of it at 17,

left there, went and stayed a friend of mines.

Me and Amy, we drifted apart for a little while.

I saw my life going like I was gonna marry Josh.

We were gonna take over the family business,

but he didn't see it the same way and he broke up with me,

but I was still living with him.

Around the same time Josh's dad, he ended up dying

of a heart attack there on the living room floor.

I thought that this was gonna bring us together in some way

'cause my mama had died and his daddy had died.

And I just thought

that would somehow rekindle our relationship.

Well it didn't go that way.

♪ Oh how you make me feel so potent ♪

♪ But when I'm with you I drown in the ocean ♪

You slut. You slut.

You don' get to do this. - Get out. Stop, stop.

I found out that he was sleeping

with my best friend at the time.

So I think that I kind of broke.

Let me go!

I hate you

♪ Put me on the alter cuz you can't be tamed ♪

Let me go! Please!

- Calm down. - I hate you!

I hate you!

I was 17.

My mom was dead. My dad was dead.

I was living with this boy

and all my hopes were on this boy.

And he didn't love me. I'd had enough.

So I left his house.

♪ self reclaimed ♪

I threw all that I could carry in a garbage bag.

And from that point on,

I was on my own.

♪ I know my way ♪

♪ Around this God forsaken town ♪

For someone who has been through the foster care system,

who has lost their parents,

who has now been essentially thrown out

by their support system, there's no fallback.

There's no, I can call this person

and think through with them, what should I do?

And that leads to what we would think of as a fear response.

A fear response, which it could be a myriad of things.

Drug use, delinquent behavior,

relationships that are abusive.

With all of those things in mind, it's very easy

for those individuals to end up on the streets

or end up victimized.

♪ You turn my water to whiskey ♪

♪ Butter to bourbon ♪

My name is Bobby Joslin

and I started Joslin & Son Signs in 1977.

I am Mikell Wiggs

and I was a sergeant for the Metro Police Department

in Nashville, Tennessee.

In the late '80s '90s, Nashville started changing

and started changing for the worst.

Nashville had a lot of crime going on in Second Avenue

and Fourth Avenue area.

Two of the main crack houses were in that area.

This was bad. This was a bad place.

This area was hot, which means that there was

a lot of gunfire, there was a lot of serious crimes.

If you wanna go pick up a prostitute,

this is where you came.

If you wanted to buy drugs,

this is where you came, Murfreesboro Road.

The place was not safe for anyone.

Women were raped, beat up, left in the alleys, dumped.

People came here,

they had to walk past all the prostitution, the drugs,

the pawn shops, the adult bookstores.

Multiple sex clubs were around.

Of course they called them spas.

It was a brutal time for Murfreesboro Road.

If you were out on the street, you were probably on crack.

I had doctors, I had nurses, I had businessmen,

all walks of life, blacks, whites, women, men,

all could cross the line.

And that line was devastating to their life.

They became a different person.

It is rarely just one event

or one scenario that leads

to someone ending up on the streets

or even in the criminal justice system.

♪ I ain't been going to church ♪

As a police officer,

I think you have to protect the people that you're serving.

And that was part of the people that I was serving.

♪ I light paper on fire just to keep getting higher ♪

♪ Hoping my memories will go ♪

♪ I drink whiskey not water ♪

♪ And my judgment will falter ♪

♪ Hoping I don't make it home ♪

Prostitutes, homeless in that condition,

in that area, for them to change was almost impossible.

They're starving for something, they're reaching out.

A lot of times the doors are closed

'cause people don't wanna have any association with them.

If I could get them help in any way,

I wanted to do that.

But they had to be willing to do it.

I only saw a couple that made it out.

♪ Hoping I don't make it home ♪

When you consider all of the factors

that were up at play in the late '80s, early '90s,

the foster care system, as fragmented as it was,

the rise and crack cocaine, the adult entertainment industry

and the childhood trauma that kind of compounded

with all of those things,

it was very unlikely for an individual

to be able to have a normal life

without ending up on the streets,

ending up any in the criminal justice system.

♪ I'm still finding my way ♪

♪ Around this God forsaken town ♪

♪ And I somehow keep finding ♪

♪ New holes in the ground ♪

♪ I'll hit rock bottom ♪

♪ Without ever making sound ♪

♪ I think I'm falling down ♪

♪ Because I can't help falling down ♪

So from the time I left Josh's house

until I ended up sleeping under a bridge homeless,

was a very fast process.

I couch hopped for a while.

I ended up with this lady named Celinda Pink.

She was an old blue singer.

She sang at a bar on Broadway,

on Lower Broad, on the weekends.

And she got me a job at the bar waiting tables.

I was very promiscuous during this time.

I was feeling myself. I was 17.

I thought that I was hot stuff.

I would pick a guy in the bar and then have sex with him.

Like that was my mental game.

Like somehow this was empowering to me somehow.

Like it made me feel like I was in control

because I would just pick any random guy.

Well, I mean, yeah,

I'm 17 years old at Honky Tonks on Lower Broad,

of course I could sleep with anybody down there

because they're guys.

But I didn't know that then,

I thought it was some kind of a challenge

or it meant something about me.

And I had spent years developing this idea about myself,

about that being my worth, that being my physical power,

that I would have control over men, that they would want

to have sex with me, that that meant something.

So that was my MO.

And this particular night I met someone

who was a bouncer at the bar across the street.

And I thought he was very handsome.

First night we played pool, flirted.

Nothing happened, which drove me crazy.

And then this Saturday we got to know each other

a little bit better.

And he asked me if I wanted to come see his apartment.

I was like, "Where do you live?"

He said, "Oh, during the day I work at a strip club

and I rent an apartment downstairs."

I was like, "That's it. That sounds amazing.

Yes, I want to go to your apartment."

So I left the bar that night with him

and he took me to International Fantasy,

which was not technically a strip club.

♪ It hurts to live this way ♪

♪ I don't mind the pain ♪

♪ And I like to feel the shame of it ♪

It was a private dance club.

It's essentially a brothel.

Men would come in and the ladies would line up

and he would pick which lady he would like

to have a private dance with.

And then they would go upstairs to a private room

where she would dance for him.

I think my eyes must have lit up.

I was like, "Do you think you could get me a job here?"

He said, "I can introduce you to the boss, G.L."

I met him the next day at the spa

and he said, "You know, you interested in a job?"

And I was like, "Yeah, I am."

He wanted to make sure I understood

what would be expected of me as an employee there.

So he gave me cash money.

He said, "I'll give you this much

because the house keeps 50% and I'm the house."

So essentially he got 50% off.

And so that's the first person

that I had sex with for money.

♪ They all say it hurts ♪

♪ To live this way ♪

My boyfriend was okay with all of this.

It was okay that I was sleeping with other men for money

'cause you know, it's just sex.

I mean, that's not that big a deal.

And so essentially house would take half

and he would take the other half.

So the first customer I had, I took the money down.

I was like, "Can you go get me some cocaine?"

And he was like, "Yes."

I was like, "I don't want crack 'cause I'm not a junkie.

I want cocaine. I want the powder."

And he was like, "Oh, I know where to go."

Well, he brings back crack immediately.

You joking. What is that?

Is that crack?

Are you a crack head?

Do I look like a crack head?

I had smoked crack before this, but I wasn't doing it right.

Like the way he showed me how to smoke crack,

it was like immediately became obsessed.

Like this was my drug of choice.

So I continued to work there and the house would take half

and I would give him the other half

and we would smoke it and crack.

I wasn't buying new dresses or makeup or things like that.

And I think that G.L. knew

that I wasn't reporting all my tips.

And so he kicked us out.

That's when the physical abuse started.

I remembered that my mom told me,

"If a man will hit you once, he will hit you again.

Don't stay."

The first time he put his hands on me,

I intended to leave him.

I went to call Celinda and Kevin, her boyfriend,

to see if they would come get me.

And Kevin said,

"No, we don't have the gas to come and get you."

And I just remember feeling so alone.

So we were in Clarksville for a few months

before we ended up back in Nashville with no plan,

no place to stay, just hustling every day,

working, smoking crack.

And we just kind of found our way

into the community of homeless people

that lived there under the Lafayette Street Bridge.

He went by Boxer and I went Bree.

I continue to live and work on the streets

for the next three years.

There was a community of other homeless people.

Everybody had their own hustle.

But to me, like this was a season, this was a moment.

This is what I was doing right now,

but it wasn't gonna be my forever.

Gwen was a girl that was also out there on the street,

and she was really the first person that I ever heard say,

"I'm gonna die with a crack pipe in my mouth.

At least I'll die happy."

Like she had fully given herself

to this way of life and was going to die this way.

And I began to see that in myself,

like in just this

short amount of time

I was on the street, living as a prostitute,

completely addicted to crack.

And somewhere in that process I just quit believing

that I had a purpose or a plan.

And in fact, the idea that God loved me

or knew I was there

seemed silly to me

because my whole life up to this point

has been heartache and brokenness

and one bad thing after another,

only to end up with me on the street selling my body,

giving everything that I had to a drug

that I could never get enough of.

And I just began

to lose hope in myself, in my future.

And seeing anything beyond this for myself.

I had been a victim of rapes, robberies.

I'd been arrested many times

and going to jail wasn't something

I was particularly afraid of,

but it was something I avoided.

I did not wanna go to jail

because it interfered with my daily crack routine.

And so I avoided the police,

but I was arrested anyway, several times.

And one particular time they took me downtown

and I had been through my process.

I had on my jumpsuit.

It's freezing cold in these places.

I had my little spot.

There were several other women in the cell with me.

And I'm just waiting for my transfer to my unit.

Then at that time,

the guards says... - Bobbitt?

And I stepped up to the bars.

Did you know that you were pregnant?

I most certainly did not know I was pregnant.

For all that I had done in the last couple of years,

I had never even considered the consequences

of the life that I was living.

That's a crack baby.

Yeah, she better nip that in the bud.

Up to a certain age,

things happened to me that I didn't have any control over.

And those were sad and really hard,

but they weren't my fault.

I didn't think poorly about myself.

I wasn't angry with God about that.

But then from about Josh's house on,

the choices I had made, I chose them.

Whether I statistically would have

or whatever the numbers would say about a girl

in my situation and how things would end up for her.

I knew right from wrong.

And I made the choice to be where I was.

And I had spent the previous few years

at the bottom of society and at the bottom with no hope

and no reason for living.

And then I had this moment in this place, this cold,

dank, smelly, unwelcoming, harsh place

where the God of the whole universe,

like the creator of everything,

came and sat down next to me.

And he said, "I do know there's a you,

and I do have a plan for you.

You're gonna be a mama."

I knew that he loved me

and I knew he knew there was a me

'cause how could he put such a precious gift

inside me if he didn't know there was a me

and that

same innate motherhood that my mom had

weld up in me like I'm a mama, that's important.

I can make a difference.

I can do something. It's not about me anymore.

And it changed me. It changed me.

And yeah, it changed me.

From that point on,

I had sworn off drugs, I wasn't going to use.

I wasn't gonna live this life anymore.

They had a chaplain in the jail and he got me a Bible

and I still have it.

And I spent the next three months incarcerated,

growing physically and spiritually.

When they arrested me that day, I was 90 pounds

and I was three months pregnant.

I was released at the beginning of my third trimester.

And they had given me prenatal care.

I had bonded with this baby inside me

and I had kindled a relationship with God.

But when Boxer bailed me out,

the first thing he wanted to do

was pick right up where we left off.

Dee got us the hookup. He gave me some great new stuff.

No, I don't want this.

We have a kid to think about.

He'll be all right.

No I rebuke this.

I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.

You're gonna have to do better than that.

I would've gone somewhere else

if I had another option, but I didn't.

And he got me out of jail.

We went immediately to a hotel room

and smoked all the crack that he had bought.

And then he started prostituting me again.

I continued to use

up until the beginning of my ninth month.

We were living in Clarksville.

Boxer's mom gave us a place to stay,

especially now that I was pregnant.

She also was very sensitive to that.

She could tell I wanted to be a mama.

And she like set me up a nursery,

but we were still carrying on the way that we were.

We just had a place to sleep at night.

We ended up getting into some trouble.

We were parked behind a house smoking crack

when a neighbor noticed us and called the police.

The police came to check it out.

They began walking around the house on both sides of us.

As soon as Boxer saw them, he floored it

and drove towards the officer.

Bullets hit the trunk. We made it out of there.

We didn't get caught that day,

but a few days later,

they were watching the house we were at.

And so coming home one day, the police tried

to pull us over.

Again, Boxer floors it,

and he slammed on the brakes, reached across me,

opened the passenger side door

and pushed me out of the car and then took off again.

Close the door.

The police officer, in his cruiser,

I'm laying on the ground, he stops. He looks at me.

I mean, I can't imagine what was probably going

through his head at this very pregnant woman

laying on the side of the road.

He took off for Boxer. I wandered off.

He got arrested.

When he called me from the jail,

he was with the detective.

And he told me that they would not arrest me

if I would check myself into rehab,

so I could either go to jail or to rehab.

So I went to rehab.

This was gonna be the opportunity for me to change my life.

And so I was gonna take full advantage of it.

And at rehab, I didn't really have a place to go after that.

And one of the counselors that worked there

had also worked for Sister Eileen in the House of Mercy.

So she called Sister Eileen and said,

"I have a girl that I think would be good for your program.

Do you wanna come and interview her?"

And Sister Eileen came out and met me.

And I remember the first time I saw her,

I knew that she was a Catholic nun.

So I had imagined her in a habit,

in black and white,

like floating into the rehab in this nun outfit.

And so when she showed up and jeans and a t-shirt,

I was like, "Sister Eileen?"

She liked to say that we had both kicked the habit, so

that was a little Sister Eileen humor for free.

So she accepted me in the program at the House of Mercy.

And so I had a discharge plan.

The House of Mercy was about 20 minutes

from Cumberland Heights.

And I spent the entire drive

telling Sister Eileen how grateful I was

she had let me in her program

and that I would not be needing all their resources,

that I would probably be there about four months.

And that I would get myself a job and get back on my feet

and get me and my baby an apartment.

And I just thought what they did was so incredible

and I really appreciated them.

Well, I lived at the House of Mercy for four years

and took full advantage of everything

that they had to offer.

It was a really good program.

When we arrived at the House of Mercy, it was Good Friday

and that Sunday was Easter.

And then four days after I moved into the House of Mercy,

I gave birth to my beautiful,

amazing, perfect son.

And he happened to be born on my 21st birthday,

which is always pretty cool.

I like to say he's the gift that keeps on taking.

I was definitely

in that honeymoon phase of my faith

where I just was amazed every day

and every moment that this God who met me that day

in that jail cell and made that promise to me

that he knew there was a me

and that he had a plan for me,

began to unfold that plan in front of me.

And I was in this house where we had to make a budget.

We had to attend meetings.

And so we had to go to three meetings a week

and either church or a meeting on Sunday.

So I was very open to going to church

and it seemed very convenient to me

that there was a church

right next door to the House of Mercy.

So I went in and they became family.

These were the first Christian relationships

I had really ever been exposed to.

And there was a group of us, there was Wendy and Joe

and Andrew and Jeremy

and Brian.

So Brian, I remember the first time I saw him

and he was singing and he had blonde hair

and he was very attractive to me.

And then he went up on stage

and started to share about his trip, his recent trip

that he had been on.

It was like, "Blah, blah, blah, God, blah, blah, blah,

the Lord did this, blah, blah, blah, help people,

blah, blah, blah missions."

I was in love.

Like I was like, I didn't even know guys like this

were my age, like out there living this life.

So I just really had a pretty serious crush on him

pretty much the first time I saw him.

He went to Bible college near the House of Mercy

and he would come to our little church every Sunday

and he started working in the homeless ministry.

And he got in with our little group of people

that would go out on Sunday after lunch.

And we just lived life together.

I still had struggles, but I was in love with God

and I was in love with Jesus.

I was in love with this life that he had given me.

And I was so grateful every day for the opportunity

that he had given me to be a mom.

And I was head over heels in love with my new baby.

I probably was glowing.

I began to learn about church community,

about faith.

I began to understand the Bible.

Scriptures made sense to me. My eyes were opened.

I was very much in love with this new life

and was doing very well.

You all would please welcome Amy.

Not a day goes by that I don't use

at least one of the tools given to me at House of Mercy.

I'm so blessed to be part of such an amazing ministry,

thank you for supporting this ministry.

It has made a real difference in my life

and in the lives of my family.

So I was there for about six months

before Boxer's release.

During that time, I was writing him faithfully.

I was sending him money.

So I got a $142 a month,

and I would give $14 to the church for tithes.

I would buy myself a carton of cigarettes.

I would send him $20.

And that was my budget at that time.

And I did that still believing

that this was gonna be the wake up call he needed.

That he would get out, he would see that this is possible,

that we don't have to live that way.

And he would see this child like this was our baby,

and we needed to live differently.

After I had been there for about six months,

he showed back up.

I began to try to incorporate him

into this new life that I had.

I brought him to church to meet my new friends.

I tried to have a relationship with him.

I got pregnant with my daughter.

I wanted to pull him this way,

but really it was much easier for him

to pull me that way.

We both really began

to fall back into some old habits.

And then it wasn't long

before he brought crack.

♪ It hurts to live this way ♪

When I got my Pell Grant money, he showed up that night

with crack and we used in my bedroom at the House of Mercy.

My son was crying. I was pregnant with our second child.

And it became painfully obvious to me at that time,

I was not going to be able

to have a new life with this person.

He left, stealing all my college money.

He once again left me there to figure it out on my own.

And he took the money that I had to go to school with.

I had really felt brokenness like never before,

because in the jail cell, when God met me there,

it was like, okay, here's a chance at a new life.

And he gave it to me. I showed up and he gave it to me.

And then I took it and I trashed it.

I was willing once again to do these things.

Even though my spirit and my heart knew that it was wrong,

I continued until finally the opportunity was there

and I smoked crack.

And I was at the end of it, left alone, like coming down

with my child in the room.

And I just saw this picture of myself

that was so scary.

Like, this is what is down that road.

This is what is down that road.

It's down that road for me

and it's down that road for that baby and for this baby.

And I've gotta change.

Something has to change.

So that's when I decided that it was over.

The sun was coming up

and people were arriving at the church next door.

My church, my friends, my people.

I heard voices I recognized,

Joey, Andrew, Wendy-Kelly.

They were setting up for something.

I don't even know what.

And I just walked over to the church

and I looked at my friend Wendy, and she looked at me

and she said, "Amy, have you backslidden?"

And I just started crying

because it's so hard when you already know,

when you know what it can be, what you can have,

and then you feel like such a failure

because in spite of all of that,

just for this momentary thing, just for this,

you would be willing to give it all up.

When Wendy asked me if I had backslid

and I started crying,

she asked Brian to pray with me at the altar.

And we just went to the altar

and I just started crying and he was praying with me.

And I was just afraid I was gonna lose my place

at the House of Mercy.

And they were gonna take David away

and then I wouldn't have a place to live.

I was pregnant again. I was gonna lose that baby.

It just was like everything in this one moment

was gonna go away.

It was all gonna go away.

He doesn't see this sin anymore.

He just sees you, Amy, just you.

The church came around me and they prayed with me

and they cried with me.

And Sister Eileen told me

that she was in the business of getting moms off the street,

not putting moms on the street.

And then if I really wanted to live differently

that I didn't have to leave.

The kindness of the Lord leads us to repentance.

And I experienced it in the grace

that was shown to me.

Nobody was angry with me.

Everybody was sad with me.

I did have to tell

the community that I lived with,

that I had brought this drug into their house.

I did have to ask for their forgiveness. They forgave me.

My church loved on me, supported me, showed me

that this didn't change who I was.

And even though I was so broken

and ashamed, they only saw me.

I think I had a renewed sense of sobriety

like earnestness towards this life

and that this is serious.

The opportunity I've been given is precious and fragile

and it can be lost.

So with that renewed perspective, I carried on,

I started going to school.

In fact, when it came time for me to have Cindy,

I was in an undeclared major at the community college.

So when she was born, she had a fever

and I had a reaction to anesthesia.

She ended up having meningitis. So she was in the NICU.

I remember noticing, realizing

that the girls taking care of these little babies

were my age.

Like there were buzzers going off and sounds and beeps

and babies were crying, but they always knew what to do.

They just dutifully would take care of this thing

or that thing and the beeping would stop

and the babies would stop crying.

And they just seemed to know what to do

with all of these machines.

And I just saw myself in that.

I was like, "I could do that."

And that's where I felt my calling to be a nurse.

So I finished my time at the House of Mercy.

I lived there for a full two years as a resident.

And then I would go on to work there

for two more years while I went through nursing school.

During that time, Brian and I started dating

and then we got married.

This summer I graduated from nursing school.

It was a very busy summer.

I graduated nursing school, bought a house,

got married and got pregnant with my third kid.

When I describe my sister to people, you know,

I'll say, "She went from living under bridges

and drug addiction and all these bad things

and now she's a registered nurse

and working in one of the most prestigious hospitals

in Nashville.

Four beautiful kids. Stupid blessings, man."

And then when I congratulate my sister on these things

and like tell her how, how proud I'm of these things,

she just looks at me and she says,

"Chris, I didn't do any of this.

All I did was show up."

I would like to say that that was my happily ever after.

I would like to say that life was all roses.

But the truth is life is hard.

And I battle some real demons.

And when you go into the enemy's camp

and you take what he thinks belongs to him,

sometimes he fights back for it.

And there are times that I still default my old ways

of thinking and I struggle with hurts

and things that have happened to me

and ways that I've hurt other people

that still affect my life today.

But I'm figuring that out

and I'm happy to be in the life that I'm in today.

And I owe it all to the grace

that was shown to me by my Father,

who really did always know there was a me

and really did have a plan for me

as it turns out.

♪ I was there ♪

♪ When she walked away ♪

♪ And you stood there on the edge that day ♪

♪ I called your name ♪

♪ From the highest place ♪

♪ 'cause I saw you ♪

♪ I saw you ♪

♪ And I stayed ♪

♪ I was there ♪

♪ When the night felt so cold ♪

♪ When they broke the wings that you used to hold ♪

♪ And I kept you close ♪

♪ While the dark went through ♪

♪ 'cause I saw you ♪

Hey, you remember the girl who left AMA last week?

The one with the barcode tattoo.

Jessie? - Yeah.

She's on the fifth floor.

I just thought you liked to know.

♪ I kept you breathing in new life ♪

♪ Kept giving you the fight ♪

♪ And you will sore ♪

♪ From what I saw ♪

♪ And I will see you through it all ♪

♪ Now the sky is an open door ♪

♪ Every step you take ♪

♪ Closer and closer to more ♪

♪ You're even stronger ♪

♪ as the light breaks through ♪

My testimony wasn't somebody came

and preached Jesus to me.

My testimony was a long, arduous,

slow trod towards a God who loved me

and a constant pursual by him.

And in all the alleyways and all the dark nights

and all of the trap houses

and all the places, dirty places

I found myself.

He kept me.

He was there, he was there with me

like not in support,

but as a guard against,

he preserved me through many things

so that I would have the opportunity ultimately

when I was ready for him to look me in my eye

and say, "I know there's a you.

I have a plan for your life and it's gonna be great."

♪ I see you ♪

♪ You know it's true. ♪

♪ I'll see you through it all. ♪