Her mother was 13 when she was born. At her age 5 she was suffering sexual abuse.
Some years later she was driving to an abortion clinic to terminate her pregnancy. Upon arrival she encountered people outside “advocating for the unborn.”
At that unforeseen moment of decision, Shakia Craig turned away from the clinic and found Blue Monarch.
Today, Craig serves as development and community relations officer for Blue Monarch, a nonprofit Christian ministry based in the Hillsboro area of Coffee County. As a graduate of the intensive recovery program, she speaks with passion and conviction about healing the whole family.
“We aren’t your average treatment center,” she told The Rotary Club of McMinnville at its weekly luncheon Thursday in the fellowship hall of First Presbyterian Church.
“We put just as much emphasis on healing the children as the mother,” the speaker stressed. While mothers may bear the physical bruises of abuse, their children carry deep emotional scars, invisible wounds that cascade onto the next generation.
That trauma haunts the child’s memory far into the future, often welling up as behavioral problems and learning disabilities, Craig observed.
She relayed to the Rotary audience the real-life nightmare of a seven-year-old who watched as his mother “was tied to a char and repeatedly beaten because she would not submit” to her male companion’s demand for sex.
“He didn’t know how to be a kid and I didn’t know how to be a mom,” another Blue Monarch client confessed in a video Craig showed.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs as they are called by professionals dealing with those problems) very often involve substance abuse and addiction. The downward pull of that vicious cycle can begin very early in life, and it can be learned from older family members.
One client revealed to Blue Monarch counselors that her introduction to methamphetamine use came from her grandmother.
Other clients were in their early teens when their mother sold them into sexual slavery to support their drug habit.
On its scenic 104-acre campus, Blue Monarch offers not only safe shelter but acceptance, grace, patience and Christian leadership to mothers and their children, she explained. Since its founding in 2003, the organization has graduated nearly 1,000 mothers, all prepared with vocational and life skills to become independent, economically empowered and self-reliant members of the community.
Many have gone straight to work in regular, fulfilling jobs while some have gone to college or training programs in specialized fields, Craig told the civic club audience. In the process, their children have had success in Hillsboro Elementary School and have benefited from one-on-one tutoring from volunteers from several counties.
Rachel Killebrew, a member of McMinnville Rotary, has competed training to serve as a member of the tutoring and mentoring corps. Kids needing extra help with math can learn a lot from Killebrew, a university-trained mathematician who served in the Apollo program that landed the first humans on the moon in the late 1960s.
The wraparound services are offered totally free to clients, Craig noted. The work is sustained and by private donations and contributions from organizations like the Rotary Clubs in Coffee and nearby counties.
Craig and Killebrew share more facts and reflections in WCPI’s weekly FOCUS session. The half-hour conversation airs Tuesday at 5 p.m. and again Saturday at 9:35 a.m. on McMinnville Public Radio 91.3-WCPI.
