As a teenager and young adult, I found myself trying to find answers to help
friends, relatives and others who had problems, not realizing the road I had
begun to travel. During my late twenties and early thirties, I found myself
being asked questions about the Bible and Christian issues faced by women in the
church I was attending. In 1985 I started a ministry called Compassionate
Ministries and began to hold monthly workshops and seminars for African American
women in the Christian community who were hurting. As a result of some of the
topics and discussions at these workshops, in 1987 I started a weekly support
group using a room in a local neighborhood church thinking I would be dealing
with only Christian women. I was in for a rude awakening. Women of all races,
religious and non-religious backgrounds began showing up for our sessions. It
was in these groups that I began to discover that some of these women were
victims of rape and incest, some were being abused physically, others
emotionally and verbally. After meeting for seven years, I realized that I was
limited in the help I was able to provide these women through group sessions
only and needed to reach out more. It was then that a dream I had carried in my
heart from my younger years was about to emerge. That dream was to let women
know that no matter what kind of crisis they found themselves in, there would be
someone out there who cared and was reaching out to help them. That someone was
me!
And so, in January 1994, I founded Life Source Consultants, Inc. to bring
hope and healing to women whose lives had been torn apart from abuse. A
nonprofit organization that would begin to effect a positive change in the area
of domestic violence and enhance the lives of women (and their children) who are
victims or survivors. I started in my basement by offering telephone crisis
intervention services and action planning sessions for abused women and
continued to use the facilities of the same neighborhood church for a weekly
support group. By the end of the first year (with one volunteer) we had served
300 women with crisis intervention services, support group, action planning
sessions, workshops, seminars and conferences, and published our first
newsletter with over 400 copies distributed.
With God's directions and assistance, I found the courage and faith to make
the dream He gave me a reality. I dared to dream that I could meet the needs of
abused women by offering them restored hope, healing, and renewed
self-confidence. Because of that dream, Life Source Consultants is a unique
organization that offers specialized programs with practical solutions, outreach
and prevention services to mend the broken hearts of women who find themselves
victims of physical, mental, verbal, emotional abuse, sexual assault or
incest.
