JOHN COFFELTEditor

Fundraiser to help with costs of new facility that expand services

Coffee County-based Miriam House is working to expand its service to the women in the community through its Residential Faith Based Rehab and Discipleship Program.

Named for the biblical sister to Moses, the organization, hopes to build a new facility that will allow for an additional five students and three staff during phase one of the project.

Miriam House will hold a fundraiser 10 a.m. until 4p.m., Nov. 4 at Canvas Community Church, 1886 McArthur St. The event will include vendors, a petting zoo, bounce houses, games pumpkin painting and live music by Emily Jordan and Bella Norman.

Director Tasha Hill said that in Exodus after the Moses parted the Red Sea, Miriam led all the women of Israel to their freedom.

“That’s where our name … comes from because we’re celebrating freedom for these women who are coming out of life controlling issues,” Hill said.

Hill said that the organization currently shelters 10 students, but that now it has outgrown its space.

“We receive women from jails, off the street—anyone who needs help and is ready for a life change,” Hill said.

During the 12-18 month program students are brought into the fold, where they are taught life skills and mentored in household finances. They are given the help they need to return to healthy, meaningful lives.

Miriam House opened during the uncertainty of the beginning of the pandemic in April of 2020.

“I almost didn’t open,” Hill said. “God was really with us. The whole world turned upside down. I asked what do we do?”

It was during that period of prayer and uncertainty that Hill received a call from distraught women.

She recalled hearing, “Miss Tasha, if you don’t open up, I don’t know if I will be alive tomorrow.”

She notes that while not downplaying the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of people die from addiction as well.

Before opening the facility, Hill struggled with addiction. She said that she grew up in church, but somewhere along the way got onto the wrong path.

“For 20 years I was lost in addiction,” she said. “I started doing drugs when I was 14 years old.”

Even in the darkness of addiction, she knew that she needed to get clean, just not how.

“The harder I fell into it I just didn’t think I could get out,” Hill added. “I just would try on my own might, but I just didn’t have the skills to do those things.”

Hill said that she was frequently arrested, lost her children and even lost hope.

Despair takes many forms. For Hill, it was hurting herself. That spiraled into fatalism.

In 2016, Hill hit her low spot. Dealing drugs, taking drug, she didn’t care if she went to prison or the grave, she just wanted to be in a place where she couldn’t hurt anyone.

She had tried secular rehabs, doing everything she thought would help.

“But I was empty on the inside,” she said. “I was losing my mind with all the stress that I was under.”

Then one day, she found herself drawing a gun on a man over drugs and money.

At the brink, she pulled back and turned to God.

Over the next three weeks, it was chaos, a barrage of arrests and a mental institute.

Hill felt the voice of God came to her from a fellow inmate at the jail in Jasper who called her by name and told her that she had to get home and take care of her children.

The lies that she had insulated herself from the truth began to melt away with each tear the two women shared in that cell.

“As a person thinks, so they are,” Hill said.

“I’m this way because I chose to be,” she accepted. “When I got out, I was different.”

There was a process to learning how to live again, and that journey eventually led to partner with Be the Bush founder Caleb McCall to form Miriam House.

Intake coordinator Ashley Trimue said that when women come into the program they are not in a good spot.

“Some people come in and don’t have anything,” Trimue said. “We meet their physical needs and then we also meet their spiritual needs.”

Trimue said that on a case-by-case basis, each student receive whatever care they might need.

“Where they come in lost and hopeless, they find hope,” she said.

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.